What are Organic Foods and Do I Care? (Part 1)

How to tell if something is Organic and, perhaps more importantly, if you care?

Today, it seems the world can be divided into two groups of people: those who have jumped on the Organic Bandwagon and those who class anything organic as another way of saying “marketing scam”.

Up until recently, I wasn’t even clear what makes something organic or non-organic? So I did some digging into the topic that some swear by and others view as a swear-word…

The main problem with the organic debate is that for the most part, nobody is actually explaining what organic really means.

Is it magical, albeit slightly dirty and dusty, produce that comes from a farm in Montague that somehow has yet to be tainted by the modern world or industrialized farming? Is it filled with natural goodness that cannot be bottled or packaged well without losing its natural goodness?

Does it only carry the fingerprints of hippies on it?

Is it really healthier to eat or is organic simply one of the finest marketing schemes ever created, along with machines that exercise your muscles for you and shoes that light up when you walk?

So to bring some clarity to this chaos, let’s look at what organic is and whether or not we should care?

So What Does Organic Mean?

According to Organic.org, organic means “produce and other ingredients that are grown without the use of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms or ionizing radiation.”

Which basically means it is food that is grown as naturally as possible. I’m fine with that.

Organic food also includes meat, chicken, eggs and dairy products from animals that eat well (i.e. do not take antibiotics or growth hormones or are fed anything that is non-organic.) I’m fine with that too, as we are what our animals eat, to adjust the phrase slightly.

How to tell if a food product is Organic?

For a label to have “Organic” on it means that a government-approved certifier has inspected the farm with his government-approved pen and government-approved clipboard to ensure the farmer is following all the rules required to meet the Government’s Organic Standards. This also applies to companies that handle or process food before it gets to us in our local supermarket.

Join us next time, as we cut open the organic grapefruit and discover whether food made organically can in fact make you smarter and better looking!

I am so reluctant to open the floodgates, but what are your views on organic food? Is it the completely essential or essentially complete hype?

Comments

comments

You might be interested in:

Comments

comments