What was your biggest fear as a child? The dark, bees, the bogeyman, bullies at school? Not me. Nope, my biggest fear was yard pesticides. My parents never sprayed our yard (much to our neighbor’s chagrin), and I decided it must be pretty terrible stuff. So every time I saw a yard with the little white signs or with that painted fake green look, I took a deep breath, held it, and ran past as fast as I could. This, of course, helped to make me the most popular kid in school
So what’s so important about organic farming and foods? Pesticides just wash off, right? They can’t really hurt us, can they?
Oh, but they can, and they do. Here are some reasons to adjust your budget in order to fit organic foods into your grocery shopping experience.
For Our and Our Children’s Safety
There are over 80,000 chemicals on the market, most of which have not been tested for safety, and many of which build up in our bodies. Some of those chemicals are in categories such as organochlorines (DDT is one of them) and organophosphorous pesticides. Many of these are known to cause cancer, nervous system disorders, birth defects, and a host of other problems. Over time, these insidious chemicals build up in our tissues especially in fats, which store them for long periods of time, and create what is called body burden. This is the amount of chemicals that can be found in a person’s body at any specific time. Body burden tends to be worse for children because they are more sensitive and less able to detoxify such chemicals from their bodies.
Also in relation to our children, studies have shown that not only can such chemicals pass through the placenta to the fetus, but they can be found in breast milk. So we are passing our own chemical body burdens to our children before they are even exposed to the external environment and contaminated foods. This does not mean we should stop breastfeeding our infants!
Many studies have shown that organically grown produce and organically raised livestock include more nutrients than conventional ones. The largest study on the topic done so far was by researchers from the European Union. Their findings demonstrated that organic produce can have as much as 40% more antioxidants than conventional produce. Even more significant, they found that organic milk can have as much as 60% more antioxidants and essential fatty acids than conventional milk.
Now if you look this topic up on the internet, you’re sure to find the latest news from the Food Standards Agency in the UK saying organic does not have enough of a difference in nutrient levels to be important to our health. But keep in mind that this was simply a review of the abstracts (which are measly summaries of the entire study) of 50 studies (chosen by the FSA, so here’s where some of the bias comes into play) from the past 50 years
For Saving the Environment
If you read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, you can understand the full impact of many pesticides on the environment. It’s a very good read if you have the time. Basically, the springtime is silent, because the bugs and animals that normally create the ambient noise outside were dying off due to the pesticide DDT. Her book led to the eventual banning of DDT in the US, although it’s still used in many other agricultural countries. Although DDT and a number of other extremely harmful pesticides have been banned by the US, pesticides are not THAT different. They are all poisons that can kill either plants or bugs, and if it kills those things, wouldn’t it harm other living things as well?
Pesticides sprayed on crops soak into the soil, where they can remain for decades. This means that future crops will soak them up through their roots. Also, the pesticides on top of and in the soil are washed into streams, rivers, and lakes during rains and irrigation, further polluting our water sources and harming the flora and fauna of the water communities. We then eat the fish that have been contaminated by the pesticides, further adding to our own body burden.
Final Food for Thought
Think about it this way. Would you feel comfortable dousing an apple with bug spray, rinsing it off under the faucet, and then handing it to your child to eat? Would water alone wash all remnants of that poison off of the apple? Would you want to take that risk? And that poison didn’t even have weeks to soak into the apple like conventional apples in the grocery store have. That bug spray under the sink that you would never dream of spraying on your food is no worse than the pesticides sprayed on conventional crops all over the world. It is poison that over time builds up in our bodies and is undoubtedly adding to the rise in disease and illness that is growing at an alarming rate in the world today.
It’s time to say “NO!” to chemical poisons in our food and “YES!” to nature, to local, to organic foods. Let’s clean up our bodies and the planet and give our children a safer world in which to grow and thrive! Buy, cook, and eat natural, organic, and local foods!
Just for fun: Check out the video Grocery Store Wars at the bottom of the blog.
Stay healthy and happy! :)
Resources for More Information
Article: “Chemicals in Mother’s Milk.” Natural Resources Defense Council: http://www.nrdc.org/breastmilk/envpoll.asp
Article: “Organic Food Is More Nutritious Say EU Researchers” Medical News Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/86972.php
Body Burden information: http://www.chemicalbodyburden.org/
“National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.” CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/
Pesticide Action Network: http://www.panna.org/
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Spring-Rachel-Carson/dp/0618249060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249068713&sr=1-1
USDA National Organic Program: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?parentnav=COOPERATIVES&navid=ORGANIC_CERTIFICATIO&navtype=RT
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