The answer is no.
Wanting to makes you a jerk.
On Thursday afternoon I was killing some time and stopped by a nearly defunct shopping center where my son had taken some music lessons years ago. On the side is a bunch of scrub where there happens to be a patch of Greenbrier. This is a wild weed that grows up a bit like a vine and has nasty thorns. However, the new shoots and early leaves are quite good and can be eaten raw. I learned about it years ago in one of Euell Gibbons’ hippy-dippy books about eating weeds. “Organic”, free and tasty.
While I was picking, a young fellow pulled his car up into the shade of a tree there. I was a little hard pressed to explain what I was doing, as my Spanish is a bit rusty and his English was no better. :(
What the study is picking up on is the fact that liberals are self-righteous jerks. The part of the American population that insists on eating only “organic” food (last I checked no food is inorganic unless one counts salt, but I digress) is heavily biased toward self-identified “liberals” and “progressives”, who also, as other studies have shown, engage in less prosocial behavior (like giving to charity or volunteering with community groups) than do conservatives.
I make a point of buying “organic” milk, despite the higher cost, but won’t buy Horizon brand. Why? What I’m really trying to buy is milk from cows that actually get to wander around pastures grazing. I don’t really care that the feed they get when they’re in the barn was “organically grown”. It turns out that the fats and proteins in milk from cows that get pasture time are measurably different in ways that are healthier for human consumption than the fats and proteins in “factory cows” that stand in stalls eating feed (Horizon brand isn’t worth buying because it come from “factory cows” that just happen to eat only “organic” feed. (It’s also better tasting — skim milk from “factory cows” is quit unpalatable, while skim milk from “free range” cows tastes like milk.)
I buy “organic” celery just because it tastes better. I buy free-range eggs for similar reasons to buying “organic” milk, but don’t really care whether they’re “organic” or “conventional” so long as they’re from free-range hens. Other than that, I’ll buy “organic” products when some quirk brings them down to price parity with “conventional” products, or when the “conventional” greens of a particular sort look tatty, while the “organic” ones look fresh.
(I realize some FReepers with whom I’ve exchanged cross posts might think I’m a jerk, but even if I am, it really has nothing to do with pouring “organic” milk over my breakfast cereal.)
I don’t think that’s necessarily so but I do have to say that Whole Foods has the rudest, most oblivious clientele that I’ve every run in to. The staff are fine but the people shopping are a real pain in the neck.
I've managed not to be a jerk about it, even though it I'm smarter, better looking and in general, superior to those with other eating habits.
Maybe not a jerk but stupid!!
Organic=throw shit at it and hope you get something edible crawling with bugs!
Personally I wanr food that is grown in soil that has been anylized, fertalized for the crop being grown, and protected from bugs with pesticide!!!
Bring back DDT, I love the smell when you breath it!
I don’t know if it makes you a jerk but I do know a couple of jerks who claim to eat “organic” food when they aren’t piggin’ out on pizza.
I grow my own vegetables...then can them. Next year I’m going to sell them if I can grow that much and if the economy doesn’t go batsh*t crazy thanks to Obama.
I might look for additional indicators. For example, if a person who eats organic food also drives a Prius with an Obama bumper sticker, that person is probably a jerk.
You were already a jerk to eat it.
Sure explains a lot, doesn’t it?
My way is 80% organic for my fruit trees. I maintain the soil humus at a high level. I do not spray anything. Fertilizer...I am not using horse or cow poop. I use the more expensive high quality NPK fertilizers where the nitrogen is coated and time release... that also include minor trace elements like zinc and iron.
I despise the eco-scammers at the EPA, the job killers who give organic and ecological a bad name
Drink a glass of organic crude oil and see if it doesn’t leave you feeling jerky.
No, but being hyper-focused on what you eat and viewing your particular diet as holy makes you a jerk.
I don't care if it is organic, vegan, low carb, high fiber, raw, vegetarian, no sugar or palo, being convinced that what you eat makes you "better then thou" and everyone should eat like you turns you into a Jerk.
A tomato is just a tomato. Eating it will not move you up the spiritual ladder.
The real truth is if you don’t grow it or raise it yourself you have no way of knowing if it is really organic. The word organic has so many meanings it is meaningless.
I do not care what people eat or don’t eat- to each his own. I do think people are jerks that act as if they are superior to others because they eat “organic” or are vegetarians or vegans or whatnot. I have found that those type of people are just all around jerks not just jerks about what they eat.
Maybe it just indicates that selfish and self-righteous people buy organic food. I would suspect that self-righteous jerks are just one subset of organic food consumers.
