to buy, or not to buy

[highchef]

The wsj had an interesting article regarding purchase of organic foods on Tues. front page of the Personal Journal. Given it's origins from a business oriented paper, the article gives weight to 'worth' balanced with benefit...or perceived benefit. Basically, it tries to break down what is overpriced, and what makes sense to pay more for in the value you get from it being labeled 'organic'. Beginning with sales figures etc. showing the ever increasing market for organics, and naming the major players, the article goes on to breakdown what foods make sense to buy (and pay the organic price for) as organic, and which ones do not.

Some make sense not to fork over the extra $, like fruits you'll peel before eating, ie oranges (obviously not if you're going to use the peel) and banannas. They also give the ok to broccolli, frozen sweet peas, frozen corn, asparagus, avocados and onions, stating that levels of pesticides are low even in conventional versions. Also safe without the organic brand would be foods you eat only occasionally.

To buy organically grown?

apples, peaches, bell peppers, strawberries, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce, potatoes (!!) carrots.

Milk and dairy products (free of the growth hormones that are given to conventionally raised cows) Milk does not have to be organic however, to be hormone free.

Meat and poultry. Free of growth hormones and antibiotics

and last but not least: baby food.

seafood is a large question mark, as even wild caught can still have alarming levels of mercuy and other things that people would rather not consume. being from Louisiana I can relate to this problem in an intimate way. The future for organic seafood seems to lie in farm raised fish fed organic meal. A compromise to be sure.

The entire article shares points and counterpoints to both conventional farming and organic, raises grey areas (exactly how much grass allows a cow to be labeled grass fed? not much!) and gives a balanced account of the industry and what benefits you can get from it if you are fairly knowledgable and not a sucker for labels and hype. I found it very helpful, especially in the areas of meat and dairy. I was getting a bit pissed off with the prices I was paying, especially for the meat. It is a very large differential in prices between reg. and hormone free..even ground meat. Milk and other dairy is almost as bad.

I don't think I'm going for the organic rice krispies though....the wheat products were mostly ignored, and at least for now, ignorance is bliss.

[Shalmanese]

Every year or so, some organisation or other comes out with one of these reports and it's always the same methodology. Choose the fruits with the most conventional pesticide residue and tell people to buy the organic versions of those. What they're not asking is a) How harmful is the conventional pesticide residue anyway and how much organic pesticide residue is on that produce and how harmful is that?

Personally, I think they're just a product of a slow news week and not to be trusted at all. Theres no academic rigour whatsoever in any of those studies.

[russ parsons]

i've got to agree. there are valid reasons for choosing organic: farmworker health concerns, groundwater contamination, etc. but any rational assessment of personal health risks would have about 999 factors rated above pesticide residue on produce. in the first place, for the most part it's not there--less than 1% of produce tested by usda over the last 10 years has residue above the legal limit (the legal limit being established by taking the lowest dose shown to cause damage and then reducing it by a factor of 100). and the vast majority had no detectable residue at all.