Organic Food is Healthier: Bullshit.
- Thread starter BenTheMan
- Start date
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
I dont buy anything organic except milk and Amy's minestrone soup.
Non-organic milk makes me ill for some unknown reason...I have tested this repeatedly over the last 8-9 years.
I buy organic soup simply because it uses filtered water instead of common tap water.
http://www.theorganicreport.com/pages/14_q_a_organic.cfm?
Are all organic products completely free of pesticide residues?
Certified organic products have been grown and handled according to strict standards without toxic and persistent chemical inputs. However, organic crops are inadvertently exposed to agricultural chemicals that are now pervasive in rain and ground water due to their overuse during the past fifty years in North America, and due to drift via wind and rain.
Do organic farmers ever use pesticides?
Prevention is the organic farmer’s primary strategy for disease, weed, and insect control. By building healthy soils, organic farmers find that healthy plants are better able to resist disease and insects. Organic producers often select species that are well adapted for the climate and therefore resist disease and pests. When pest populations get out of balance, growers will try various options like insect predators, mating disruption, traps, and barriers. If these fail, permission may be granted by the certifier to apply botanical or other nonpersistent pest controls under restricted conditions. Botanicals are derived from plants and are broken down quickly by oxygen and sunlight.
How will purchasing organic products help keep our water clean?
Conventional agricultural methods can cause water contamination. Beginning in May 1995, a network of environmental organizations, including the Environmental Working Group, began testing tap water for herbicides in cities across the United States’ Corn Belt, and in Louisiana and Maryland. The results revealed widespread contamination of tap water with many different pesticides at levels that present serious health risks. In some cities, herbicides in tap water exceed federal lifetime health standards for weeks or months at a time. The organic farmer’s elimination of polluting chemicals and nitrogen leaching, in combination with soil building, works to prevent contamination, and protects and conserves water resources.
Is organic food better for you?
There is no conclusive evidence at this time to suggest that organically produced foods are more nutritious. Rather, organic foods and fiber are spared the application of toxic and persistent insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. Many EPA-approved pesticides were registered long before extensive research linked these chemicals to cancer and other diseases. In the long run, organic farming techniques provide a safer, more sustainable environment for everyone.
Non-organic milk makes me ill for some unknown reason...I have tested this repeatedly over the last 8-9 years.
I buy organic soup simply because it uses filtered water instead of common tap water.
http://www.theorganicreport.com/pages/14_q_a_organic.cfm?
Are all organic products completely free of pesticide residues?
Certified organic products have been grown and handled according to strict standards without toxic and persistent chemical inputs. However, organic crops are inadvertently exposed to agricultural chemicals that are now pervasive in rain and ground water due to their overuse during the past fifty years in North America, and due to drift via wind and rain.
Do organic farmers ever use pesticides?
Prevention is the organic farmer’s primary strategy for disease, weed, and insect control. By building healthy soils, organic farmers find that healthy plants are better able to resist disease and insects. Organic producers often select species that are well adapted for the climate and therefore resist disease and pests. When pest populations get out of balance, growers will try various options like insect predators, mating disruption, traps, and barriers. If these fail, permission may be granted by the certifier to apply botanical or other nonpersistent pest controls under restricted conditions. Botanicals are derived from plants and are broken down quickly by oxygen and sunlight.
How will purchasing organic products help keep our water clean?
Conventional agricultural methods can cause water contamination. Beginning in May 1995, a network of environmental organizations, including the Environmental Working Group, began testing tap water for herbicides in cities across the United States’ Corn Belt, and in Louisiana and Maryland. The results revealed widespread contamination of tap water with many different pesticides at levels that present serious health risks. In some cities, herbicides in tap water exceed federal lifetime health standards for weeks or months at a time. The organic farmer’s elimination of polluting chemicals and nitrogen leaching, in combination with soil building, works to prevent contamination, and protects and conserves water resources.
Is organic food better for you?
There is no conclusive evidence at this time to suggest that organically produced foods are more nutritious. Rather, organic foods and fiber are spared the application of toxic and persistent insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. Many EPA-approved pesticides were registered long before extensive research linked these chemicals to cancer and other diseases. In the long run, organic farming techniques provide a safer, more sustainable environment for everyone.
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Sure why not.
Organic foods still use pesticides, many pesticides are less poisonous to you then natural chemicals in the food. Solanine in potatoes has a deadlier LD50 then most pesticides.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
Interesting...avoid green potatoes and tomatoes.
why don't you avoid everything while your at it, all foods have something in them that is bad for you.
They use much less pesticide and herbicide (or antibiotics in general), use none of the most dangerous kinds, and use the stuff much more sporadically. They do not routinely incorporate dangerous stuff into the plant or animal itself, or make changes that encourage such incorporation.electric said:
They also grow their stuff in richer soil or feed richer food with more micronutrients and the like, and do not systematically eliminate subsidiary nourishment.
So your exposure to bad stuff is reduced, sometimes dramatically, and your exposure to good stuff is enhanced, sometimes noticeably (it tastes better).
And that's without the environmental, economic, and political issues.
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Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
Organic pesticides are not proven to be any "more safe" than synthetic ones. In fact, from what I've read, the opposite is true, that synthetics have gotten so much safer in the last 40 years that there is now no doubt that organic pesticides used in organic farming are more toxic to humans.
Now, I am no expert and can only relay what I have read without necessarily endorsing the accuracy of it, but I get the sense that a lot f the pro-organic arguments are based on supposition and wishful thinking.
All farmers use poisons, organic farmers or not. There are no tests that conclusively show that organic food is healthier in terms of the poisons delivered or long term health effects. (There are tests from interest groups that suggest things one way or the other, but if you believe an organic farmer when he says his food is safer without further evidence, then you are just being gullible.) Chemical tests have difficulty finding nutritional differences between organic and non-organic foods. Several blind taste tests suggest that people either cannot distinguish between organically grown food and that grown using inorganic methods.
If people want to eat organics that does not bother me, but I am taken aback by the almost religious fervor of many of those who do. I certainly tried organic foods (and as I live right next door to a Whole Foods supermarket, I continue to eat it regularly) and my own impression is that the inorganics deliver a better appearance, and are more consistently better tasting than the organic alternatives, and they cost 20% less.
Now, I am no expert and can only relay what I have read without necessarily endorsing the accuracy of it, but I get the sense that a lot f the pro-organic arguments are based on supposition and wishful thinking.
All farmers use poisons, organic farmers or not. There are no tests that conclusively show that organic food is healthier in terms of the poisons delivered or long term health effects. (There are tests from interest groups that suggest things one way or the other, but if you believe an organic farmer when he says his food is safer without further evidence, then you are just being gullible.) Chemical tests have difficulty finding nutritional differences between organic and non-organic foods. Several blind taste tests suggest that people either cannot distinguish between organically grown food and that grown using inorganic methods.
If people want to eat organics that does not bother me, but I am taken aback by the almost religious fervor of many of those who do. I certainly tried organic foods (and as I live right next door to a Whole Foods supermarket, I continue to eat it regularly) and my own impression is that the inorganics deliver a better appearance, and are more consistently better tasting than the organic alternatives, and they cost 20% less.
Not the same ones, not to the same degree or extent, and not in the same way. BT toxin is not incorporated into the plant itself, by organic farmers, for example.pande said:
There are no studies done capable of deciding things like that. For some reason.pande said:
The more or less obvious consequences of hydrogenating vegetable oils, for example, were not discovered in performed studies and tests of the safety of such processing - they were observed in the general public, after such processing had been spread throughout the food market.
This and that
As a pothead, I can say that marijuana grown with certain fertilizers, even Miracle-Gro, often tastes and smokes like shit. Organic, composted soil grows a markedly better product, and organic hydroponic even better than that.
On a side note, did you hear about the rising call to boycott Whole Foods? Turns out our local chain organic supermarket is run by a guy who wants people to be sick. A lot of Whole Foods customers are having a hard time reconciling that notion.
As to the actual point, it's a weird thing with the produce. It is usually smaller and uglier, I agree. But Washington state used to be famous for its apples, and then Microsoft came along, or something. Or maybe it was that the farmers got all commercial and destroyed our most prominent variety by pursuing appearance over flavor and texture. There has been a push in recent years to reclaim the Red Delicious for what it was, a mostly dark red, speckled apple with a slightly green tinge inside, and is crisp, sweet, and juicy. I used to get those all the time ... when I was a kid. The loss of the Red Delicious into a dark red, soft, dry, mealy apple that looked much better than it tasted drastically lowered my apple consumption.
These days, the reclamation is going well. I can occasionally get a small, dark red, speckled apple with a slightly green tinge inside that is crisp, sweet, and juicy. And it's getting more frequent. In the meantime, Honeycrisp (a Keepsake derivative from Minnesota) and Pink Lady (the Australian Lady Williams crossed with West Virginia's Golden Delicious) are varieties gaining popularity with farmers and consumers alike up here. The thing is that our mass market ships all the best produce elsewhere. Washington consumers get the lower end of the harvest. (A couple years ago, I was in Irvine, Calforina, at conference, and gave a nudge and grin to a friend when I saw the apples on the buffet table had a Washington sticker on them. That grin transformed into amazement when I bit into it. We just don't get those apples up here.) With the organic farmers, many of the apples are bought up by local grocers. The result is that, while the appearance of a certain variety of apples is inconsistent and the fruit of smaller size, we are, in fact, generally getting a better consumption experience. Part of the reason for the technology so many find objectionable is a matter of scale. Try this phrase on—multinational fruit conglomerate. Yeah, I eat fruit from around the world. And, yes, we ship our apples around the world. But at some point, I have to admit that locally-grown produce tastes better. And one of the things about organic farmers right now is that they are of lesser scale. An apple that has traveled a hundred miles I'll take, especially compared to an apple that grew across the road from the other, but has been shipped a thousand miles or more. (Yes, some of our apples are shipped to out of state warehouses owned by various buyers, and then shipped back to the markets they supply.)
But that's just apples. I can also say that, as someone who eats very few vegetables, organic sugar and snap peas (in the pod, as that's the only way I eat them) are scads better. Organic bell peppers? Much better. Organic carrots? Couldn't tell you; don't eat carrots. Leaf spinach or fresh leaf basil? I don't know; by the time I got around to eating those things, it was organic, anyway.
Which is tragic, since one of the best sandwiches I ever had—turkey and bacon with spinach, leaf basil, provolone, honey mustard, and black pepper on sourdough—came from Whole Foods. Sure, I'll boycott the place, but I never spent enough money there for it to mean anything.
As a pothead, I can say that marijuana grown with certain fertilizers, even Miracle-Gro, often tastes and smokes like shit. Organic, composted soil grows a markedly better product, and organic hydroponic even better than that.
• • •
Pandaemoni said:
On a side note, did you hear about the rising call to boycott Whole Foods? Turns out our local chain organic supermarket is run by a guy who wants people to be sick. A lot of Whole Foods customers are having a hard time reconciling that notion.
As to the actual point, it's a weird thing with the produce. It is usually smaller and uglier, I agree. But Washington state used to be famous for its apples, and then Microsoft came along, or something. Or maybe it was that the farmers got all commercial and destroyed our most prominent variety by pursuing appearance over flavor and texture. There has been a push in recent years to reclaim the Red Delicious for what it was, a mostly dark red, speckled apple with a slightly green tinge inside, and is crisp, sweet, and juicy. I used to get those all the time ... when I was a kid. The loss of the Red Delicious into a dark red, soft, dry, mealy apple that looked much better than it tasted drastically lowered my apple consumption.
These days, the reclamation is going well. I can occasionally get a small, dark red, speckled apple with a slightly green tinge inside that is crisp, sweet, and juicy. And it's getting more frequent. In the meantime, Honeycrisp (a Keepsake derivative from Minnesota) and Pink Lady (the Australian Lady Williams crossed with West Virginia's Golden Delicious) are varieties gaining popularity with farmers and consumers alike up here. The thing is that our mass market ships all the best produce elsewhere. Washington consumers get the lower end of the harvest. (A couple years ago, I was in Irvine, Calforina, at conference, and gave a nudge and grin to a friend when I saw the apples on the buffet table had a Washington sticker on them. That grin transformed into amazement when I bit into it. We just don't get those apples up here.) With the organic farmers, many of the apples are bought up by local grocers. The result is that, while the appearance of a certain variety of apples is inconsistent and the fruit of smaller size, we are, in fact, generally getting a better consumption experience. Part of the reason for the technology so many find objectionable is a matter of scale. Try this phrase on—multinational fruit conglomerate. Yeah, I eat fruit from around the world. And, yes, we ship our apples around the world. But at some point, I have to admit that locally-grown produce tastes better. And one of the things about organic farmers right now is that they are of lesser scale. An apple that has traveled a hundred miles I'll take, especially compared to an apple that grew across the road from the other, but has been shipped a thousand miles or more. (Yes, some of our apples are shipped to out of state warehouses owned by various buyers, and then shipped back to the markets they supply.)
But that's just apples. I can also say that, as someone who eats very few vegetables, organic sugar and snap peas (in the pod, as that's the only way I eat them) are scads better. Organic bell peppers? Much better. Organic carrots? Couldn't tell you; don't eat carrots. Leaf spinach or fresh leaf basil? I don't know; by the time I got around to eating those things, it was organic, anyway.
Which is tragic, since one of the best sandwiches I ever had—turkey and bacon with spinach, leaf basil, provolone, honey mustard, and black pepper on sourdough—came from Whole Foods. Sure, I'll boycott the place, but I never spent enough money there for it to mean anything.
no, they just claim these things. I can see it now chocking down some organic foods back in the early 2000's thinking your eating right, and then bam! you got parkisons disease!
Joy, because I have not been getting enough selenium in my diet. You get enough micronutrients from just about everything, there present in all foods in very small amounts and you only need very small amounts, and high amounts are often toxic.
bad stuff, good stuff, what are these bad stuffs and good stuffs?
So a whole bunch of hot air before we talk about more definite things?
Those are not claims, they are defining features - you can't get certified organic legitimately unless that description is accurate, even under the USDA compromise standards.electric said:
Or choking down "conventional" foods and poisoning yourself with exactly the same stuff, in combination with worse and more. Do you think the use of rotenone was a recent innovation of new age hippy organic tofu farmers?electric said:
No, you don't.electric said:
There enough holes and compromises in said standard to invalidate the whole concept, it clearly just a marketing gimmick. Add in that they don't want GMOs and irradiation, and you have a policy driven more irrational ideology than sound science.
I would rather have round up over rotenone any day, mainly the organic food industry used rotenone, while industrial agriculture was using less harmful herbicides like round up. Your fear is that the pesticides do harm in the amounts they come in: a chemophobia if you will. If you drink 2 gallons of dihydrogen monoxide in a single sitting you will die (LD50 of 90ml/kg), therefor any amount could be bad... right?
Oh then I should have been dead then long ago, eating my diet or random crap.
Nevertheless, the description is accurate.electric said:
Rotenone has been used since the 1940s, in large quantities, by agribusiness farming. You were not choosing one over the other - with conventional, you got both.electric said:
And the question is not which you'd rather have, but in what doses, right? How much rotenone, a quickly degraded substance sparingly applied and easily washed off, balances how much atrazine, a slower degraded substance often accumulated from its massive broadcasting in the cells of the food crop, and apparently released from its accumulations into your small intestine - from where, unlike rotenone, it is readily absorbed.
Rotenone is not a herbicide.electric said:
what that it somehow safer and better for you? Do prove that.
My chances of eating Rotenone were far less likely eating industrial agriculture then organic foods.
and does what to me?
So? Pesticide then, that like saying I didn't spell something correctly, nitpicking?
I thought the posed nature of Organic food wasn't that it gave you more Vitamins and Minerals, but it was grown using none artificial fertilizers and pesticides. (The sort that pollute rivers and streams and that can actually poison you if you haven't washed your fruit/vegetables properly.)
I would suggest the study was focusing on obtaining the wrong information.
(In fact reading the first link, gave this:
I guess I see why some will say the study was wrong.
I would suggest the study was focusing on obtaining the wrong information.
(In fact reading the first link, gave this:
I guess I see why some will say the study was wrong.
I've never bought organic for health reasons.
Not what I said, and evidence for what I did say supplied throughout the thread, by several including the OP.electric said:
The demand for "proof" in inapplicable circumstances is characteristic of a certain kind of posting around here, which is not otherwise characterized by honest attempts at discussion.
You phrased it as if there were some kind of choice involved between mutually exclusive poisons.electric said:
The conventional agribusiness producers use everything the organic farmers use, and a whole lot of other stuff as well - not instead of. They also use larger quantities, apply regularly rather than as needed, create reservoirs of the stuff in the environment whose contribution to exposure is cryptic, and genetically modify to allow more intensive applications and incorporate the stuff into the body of the plant or animal.
No one knows. The possibility was not anticipated, and remains unstudied AFAIK (for example, I don't think anyone has injected atrazine directly into the arteries of rats and drawn conclusions about its field use thereby) - as with most of the side effects of the production innovations of chemical agribusiness. But there seem to be a large population of consumers who are willing to infer safety from lack of information.electric said:
And you know that how? But if we are going to discuss probabilities, dosages, frequencies, and so forth, like grownups, maybe we can start over.electric said:
The topic was "healthier", after all, even if the OP didn't hae any real bearing on that.
none of what been provides so far is proof of anything, you show me people on organic foods living longer and getting less cancer (and account for diet proportions and properties) and I'll believe you that organic foods and safer, better, healtheir.
why use rotenone when many synthetic pesticides are cheaper?
I have nothing against environmental concerns of pesticides.
oh the horror, its going to produce proteins and I'm going to digest them, I'm scared.
Appeal to the unknown Fallacy: just because we don't know all possible consequences does not mean we should not do it.
Well I don't think anyone going to get it administered directly into the arteries, a few milliliters of air injects into the artiers is enough to kill a man, a gallon or two of dihydrogen monoxide equally so. But LD50 for oral, vaporized inhalation and even under skin injection dosages have been determined with many test animals: "The oral LD50 for atrazine is 3090 mg/kg in rats, 1750 mg/kg in mice, 750 mg/kg in rabbits, and 1000 mg/kg in hamsters. The dermal LD50 in rabbits is 7500 mg/kg and greater than 3000 mg/kg in rats. The 1-hour inhalation LC50 is greater than 0.7 mg/L in rats. The 4-hour inhalation LC50 is 5.2 mg/L in rats." -- http://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/atrazine.htm
that way I'm not talking about environmental or economical concerns. As stated agribusiness is going to use cheaper pesticides, and talking about consumer ignorant rotenone is still peddled as an "organic pesticide" for sale for those growing their home gardens.
ripleofdeath
Registered Senior Member
how do you compare 2 things when you are addicted to one of them ?
a vast number of people are creatures of habit when it comes to food and will gladly eat complete shit because it is something they know.
if you offer them quality food that is not filled with msg and god knows what else they will be surprised at the actual taste of the foods they had been eating in the past but could not taste because of all the artificial sauces and things designed to cover over any taste problems with the original food items.
very few people develop past the age of about 13 or 14.
if they wont try alternate foods by that age they are pretty much stuffed for life and all future experience will simply be realigned to nurture their dislike for all things they have never eaten before even to the extent of psychosomatic sicknesses to prove an absolute when they might actually like the flavour.
organic food does not have pesticides on it like much of the fruit and vegetables that appear in the supermarket shelves.
regardles if you eat it, just handling it is bad for your health.
if organic farming allows better and more regular use and less damage and pollution of the land we live in, on and around(and kids roll around on and eat) then why not support it ?
surely safer waterways and cleaner earth is far better for our future children then some mad max like wasteland fighting over fastfood type hamburgers made from insects... ?