MOST of the chicken, fruit and vegetables in Ellen Devlin-Sample’s kitchen are organic. She thinks those foods taste better than their conventional counterparts. And she hopes they are healthier for her children.
Lately, though, she is not so sure.Read more here:
I always found the whole definition of "organic food" very problematic. I'm sure there is some consensus on what is organic and what not, but at least I haven't heard any convincing description.
ReplyDelete"Does not contain chemicals" is ridiculous as nature has no preference to one carbon and hidrogen atom over the other, no matter where they came from. In that sense I see no difference between a piece of radish and a piece of molten lead.
If it really means 'organic compounds', or found in nature, than it gets even more tricky, as many organic compounds can be quite unhealthy... snake venom anyone ? What about poisonous mushrooms ?
"Not have been genetically engineered"... well, all our crops are results of thousands of years of selective breeding, so...
BTW, I'm not implying that there's no value in being selective in what we eat... or that there aren't forms of food healthier than other... but also one should be careful in jumping on a bandwagon, esp. if it is a moving target...
ReplyDeleteI think nature does care about the arrangments of atoms, which is why you can eat a radish but not a piece of molten lead (temperature aside). Organisms utilize chemical compounds to do things, and organisms have "naturally" evolved to process "natural" compounds during the long process of co-evolution. That is not to say that human-made compounds are all dangerous--what is dangerous is to throw them on our food and into our bodies without testing their effects first.
ReplyDeleteI would rather not eat pesticides, ingest hormones, or breathe smog. I took one second to look up DDT (insecticide), and found a U Berkley study of the levels of various pesticides in 360 pregnant women, then assessed the mental and motor skills of their offspring. "For every tenfold rise in DDT exposure, the children's scores on mental tests dropped 2 to 3 points. Their motor skills were also reduced. In the most severe cases, the highest DDT doses were associated with a 7- to 10-point drop in the mental scores of 2-year-old children compared with those who were not exposed."
http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/11964
@Laszlo: organic is a brand name for a certain set of farming practices. whether these practices add value in terms of nutrition, sustainability, environmental impact etc. is hotly debated. the wiki page summarizes some of these debates. i guess what you meant to suggest was that the ecological movement associates (possibly unexamined) holiness with natural over man-made stuff, and this rising religiosity has to be checked. on the other end of the debate, there is zizek who trashes the whole movement without facts ;) i totally agree that we need a balance.
ReplyDelete@CNAN1U: DDT was banned for all agricultural practice in the stockholm convention, 1972. so if you're concerned about DDT, regular food is safe. but judging all pesticides, chemical (i.e. NPK) fertilizers etc. as 'evil' because of DDT is a baby/bathwater fallacy.
@Pavan: i am merely pointing out the dangers of using chemicals without testing their effects. DDT is a striking case in point. Caveat emptor.
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