The REAL Reason to Eat Organic Food

When I first started writing my upcoming book Organic Manifesto a year ago, I fully expected to have lots of information about how organic foods are healthier for you because they are more nutritious. The more research I did, the more I realized that nutrition is the least of our worries. Aside from the fact that the nutritional content of just about ALL of our food has declined over the past 50 years, we are, as a rule, overfed. And good nutrition is available from many sources in our diet.

So I wasn’t surprised in the least when a report was released last week by a British research team saying that a review of studies showed that organic foods aren’t more nutritious than chemical foods. As it turns out, there are some significant flaws in the way that analysis was done, as reported by Rodale.com and others. But beyond that is a larger point: The quest for more nutrition should be the last reason to eat organic foods.

What’s the first reason? The REAL reason we should eat organic foods? The real reason to eat organic food is that the thousands of chemicals used to grow chemical foods are causing horrific health and environmental problems. In my book (due out in March 2010) I discuss multiple well-documented studies from reliable sources showing that chemical pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and the GMO’s used in chemically based food production, are implicated in, if not causing, the following health problems: diabetes, obesity, cancer, autism, Parkinson’s disease, male sterility, genital deformities, female infertility, miscarriage, infant deformities, ADHD, hormonally caused gender confusion, asthma, allergies, accelerated aging, and smaller penises in boys, amphibians, and other wildlife.

I have also discovered (and reveal in my book) that the chemicals used to grow so-called “conventional food” are responsible for the majority of our climate-change problems, the majority of our water-pollution problems, the majority of our plant and insect disease problems, and the majority of our economic woes.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true. You’ll have to wait until the book comes out to find out the details. But in the meantime, for your sake, for your kid’s sake, and for the planet’s sake, keep on eating organic!

I see very few valid comments 'dismissing' organic agriculture. Snarky comments about Whole Foods Market don't qualify as "roundly dismissing organic agriculture". If it works for you, that's great. If you want to pay more for a product that may or may not be superior, that's great.

I see plenty of them, along with dismissals of Whole Foods. Organic products are superior in that they don’t have toxic residue and taste better. If eating refined foods with residue, chemicals, antibiotics and hormones works for you, more power to you. It doesn’t work for me and many others.

There are portions of this world where 'organic' farming would be the end of farming. That may be a foreign concept to you if you are unfamiliar with those places.

Please provide a list of those places where sustainable organic agriculture would “be the end of farming”.

Do you approve of the hundreds of millions of human deaths that have occurred since DDT was banned? Where are the valid studies that scientifically show harm caused by DDT? Are you familiar with the studies done at UC Berkeley wherein DDT was fed in high concentrations to test subjects with no ill effects whatsoever over a period of years?

Nobody here is condoning the use of chemicals that are proven to be harmful when used according to the label.

Please provide proof that “hundreds of millions” of people have died because DDT wasn’t used, where alternatives could be applied. In fact, agricultural use of DDT has contributed to its ineffectiveness and increased resistance to it. The same goes for antibiotics in food. Using your logic, Using DDT has killed “hundreds of millions of people” on top of the harmful effects. Next your going to ask me if I approve of tsunamis killing people…

That's the best you can do in response to a paragraph of info? A personal attack instead of telling me where I made a mistake in my assertions is pretty weak.

Your assertion that I was being holier than thou was a MISTAKE.

"I do not think the trees died, no."

Then why did you make the statement that herbicide was killing trees 10 miles downwind? If you have to make your argument with untruths, your position suffers.

"Would you agree that if something is dangerous enough to require insurance and regulation to use it is more dangerous than manure?"

It depends on what you're comparing to manure. Properly applied, there are many chemicals that are no more harmful than manure. I will admit that I am really not familiar with the proper application of manure. But to answer your question with specificity, I'd need to know which particular product you're trying to compare to the 'safety' of manure.

Just because you have to possess an applicator's card and 'license' to buy bulk (hundreds and thousands of gallons) of agricultural chemicals, does not necessarily indicate that they are "dangerous". Any Tom, Dick or Harry can buy the same things in smaller packages at the feed store or Home Depot and misuse it all day long without a permit.

"My only objection is saying there is NO difference, the end result might be the same, but there is a difference."

I've never made the contention that there is NO difference. I have written that there are chemicals certified for use in 'organic' agriculture that are just as harmful to humans/animals/fish as some that are not certified 'organic', when they are used improperly.

“Then why did you make the statement that herbicide was killing trees 10 miles downwind? If you have to make your argument with untruths, your position suffers.”

True, I believe the police were called and the spraying was halted. I should not have said ‘killing’ I suppose, as they did not die.

I see that the issue is confused over ‘organic’. It is obvious to me now is how misleading that label is.

I’ve gardened organically for, forever. Not because I want to save the earth, but because I’m CHEAP and the old ways ARE the best ways for the average home garden. It does NOT always work on a massive scale when you are a business and must honor your bottom line during times of grasshopper invasion and tomato blight!

Agree completely. And after years of organic gardening in the same spot of my yard, I'm going to have to fertilize or next year's crop is going to suck. I can tell the difference between this year and the year before. So I either have to plant a legume like soybeans for a year or I can put fertilizer and top soil and move the corn to a different spot next year. That's what I will probably choose.

I used to spend waaaaay too much time and waaaay too much money on amending my soil. Granted, I do beef it up with the straw I use to keep down weeds, and homemade compost, and I am totally lazy, so it never gets cleaned up in the fall, so all of that ‘green manure’ of dead plants goes back into the soil when we till in the spring.

I have decided that ‘soil’ is just what holds my plants UP, LOL! By giving each plant (tomato, pepper, bean, squash, etc.) what IT needs directly in the way of fertilizer, I’ve really improved production and veggie quality over the years while cutting disease problems drastically. This year, even though we’ve had a really cool season, has given me one of the best gardens ever because I paid attention to fertilizing on a regular basis and was very good about watering on a schedule. Yes, it means tending to different parts of the garden with different fertilizers, but it works really, really well.

Anyhow, I’ve found a product called ‘Algoflash’ which has given me awesome tomatoes and peppers this season. Check it out! (I am not a paid shill for Algoflash.)

http://www.algoflash.com/About%20Algoflash.htm

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