You can't use... chemicals? How does it grow without water?
Organic food is a crock. Ain't nothing wrong with buying some local food if it tastes better, but the notion that agribusiness foods are in any way less healthy isn't supported by anything.
"The same thing" is quite relative. Yes, two hamburger patties side by side look the same and amount to the same meal, but I'll guarantee you that the one made from freshly ground organic beef probably tastes a lot better than the frozen pack shipped out from Jersey. (Sorry, your state is just perpetually the symbol of mass production of all things both natural and artificial.)
The same goes for milk. Yeah, I'll spend the extra $1.25 or so and get the stuff in glass jugs shipped from the farm probably no more than 50mi outside the city. It *does* taste better.
Nutritionally everything's probably square, but that's not the only metric people use.
I agree 100%. It's just the claim that local or organic foods are somehow healthier, either for me or for the environment, that annoys me. There's nothing wrong with preferring local food because it tastes better or because you want to support local businesses; but those are the arguments people should actually use.
Yeah, but in that case, the difference is between food that's produced with care by a local producer and frozen garbage. It doesn't have anything to do with chemicals or hormones. If people want to use "organic" as a proxy for "fresh and local," I don't have a problem with that, but like Chip says, that should be the stated reason.
Likewise, I'd rather get the farm-fresh strawberries down the road from here than the frozen pack shipped out from CA.
As for the organic argument as a whole, the only real "pro" I can see to it is the overall environmental impact. Pesticides can have far-reaching implications on local wildlife, but not using them reduces crop yields. The local joke from farmers out here (yes, farmers are "out here") is that they charge just as much as the supermarkets for their corn because they also have to deal with shoplifters. In this case, the shoplifters are deer. I'm pretty sure that we can't legally poison *them* with anything but lead, and even then, only when delivered at a fairly high velocity.
Agreed with pretty much everything here. Organic carrots taste a lot better to me than regular ones, so it's worth the price difference.
On the plus side, if you happen to be within striking distance of a Trader Joe's, getting organic stuff there is almost always cheaper than the regular stuff at a grocery store. That's like, the most fantastic place on the planet.
I love Trader Joe's too, but more because they have items that they tend not to have at a regular supermarket. There are some fantastic soups I get there that they don't have at the local Pathmark.
And you can't beat a bargain like three or four bucks for an okay bottle of wine.
As far as the carrots go, I've once or twice accidentally bought organic carrots from the Pathmark around the block and didn't realize there was any difference until I was halfway through the bag. It tasted exactly the same as the non-organic ones I get at the same store. So I guess it really depends on who's selling the organic produce to the store.
The word 'organic' has been so badly bowdlerized by the government and industry it's practically worthless.
That said, I will pick up your 'unnatural food is perfectly healthy' gauntlet, starting with the plain nosed fact that over the past 35 years of creating the most highly processed Western Diet, Americans have surged in weight gain, diabetes, coronary heart disease and colon cancer. I'm quite convinced eating an apple is always going to get you ahead of eating AppleJacks.
Well, hold on. I didn't say unnatural food is all perfectly healthy. I said that food isn't necessarily unhealthy just BECAUSE it's unnatural.
AppleJacks are worse than apples because they're loaded with sugar and therefore higher in calories, not because they're processed. Of course, process foods do tend to be higher in calories, but if you eat the all-natural rip-off of AppleJacks that they sell at Trader Joe's, it's not going to be much better.
And to be fair, you have to make an apples-to-apples comparison (HAR HAR). The issue isn't whether something with a pound of sugar is worse than something without. It's whether that organic apple is any better for you than that apple that came from a huge, industrial farm. It appears that it's not.
I challenge you to find me two comparable foods where the processed version has fewer calories per serving. I think that will be a very long safari.
But to put a larger point on it, processed foods as a whole have a far greater chemical/hormone/artifice content than their natural analogs, and far and away will make you far sicker in both the immediate and chronic.
I question the metric used in the study. The article is suspiciously lacking in details, but the gist I'm getting is that they tested the food to see if it had any more nutrients, vitamins, what-have-you... but isn't the "organic" label more about what ISN'T in it than what is? Sure, some people might claim that using non-chemical pesticides somehow helps plants get more nutrients or something, but really, the point is that the consumer isn't consuming the pesticides. And this study doesn't seem to address that at all.
WE HAVE A WINNAH! Yes, the whole point of organic food isn't that it has more vitamins or fewer calories or whatever; I'm confident it has no such advantages at all. The point is that it doesn't have synthetic pesticides, hormones, and waxes. This article says nothing about endocrine disrupters or the expanding "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico caused by fertilizer offwash. And those are the whole point of choosing organic foods.
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Organic food is a crock. Ain't nothing wrong with buying some local food if it tastes better, but the notion that agribusiness foods are in any way less healthy isn't supported by anything.
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The same goes for milk. Yeah, I'll spend the extra $1.25 or so and get the stuff in glass jugs shipped from the farm probably no more than 50mi outside the city. It *does* taste better.
Nutritionally everything's probably square, but that's not the only metric people use.
Reply
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As for the organic argument as a whole, the only real "pro" I can see to it is the overall environmental impact. Pesticides can have far-reaching implications on local wildlife, but not using them reduces crop yields. The local joke from farmers out here (yes, farmers are "out here") is that they charge just as much as the supermarkets for their corn because they also have to deal with shoplifters. In this case, the shoplifters are deer. I'm pretty sure that we can't legally poison *them* with anything but lead, and even then, only when delivered at a fairly high velocity.
Reply
On the plus side, if you happen to be within striking distance of a Trader Joe's, getting organic stuff there is almost always cheaper than the regular stuff at a grocery store. That's like, the most fantastic place on the planet.
Reply
And you can't beat a bargain like three or four bucks for an okay bottle of wine.
As far as the carrots go, I've once or twice accidentally bought organic carrots from the Pathmark around the block and didn't realize there was any difference until I was halfway through the bag. It tasted exactly the same as the non-organic ones I get at the same store. So I guess it really depends on who's selling the organic produce to the store.
Reply
That said, I will pick up your 'unnatural food is perfectly healthy' gauntlet, starting with the plain nosed fact that over the past 35 years of creating the most highly processed Western Diet, Americans have surged in weight gain, diabetes, coronary heart disease and colon cancer. I'm quite convinced eating an apple is always going to get you ahead of eating AppleJacks.
Reply
AppleJacks are worse than apples because they're loaded with sugar and therefore higher in calories, not because they're processed. Of course, process foods do tend to be higher in calories, but if you eat the all-natural rip-off of AppleJacks that they sell at Trader Joe's, it's not going to be much better.
And to be fair, you have to make an apples-to-apples comparison (HAR HAR). The issue isn't whether something with a pound of sugar is worse than something without. It's whether that organic apple is any better for you than that apple that came from a huge, industrial farm. It appears that it's not.
Reply
But to put a larger point on it, processed foods as a whole have a far greater chemical/hormone/artifice content than their natural analogs, and far and away will make you far sicker in both the immediate and chronic.
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-Thy
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