Dear Subscriber,
Terri and I are blessed to live in a small community in the North Bay that is enlightened about food. We have more organic restaurant food selections than cities many times our size. Food stores have shelves stocked with organic. Even our Costco (in Santa Rosa) boasts a huge selection of organic produce and other foods. Further, we get to grow our own fruit in a small backyard orchard. Today I harvested our first apples (Gravenstein) of the season, (obviously organic, though I don’t need to certify for personal consumption).
But, it begs the question, is organic better? David Montgomery has studied the question and wrote the book on “What Your Food Ate:”. There have been some conflicting studies, but overall, it is clear that organic food has less pesticide residue and higher content of certain nutrients. Clearly, the best level of pesticides is zero, and more nutrients is better. We will not get to zero pesticides, due to cross contamination, sadly. Roundup literally rains on us.
Organic food production has doubled in the past decade, now a 52 billion dollar a year industry. Yes, it costs more, but it is much more expensive to produce. It’s easier to spray chemicals than plan proper means to naturally control pests, save soil, fertilize, etc. Just like it’s easier for your conventional doctor to spray drugs into you than address the causes of your dis-ease.
So, the purpose of this report is to address if, aside from toxins, you are better off spending the extra for organic. I think yes.