Organic Food

Caveat: This is very, very long. I'm not sorry. I hope you read it all.

This morning I was reading through the NYT website, and I came across their apparently very popular article, "The 'Organic Stamp' - Does It Mean That Food Is Safer?"
I also follow Treehugger.com's blog, and they offered their own response to the NYT article, "Is Organic Food Safer? Or Is Processed Food More Dangerous?"

Having read both, and being an avid fan of the organics movement (yes I know, there's a lot of hype), I think both articles miss the train.
The jumping off point for the NYT article is the recent Peanut Butter-Salmonella outbreak. I offer a unique perspective here as I actually had salmonella over the holidays as a result of eating contaminated peanut butter, in a Clif Bar, no less.

First off, I have to say that unless we are discussing the Peanut Butter/Peanut Product manufacturer or the FDA, I think it is inappropriate to demonize or single out particular products or brand names. As this recent peanut butter issue has demonstrated, no company, manufacturer, brand, product, or food type is immune from the risks of contamination. Because of the structure of our commercial food industry the people at the levels of decision making or overseeing at a company like Clif, or Kellogg, or Keebler, or Kraft have little influence or knowledge of factory-level food safety. Everyone, in every industry, follows chain of command and chain of production hierarchy. With the government oversight and direct relationship with factory supervisors, there is no "trickle up" phenomena happening. It is possible for an executive at a Big Name Company to obtain reports of food safety inspections for a specific factory that produces a product that is used in the further production of a Final Product at the Big Name Company. Even thinking about that (or reading that sentence) is as exhausting as the actual process probably is. Not to mention, if a Big Name Company produces over 1,000 Final Products that each use many ingredients that all come from individual or specialized sources, the micromanaging of all those sources from that high up is logistically impossible, and a huge waste of time and resources. My personal case of salmonella likely came from a peanut butter chocolate chip clif bar, a food I love. Does that mean I'm going to stop eating Clif Bars, or stop supporting a uniquely green company? Nope. It isn't Clif Bar's responsibility to maintain the food safety standards at King Nut's peanut butter factory.

Second, the Times article begins with a misleading into- about a mother who feeds her children organic food because she hopes it is healthier for them. "Healthier" than what? Than processed food? Certainly, but processed food and organic food aren't opposites; processed food and fresh food are opposites. They completely wrecked the tone of the article from the first sentence by inciting fear into people who aren't particularly read on the issue of organic food, and by using as an example someone who already appears mislead and uniformed to those readers who do have knowledge about buying organic food.

Third, following that point, pitting organic food against processed food is wrong. Period. The two items are at opposite ends of a food spectrum: On one end, the organic apple you eat straight off a tree that grows in a wild orchard, never touched by the human hand, on land that is magically uninfluenced by contaminated water or air pollutants or chemical transfer from pollinating bees. On the other end of the spectrum you would probably find Twinkies, Velveeta Cheese, and Spam - foods that probably have as little naturally occuring product in them as possible. Unfortunately in today's world, the ideal apple on the one side of the spectrum doesn't exist. The idea of avoiding processed food comes from a back to basics perspective- Looking at what the human body needs to thrive, where those vitamins, minerals and substances come from, and how to get them easily and at their most potent (read: effective) without altering them. Additionally, in the last 60 years or so westernized cultures have produced hoards of additive substances, preservatives, dyes, and flavorings that have been put into our food chain with no real knowledge of their potential long-term effects on the human body (Hello MSG! Yellow4! Aspartame!).  We've gotten some delicious foods from these new additives, and thousands of new options in terms of food preparation and convenience because of the way these additives affect the state of our food. With these additive substances, there has also been a movement on the agricultural side of the food business towards effective and efficient ways to produce crops. The nemesis of the perfectly productive farmer, save the weather, is the insect. Understandably, farmers look to reduce, eliminate and prevent insect infestations by using pesticides and chemical treatments on their plants. These chemical treatments (also a product of the last 60 years) have been remiss of the type of testing we should vigilantly demand before things are applied to our food chain. Additionally, the pesticides used to treat many of the foods we eat are also strongly suspected in the mutations of fish, amphibians and other wildlife in rivers that contain runoff from pesticide-using farms, or that are used as dumping grounds for waste from these same farms. Still yet, livestock that are raised on farms for our consumption are treated with antibiotics to reduce the occurence of disease, they are fed chemically altered or treated food to bulk them up quickly or to maintain health on the farm. These substances stay in the meat of the livestock well beyond slaughter, and ultimately are part of what we consume at the dinner table.

The idea of being "Organic" is, at its simplest, the avoidance of all of these unatural additions or "enhancements" of our food supply. I guess you could say that, because organic food doesn't contain chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics, etc. that it is "healthier" than non-organic food. However when it comes down to nutritional value, an organic Orange contains the same vitamins and minerals, the same biological makeup, as a non-organic Orange; it is the non-organic Orange that contains more. The Orange is the opposite of the processed food option, and will still be the healthier choice because it is a naturally occuring basic food, regardless of whether it is organic or not. The same can be said for choosing fresh chicken over a hot dog - it doesn't really matter if the chicken is organic or not, it is the healthier choice because it is unprocessed.

The Times article asks if Organic food is safer based on the principle of its organic status. That really depends on your definition of safe. The article from Treehugger asks if Processed food is more dangerous - again, what is your definition of dangerous? And both fail to acknowledge that in a comparison to processed food, organic status doesn't make a difference in figuring out which is the healthier choice.

I'm not even going to touch on the issues of FDA regulations in terms of Food Safety or in terms of Organic certification. Both of those things right now are a joke, and your best bet if you want to try to buy organic food is to read the label. If it is organic, it won't list items that sound like chemicals, it won't list foreign substances, and in particular it will say that your food is made from only non-genetically engineered or modified foods.

Organic = Less/Simple/Basic.
Fresh = Real/Naturally Occurring/Grown.
Processed = More/Synthetic/Produced.

The FDA has a long way to go in food safety. I don't think anyone is denying that. I think it's a safe bet that the majority of people out there don't put a lot of thought into where their food comes from. They have pressing, urgent life responsibilities and they don't have the luxury of free time or brain capacity to sit and postulate about what they eat. But misleading or propogandizing media that contribute negatively, or misinform readers about food, regardless of what kind, only complicate the problem and make eating healthy unnecessarily complex.

We need to change the way we think about food.