Friday, August 14, 2009

The Organic Food Hoax

After, at the insistence of my wife, spending a premium on Earth's Best and Gerber Tender Harvest baby food for my two children, I feel a little a little vindicated and a little violated after a report from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine concluded that there is no evidence of significant health benefit in eating organic foods over conventionally prepared foods.

The study, a review of over 50 years of research and reports in the field seems to confirm a suspicion that I had that aside from providing foods that may have less allergens than conventionally prepared foods (which is only significant for those who have specific food allergies), you're largely paying a premium for a benefit which is essentially meaningless. It's sort of like paying twice as much for a maplewood chair that is constructed by hand. It's cool, but doesn't make it any stronger or better designed.

The article goes on to say that growth in the purchase of organic foods has slowed as budgets get tighter in the restrictions. I wonder if a recovery in the economy will lead to people going back to throwing money away necessarily, or a realization that "hey, we've eaten non-organic for the past 12 months. We're feeling great and realize it's more what you eat as opposed to how that food was how that food was produced." But who am I to say? I'm the guy who likes KFC and Long John Silver's.

My sense is that as long as there's people who are willing to buy, there will be companies who will be more than happy to create a market which largely doesn't need to exist.

2 comments:

LiLing Pang said...

I watched a news segment - can't remember where now. Where they were revealing that Safeway's organic brand is barely organic. They do just enough to get labeled organic. Not sure how true. But I for one have stopped buying organic milk. The way we go through that stuff and throw it down the drain? I just can't bring myself to pay $7 per gallon for it. I know lots of moms think I'm killin' my kids. But hey, at least they eat the Bok Choy willingly.

JD said...

I prefer eating my vegetables with the dirt still on. I figure it probably make me healthier in the long-run.