Posted on 05/17/2009 4:42:27 PM PDT by Shout Bits
While the world most people inhabit rarely adopts Hollywood and Berkley fads, the 'green' movement has indeed caught fire with people who actually work to eat. Bemused by Kabbalah, Scientology, earth auras, and the like, regular America seems interested in being 'green.' Naturally, wherever there is a fad, an enterprising company will step up to exploit it. In this case, the practice of exploiting the public's concerns is called 'green washing.' While most green washing is simply characterizing established practices as somehow environmentally friendly, the grocery chain Whole Foods has magically turned one of the least green practices into a core sacrament of the new religion.
Whole Foods pushes 'organic' products. While regular foods sold in the US have been conclusively proven to be safe through extensive testing, reporting, and regulation, Whole Foods was basically founded on the idea that organic foods were healthier and better tasting. Whole Foods eschewed the 'corporate' food industry in favor of a more commune like diet. Whole Foods customers responded to slogans like 'organic,' 'macro-biotic,' 'unprocessed,' and 'preservative free.' Whole Foods sold yoga magazines instead of gossip rags; they and their customers were enlightened. Many Americans bought into a healthier, purer lifestyle, and Whole Foods fueled their spiritual mission.
Of course Whole Food's health claims were at best exaggerated. Regular foods are every bit as healthy as organic. Dreaded pesticides, in the quantities found on grocery foods, are perfectly safe. Best of all, regular foods taste just fine. At worst, the anti-corporate attitude of Whole Foods's suppliers kills people. The juice company Odwalla, for inexplicable reasons, touted that its fruit smoothies were not pasteurized. Since pasteurization is what prevents the spread of deadly diseases through food products, it was only a matter of time before a young girl was killed by Odwalla products. Since then Odwalla has pasteurized its products using a special 'flash pasteurization' process. Flash pasteurization, by the way, is more health food hype, as all pasteurized foods must be heated for the same amount of time to have any benefit.
Aside from peddling snake oil, Whole Foods has morphed in to the environmentalism racket. Without changing much of their product line, they are now a temple to the green religion. Organic foods are the answer to evil corporate farms and processed foods that kill the planet. Whole Foods stores are plastered with green propaganda, and their recycling area is so complicated as to be a self parody. More than a few Priuses drop by Whole Foods on their way home from the yoga studio.
Of course hardly anything is worse for the environment than organic foods. While some organic products, like bananas, are about the same as their regular cousins, most organic foods take far more resources to grow and distribute. The average organic product requires about a third more land per unit of output than its FDA approved equivalent. Organic food subsequently requires more water and tractor fuel as well. Because the organic cannons preclude preservatives or irradiation, the ultimate amount of food consumed by the end user is smaller still.
Organic foods burn more fossil fuels, clear more wildlife lands, and consume more fresh water than regular foods. This is further evidence that the green movement is not so much about helping the environment as it is a counter culture backlash against everything deemed 'corporate.' The most environmentally safe diet choice is vegetarianism, since meats require up to ten times the natural resources as staple plants. Because even Whole Foods cares about its profits, it proudly sells the full range of animal produce.
Still, nobody is forcing the Whole Foods faithful to pay extra for inferior products. What people do with their own time, money, and bodies is their own business. Blessedly, unlike in Europe, the US does not preferentially subsidize organic farmers over their more efficient competitors. So, the next time you consider Whole Foods to fill your refrigerator, ask yourself if you are not buying food so much as buying into a green washed, counter-culture religion you might find objectionable.
I believe in the free market. I believe WF should sell what they can, I believe Safe Way and other regular food stores should sell what they can. I believe people should shop where they want to shop and to he** with the “green” BS. In other words I believe in freedom to sell and/or shop at your pleasure.
No she quit drinking milk with the artifical hormones used to increase milk production. She still drank milk.
But that isn't happening so, even though you see a correlation between this girl's period and her consumption of milk, proving causation just isn't possible.
Start here: http://www.dirtdoctor.com. Oh, and I get my organic milk for $4.99 a gallon (sometimes $3.99 on sale!).
Don’t think they were interested in proving anything. They were interested in improving her health which occured when she stopped. The failure of a doctor or scientist to explain why stopping helped is irrevelent.
Sure there’s a middle ground to improve food safety. For a food conglomerate like cargill to claim natural foods are unsafe is the fox guarding the henhouse. They have an obvious agenda to control everyones food.
I’ve had enough of chickens grown in cages to small for them to stand up. They taste like cardboard.
It is much cheaper to ship vegetable seeds than vegetables. The very best organic vegetables are grown at home.
You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you had two beautiful peaches in front of you, and you knew that one had been grown from a kernel that was sprayed with a certain heavy chemical and the other was not, all else being equal, which one would you eat?
Organic is not perfect. Organic, re fruits and veggies, means your product has had LESS toxic input that non-organic.
It’s not about taste or cost, it’s about LESS non-food and poison going into it.
Maybe you can afford to shop there (for fruits, veggies, and meat /fish — forget packaged foods, they are cr@p from anywhere!), if you think about paying more to grocery and less to doctors later.
And yeah, you had to avoid all the Obamanauts that work there, but it’s worth it!
Mainly the case. They also have the most annoying customers in the known universe.
Do you really believe that the organic offering will be totally free from pesticides? That's nonsense. Without the use of toxins or genetic modification, you wouldn't have peaches, organic or otherwise. People who believe that organic means free from pesticides, or any other chemicals, believe in fairy tales.
Organic, re fruits and veggies, means your product has had LESS toxic input that non-organic
More nonsense. Insect predation is associated with increased levels of toxins in plants and that's why it's important to treat against insects and use genetic modification to produce more disease resistant crops. Organic attempts to use fewer pesticides and therefore requires more disease-resistant crops. Protoplast fusion, cytoplasmic male sterility without restorer genes, radiated mentor pollen and mutation induction have been used by organic producers for a long time. It is practically impossible to find any produce, organic or otherwise, that is not the product of the above plant breeding techniques.
You fear trace amounts of chemicals that produce no harm to your body but readily accept the above methods? Organic advocates may mean well but they sure are mired in hypocrisy.
It’s not about taste or cost, it’s about LESS non-food and poison going into it.
LOL! If you want to avoid toxic chemicals the best way to do it is to skip any meal you had planned. Plants are chemical factories and produce a variety of secondary metabolites, some of which are toxins used to protect the plant. In addition, fungal or other infestation not only induces the production of more plant toxins but themselves produce potentially deadly toxins, which can occur in the field or at various stages of post harvest storage and distribution. Beyond that, the foods you eat every day contain trace chemicals that are known carcinogens and poisons. Potatoes have arsenic. Lima beans contain cyanide. Orange juice has limonene (paint thinner). Apples and breads contain acetaldehyde. Aflatoxin is found in nuts. Benzene is found in butter, roast beef and coffee. The list goes on and on.
If organic is about taste then that's a personal preference. But to say that organic offers superior nutritional value or less non-food and poison is absolute nonsense. Paying so much more for something that delivers little or nothing in return doesn't make much sense to me. The whole organic craze has benefited the small farmer who has chosen to specialize however, so I suppose that's a good thing. Otherwise, they'd never be able to compete with corporate agriculture.
But she's still consuming the evil hormones by drinking milk. Like I said about correlation and causation.
The failure of a doctor or scientist to explain why stopping helped is irrevelent.
It's relevant if you want to know why she was experiencing those problems. If millions of girls around the country are drinking non-organic milk and not experiencing what she did then it's pretty obvious that it isn't the milk. There's something else involved but the milk is being blamed as the cause cause when it isn't the cause of her problem.
Sure there’s a middle ground to improve food safety.
Huh? You either improve it or you don't. There's not a lot of gray area in there. You either irradiate or you don't. How do you find middle ground with irradiation?
For a food conglomerate like cargill to claim natural foods are unsafe is the fox guarding the henhouse
Considering Cargill is moving into the "natural foods" market I find your claim hard to believe. I guess it would also depend on how one defines the term "natural."
They have an obvious agenda to control everyones food.
Cargill is the largest privately held company in the country but they are a long way from controlling the food supply. The food industry is huge and highly fragmented. Suggesting that one company could control the food supply is laughable.
I’ve had enough of chickens grown in cages to small for them to stand up. They taste like cardboard.
Free range chickens are a lot like grass fed beef: lousy. If you want better chicken then you're going to have to pay for it. Relying on Tyson or store brands won't get you there. Try the butcher shop or look for the Purdue brand. The food business is like any other. For the most part you get what you pay for.
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