I have very little time to read newspapers and often miss the news, so the free Evening Standard app for my phone is a very valued tool for me. When I'm able to snatch random pockets of time, it allows me to catch the headlines and find out what's going on in the world.
This morning though I was rather rattled when I saw a headline proclaiming that organic food is "of little benefit". Apparently, a two-year study by "Which?" has suggested that there appears to be little or no nutritional or taste benefits to growing food organically.
The bulk of the Evening Standard's article elaborated on this "revelation", with just a brief paragraph at the very end, where the "Which? Gardening" editor mentioned that the trial didn't look at other benefits of opting for organics, such as the impact on the environment. A few years ago, Delia Smith also very publicly snubbed organic food. As someone who'd previously been an avid Delia fan, I immediately lost much respect for her at her staggering short-sightedness.
Whether the topic is organic food, organic textiles, organic cosmetics or toiletries or any other organic product, the main benefits are that with these: a) we're not exposing ourselves to harmful (often toxic or even carcinogenic) chemicals, antibiotic-pumped meat or GM food; and b) we're making a better environmental and social choice. Consumers should, however, be aware that only certified organic products should be trusted with these claims and to also be wary of products stating that they merely contain certified organic ingredients. This tactic is often used, particularly with toiletries and cosmetic products, to misleadingly gloss over the fact that actually there might be only a tiny percentage of certified organic ingredients in the product as a whole.
Cancer
Very few of us are lucky enough to have not been affected by somebody close to us being given the devastating news that they have cancer. We are being invisibly bombarded with carcinogens or "suspected" carcinogens in virtually every area of our lives. The most potent triggers of this awful disease must be those which we ingest, inhale or absorb through our skin. (If you're in any doubt about the potency of absorbing chemicals through our skin, just think about the effectiveness of nicotine or hormonal patches transporting chemicals into the bloodstream through small areas of the skin.) I wholeheartedly believe that there is a direct link between the epidemic influx of chemicals saturating our lifestyles and the ever-rising new cancer diagnoses (as well as record highs of eczema, asthma and allergy cases too). Whilst foodstuffs and toiletries are of course not the only sources of toxic chemicals in our lives, they do collectively form a huge chunk of the chemicals our bodies have to process. Genuinely organic alternatives to these products are providing increasingly accessible escapes from so many harmful toxins.
Carcinogenic chemicals used in overseas farming may be either banned for use here or not yet clinically "proven" to be as harmful as they are, but how many people took up smoking (or passively smoked) in the time between the first inklings that it could cause lung cancer to when it was actually clinically proven to do so.
The environment
The environmental benefits of "going organic" can't be understated and are intertwined with complex and widespread social and health problems for people who work in and live around the vast farming areas throughout the world. Not only do the toxic chemicals used in most conventional farming methods cause large scale environmental damage and contamination to humans but it also poses critical threats to wildlife and fragile eco systems. Perhaps the most worrying of these threats (a view shared by many experts including Sir David Attenborough), is the dramatic decline of bees. Towards the end of last year, America reported that for the third year running, their bee population had declined by more than a third. It is widely believed that pesticides are playing a significant role in this, by interfering with bees' natural communication techniques.
As if increasing concerns about fuel and food crises weren't enough to worry about for future generations, the man-made contribution to the decline of bees is all the more perplexing, given that Einstein is said to have predicted that humanity would be unable to exist more than four years without bees.
There are, of course, many other attributes of organic food, including improved farmed animals' welfare, the absence of routinely pumping animals with antibiotics or other growth-inducing/profit-swelling substances and no GM food. So it's a real shame that the very small scale study by "Which?" didn't spend that two years so much more productively, by focusing on the far, far, more important benefits of organic food than taste-testing or minor nutritional discrepancies. At times when more families are struggling to afford the inevitably more expensive organic food, the infinitely more valuable use of the researchers' time would have been to educate people about what's at stake by not opting for organic, instead of falsely implying that people are wasting their money buying organic food.
