What is Organic Food and is it Good for Us?
According to The business of food: encyclopedia of the food and drink industries by Gary J. Allen and Ken Albala[1],
Organic food refers to food produced without using the conventional inputs of modern, industrial agriculture: pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modifed organisms (GMOs), irradiation or food additives. It is marketed as being healthy for the body and the environment, It is also portrayed as being natural, implying a connection between the human body and Nature as inherently pure, complete, clean, and friendly. Organic production, in this vein, resists a human-made system of production that suffers from pollution as a result of attempts by human intervention to manage and manipulate Nature.
There are a number of great articles already on the web discussing what organic food is and isn’t. I will be providing links to ones that I have found interesting myself below.
My own personal opinion is that being “organic” is not what determines if food is good or bad. Rather it is whether it has been grown or reared, with care. There is plenty of good organic food as well as good normal food. Respectively, there are bad versions of both that we can buy too. The problem we face is determining the good from the bad. Many people use the organic label to determine what is good (or healthy). However I think that the issue is deeper than this. Due to the higher price of organic products, this can attract farmers and food producers who are just in it for the money. Most people buying organic produce though like to think that they are highly health and environment conscious. The only problem is that not all the producers of organic foods share this understanding.
To find out more about the legal requirements of organic food, check out the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990[2].
Paying more for top quality food is reasonable. Ideally I would like to be eating local, “organic” food, grown by people I actually know. In this case, whether the food was certified as organic or not would be of much less concern. I would be personally much more aware about how my food was produced. It seems that the “organic” label has become so popular simply because the sort of ideal scenario is not a reality for the vast majority of us.
A lot of the information on organic foods seems to be written by people who are either for or against it. I am mildly for it. However, I do think that there are serious shortcomings with the system at present. There are issues of trust and also questions that we have to ask ourselves. For instance, is it better to eat organic food that has been flown half way across the world or conventional foods grown much closer to where we home.
Pick Your Own[3] offers a great introduction to what organic means to you and your family.
Stephen Barrett, M.D. at Nutriwatch[4] argues:
if you want to pay extra for your food, the U.S. Government will help you do so. Violators of the rules can be fined up to $10,000 per violation. But organic “certification,” no matter what the rules, will not protect consumers. Foods certified as “organic” will neither be safer nor more nutritious than “regular” foods. They will just cost more and may lessen public confidence in the safety of “ordinary” foods. Instead of legitimizing health nonsense, our government should do more to attack its spread.
I think it is important for those of us with an interest in health and well being to take an active role in our own education. Then make up our own minds about the pros and cons of organic food.
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=gNzmOUyiFRAC&pg=PA288#v=onepage&q&f=false
[2] http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5060370&acct=nopgeninfo