There's a great article in the New York Times about organic foods, Eating Food That's Better for You, Organic or Not, by Mark Bittman.
It addresses the perception that you have to eat organic to eat healthy and misconceptions about what organic is.
Here are some excerpts:
"No matter how carefully I avoided using the word "organic" when I spoke to groups of food enthusiasts about how to eat better, someone in the audience would inevitably ask, "What if I can't afford to buy organic food?" It seems to have become the magic cure-all, synonymous with eating well, healthfully, sanely, even ethically."
"But eating "organic" offers no guarantee of any of that. And the truth is that most Americans eat so badly -- we get 7 percent of our calories from soft drinks, more than we do from vegetables; the top food group by caloric intake is "sweets"; and one-third of nation's adults are now obese -- that the organic question is a secondary one. It's not unimportant, but it's not the primary issue in the way Americans eat."
"To eat well, says Michael Pollan, the author of "In Defense of Food" means avoiding "edible food-like substances" and sticking to real ingredients, increasingly from the plant kingdom. (Americans each consume an average of nearly two pounds a day of animal products.) There's plenty of evidence that both a person's health -- as well as the environment's -- will improve with a simple shift in eating habits away from animal products and highly processed foods to plant products and what might be called "real food." (With all due respect to people in the "food movement," the food need not be "slow," either.)"
Leave a comment