PEOPLE spending up to 70 per cent more on organic food are getting no more health benefits than those buying conventional food, according to new research.

The study is the latest to knock down suggestions that bio food is better for you.

It comes less than 12 months after the UK’s Food Standards Agency reviewed 50 years of research to find that costly organic products had no more nutritional goodness than food produced in the normal way.

The new findings on environmentally-friendly processed food were announced in Berlin yesterday by one of Europe’s most respected consumer watchdogs, Stiftung Warentest. Experts carried out 85 investigations over eight years by testing a range of products from baby food to apple juice and cinnamon.

Last year, the Food Standards Agency also found Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food, a large independent review has concluded.

There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found.

Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour.

Overall the report, which is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no differences in most nutrients in organically or conventionally grown crops, including in vitamin C, calcium, and iron.

The same was true for studies looking at meat, dairy and eggs.

Differences that were detected, for example in levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use and ripeness at harvest and are unlikely to provide any health benefit, the report concluded.

The review did not look at pesticides or the environmental impact of different farming practices.