I swear sometimes I think the news is going to do us all in. On the web this morning was a big story "Organic Food is No Healther, Study Finds." If you read the story the angle is that studies find that organic food is nutritionally no different than non-organic AND CHEAPER (as the story points out repeatedly) food. Here's a quote:
"Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."
Well, duh. An apple is an apple--nutritionally speaking--and the way it is grown (pesticide free) isn't going to change how much fiber it has, or the amount of vitamins in it.
I personally don't buy organic foods thinking they will be more nutritious. I buy them because I want to support growers who DON'T use synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, and fertilizer, and who have greater suspect for the sustainability of their soil.
Of course the "read" of this story today is that we shouldn't be wasting money to buy organic because it doesn't really matter. It DOES matter, to me, and I will continue to choose organic over regular, when it is available (which isn't always the case here). I will spend $3-$4 on a half-gallon of organic milk instead of $3 on a gallon of regular (it tastes better...I promise you!) and twice as much on organic carrots (ditto...deeper orange, better flavor). There are some organic items I won't spend extra on at this point, but I suspect it is more a point of price-gauging on behalf of the local supermarkets, rather than the true cost.
2 comments:
WORD.
Who said the media was liberally-biased? At least there's one pinko-paper we can count on- here's another retort, courtesy of that left-leaning rag, the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-lasalle/organic-food-emisem-all-t_b_248130.html
Ya, what he said!
Another well-written, well-researched response is from Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food". He goes into depth about the "cult of nutritionism" in the US, which is a theory that too much emphasis is placed on the individual nutrients found in foods rather than the whole of a food's parts. Example: one can take beta-carotene supplements all day and not reap the rewards of, say, eating a carrot, because the single element doesn't work as well when removed from the complex system of a whole food, i.e., the carrot root. So, a study can show that organic foods don't best conventional foods in nutrient amounts, but says nothing of the way we disect a carrot's nutritional value into simplified categories to measure its benefits in our diet. Organic agriculture helps to bring the whole food/whole planet theory into focus by emphasizing a carrot's place in the ecosystem, from its seed to our stomach, instead of working with the reductionist assumption that beta-carotene can be taken to supplement a American diet rich in carbohydrates.
Want a copy of the book? I'm getting it for you right now...
I'm glad to know there are other more educated (or at least substantiated) opinions on this floating in the internets. I just don't understand why it is that we (the collective "we") have to assume that anything with the words "organic" or "green" are a negative thing. I stand by my theory that our own stupidity (again, the collective "our") will be the end of us.
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