by Lefteri Theodorakis
 In the year 2002 the USDA introduced a new type of food that has taken hold of American consumers known as organic food.
The word organic has gripped the market, as a better healthier source of food, indicating foods without the word organic are not as or are less healthy. This is a great misconception. As Dr. David Katz a clinical professor of public health and medicine at Yale University put it, “Organic is a gimmick”. He states, “Sometimes organic is used to make people think a product is more wholesome”.
Organic foods with their superior prices hold on to the belief that organically grown food has better flavor, is more nutritious, and is healthier for the consumer. This again is untrue. Dr. William Sebrell, former director of the National Institutes of Health stated that “no acceptable medical benefits or nutritional advantages, to be obtained from the use of organic foods.” He isn’t the only professional who believes this. Robyn Flipse, a registered dietician with Nutrition Communication Services, states, “There is no good evidence that organically grown plants or animals are nutritionally superior to conventionally grown.”
The idea behind organic foods is that they are grown free of pesticides, antibiotics or vitamins. This is once again untrue. Dr. Jean Mayer, a Harvard University nutritionist was asked if food without chemical fertilizer and pesticides lead to better nutrition. She doesn’t think so. “The reason is that this effort is unscientific and full of internal contradictions. With regard to fertilizers, if we don’t use them throughout, the world is going to starve. You just cannot produce the amount of food we need in the world without fertilizers.”
This goes into the idea of factory farming. Factory Farming is the way the United States, as well as other developing countries, creates the food it needs to feed the general public. Factory farming sidesteps the natural conditions needed for plants and animals and survive to create more food, at a more cost-efficient price. An example would be fertilizers making it possible to grow plants in what would be otherwise unproductive land. For animals, antibiotics and vitamins would allow them to be confined into smaller spaces where disease would normally be rampant.
Cutting these conditions allows more time and cost-efficient procedures, which translate to lower supermarket shelf prices and even more jobs and industry production for the economy. Even so, Ruth Zadoks, a PhD research associate in the department of Food Science at Cornell University states, “So far, the scientific evidence does not show that milk-enhancing hormones used in cows pose a risk for human health”.
In the end organic foods seems to be an expensive propaganda, as not only are they no more nutritious than factory farmed food, they are more expensive to grow, yield less food per acre and have a shorter shelf life. In Organic foods use the bandwagon technique and scare tactics to lure consumers into buying their products, thinking they will be more nutritious or gain some health benefit.
Instead of misleading and scaring consumers into buying overpriced in foods, why not let them decide for themselves whether or not organic foods are right for them and their budget?
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