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Do you eat organic food?

Do you eat organic food?

  • Yes all the time

    Votes: 3 5.5%

  • Yes most of the time

    Votes: 4 7.3%

  • Sometimes

    Votes: 18 32.7%

  • Not that often

    Votes: 18 32.7%

  • No never

    Votes: 12 21.8%
  • Total voters
    55
Cephus said:
Except that unless you are buying everything you eat exclusively from the local people who grow it, you never know where it came from. There is no packaging requirement to print where any food, organic or otherwise, was produced. For all you know, the "organic" food you buy in the supermarket came from Canada or Brazil or China.
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That is true if you go to Whole Foods for organics.

We buy meat and some vegetables from a local farmer. It is important for kids.

Beyond that, it is useful for parents to look at a check list of the foods with the highest chemical loads.(its online) Just forget about buying non-organic peaches, strawberries, lettuce, rice, raisins for the kids. It doesn't cost much to buy organic raisins and rice. I think the meat is important, too, but if you don't buy it direct from a farmer, it is wickedly expensive
 
Call it "hype" all you want, but I've never had an allergic reaction to organic beef. (beef bred without hormone and wtf other **** they put in) I don't always have a reaction to regular beef, and the reactions vary from extreme (swollen tongue, swollen throat, vomiting, etc) to mild (pain in my mouth and eventually my body). But when I buy regular beef, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not I'll have a reaction.
 
It would be hard to really know what causes that without full diagnosis. Still, both options need to be available since organic (I still find the name funny, I don't eat inorganic food) farming practices are not sustainable on the necessary scale.
 
Ikari said:
It would be hard to really know what causes that without full diagnosis. Still, both options need to be available since organic (I still find the name funny, I don't eat inorganic food) farming practices are not sustainable on the necessary scale.
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I think there is a misunderstanding about that. Yes, small farms using sustainable practices ( a really long term compared with "organic"), are a lot more labor intensive but they can feed people just fine.
Organic Farming Can Feed The World, Study Suggests


The World, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (July 13, 2007) — Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food as conventional farming on the same amount of land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing assumption that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.


Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In developing countries, food production could double or triple using organic methods, said Ivette Perfecto, professor at U-M's School of Natural Resources and Environment, and one the study's principal investigators. Catherine Badgley, research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, is a co-author of the paper along with several current and former graduate and undergraduate students from U-M.

"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture," Perfecto said.

In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yields could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers, and without putting more farmland into production.
 
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Cassandra said:
Beyond that, it is useful for parents to look at a check list of the foods with the highest chemical loads.(its online) Just forget about buying non-organic peaches, strawberries, lettuce, rice, raisins for the kids. It doesn't cost much to buy organic raisins and rice. I think the meat is important, too, but if you don't buy it direct from a farmer, it is wickedly expensive
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You're free to buy whatever you want to buy, so long as you actually know the real facts about what you're doing, not the ridiculous hype that comes from the organic-groupies who routinely spread falsehoods about how "healthy" organic food is and how "bad" non-organic food is. There's nothing demonstrably bad about non-organic food, nor is there anything demonstrably better about organic food, it all comes down to personal preference and if you want to pay more for essentially the same food, feel free, it's your money.
 
Cassandra said:
I think there is a misunderstanding about that. Yes, small farms using sustainable practices ( a really long term compared with "organic"), are a lot more labor intensive but they can feed people just fine.
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Notice they're not comparing organic farming methods with modern efficient Western farms, they're only looking at bad farming methods in third world countries.

Real honest study there. :roll:
 
Cephus said:
You're free to buy whatever you want to buy, so long as you actually know the real facts about what you're doing, not the ridiculous hype that comes from the organic-groupies who routinely spread falsehoods about how "healthy" organic food is and how "bad" non-organic food is. There's nothing demonstrably bad about non-organic food, nor is there anything demonstrably better about organic food, it all comes down to personal preference and if you want to pay more for essentially the same food, feel free, it's your money.
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It is demonstrable that infants are born with over a hundred carcinogenic chemicals in their blood the day they are born. It is demonstrable that mammals high on the food chain have a high incidence of numerous health problems especially cancer. It is demonstrable that one in two men will have cancer during their lifetime, one in three women.

Of course, not all the poisons that make their way into our tissues get there because of food. There are plenty of chemiclas that we absorb from the air, water, cosmetics, rugs, plastic, fabrics etc etc. Fans of organics are not spreading falsehoods, however.
 
Cephus said:
Notice they're not comparing organic farming methods with modern efficient Western farms, they're only looking at bad farming methods in third world countries.

Real honest study there. :roll:
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Like I said, U.S. factory farms are not particularly efficient. We just use petroleum based products to grow a whole lot of corn, while draining aquifers and losing top soil. It is unsustainable.
 
Cassandra said:
Like I said, U.S. factory farms are not particularly efficient. We just use petroleum based products to grow a whole lot of corn, while draining aquifers and losing top soil. It is unsustainable.
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Like on organic farms, they use tons of cow manure and pump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Not very sustainable.
 
If you are a "all the time", then your food bill would double, unless you grow your own..
I see little sense in this, seeking out "organic".
I thinks its a fad thing for the wealthy and "fadophiles".
 
Cassandra said:
It is demonstrable that infants are born with over a hundred carcinogenic chemicals in their blood the day they are born. It is demonstrable that mammals high on the food chain have a high incidence of numerous health problems especially cancer. It is demonstrable that one in two men will have cancer during their lifetime, one in three women.

Of course, not all the poisons that make their way into our tissues get there because of food. There are plenty of chemiclas that we absorb from the air, water, cosmetics, rugs, plastic, fabrics etc etc. Fans of organics are not spreading falsehoods, however.
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irrational fears, maybe?
I am reminded of the Vietnamese village that I could see from the deck of the LST I was on, we were WAY upriver from salt water.
Their poop station was only a narrow dirt dike away from their rice paddies and vegetable garden.
Now THAT is organic....:mrgreen:
 
UtahBill said:
irrational fears, maybe?
I am reminded of the Vietnamese village that I could see from the deck of the LST I was on, we were WAY upriver from salt water.
Their poop station was only a narrow dirt dike away from their rice paddies and vegetable garden.
Now THAT is organic....:mrgreen:
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To what do you attribute cancer rates ?
 
Cephus said:
Like on organic farms, they use tons of cow manure and pump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Not very sustainable.
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The key word here is "use" -unlike the cesspools of manure created by factory raised beef/hogs.
 
Cassandra said:
The key word here is "use" -unlike the cesspools of manure created by factory raised beef/hogs.
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Yes but when they advocate switching planet-wide growing methods to organic methods... you get the idea.
 
Cassandra said:
To what do you attribute cancer rates ?
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Some are due to repeated and excessive exposure to man made contaminants, but most are due to choosing the wrong parents.
Some of us are just more prone to dying from cancer than others...
 
UtahBill said:
Some are due to repeated and excessive exposure to man made contaminants, but most are due to choosing the wrong parents.
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Especially if your parents had a high build up of nasty chemicals in their tissues.
From the E.P.A.

Cancer Incidence and Mortality

The incidence of childhood cancer increased from 1975 until about 1990. The frequency of the disease appears to have become fairly stable overall since 1990. Mortality has declined substantially during the last 25 years, due largely to improvements in treatment.

The causes of cancer in children are poorly understood, though in general it is thought that different forms of cancer have different causes. Established risk factors for the development of childhood cancer include family history, genetic defects, radiation, and certain pharmaceutical agents used in chemotherapy.47 Evidence from epidemiological studies suggests that environmental contaminants such as pesticides and certain chemicals, in addition to radiation, may contribute to an increased frequency of some childhood cancers.32 Some studies have found that children born to parents who work with or use such chemicals are more likely to have cancer in childhood.48 It may be that the chemicals cause mutations in parents' germ cells that may increase the risk of their children developing certain cancers, or perhaps the parental exposure is passed on to the child while in utero, affecting the child directly. Children's direct exposures to such chemicals also may contribute to cancer.
 
Cephus said:
Yes but when they advocate switching planet-wide growing methods to organic methods... you get the idea.
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No, I don't really.
Americans are over fed and undernourished. Doesn't that tell you anything? Meat should be a condiment, not a giant main course. If Americans ate much less meat, we would not have so much animal waste. We would allocate many more acres to growing things that are nutritious rather than corn which requires lrg amounts of petrol/water. We would consume more calories from leaves and fewer from seed and meat. We would be slimmer and healthier.

We wouldn't force Mexican farmers out of business by flooding their market with cheap subsidized corn.

The beauty of a well run organic farm is that it mimics nature. The cows mow and fertilize the fields, the birds (chickens) fly in afterward and clean up the pests that are attracted to the manure. Soil remains rich. Pests are confused because crops are rotated. Animals are not bunched together so they do not become sick. It is highly productive but there must be a balance of animals to land just as there should be that balance in a person's diet.

I am not particularly rigid about eating everything organic but I do conform to the principles I just laid out. I eat more greens than anything else. I never eat anything processed- things that my grandmother would not recognize as food.
 
Reverend_Hellh0und said:
so you are going to feed the world on small output farms? :lol:
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No, realistically such things cannot happen overnight. The soil is terribly depleted in many parts of the world but things will change because they must...and people will starve just as they did last summer.

China and India are running out of water to continue to farm in the industrial manner. The aquifers are drying up.

And...

What do you think will happen when gas hits $20. a gallon and fertilizer prices quadruple? There will be a lot of people looking at organic methods.
 
Cassandra said:
Especially if your parents had a high build up of nasty chemicals in their tissues.
From the E.P.A.

Cancer Incidence and Mortality

The incidence of childhood cancer increased from 1975 until about 1990. The frequency of the disease appears to have become fairly stable overall since 1990. Mortality has declined substantially during the last 25 years, due largely to improvements in treatment.

The causes of cancer in children are poorly understood, though in general it is thought that different forms of cancer have different causes. Established risk factors for the development of childhood cancer include family history, genetic defects, radiation, and certain pharmaceutical agents used in chemotherapy.47 Evidence from epidemiological studies suggests that environmental contaminants such as pesticides and certain chemicals, in addition to radiation, may contribute to an increased frequency of some childhood cancers.32 Some studies have found that children born to parents who work with or use such chemicals are more likely to have cancer in childhood.48 It may be that the chemicals cause mutations in parents' germ cells that may increase the risk of their children developing certain cancers, or perhaps the parental exposure is passed on to the child while in utero, affecting the child directly. Children's direct exposures to such chemicals also may contribute to cancer.
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I love all the weasel words they use....
Certainly high concentrations of certain chemicals have been found to be the culprit, but for those of us not living near a chemical plant, breathing foul air and drinking contaminated water, the odds are not changed significantly.
Living down wind of a coal fired electric generation plant probably causes lots of disease, but we need the electricity, so people don't complain so much.
Lots of people die from alcohol abuse, directly or indirectly (traffic accidents), but we haven't banned it yet.
Life is a crapshoot.... we should all be trying to increase our odds of survival, but there is a lot that we have no control over...
 
UtahBill said:
Life is a crapshoot.......
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Yeh! No kidding! It is hard to know which is the greater health hazard: the plastic bottle so many people drink from or the crappy beverage it contains.

No one has really studied this stuff, in depth, so I go with the pre-cautionary principle to the extent that I can afford it.

Beyond my personal health and the frightening incidence of cancer I see in my family and community, there are a whole lot of reasons why sustainable farming practices are important for the planet. This is not a touchy/ feelly sentiment. Industrial farming practices are the ones that are not sustainable.
 
No, because stuff like organic food is girly liberal crap. "Let's go eat some organic cheese and then fill up our hemp baskets with Obama stickers!!"

My father raised me to be a man.
 
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