Thursday, February 28, 2013

5 Things I've noticed about... Organic Food

There's a lot of things I've notice organic foods and the claims about it, and of all the things I've noticed about organic foods, there are five things about it that really stand out for me.

So here are five things I've noticed about organic food:

5. It's expensive.

Organic food cost an awful lot, and in some cases twice as much as non-organic foods, and unless you are very well off, it can get expensive real quick and make a real hit on a households budget.

Even if organic food were to cost only 10% more than conventional food, the expense can still add pretty quickly, even if not all the food you buy is organic, just some of your food.

4. It's not as environmentally friendly as one might think.

Due to the sheer fact that organic farming doesn't produce as high of a yield of crops per acre as with regular farming, if organic farming was done nation wide (or world wide for that matter) over regular farming, then a lot more land would be needed to grow crops in order to feed everyone, thus things like deforestation would increase in order to make open land to grow crops on, and to raise animals for meat on.

3. There's no set guide lines for what's considered organic.

There is really no set of criteria or laws and regulations for what can be considered and labeled organic food, and also what is considered to be organic to one person might not be considered organic to another person.

Also, because there is no set criteria or guide lines for what is considered organic, a farmer could claim what they are growing is organic, but in reality is not by most anyone's standards, and could be claimed to be organic to only be used as a selling point to get people to buy their product.

2. The benefits don't outweigh the costs.

Studies have shown that organic foods is no more healthier or nutritious than conventional, non-organic foods.

In fact the only real benefits organic foods have over conventional foods is that sometimes organic foods tastes better, and that organically raised meat animals do have a much lower chance of getting certain types diseases that results from eating food made with animal by products, but it doesn't prevent animals from getting certain types of diseases that could be prevented through the use of antibiotics. Some people could even argue that not giving an animal antibiotics is a form of animal cruelty.

1. It's not really organic.

Most people who prefer organic foods over conventional foods will tell you that organic foods must be free of genetic modifications, but the thing about that is that most of our basic foods have been genetically modified at one point in time or another, either through crossbreeding, cross pollination, or just simple crop and animal selection.

Most of our modern basic foods are the result of some type of man-made genetic modifications. The only real difference is that it wasn't done in a laboratory using modern scientific equipment.

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