Are you buying organic foods?

Just curious how many people buy organic foods. I would also like to discuss truth vs rumors regarding imported (organic) foods from Countries we have little to no control over.
i.e.

http://draxe.com/organic-foods-china-shocking-and-exposed/
(many other articles out there)
If true, how concerned are you? What are you most concerned about?
Can we be sure that what we eat is safe?

 

No because it is a stupid gimmick and the food is no better for you. Just because something is labelled as organic doesn't mean its good. The only things I really look for is if milk has BGH in it and if my fish/seafood is farm raised or wild caught and if farm raised which country its from. If its from Vietnam or another way out their country I won't buy it because their sanitary conditions are deplorable.

 

Many of our meats and seafood comes from other countries. That, or its processed there.
Its not a pleasant thought.

 

Sometimes I buy organic, but mostly I grow organic from heritage/heirloom seeds. I often buy free range vegetarian eggs (before you ask, it means there are no roosters to fertilize them); local raised beef/buffalo; local grown fruit, etc. I seldom eat fish at all other than making salmon cakes from canned salmon because the local watershed has too many issues and I do not particularly think "fresh" means frozen two months ago and shipped from Thailand. To me it is more about the flavors and supporting local producers first; the health stuff secondary to that.

 

NO - I do not.

 

Not specifically. More likely to avoid processed/pre-boxed/pre-made foods.

 

Quite a bit pf organic food fits the description of that which you wish to avoid

 

That makes a lot of sense.
We buy local and in season as much as we can. The rest can be shipped from reputable suppliers.
Supermarkets are taking so many choices from us. Read the labels. With all the cows we have around here, and the fact that we export beef, why do we have to buy hamburger that comes from Mexico and Canada? (no offense)

 

All foods are organic using the original sense of the term. I think "organic" foods are good if you don't like a few extra bugs in your food, and paying more money for it.

 

It does crack me up though--there is this one local grocery that has like 5 locations that always advertises its tomatoes as either local grown or home grown, but then there are stacks of boxes of tomatoes sitting around that are clearly marked that they are from Mexico yet people will still swear that they only sell local produce.

Once I get my farm up and running properly, which will still take a few years, I might try to open a seasonal produce place that provides better choices, better flavors, at a cheaper price. I already am making some money just off my backyard garden by growing and selling things to a local restaurant whose chef/owner is a friend that are not often grown around here. He will just ask what I have, come get what he wants, and then just pays me whatever on the honor system and recommends what he would like to see grown--like I have 200 eggplants growing right now and I can only eat eggplant twice a year. The rest is for him. I make my money on the landscape design & installation/horticulture side, and bought my farm to go vertical in growing more plant material myself, but I will have a lot of space leftover for food crops, so why not.

 

In EU there are rather sever rules about labeling foods for sales. To carry a label saying "organic" is not that easy.

Generally distribution chains assure the consumers that the labels are real and original [also in Italy we had cases of fake labeling]. Less sure is the case of the little distribution, where the NAS [a section of Carabinieri dedicated to drugs and food controls] make periodical controls.

Anyway, once I am sure an "organic product" is really "organic" [any eatable product is actually "organic" from a systemic viewpoint: we don't eat not organic products ... we don't digest plastic!] I make some thought.

* Humans modify vegetables and animals since ancient times. What we consider "organic" cereals today are actually the result of a long chain of interbreeding [in other words they are "organic GMOs" ! Modified by means of interbreeding, so ...].

Then, depending on where they run these "organic" cultures, the conditions of irrigation, climate, chemical composition of rains ... vary a lot the real meaning of that "organic" [you can cultivate a plantation in a totally natural way, but if the rains are no more the rains of 2 centuries ago ... what can you do about?].

 

So you regulate imports from within the EU. Do you import from outside and how is it regulated?

 

Right and wrong. Obviously, you haven't taken much chemistry. Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Most plastics are organic--meaning they are made up of carbon compounds. So you are right that we only eat organic compounds, you are wrong in your example.

 

from the US the ag product has to be NOP certified organic and packed and shipped from the US directly to the EU. There are some "critical variances" i.e. additional requirements like certain fruits cannot contain any antibiotics and wine has to be produced a certain way with certain ingredients in order to be labeled organic in the EU. They pretty much shun all our meat though, and probably rightfully so.

 

Lableing is important in purchasing organic food products. Just saying it is organic is not enough. "Certified Organic" labeling is what you need to look for. The rules and regulations for a farm or producer to be certified are quite stringent.

Meat, eggs, milk and poultry that are non-organic are filled with hormones and antibiotics and who in their right mind would willingly and knowingly ingest that?

Food grown organically has been scientifically proven to be more nutritous...

There is mounting evidence that organically grown foods generate more nutrients and fewer nitrates. In a review of 400 published papers comparing organic and nonorganic foods, Soil Association Certification Ltd. Of the United Kingdom reported that organic crops were higher in essential minerals, phytonutrients, and vitamin C. Phytonutrients are plant compounds other than vitamins and minerals (such as enzymes, antioxidants, bioflavonoids).
http://www.organic.org/articles/showarticle/article-46

...and if you do not choose to eat a strictly organic diet, a person should at least choose organic when it comes to the dirty dozen...
http://www.downtoearth.org/environm...arming/dirty-dozen-most-heavily-sprayed-foods

So, again, it is important to be certain that the labeling is stamped "Certified Organic"

 

Yes, my chemistry studies are quite basic ... I remembered something from High School, but ... the confusion comes from the fact that we in Italy prefer to talk about "biological" products instead of "organic". But at the end, also the definition "biological" is quite curious ...

 

We import organic products from the United States, for example. There is a wide and important agreement between US and EU about import-export of organic products.

Generally the ministry deals with the matter, but in the last years several other authorities have been entitled to managed the matter. Usually [not only about US, the trades are based on bilateral agreement with assurances of qualities].

 

A link which could be useful:

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/eu-rules-on-trade/import-export/index_en.htm

 

All food is organic, or it's not food. Food COULD be synthesized from basic chemicals, I suppose, but it would cost millions. When you buy organic you're paying extra to have nutrients and preservatives taken OUT, so your bread will go moldy and make you sick faster. The only thing making brown sugar brown is good old-fashioned dirt.

 

Obviously you have never heard of Food, Inc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3I

Your post is dead on incorrect. Nutrients taken out? Seriously?

 

All the food I buy is organic. I've never seen any inorganic food except maybe salt.

 

I am just waiting for hydroponics to take off. Growing food "organically" in soil it highly inefficient and wasteful. A hydroponic facility can turn out several crops over the same amount of time that you get one or maybe two from land.

 

I think that the base question [from a family / consumer perspective] is about how much is organic farming more healthy. This is substantially a fallout of the general diffused persuasion that our society pollutes everything with chemical this and that to increase productivity.

It's probably a not too relevant point: an industry doesn't produce bad fruits to distribute them to make customers unhappy and to lose its position on the market [suicide it's always an opportunity, but usually businessmen ...].

About this aspect, the key moments of the production chain are selection and control. [Quality Control, if we want to use a technical definition].

To this they [organic production or not] can add a bit of marketing / image.

For example in Norther Italy we cultivate tasteful apples with a nice look. There is who puts the trees in a way that the sun in the morning hits the fruits, so that on a side of a yellow apple there can be a kind of "brush stroke" of a different color.

This effect can be obtained regardless the tech you use to cultivate your apple trees.

So at the end, if controls are of a suitable level, the sanitary conditions of the products are in any case at suitable level.

 

So instead of using chemicals to increase productivity, we should be growing produce where its most suitable for maximum yield, ideally in healthy ground.
But that brings us back to the original intent of this thread. Foods grown in places like China, where we have little to no oversight, is imported as 'organic', when in fact it can't possibly be so.

 

Hydroponics has been "taking off" for 200 years. While you're waiting for it to succeed, eat something.