Why organic food, Mark? page 2

[Diana Renata]

If you notice in Mark's book, he advocates Local first, over Organic.

[bobbylight]

PB can be expensive if you eat all organic produce and grass fed meat. In my opinion, the benefits do not outweigh the added cost. If I ever have a lot of excess money, maybe I will switch over, but for right now non organic and grain fed is good enough for me.

[OnTheBayou]

I'm a fan of organic. I gardened organically and visited the Rodale farms and subscribed to Organic Gardening way back when it was fringe, the 1970's.


Saying that, I don't think that there is a +/- 10% difference in the nutritional differences between organic and conventional. But organic can be done on a long term sustainable basis, unlike conventional that require large inputs of petroleum based fertilizers, insecticides, etc.


Buy organic when you can, just don't think it's some form of magic elixir.

[SerialSinner]

*Edit: oops, wrong link.

About chemicals in organic products: http://tinyurl.com/bno422

[Atomontage]

I'm not sold on the idea of organic foods either. For anyone interested, Penn and Teller (the famous Vegas magicians, among other things) tackle this subject in their Showtime television show (S07E06), "Bullshit!"


"Repudiates the idea that Organic food has better nutrients, a smaller environmental impact, less harmful pesticides, and better taste than non-organic foods."


Worth watching if you think Organic is the way to go for any of the aforementioned reasons in the above summary.

[Pikaia]

Skeptic, I wish I shared your confidence in the EPA. But I don't, especially when it comes to what my kids are eating.


I try to eat local and organic first. I buy local for produce that is less likely to be heavily contaminated with pesticides. I buy organic, local if possible, for produce that is more likely to be heavily contaminated with pesticides. The following ranked list may be useful if you do decide to buy some organics:


http://www.foodnews.org/fulllist.php


But honestly, if I had to choose between non-feedlot meat and organic produce, I'd give up the organic produce first.

[Atomontage]

@Pikaia - Being certified "organic" means no synthetic pesticides only. Organic fruits and vegetables can routinely be treated with non-synthetic pesticides, and there is no guarantee that it is not as "heavily treated" with non synthetic pesticides as conventionally grown fruits/veggies are treated with synthetics.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food

[Skeptic]

Nothing is grown without pesticides anywhere, period. Without them, very few items would emerge from a harvest unscathed. Even your local mom and pop growers use some form of pesticide, as many of them depend on a decent yield to survive financially.


Now then, which pesticide do we want? The highly toxic yet less potent (yes it requires using MORE, in turn consuming more petroleum for vehicles), "organic" variety? Or the synthesized that is safe by design, so sayeth the EPA, FDA, and USDA. My faith in these government agencies isn't really faith, it is backed by the lack of plausible deniability any one of them would have if they somehow ALL greenlit substances that could damage human beings.


Reverting to organic pesticides is simply going back to the vileness that technology saved us from.


Then there is the fertilizer issue. All plant life requires a balance of nitrogen, potassium, and sodium in order to grow. I tend to favor growing food with clean synthetic nitrogen instead of cow poop.

[kuno1chi]

Skeptic,


I am a big fan of cow poop as fertilizer.

If you prefer your vegetables otherwise...enjoy them your way.

[Anand Srivastava]

@skeptic

Well synthetic nitrogen will contain only that nitrogen. While cow poop will contain lots more. Even bacteria to build up a culture in the soil, to help with your farm. But it is inefficient process. It does give it more things to live on than nitrogen only.


If you think about it we need more things than nitrogen, phosphorus, and Potassium. We need calcium, where does it get into the NKP mix. It has to be more complex than that, and cow poop is sufficiently more complex. The only way to do better than that would be to kill some chickens and feed it to the land.