Who Cares if Organic Food is Good for You?

I would like to take a minute to discuss (with absolutely no scientific support) the merits of producing and eating organic food. Lately I have been finding a bounty of articles that want to debate the nutritional merits of eating organic food. Some have come to the aid of the organic food industry, but some continue to question the health benefits vs cost of organics. (Almost the exact same arguments about vitamins and supplements are battled in health and research publications) The truth is we may never know the full benefits of eating organic foods. Every human varies biologically and is exposed to different environmental factors, which makes a long term scientific test (over the span of ten plus years) virtually impossible. Add to the fact that two pieces of produce grown on the same farm could have drastically different nutrition levels, let alone an orange from Florida vs one from South America, and we just have way too many variables to produce a viable experiment.




After all of this debating, I think we have missed out on one of the biggest known benefits of producing organic food. It is good for the environment. When I reach for the organic apple in the store my first thought is definitely ‘this will taste better and will have no pesticides’, maybe if for no other reason to justify the extra cost. I do consider the fact that this might be a complete farce, but what I do know is this apple is better for the environment, and that is enough for me to spend the extra few cents.


I guess my point is, why are we wasting all of this energy debating the health benefits of organic food (even though it seems like a no brainer to me that pesticide free food will be better for me) when the simple fact is organic gardening is just good practice? You want to start taking some serious steps to making this country more environmentally friendly?


I was thinking of some crazy ideas of how to level the economic playing field for organic farmers, again with no solid economic data to support any of these ideas. What if a grocery store offered to ‘match the difference’ between organic and non organic produce certain days of the week? So instead of paying $0.20 more for the organic apple, you pay $0.10 and the store matches the other $0.10.


What are some other ways we can support organic farming?