Not too long ago, if you wanted to find a decent selection of organic
products, you had to go to a specialty health food store. Now you can
find organic produce, meats, dairy products and more at almost any
grocery store. There is no question that organic foods have increased in
popularity in recent years, but many people still have questions about
these products. Perhaps the most common question is, are organic foods
really better than regular foods?
This question has been debated a lot in recent years, with some people
heavily promoting organic foods, while others claim they are no better
than the regular foods you eat. Both sides have some evidence to support
their opinion, but some of this evidence is a little misleading. The
first important thing to note about this debate is nobody is saying that
organic foods are less healthy or in any way inferior to regular foods.
The people defending regular foods are just trying to say they have no
additional benefits.
The main evidence against the need for organic foods comes from
nutrient comparisons that have been made between organic and regular
foods. Lab tests have found that organic foods may not contain
significantly more nutrients than other foods and defenders of regular
foods have taken this to mean that organic foods are not any better or
healthier than other foods. If the amount of nutrients in a food was the
only thing that mattered, then this would be a compelling argument
against the need for organic foods, but the amount of nutrients is just
one component of food.
Probably the best quality of organic foods has nothing to do with how
many nutrients they have, but rather what they don't have. Regular foods
often have undesirable things added to them during their growing and/or
processing phases. For example, fruits and vegetables are often treated
with pesticides or other unhealthy substances. Foods can contain
pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, or worse, and this information will
not be shown anywhere on the food label. However, organic products have
to follow strict regulations, which include not using unhealthy
substances like pesticides at any point from start to finished product.
By not having these unhealthy ingredients, organic foods are
unquestionably healthier than their regular counterparts, even if the
foods have the same amount of nutrients. Basically every food has some
things that are good for you and some things that are bad for you and
products that have a lot of healthy features with few unhealthy ones are
the healthiest foods and vice versa. Therefore, even if a food has a
decent amount of nutrients, it can still be unhealthy if it also
contains a lot of things that are bad for you.
For example, cold water salmon is incredibly healthy, because it
contains quality protein and high levels of EPA and DHA, which are the
healthiest Omega-3 fats. However, if you take salmon and deep fry it,
you end up adding unhealthy substances, which lowers the overall
healthiness of the food. While this has nothing to do with whether or
not the food is organic, you can make the analogy that the organic food
is the original salmon and the regular food is what you get after frying
it.
To be fair, the difference in healthiness between an organic and
regular food is not as big as the difference between fresh and fried
salmon, but the analogy is accurate in the sense that both regular foods
and fried salmon have a higher amount of ingredients that are bad for
your health. Unfortunately, it is very hard to determine the actual
impact on your health, because the extra substances found in traditional
products may not visibly affect your body until years or even decades
down the road. This makes it difficult to figure out the true benefit
you get from eating organic foods.
Another issue is that the benefits of eating organic foods vary from
product to product and some regular foods are not much different than
their organic counterpart, while there is a big difference between
others. The problem is you have no way of knowing how the regular foods
are made, so you will not know what unhealthy substances they contain.
One of the reasons people like to buy organic is because they don't have
to worry about all the unknown extras that might be in their food.
There is one more benefit to organic foods that is not talked about as
much, which is that organic foods typically have more taste than
traditional foods, especially when it comes to fresh fruits and
vegetables. Regular produce can taste almost like a watered down version
of organic produce and this is certainly something people take into
account when deciding whether or not to buy organic foods.
While it is not possible to say exactly how much better organic foods
are than regular ones, it is hard to argue that they are not at least
somewhat healthier than traditional foods. If they did not cost more
than other foods, there probably would not be any interest in this
issue, because everyone would choose to eat organic products. Of course,
they do cost more, so the question at the heart of the matter is
whether or not organic foods are worth the extra cost, but that is an
issue for another time.
food12
