Friday, February 11, 2011
Buy Organic
Everyone knows they should eat more fruits and vegetables, and most people hear they should eat organic food. Buying organic food is better for the environment and your health. It may cost a few more dollars than boxed production line food, but you save money in the long run on you health bill. Less pesticides, chemicals and preservatives are used on the food and fewer hands and machinery parts come in contact with the food so it has more nutritional value. If eating organic meat, you are eating an animal that has been fed properly and not injected with chemicals for faster production. Besides feeling better about yourself for eating organic food it also seems to taste better than non organic meat, eggs, vegetables and fruits. Remember: buy in season and buy organic!
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There are benefits to eating organic, though some farmers and restauarants (who claim to be organic - I don't know any personally in Wichita however) have not been certified as organic though they claim to be. Sometimes a reason for this is because they dont sell commercially or they cant afford the thousand dollars (2002 figure) plus other fees to have been assessed and certified by the non-governmental agency delegated by the FDA to do such analysis. I agree, organic and non-hormone injected animals are better for you, but the movement does have it's detractors who say that if organic farming was exclusively implented globally we would not have enough food to feed the world - though it doesn't appear the world is being fed adaquately currently.
ReplyDeleteAnother question of concern for the mass market non organic food is that since the latest of the early 1980's foods you find in the supermarket or even some local farmers are the product of biotechnology. Multinational Monsanto is the biggest creator of bioengineered food which is not labelled as such in America and abroad (though most of Europe and Australia have worked hard to keep it out of their countries). This biotechnology came about as genetically modified foods. Foods like tomatoes have been altered to contain genetic elements of other foods such as a fish. Corn may have been modified to contain elements of insects. The extent of this genetic tweaking is not known because there is no special labeling for genetically modified organisms and foods, but it is widely circulated that these processes have taken place and are semi-typical in our current mass non-organic foods. I do not have specific evidence or reports at the moment but in my in-class presentation I will discuss a few sources that claim this. Being as there is no labelling for genetically modified foods people who are vegan, or Muslim or Hindu do not know if they are adhering to their diet or religious laws when they eat food that is not labelled organic (and even then, you cant necessarilly really be sure). It is said that foods that are or contain genetically modified ingredients are in 78% of the processed foods in American supermarkets (Food Inc. Magnolia Home Entertainment. 2009)
I apologize for saying that even eating organic food a person might not know if it is composed of genetically modified organism - the only case I can see for that would be if seed from another non-organic farmer's crop were to blow over to an organic farm. But even in that case organic farmers seem to be very conscientious about their produce and might possibly spot such crop and not sell along their own produce. Organic activists have fought repeated efforts to make lax the regulations for certification - from allowing ammonia based (nitrogen) fertilizers to using certain chemical pesticides - and have won, upholding the integrity of organic foods.
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