Water, water everywhere - Updates - Brief Article

Better Nutrition, Nov, 2002

Although conventionally grown oranges are typically twice as large as their organic counterparts, the organic ones contain 30 percent more vitamin C. While you might expect to reap better health benefits from the larger oranges, all you're really getting is more-water.

Assisted by his undergraduate students in the spring of 2002, Theo Clark, PhD--then a visiting chemistry professor at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri--analyzed both types of fruit. "The orange is the traditional source of vitamin C, and it's highly commercialized," Clark said, announcing his findings on June 2, 2002, at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Minneapolis. "But no one to our knowledge has thought to compare the organic and conventionally grown varieties."

Clark says the reason for the surplus vitamin C in organic oranges isn't clear. However, he offered one possible explanation for the increased size of conventional oranges: The nitrogen in fertilizers used on conventional oranges may cause them to absorb more water, making them bigger.