Organic Food: What Are the Real Benefits? - Health Checkup: Who Needs Organic Food?
As a consumer and grower of organic foods, Time gets the lead wrong. Non-organic milk is not full of chemicals. Organic apples have the same nutritional content as non-organic apples. But yes, non-processed foods are more nutritional then processed foods.
Organic food is about organic farming - it’s about how food is cultivated. It’s about using the land in sustainable ways. It’s about permaculture. It’s about recognizing that what goes in, must eventually come out. It’s about realizing that you are just a microcosm of the earth as a whole. It’s not useless to yammer on about renewable energy when we don’t live lives of sustainability, but it’s close to useless.
And no, I don’t worship Gaia. But anyone who’s ever eaten, composted, gardened and eaten has seen and participated in a circle. Quit acting like it’s not there.
What’s more, while grass-fed beef is lower in fat, and milk without chemicals is clearly a good idea, it’s less obvious that organic fruits and vegetables have a nutritional edge to speak of. A 2009 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition led to a firestorm in the food world. It found no difference between organic and conventional produce with regard to all but three of the vitamins and other food components studied, and conventional produce actually squeaked past organic for one of those three.
(See the results of a farm vs. supermarket taste test.)
“We draw these bright lines between organic and conventional food,” says McWilliams. “But science doesn’t draw those lines. They crisscross, and you have people on both sides of the argument cherry-picking their data.” For consumers trying to stay healthy and feed their families — and do both on budgets that have become tighter than ever — the ideological back-and-forth does no good at all. What’s needed are not arguments but answers.