What's So Great About Organic Food?
The latest issue of Time Magazine contains an article about organic food and asks the question above.
The writer's complaint? It too costly, too hard to find, and everyone says you should be eating it. In short, the writer finds organic foods not worth the money, too much of a trouble, and peer pressure to eat healthy sucks.
His research reports that organic fruits and vegetables cost 13 cents to 36 cents more per pound than ordinary produce. That's it? Less than 50 cents more per pound and he's complaining? Wow, that's a whole new level of cheap.
Isn't it odd that people are more willing to pay for just about anything else other than food they actually ingest into their bodies?
I know a married couple. Between them they own a humvee, an SUV, a luxury sedan, and a rather souped up Harley Davidson. They won't buy organic eggs because they say it costs $3.00 a dozen. If they didn't buy even just one of the 4 vehicles, say, the cheapest of the 4, how many cartons of organic eggs can they buy?
Clearly, it's not that they don't have the money, it's simply a case of putting more value on a show of wealth rather than a show of health.
Kluger is also unconvinced that organic fruits and veggies have a nutritional edge over conventional.
Here's the deal: It's important to eat organic fruits and veggies, not because they are more nutritious, not even because they taste better, but because they don't have fungicide, insecticide, herbicide, vermicide, rodenticide, and whatever other -cide there is that farmers douse their crops with. When it comes to dairy, meat, and eggs, conventional farming adds antibiotics and hormones to the already long list of toxins that end with a -cide.
It isn't what's IN organic food that makes it important for us to pay more to eat it; it's what ISN'T in organic food that makes organic food preferable.
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