I welcome either of you to provide credible links to studies showing that it’s better we eat vegetables slathered in pesticides—because otherwise, left to their organic selves, the veggies will explode into more poisonous vessels of killer chemicals.
Slathered? LOL! Your mind is made up.
We live in the histories richest country, food-wise. If you want to eat 'organic', please, be my guest. we've got more food than we can possibly eat.
Well, rather be the guest of friends and family of mine who grow 'organic, and are getting wealthy by doing so.
I've raised over 250,000 hogs, retired from that more than 25 years ago, but if I were raising hogs today I would give serious consideration to raising 'organic.
A fool and his money are soon, and easily, parted, and it would be a disservice to myself and my family to turn down such money.
You can start here. It's the Cornell University page on the topic.
The family of naturally occurring chemicals to which you refer were dubbed "defensins" at the NIH, where my brother was working at the time back in the late 1980s (he's an MD-PhD in viral immunology, studying cancers that start from viruses such as HPV). An associate of his was growing meal worms on freeze-dried spinach v. the fresh stuff. Guess what? The meal worms eating the freeze-dried spinach grew to twice the size as those eating fresh spinach. The study was spiked by NIH bigwigs, not desiring to tell the public that "fresh" veggies (usually days old when eaten) carried long term health risks.