Thread: organic food....

What's the deal, eh? A study came out saying it is not nutritionaly superior. Don't know if I see any reason it would be. BUT, a big reason I hear for eating it is 1) there is no pesticide residue, which is a nice health benefit, and 2) it is cultivated in more environmentally friendly ways.


Organic food is no healthier, study finds - Yahoo! News

My wife buys (and my family therefore eats) mostly organic food.
So...who is in the know on the topic?

Organic foods typically do not have GMOs which is great. Also some organics are Fair Trade and sustainable.

Would I buy an Organic Banana, no. Would I buy organic peanut butter, yes because there is typically less "what the hell is that ingredient" in the ingredient list.

An exception to that is Adam's Peanut butter.

I mix it up. Sometimes organic and more often not. I've done a lot of reading on it and there have been studies with conclusions both ways. It is kind of like global warming. You can find experts on either side of the fence. One thing that is for sure if the bees keep dieing off it won't be an issue since nothing will be pollinated and we will all starve. Soylent Green ?

That study or result of numerous studies as it suggests doesn't really surprise me; We've been fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy mostly organic food including milk for our three children. However, buying organic for the sake of nutritional superiority over similar non-organic foods has never been foremost on my reason for buying organic. We buy organic for the following reasons off the top of my head in descending order of importance:

1. The lack of any potentially harmful pesticide residue. "Yeah, but you can wash off the residue on conventional foods". "Yeah, but all the pesticides used to produce conventional coffee (I recall reading a study that coffee ranks with tobacco and cotton as being one of the top three plant based products in which the highest amount of pesticide is used to grow it) are burned off during roasting", etc etc.
2. Supporting sustainable small scale agriculture and the small farmer vs. factory corporate farming which relies on pesticides, GMO and petroleum based fertilizers to grow most conventionally grown produce in the nutrient poor "dead" soil its grown in.
3. I feel better about it.

I also plan of being able to grow most of our produce next year using raised bed gardening in our small city lot which I'm very excited about. Since I'm unfortunately skeptical given that organic is such a growing profit center that we can be assured that what we're actually buying in all cases is or will continue to be truly organic.

Regarding conventional pesticides, I recall reading something approx seven years ago about a pesticide used at that time for killing off the above ground potato plant prior to harvesting the below ground tubers. IIRC the pesticide was known as something like "Aldicarb"? The information talked about the pesticide being so highly toxic and poisonous that those using it had to almost be covered in space suits to handle it. What was fascinating to me was that the info said if a human was exposed to a small amount of the stuff directly again, IIRC, they would first spontaneously urinate and defecate prior to promptly dying from the exposure. I remember thinking it sounded like what I would think the insect equivalent of getting shot with a stream of "Raid" insecticide is to insects.

Chris L

Same three arguments for me. Getting decent meat in Berlin is nigh impossible, but we were lucky to find an organic food chain, which is organised like an LPG sans the communist fluff. So most of their foodstuff is local, which I like a lot. You know, salads that actually have a flavour, and all that.

Originally Posted by BeBerlin

Same three arguments for me. Getting decent meat in Berlin is nigh impossible, but we were lucky to find an organic food chain, which is organised like an LPG sans the communist fluff. So most of their foodstuff is local, which I like a lot. You know, salads that actually have a flavour, and all that.

That's a good point, flavor. I could have added as one of my points. Organic meats, eggs and even some of the produce has more flavor than conventional.

Tomatoes for example? I'm pretty sure conventionally grown tomatoes sold in the U.S. are poster children for GMO. Not to mention, they're downright awful and flavor and texture. Absolutely positively not even worth wasting money on let along putting them in my mouth.

Chris L

Originally Posted by ChrisL

Tomatoes for example? I'm pretty sure conventionally grown tomatoes sold in the U.S. are poster children for GMO. Not to mention, they're downright awful and flavor and texture. Absolutely positively not even worth wasting money on let along putting them in my mouth.

Ours are mostly from Holland. Look like tomatoes, taste like wet cotton wool.

My main gripe with food in general is that it has become so unspeakably uninspiring. I'm not saying this is not the case with organic food in general, but at least it's not convenience food, genetically streamlined, and usually just different. Supermarket cheeses? Only over my dead body. And why would I spend an hour preparing scallops in lemon sauce with risotto and stir fried vegetables if the end product tasted average?

We spent the weekend with friends. She's eight months pregnant, and therefore quite conscious of what she eats and drinks. He's a dotcom kid. He and I went to the supermarket. He bought mayonnaise, rémoulade, and marinated meat for the barbecue. Oh yes, and convenience potato salad. It took me about 30 minutes to prepare all of that myself, using materials I'd conveniently brought along (including a full set of kitchen knives - why do people buy knives that aren't even worth the EUR 5 they cost in the first place?). The result was rather predictable. His stuff is now clogging his freezer.

Cooking really, really is not difficult. I'll never understand why people just couldn't be bothered.

from a snippet at yahoo news i can't really tell much. what does nutritional value mean?
i thought the amount of vitamins could be dramatically different. basically food that is shielded from whatever enemies it has doesn't develop the means to fight them and those turn out to be good for humans too.
i don't know whether these things are counted into the nutritional value, but they do say also that there are no added health benefits.

but i'm willing to pay extra for better taste, and most people of the developed world seem to be willing too. except that a lot of them restrict it just to the chips and soda components. granted, these components often comprise the entire diet

If you think it's important to buy organically grown fruits and vegetables it may be even more important to choose ethically and organically grown animal products as well. Due to bioaccumulation those toxins just keep building up. This advice is from a guy who doesn't eat birds or mammals.

X

Coming from a background of learning nutrition in medical school, where they teach you that you need this amount of protein, this amount of carbs, this amount of fat, this amount of vitamins, I really have to admit, I never really tried to think beyond the box, but just felt that nutritional science was all worked out already, nothing really to ponder or questio.

So I was never one for organic or nonprocessed foods, until reading the book, "In defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. Well for me Pollan's book really exposes that myth quite well. There are a number of other nutritional authorities with similar views.

The truth is, we've really scratched the surface when it comes to understanding about nutrition, and the large food companies try to use bogus nutritional science to foist processed foods on us, which may have lost a lot of their nutritional value. There likely are many types of nutrients that aren't on the FDA required labels but which we need anyways. These are not neccessarily retained when food is processed. Its possible that a lot of the obesity in the US may be due to too much processed foods, we eat processed foods but still dont get some of the nutrients our body craves, so we eat more to compensate.

Anyway, now that I am eating more fresh vegetables and fruits from the local farmers markets, and whole unprocessed grains, throw some fresh seafood into the mix, and don't eat as much meat as I used to, I really feel better and healthier. And for those of you who like to lift weights, I can tell you I do too, and to support your training, you can get a lot more protein out of vegetables than you think. I am just a dermatologist and really not a nutritional expert, but when patients ask me about nutrition as they sometimes do, I find myself giving this same advice to them.