Me Thinks Thou Dost Protest Too Much

All week I keep running in to the recent study being widely heralded across our nation declaring that organic fruit, vegetables, and meat are no more nutritious than conventional fruit, vegetables, and meat. So? I think the study completely misses the point on organics. I don’t eat organic because I think the food is better for me nutritionally, I eat it because it doesn’t have pesticides, GMO engineering, artificial additives, preservatives, and God knows what else in it.  

As a parent of a child with an incurable auto immune disorder which has an environmental trigger that has yet to be identified, I’m all about avoiding unnecessary chemicals. My leanings aside, there have been MANY studies indicating the potential danger of pesticides, artificial food dyes, and GMO engineered foods. Beyond that, no person with a fully functioning brain needs a study to tell them that chemicals meant to kill insects are not something they want to be ingesting. 

Beyond the nutrition and the chemicals avoided, I eat organic fruits, vegetables, and meat because they taste better. I’ve done my own studies, and the four other participants in my extremely local study agree with me. Organic food tastes exceedingly better and we don’t need a multi-million dollar study to tell us that. 

Now, if you want to compare the nutritional value of locally grown fruits and veggies with conventionally grown veggies shipped to me from across the country, I would hypothesize that the local stuff is more nutritious simply because it’s fresh. It hasn’t lost valuable nutrients in the process of being stored and shipped.

I’ve come across this Stanford study in basically every newspaper, periodical, and news web page I’ve opened this week. Which begs the question, who’s paying for all this publicity? (And who funded the study to begin with?) Could it be that conventional farming lobbyiests and food industry advocates are desperate to turn the tide of public opinion? At my house, the party that protests the loudest is typically the guilty party. Just a thought.