Organic Food: A Waste of Money

[blackjack]

Organic Food: A Waste of Money ?

Overheard middle-class conversation: "I really want to switch to all organic fruit and veg - it's just so expensive."

"Sometimes I feel really guilty buying non-organic," said the other woman. "It's so bad for the environment."

"Can't be good for your health either. All those toxins."

They're both wrong. Organic isn't better for you. Eating organic food won't stop imaginary 'toxins' from bypassing your liver and making you sick. Buying organic can potentially cause greater harm to the environment. Eating local is no guarantee of reducing your carbon footprint, if the local food has been sitting in a fridge for a few months; choosing seasonal food is more important.

If everybody switched to organic - if they could afford to - the pressures on the land would increase exponentially, as much more space would be required to grow crops. The result? More trees chopped down. That has to be weighed against the harmful effects of a small number of pesticides. We need more efficient agriculture, based on sustainable and scientific methods, says Brian Dunning, an excellent American writer who debunks pseudoscience at Skeptoid.com:

I say we dump the useless paranormal objections to foods freighted with evil corporate hate energy, and instead use our brains to our advantage for once. When we find a better way to grow the same crop faster, stronger, healthier, and on less acreage, let's do it. We all benefit.
I don't entirely agree with Dunning; corporate concentration of food has, for instance, led to the very sad demise of diversity in fruit and vegetables, ultimately taking away our choices and limiting competition - Seedsavers does great work here. It's also clear that some non-organic pesticides, such as one produced by Bayer, are causing major harm to the world's bees, an insect that is vital for our food supply. We do need to cast a very skeptical eye over corporate agriculture.

But Dunning has a point. The majority of modern pesticides do not leave harmful residues, and many "organic" or "natural" pesticides - including sewerage or fungicides - are far worse for the environment than safe, synthetic options. "Natural" is not always better: think of snake venom. All in all, there's a wrong-headed idea that organic food production will lead to environmental utopia. It's not: it too has costs. Skeptoid has a useful and informative article on the topic.

Professor Mike Gibney, director of University College Dublin's Institute of Food and Health and author of a recently published popular science book Something to chew on: Challenging controversies in food and health, wrote last year in the Irish Times that organically grown food is nutritionally identical to conventional food (Prof Gibney's excellent book is available at www.ucdpress.ie).

Blind taste tests have shown that non-organic food actually tends to be tastier. In this video, the always hilarious Penn and Teller have an interesting, albeit extreme view: "Organic food is another f**king religion, and few people can face facts that defy their faith, even when they've sucked that fact into their own mouth."

Then there's cost: organic is more expensive and when you look at the evidence, the higher price isn't worth it. Organic food is a costly and unnecessary luxury, and it's out of many people's reach.

In spite of all the evidence against organic food, I will admit to being slightly dazzled by its marketing allure, and places like the Organic Shop in Dublin, Ireland, do sell a lot of delicious food products. But I've developed resistance. I don't object to eating it at all, it's just no longer something I'm prepared to waste my money on. You shouldn't either.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-mcguire/organic-food-waste-of-money_b_2638840.html

[Apples]

I could write a book about my thoughts on this, but here's the short version:

1.  Organic food has been discussed multiple times throughout these forums, with thorough viewpoints presented
2.  For overall carbon footprint, eat locally and seasonally, then organically.  It is much more trying to grow organic produce on the east coast.  West coasters grow it and ship it thousands of miles for your local grocery store-check the signs.  Also, local conventional produce picked yesterday will always taste better than produce picked thousands of miles away several weeks or months ago.
3.  We are talking about trace amounts of pesticides here.  While they may possibly effect the endocrine system, it's a tiny amount.  Most things you eat out of season will have fungicides on it because the place where the produce was stored need to prevent disease from spreading.
4.  Spend your money as you wish.  Buy organic, but look up the regulations and know which pesticides and production methods are allowed.  There is an allowed list of synthetic pesticides and an unallowed list of nonsynthetic/natural/organic pesticides (I can't remember the correct word).
5.  Both production methods can be done by large farms or small farms.  Both can even be done by the same farm.

Generally speaking, eat your fruits and veggies.  Read about what being certified organic actually means, and if it's important to you, know your farmer.

Also, in my class on Sustainable Ag in college, we talked about "feeding the world".  Most of it comes down to increasing acreage in Africa.  Overall bushels/tons/etc. per acre grown here in the U.S. will definitely go down if switched to exclusively organic methods, but that would be covered by increasing acreage in Africa.  For our situation of produce on the East Coast, we would have to increase cover sprays to fight disease infection periods, which using the same number of people means we have to decrease acreage we manage.  Also, we would have a higher % of "ugly" fruit, so our overall production would go down.  Even using conventional methods, the main goal of feeding the world big-picture comes down to increasing production, storage, and transportation systems in Africa.  My professor published a paper on it, but I'm too busy right now to go look it up.

Finally, conventional growers incorporate some of the practices mentioned in the organic certification, just not all of them.  We personally also do most of the things in the "good" and "better" categories of the new Whole Foods rating program, but because of two specific pesticides we use to fight very specific insects, we go "unrated", which is code for failing.

There are more varieties of apples available in your local supermarket shelves than there were 20 year ago.  The average number of varieties has doubled.  But we all eat one variety of banana and oranges are sold as "oranges".  I think that has more to do with corporations (both farm and store side) than conventional vs. organic.

People confuse organic with local/natural/seasonal/heirloom.  I can grow heirloom apples conventionally and sell them to a neighboring farm to sell in their farm market.  These things aren't the same.

Well, that's a lot more thoughts than I planned to write out.  I'm sure you can tell my family works on a conventional produce farm. :)  But anyone can buy organic food if they want to, go for it.

[abiteveryday]

But we all eat one variety of banana and oranges are sold as "oranges".  I think that has more to do with corporations (both farm and store side) than conventional vs. organic.

There is actually more to this than meets the eye.  There are tons of varieties of bananas, but the number of those that will readily ship from the tropics to temperate markets is vanishingly small.     With bananas, read up on the Gros Michel and Cavendish varieties.    We are one resistant fungus from being back to the drawing board, and potentially not having bananas in temperate markets anymore.

Oranges are tricky for another reason, that being that most (almost all) natural seed grown orange trees produce very bitter fruit.    All navel oranges are clones from a single random mutation in Brazil that gave us the sweet seedless version we all expect today.    Grow a tree from seed, and you will almost certainly be very disappointed.   Incidentally, the same is true for apples and pears, but there is a much longer history of selective grafting from trees that luckily turned out good in those fruits.

[ENL]

I buy organic milk, eggs, and dairy products whenever I have the option.  (Would do it with meat, too, but we are vegetarians.)  I feel this is necessary because I think that the antibiotics and hormones pumped into the animals are unhealthy, especially for my very young boys.

[Case]

Organic Food: A Waste of Money ?

Overheard middle-class conversation: "I really want to switch to all organic fruit and veg - it's just so expensive."

"Sometimes I feel really guilty buying non-organic," said the other woman. "It's so bad for the environment."

"Can't be good for your health either. All those toxins."

They're both wrong. Organic isn't better for you. Eating organic food won't stop imaginary 'toxins' from bypassing your liver and making you sick. Buying organic can potentially cause greater harm to the environment. Eating local is no guarantee of reducing your carbon footprint, if the local food has been sitting in a fridge for a few months; choosing seasonal food is more important.

If everybody switched to organic - if they could afford to - the pressures on the land would increase exponentially, as much more space would be required to grow crops. The result? More trees chopped down. That has to be weighed against the harmful effects of a small number of pesticides. We need more efficient agriculture, based on sustainable and scientific methods, says Brian Dunning, an excellent American writer who debunks pseudoscience at Skeptoid.com:

I say we dump the useless paranormal objections to foods freighted with evil corporate hate energy, and instead use our brains to our advantage for once. When we find a better way to grow the same crop faster, stronger, healthier, and on less acreage, let's do it. We all benefit.
I don't entirely agree with Dunning; corporate concentration of food has, for instance, led to the very sad demise of diversity in fruit and vegetables, ultimately taking away our choices and limiting competition - Seedsavers does great work here. It's also clear that some non-organic pesticides, such as one produced by Bayer, are causing major harm to the world's bees, an insect that is vital for our food supply. We do need to cast a very skeptical eye over corporate agriculture.

But Dunning has a point. The majority of modern pesticides do not leave harmful residues, and many "organic" or "natural" pesticides - including sewerage or fungicides - are far worse for the environment than safe, synthetic options. "Natural" is not always better: think of snake venom. All in all, there's a wrong-headed idea that organic food production will lead to environmental utopia. It's not: it too has costs. Skeptoid has a useful and informative article on the topic.

Professor Mike Gibney, director of University College Dublin's Institute of Food and Health and author of a recently published popular science book Something to chew on: Challenging controversies in food and health, wrote last year in the Irish Times that organically grown food is nutritionally identical to conventional food (Prof Gibney's excellent book is available at www.ucdpress.ie).

Blind taste tests have shown that non-organic food actually tends to be tastier. In this video, the always hilarious Penn and Teller have an interesting, albeit extreme view: "Organic food is another f**king religion, and few people can face facts that defy their faith, even when they've sucked that fact into their own mouth."

Then there's cost: organic is more expensive and when you look at the evidence, the higher price isn't worth it. Organic food is a costly and unnecessary luxury, and it's out of many people's reach.

In spite of all the evidence against organic food, I will admit to being slightly dazzled by its marketing allure, and places like the Organic Shop in Dublin, Ireland, do sell a lot of delicious food products. But I've developed resistance. I don't object to eating it at all, it's just no longer something I'm prepared to waste my money on. You shouldn't either.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/peter-mcguire/organic-food-waste-of-money_b_2638840.html

The economical way of doing all the stuff people are talking about (eat local, eat organic, eat seasonal, blah blah blah) is to join a CSA.  Generally speaking they are a great deal; often the are organic or pesticide free, and you end up paying less than at a grocery store.  The trade off is that you have to pay up front, and there are no guarantees in event of a bad harvest year.  The CSAs I've been in often produce more than they need and you can pick up lots of freebies which is useful for saving up for the winning (canning, freezing, etc...).

Same deal with getting meat.  CSAs will often give great deals.

Other trade off is that you don't always get to select all of what you get.  But, the opposite of that is what makes a supermarket a supermarket.

Plus, if you get a CSA, you get to give the finger to local grocery stores, the food industry, and possibly the state of California.  All worthy endeavors.