Judging a Banana by its Label

I’ve spent a lot of time this year working on my college courses. I haven’t finalized what I’ll do and exactly what my degree will be; I am not in a rush with 2 little ones at home.

For my English class, the major assignment was writing a research essay. We spent most of the course working at researching our chosen topic. We could choose anything. I tossed a couple different controversial ideas in my mind and then decided to go for something a little less controversial, and more something I actually wanted to know about. Now I think it’s probably still pretty controversial, as a lot of people have their own ideas about everything, but why don’t I share with you what I found out, about Organic food.

Everyone knows somebody who devotes the majority of their eating habits to organic foods, at least I think so. Especially in a metropolitan area, there are plenty of grocers with their own organic sections and some whole stores are devoted to 100% organic. My husband is a farm boy, raised in Wisconsin and grew up on a cattle farm, owned by his Veterinarian father, who actually just enjoys having cattle on the side. They didn’t eat organic anything, except for the produce from their own garden. It was store bought milk and their own non-organic beef, and to this day the 10 kids of his family are all alive and well, so it’s easy to see why he has so many uneducated and firm ideas about organic being ridiculous, which of course have rubbed off on me.

I decided this was the perfect opportunity to research this unknown water to us, I mean it’s really not fair to pass judgment discriminate against the organic bananas if you don’t really know about them, right?

Well, after 12 weeks, a tone of research, and a 3,500 word research paper later, I am informed. And this is my way of sharing with you what I learned without throwing 12 pages of words and citation in front of you!

I had so many questions, and I dove in with the question I had assumed for some time to be true: Why is organic food better? Let’s get right at it, it’s not. This is a total misconception. After looking at several studies completed, there is no firm evidence that organic food is better. Some organic potatoes showed to have a little more phosphorus, but our diets are more than potatoes, or at least mine is and I hope yours is too! The process of making organic produce is actually more environmentally friendly and research shows this is proven, less synthetic pesticide run off and such.

And how about those pesticides? Organic foods aren’t made with pesticides right? Yea, actually they are. They are just environmentally friendly pesticides, approved by the USDA, which breakdown in the environment. So if they break down easier in the environment this also means that sometimes, organic farmers have to use larger amounts of pesticides to find success for their crop. Keep in mind too, just because they’re more environmentally friendly does not necessarily mean they are more human health friendly. Some of the pesticides, rotenone and pyrethin, used on organic crops are 10x more toxic then roundup by weight. Lovely. A lot of people seem to fear the synthetic pesticides on regular old produce, but there’s no research proving them a problem, and the FDA monitors this closely.

Not only is there organic produce, we also see the +$6.00 gallon of organic milk at the grocery store, and the (usually) grass fed organic beef. A lot of people will buy organic milk to stay away from hormones given to the cows. But really, those hormones rarely make it through the pasteurization process and even if they did our bodies ignore them and can’t break them down. So unless you’re getting your milk from your pet cow, or buying raw milk, don’t use the excuse of avoiding hormones to spend extra $ on organic milk. In fact, a study done showed that the average range of hormone byproducts in both organic and non-organic milk was in the same range, that’s ironic.

The beef issue pushed me into an interesting area of my research. I got to bond with my father-in-law and talk to him about his experience as a veterinarian and a cattle farmer. He had a lot to share and I was extremely enlightened. As a vet he actually goes to some organic farms and provides hormones or antibiotics if necessary, yea, to organic cows. But the USDA actually offers farmers waivers for certain situations. So the beef can still get that ‘organic’ label even though they’ve received antibiotics or hormones. Other farmers can actually obtain waivers if they live outside of 100 mile radius of organic feed. So they feed the cows non-organic feed and then get a waiver from the USDA to maintain the organic label on the beef. Kind of contradictory, right? So what about antibiotics and hormones in regular old beef? My father in law has cattle and according to him, if his beef tests positive for antibiotics, well, it can’t be sold. The FDA does a pretty good job, I am not sure we give them enough credit, probably because most of the times were too busy criticizing.  I think it’s really important to remember the FDA will test things accordingly and it’s up to us not to do drastic things to our bodies.

After all was said and done- and 3500 words later-my husband was happy to know that based off current science and knowledge, we can still buy the non-organic products without fear. Maybe over time research and studies might show a difference, but for now, organic foods are better for the environment, but not proven better for us. I am not saying you should not buy organic, you should just make eating a healthy well rounded diet a priority, not the ‘O’ word. My main purpose in my research was to make sure I was making good decisions for my family and also be able to know why I don’t buy organic when asked about it.  Its best for us to eat a good variety, keep up with our vitamins, and if you really want something good, grow your own produce! I think anything we grow ourselves is going to taste a lot better, and be a lot better than what we buy at a grocery store.