organic food isnt better for you, i thought i would point that out

[Tortington]

organic food isn't bettr for you

This is a really interesting thread...

I have a friend who has a farm. Her husband's family has farmed the land for years. When I asked her why she didn't go for 'organic' status, she almost got a bit stroppy! She thinks it's a great idea in theory, and endorses some of the values such as never giving animals antibiotics as growth promoters, only feeding grass, hay & grain etc. But she thinks that the supermarkets have jumped on the bandwagon and 'organic' isn't necessarily best for the animals. Hers receive appropriate drugs for medical need, their land is fertilised and weed killed when necessary. The weedkillers they use break down in the soil within a few hours, apparently.
She insists on driving her own animals to slaughter - she won't allow a contractor to take them as she wants them driven gently to minimise stress.
I can only say that their meat is gorgeous. They have properly trained butchers working on site - unlike a suppermarket where the so-called 'butchers' can just about cut you a slice of bacon.
Their farm shop is open Tue - Sat. If anyone is interested it's Hedges Farm on the North Orbital Road just outside London Colney, Herts. You can go there with your kids and they will see happy animals either out in the fiels or brought into spacious, airy barns with lots of straw. There will be lambs to see, soon, but they don't do bottle feeding or anything like that - the lambs are with their mums.

ps - Xenia - I now realise that I have taken you far too literally up until now!

Fortyplus puts it well. "organic" has become a marketing badge for what we used to call "premium" foods.
I buy a variety of "organic" stuff. For instance organic beer rarely has sulphur dioxide like most beer. Of course beer ain't good for you, but I prefer the taste.

Same goes for cheese, fat ain't exactly a health food, but some organic cheeses taste better.
Same goes for organic chocolate and many other foods.

Organic cerery is delish too.

I'm interested in this as I'm thinking of opening up a vegi/organic/speciality deli where I live if my PhD funding falls through. From evolution to shop keeping..

opps celery

I don't care too much if it's better for you TBH. It's better for the environment generally and it's a more compassionate way of producing food. However I do think that the whole food miles thing and excessive packaging does tend to negate the benefits of food organicness. Importance to me goes in the following order - local produce, fair-trade, free-range and then organic. How food tastes has to be important too and I think that a can be affected by the whole transport/processing/packaging thing as well.

But I do think that people taking notice of the provenance of our food is important. Whether that makes them buy organic or not. The simple realisation of how food choices affect the world as well as their health makes a difference.

i spoke to a toxicologist about this and he said it is better to try and find food with fewer chemicals on it [ie organic]if only to attempt to balance out the huge exposure to chemicals we have in modern life. Chemicals that are largely untested for long term safety. WWF tested mothers breast milk and found alarmingly high levels of toxins, mostly from fire retardants in furniture and the food we eat. I wouldn't buy organic food that had been flown from the other side of the world, but do try to buy it where possible. Correct me if i'm wrong, but as we have struggling farmers and a surplus of rotting food because of industrialized farming, going back to a smaller organic way of farming makes a lot of sense in many ways.

I suspect that even if organic food isn't better for you, organic farming is better for, you know, the planet and all.

But hey, I'm a dippyhippy liberal who buys organic fair-traded cotton.

Chickens love worms and other wriggly things. A friend used to give me eggs from her hens, which roamed in her garden, and sometimes you could taste in the eggs what they'd been eating.

I wasn't so keen on those particular eggs, I have to say [puke]

"stupid farmers markets"?

What is better, organic from a million miles away or conventional stuff from up the road?

hmmm - good point, oo. (Organic from up the road trumps both of course)

Hmmm. For meat I would rather have imported organic because animal welfare is the issue there for me and that's a big moral issue that trumps economic ones. For veg I'd go with supporting local farmers because the conventional carrots at least haven't suffered.

Alaskan salmon is that colour naturally, it's sockeye or something which is red.

I don't even buy organic any more I buy veg with no chemicals at all (soil association allow loads of chemicals).

I would rather shop at farmers' markets not because I am namby pamby or middle class but because the money goes straight to the farmers and not to the evil money-grabbing Tesco and the likes. And how much nicer is it buying food in the open air than pushing a trolley round some barn of a supermarket full of shite food trying to pick out the good bits?

btw, speaking of hippy dippy fair traded cotton, i noticed on the top shop website they have some lovely babygros/blanky sets in organic cotton in the sale...

Does it do you any harm?

WellI read once, that organic peanut butter carried more risk because it was more likely to be contaminated with a poisonous/carcinogenic fungus. Lack of pesticides and all that.

How true that is I don't know. Anyone?

Its very true and the same goes for lettuce.

Thank you Paula. That's news to me about lettuce. I won't see it in the same light again.

It doesn't mean that you should stop buying organic lettuces though, it just means they need a better wash.

.. and I'd better wash my peanut butter too.

oh feck me i make my own peanut butter

and grow my own lettuce

and shop at farmers markets

i wonder if the bugs or the smugness will get me first.

I have to admit I don't buy organic peanut butter, bacause peanut butter should be a treat and nobody makes a yummy organic peanut butter.

eh?

"no one makes a yummy organic peanut butter"

the peanut butter is most yummy chez filly, paula

the secret is to add lots of sugar and salt, I think

I'll try that whenever someone can pry the skippy from my hands.

now add lots of salt, mind

otherwise it will taste like wholearth peanut butter