Question by St.Blaise: What’s the deal with organic food? Is it worth all the hype?
I’ve been noticing more and more people jumping on this organic food bandwagon and, quite frankly, it’s getting a little annoying. My girlfriend’s mother recently “converted” to the organic diet (not to mention this Kevin Trudeau “Natural Cures” conspiracy theory). All of a sudden eating anything non-organic is horrible for you?
Best answer:
Answer by KJ
The organic food industry is a passing fad. It has been proven that organic food is no better nutritionally and is generally of a lower quality. The media are just making it out to be- its natural, so it must be better. This is far from the truth. In fact, it is a lesser product, lower quality. The crops yield less and the livestock are fed at a lower plane. This increases the cost of production. Also suppliers are putting up prices to make it appear to the customers that this more expensive product must be better than conventionally produced food. The lowered efficiency of production means that more land is required to produce the same kg of output, this and the longer growing time required for livestock increases the energy requirement per kg of output. This is using up ground which could be used for producing biofuels. So organic food production has its part in fuel price rise!
Also, another point brought out by organic enthusiasts is that organic food production is better on animal welfare grounds. This simply isnt true. Animals in organic units are only treated for diseases when they are a threat to the animals life. So the animal can contract the disease and have to suffer it until it is discovered and treated. On conventional units, animals are treated routinely to build up resistance to many diseases.
Hope this helps!
In response to organic hippy:
It is illegal to spread untreated human sewage on land.
All pesticides for use on crops must by law go through rigorous testing to ensure that there are no traces left in the product.
GM food is only really grown in USA, and even at that it rarely goes into the human food chain
The production system, organic or conventional has NO effect on the fat content of meats. I am afraid that you are listening to the media a little too much. The fat content of processed food is controlled by the processor. They basically use the fat left over from other cuts of meat and mince them up with some lower quality meat that has a lower market value. It is the ratio of meat : fat that they decide on, which in turn decides the % fat in the food.
I hope you will see that organic food production is a bit of a farce, and that every piece of ‘evidence’ that is put forward is immediately disproven by science.
Please read into this and you will find how much the public can be swayed!… i completed an extensive study on this at university.
What do you think? Answer below!