Why Do People Eat Organic Food?

February 1, 2010 at 12:12 am Chad Upton 1 comment

I have always enjoyed visiting my grandparents, something I probably didn’t and still don’t do often enough.

I have a lot of great memories from those times and spending time in my grandmother’s vegetable garden is one of my favorites. She had a huge backyard, almost half of it was a garden.

I didn’t actually like vegetables back then, but she had a secret raspberry patch. It was tucked away in the back of the garden, behind the shed. I’m not sure if she was trying to hide it, or just keep it separate from the main garden — raspberry plants are locally invasive, they can take over your entire garden if not pruned.

I could spend the whole day eating raspberries, fresh off the bush.

Some days, I did.

It was nature’s 7-11, a store full of squishy red candy, at the right height and the right price for a child.

I wouldn’t dare say they were “free” since there was a price to pay — raspberry bushes are very prickly. There are thornless cultivars available now, but it worked out OK. The thorns slow you down enough to swallow one raspberry before you pick the next. I’m sure that’s why nature put the pricks there.

Raspberries never tasted better than that. Of course, there is no better way to get fresh fruit than to eat it right off the plant.

Depending on where you live, a lot of the produce you buy has traveled a long way to get there, especially if you have cold weather in the winter months.Transporting food is expensive, so farmers must have productive farms in order to make enough money.

They use pesticides, growth hormones and chemical fertilizers to grow the greatest quantity and best looking crops, as quickly as possible.

There is a fair amount of evidence that these chemicals are not good for us — I’ll share a couple examples.

In 2007, five Nicaraguan banana plantation workers won a $5.2 million lawsuit against Dole Corporation, for harmful pesticides that made the men sterile. There’s more info about the case in a link at the end. There is also a documentary about the trial called, “Bananas!*.” Here is the trailer if you’re interested.

In 1961, the pesticide used in the Dole case was found to cause undesirable affects on human reproductive systems. It was also shown to cause liver and kidney failure. But, it wasn’t banned until 1977, another 16 years later. So, that was over 30 years ago, we can’t be doing anything similar now, right?

Wrong. We’re still doing the exact same thing. A study published last month compared three types of genetically modified corn. One specific type of corn was found to contain pesticide residue. When they fed this corn to Rats, it caused organ failure. Guess which organs?

Liver and kidneys, just like the pesticide that made the Dole workers sterile. Considering your liver and kidneys play a large role in detoxifying your body, it’s no wonder they are damaged as they try rid your body of these chemicals.

The goal of organic food is: to produce food as naturally as possible, without chemical fertilizers, growth hormones or hazardous pesticides — the same way my grandmother grew her garden.

Organic food is gaining popularity, not because people have some wacky idea that standard food is bad for us, but because there is proof that the chemicals used to grow food in perfectly legal ways can harm us.

Some people also say that organic food is richer in taste, although that is hard to prove.

I should also note that organic food isn’t perfect either. In the United States, for example, the USDA allows many non-organic ingredients in “organic” foods. Mostly, because the market for these ingredients isn’t large enough so an organic supplier does not exist or cannot meet production demands. This suggests that if organic food becomes more popular, more ingredients will be available in organic form and all organic products will be better because of it. I have an entire entry about non-organic ingredients in organic products here if you’d like to read it.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

[available on Kindle]

Sources: CBS, International Journal of Biological Sciences, Bananas!*