Wednesday, May 10, 2006
When I walk into a grocery with $20 to buy a week’s worth of food, I tend to buy whatever’s cheapest. Near-expired, marked-down ground beef? Check. No-brand-name milk? Check. Green bananas for 39 cents a pound? Check.
There’s no way I can afford to buy fresh, organic lettuces or free-range beef raised without bovine growth hormone or pesticide-free apples.
We’ve all been to organic grocery stores, and we all know that prices can be double or even triple what you see at Checkers.
So why the higher price? First, most organic farms aren’t subsidized by the government. Your average stockyard receives money from the government, which keeps their prices down. Organic farms don’t have that luxury. Second, more money goes into the care of the animals, and oftentimes more human labor.
Third, the farms tend to be smaller. A basic economics class will teach you that the more of something you produce, the lower the cost of production becomes.
So smaller farms have higher costs of production, which means their prices must be higher to compensate.
So, what benefit do you get from organic food that you don’t from so-called ordinary food? There’s no scientific evidence that organic foods have more vitamins or nutritional value than non-organic food.
The biggest pro-organic argument isn’t about what you get, it’s about what don’t get. All of the pesticides and growth hormones and preservatives and ripening chemicals put on fruits and vegetables are not present in organic food.
In recent years, scientists are finding these chemicals everywhere — stored in fat in the human body or in breastmilk; in rivers, lakes and oceans and in their sands and sediments;
Most die-hard, pro-organic supporters say that these chemicals can cause cancer, hormonal imbalances and a weakened immune system, for starters. Skeptics can say that scientists are much better at proving that the chemicals are in and around our bodies than they are at proving that they’re harmful, and they’d be right.
It’s easy to figure out how much of a certain pesticide a person could eat before he or she died from poisoning, but it’s much harder to tell what effects minute amounts have over long periods of time.
Have cancer rates been going up? Yes. Is it due to all of the chemicals that have found their way into our bodies? Not as clear. Most scientists would answer a hesitant “probably.” The trouble is, there are so MANY chemicals supposedly at work in our bodies that scientists can’t tell exactly what harmful effects any given one has.
When I graduate and make a million dollars a year — ha ha — I think I will buy organic foods, but for different reasons than those listed above.
Supporting local, organic growers is important to me, for starters. But organic food seems to taste better, fresher and riper. And I think there’s value in going to the Farmer’s Market or an organic grocery store to buy vegetables without plastic packaging, or beef that I know has grown up around where I have. It’s simply more appealing.
Plus, it’s a safe bet — in case all of these hesitant scientists are right.
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