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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Eating Food That’s Better for You, Organic or Not
  • Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:20:28 -0700


Eating Food That’s Better for You, Organic or Not

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22bittman.html?ref=business


March 22, 2009
By Mark Bitman
NY Times

In the six-and-one-half years since the federal government began certifying
food as “organic,” Americans have taken to the idea with considerable
enthusiasm. Sales have at least doubled, and three-quarters of the
nation’s grocery stores now carry at least some organic food. A Harris
poll in October 2007 found that about 30 percent of Americans buy organic
food at least on occasion, and most think it is safer, better for the
environment and healthier.

Photo: GREEN THUMBS Workers at an organic farm in Carnation, Wash., tend to
baby romaine lettuce. (Scott Eklund/ Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

“People believe it must be better for you if it’s organic,” says Phil
Howard, an assistant professor of community, food and agriculture at
Michigan State University.

So I discovered on a recent book tour around the United States and Canada.

No matter how carefully I avoided using the word “organic” when I spoke
to groups of food enthusiasts about how to eat better, someone in the
audience would inevitably ask, “What if I can’t afford to buy organic
food?” It seems to have become the magic cure-all, synonymous with eating
well, healthfully, sanely, even ethically.

But eating “organic” offers no guarantee of any of that. And the truth
is that most Americans eat so badly — we get 7 percent of our calories
from soft drinks, more than we do from vegetables; the top food group by
caloric intake is “sweets”; and one-third of nation’s adults are now
obese — that the organic question is a secondary one. It’s not
unimportant, but it’s not the primary issue in the way Americans eat.

To eat well, says Michael Pollan, the author of “In Defense of Food,”
means avoiding “edible food-like substances” and sticking to real
ingredients, increasingly from the plant kingdom. (Americans each consume
an average of nearly two pounds a day of animal products.) There’s plenty
of evidence that both a person’s health — as well as the
environment’s — will improve with a simple shift in eating habits away
from animal products and highly processed foods to plant products and what
might be called “real food.” (With all due respect to people in the
“food movement,” the food need not be “slow,” either.)

>From these changes, Americans would reduce the amount of land, water and
chemicals used to produce the food we eat, as well as the incidence of
lifestyle diseases linked to unhealthy diets, and greenhouse gases from
industrial meat production. All without legislation.

And the food would not necessarily have to be organic, which, under the
United States Department of Agriculture’s definition, means it is
generally free of synthetic substances; contains no antibiotics and
hormones; has not been irradiated or fertilized with sewage sludge; was
raised without the use of most conventional pesticides; and contains no
genetically modified ingredients.

Those requirements, which must be met in order for food to be labeled
“U.S.D.A. Organic,” are fine, of course. But they still fall short of
the lofty dreams of early organic farmers and consumers who gave the word
“organic” its allure — of returning natural nutrients and substance
to the soil in the same proportion used by the growing process (there is no
requirement that this be done); of raising animals humanely in accordance
with nature (animals must be given access to the outdoors, but for how long
and under what conditions is not spelled out); and of producing the most
nutritious food possible (the evidence is mixed on whether organic food is
more nutritious) in the most ecologically conscious way.

The government’s organic program, says Joan Shaffer, a spokeswoman for
the Agriculture Department, “is a marketing program that sets standards
for what can be certified as organic. Neither the enabling legislation nor
the regulations address food safety or nutrition.”

People don’t understand that, nor do they realize “organic” doesn’t
mean “local.” “It doesn’t matter if it’s from the farm down the
road or from Chile,” Ms. Shaffer said. “As long as it meets the
standards it’s organic.”

Photo: MAINSTREAM More grocery stores are stocking organic foods. (Tim
Boyle / Getty)

Hence, the organic status of salmon flown in from Chile, or of frozen
vegetables grown in China and sold in the United States — no matter the
size of the carbon footprint left behind by getting from there to here.

Today, most farmers who practice truly sustainable farming, or what you
might call “organic in spirit,” operate on small scale, some so small
they can’t afford the requirements to be certified organic by the
government. Others say that certification isn’t meaningful enough to
bother. These farmers argue that, “When you buy organic you don’t just
buy a product, you buy a way of life that is committed to not exploiting
the planet,” says Ed Maltby, executive director of the Northeast Organic
Dairy Producers Alliance.

But the organic food business is now big business, and getting bigger.
Professor Howard estimates that major corporations now are responsible for
at least 25 percent of all organic manufacturing and marketing (40 percent
if you count only processed organic foods). Much of the nation’s organic
food is as much a part of industrial food production as midwinter grapes,
and becoming more so. In 2006, sales of organic foods and beverages totaled
about $16.7 billion, according to the most recent figures from Organic
Trade Association.

Still, those sales amounted to slightly less than 3 percent of overall food
and beverage sales. For all the hoo-ha, organic food is not making much of
an impact on the way Americans eat, though, as Mark Kastel, co-founder of
The Cornucopia Institute, puts it: “There are generic benefits from doing
organics. It protects the land from the ravages of conventional
agriculture,” and safeguards farm workers from being exposed to
pesticides.

But the questions remain over how we eat in general. It may feel better to
eat an organic Oreo than a conventional Oreo, but, says Marion Nestle, a
professor at New York University’s department of nutrition, food studies
and public health, “Organic junk food is still junk food.”

Last week, Michelle Obama began digging up a patch of the South Lawn of the
White House to plant an organic vegetable garden to provide food for the
first family and, more important, to educate children about healthy,
locally grown fruits and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes
have become national concerns.

But Mrs. Obama also emphasized that there were many changes Americans can
make if they don’t have the time or space for an organic garden.

“You can begin in your own cupboard,” she said, “by eliminating
processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to
incorporate more fruits and vegetables.”

Popularizing such choices may not be as marketable as creating a logo that
says “organic.” But when Americans have had their fill of
“value-added” and overprocessed food, perhaps they can begin producing
and consuming more food that treats animals and the land as if they
mattered. Some of that food will be organic, and hooray for that.
Meanwhile, they should remember that the word itself is not synonymous with
“safe,” “healthy,” “fair” or even necessarily “good.”

Mark Bittman writes the Minimalist column for the Dining section of The
Times and is the author, most recently, of “Food Matters: A Guide to
Conscious Eating.”




  • [Livingontheland] Eating Food That’s Better for You, Organic or Not, Tradingpost, 03/24/2009

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