Do you think organic food is really that much better? Why or why not?

It generally will have little or no pesticide residue. Non-organic foods are often drenched in pesticides. That’s why you have to wash them off. Most people aren’t real fans of consuming pesticides.

Also, organic foods tend to be fresher, grown more locally compared to industrialized vegetable manufacturers. As a result, they usually taste better.

Chemically, in terms of their construction, I don’t think they are much different from industrial vegetables. However, since you don’t have to peel them to get rid of the pesticides, they are more nutritious.

I don’t really know much about the difference except that it costs a whole lot more! When I want something truly healthy, I buy from a friend who has a huge garden/market. There is something in commercial eggs that makes me deathly ill, but I can eat his eggs with no problem.

It’s probably best to become a “locavore”. There are cooperatives where people in urban areas band together, buy a local small farmer’s crop outright and divide the yummies amongst themselves come harvest time. The closer to home that the food is grown and consumed, the less need for genetically modified anything, since the point to do that is, in part, to reduce spoilage and lengthen bin times.

Most of the farmers involved in such efforts in my area are non-pesticide growers. I think it’s worth it. Pesticides are meant to kill, after all.

At the supermarket, I often have the choice between factory farmed produce and organic produce. Green peppers, for instance: the factory farmed ones are big and pretty, but taste like water, while the organic ones are smaller, uglier—they have blemishes, and they’re not perfectly curvy—but they taste like green peppers.

I’m not sure what you mean by “better”, and Big Agro is making moves to vitiate the definition of “organic”, but at least now there is a smaller carbon footprint for organic food, much less pesticide residue, and some foods may possibly contain more nutrition per serving size depending upon how they are cooked.

The FDA and USDA are puppets for Monsanto and Cargill. Look for Codex Alimentarius to turn Organic foods upside down.

There are certain foods where it is much moe important to buy organic. Others which are not as attractive to pests or shielded by their thick impervious skins are less crucial.

If you have the money then you are better off buying everything organic. Others is us have to balance our budgets.

There are a couple of lists of these two categories. I’m on the iPhone so can’t put in links but just Google the phrases Dirty Dozen (not the movie of course) and the Clean Fifteen for a general idea.

I will never ever buy non-organic carrots for the rest of my life. A book I was reading pointed out that when they want to clear pesticide buildup from a field they plant carrots

Ewwww

@daloon I would have agreed with you a few months ago about organic meaner fresher more local foods without pesticides but that happens to not be the case. Although companies use few to no chemicals in their production they are just as unsustainable as big agriculture. How do I know this? Well if you want a more in depth look into “organic” agriculture I would read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Fascinating book by the way. :)

I’m an organic, naturally grown locavore. My preference for food is this: local organic, local naturally grown, local, omgbigchainstore. I try to eat mostly things that I can talk to the maker/farmer about. I get a CSA box. The reason I do this is that fresh matters with fruits, vegetables, and meat. It just does. It tastes better fresh. And I would rather have a farmer who cares about their land enough to take the kind of care the sustainable practices involve give me their food because it means they’ll care about their food too. I’m not going to hold out for organic dairy when the local dairy is basically organic, just not certified. Fresher is so much yummier than non-local it’s not even funny.

I do not buy organic food on purpose. I do not support the lack of efficiency in their food production mechanisms which cause the costs to go up drastically. A multitude of scientific studies have shown that organic food and regular food have the same nutrients, and I do not believe that the amount of pesticides on fruit and vegetables is enough to put my health at risk. Furthermore, the label “organic” does not mean what everyone thinks it means, as illustrated by the wonderful Penn and Teller in a recent episode of Bullshit about the Organic industry.

That said, I do enjoy supporting local farmers, who sometimes grow organic and sometimes don’t. I would rather interact with the food producer than buy it off of the shelf, and as I hope to be a farmer one day myself, it gives me a chance to talk and learn information and get a feel of the market. And I can say without a doubt, the peaches grown here in Ontario tasted ten thousand times better than a HUGE white fleshed one that was shipped in from out of country. The white one tasted like cardboard in comparison. It was awful. So eating local foods often means you get more options in the items you can buy (I enjoyed some really cool Purple Haze carrots this summer) and species which aren’t grown for longevity but for flavour, resulting in what I would argue is a better product. That said, the cost is the same if not more, but I understand the economics of scale regarding large vegetable growing operations (and the lack in smaller operations) and thus I am more willing to part with more of my money. Like I said, a lot of this food is not organic but does use organic methods such as composting and crop rotation to help give the plants a fighting chance, and some of them probably do use some type of chemical fertilizer or pesticide perhaps. But I do not think that organic food is better, no. Local food, yes.

‘BBC news: No proof’ organic food is better

“Proof” is what is commonly accepted by mainstream science. Suppression of knowledge has always been a tool of power usurpers. Best to side with peoples independence on this one or, come socialized health care and Codex Alimentarius, you will soon wish there were such a thing as truly organic food.

Contrary to popular assumption, there have been no scientific studies concluding that industrial pesticides legally in use in the United States pose a significant health hazard [period]

That’s why they’re legal. You know what else kills bugs? Parsley. My girlfriend’s father uses it on his property all the time. Just because something kills bugs does not mean it kills people. If they did, we have government agencies to prevent that. DDT can not be used for that reason.

You have to wash food anyway because it grows in the dirt.

To grow food organically would cause billions of people around the world to starve. It would require natural rainfall, unengineered seeds (though that depends on what you call engineering, since every piece of vegetation farmed in the world has been engineered), and billions of pounds of cow manure.

We used to farm organically in North America. We also used to starve in times of famine, like so many other places in the world do today.

Oh, and for the Global Warming people, please be aware that organic farming requires cow crap, and cow farts produce more methane than every car in the world as of right now. To produce enough cow crap to fertilize the amount of food we would need to not starve, we would have to increase the amount of cow crap.

You take a guess at how much cow manure we would need and how much methane that would produce.

I guess that means Global Warming is Organic, too!

PS: Also, they aren’t more “nutritious”, and are in fact less reliable because nutrition depends heavily on the conditions the food grew in—which can not be kept constant in organic farming methods.

@Buttonstc Here is a link to your reference/

Very interesting discussion so far. I’m glad to see input from both sides!

My point was, no, it’s not that much better.

It’s not even better at all.

@Ailia I was wondering about that. It seems to me that Whole Foods seems to transport it’s fruits and vegetables for long distances. Never-the-less, the produce there seems to me to be of a higher quality and freshness than is usually found in other supermarkets. Although, whenever there is produce available from local farmers, I buy it. I’m not that fond of Whole Foods produce since it doesn’t seem to be as fresh or flavorful as local produce. Most (though not all) of the farmers in our farmer’s market use organic practices (i.e., no pesticides).

@daloon Thats true. But when I look at some of the additives in some of the brand names, I just think what is this madness?? In the 70s organic never meant for pesticides and whatnot or industrializing of food. They were anti-industrial and completely chemical free. The USDA symbol stands for something totally different and I think I a lot of consumers have been mislead by this label. I myself thought it was something great until a few months ago. Its crazy how industries and the government, especially, can control our food systems.

dynamicduo, Thank You! Everyone needs to see the Penn & Teller: Bullshit episode on organic food and I am glad to see someone referenced it. The taste tests were especially eye opening—imagine 9 out of ten people saying that one half of the same banana tasted better just because they were told it was organically grown and 7/10 picking non-organic foods out of a taste test. Besides taste, they shoot down every other reason misinformed people think organic foods are better… and 3 billion people starve if everyone reverts back to farming organically. Why are these hippies wanting to kill 3 billion people so badly??