There is so much written these days about how we should be living. Rather than giving us pure facts, people continually bombard us with imperatives. Organic foods hype typifies this situation. It is important to get behind all of these imperatives to find out what is known about organic foods.

Defining Organic Food

Organic food is a literally redundant term. After all, don't all living, growing things have carbon? In the world of organic foods, "organic food" refers to food that grows without too many of man's scientific interventions. It isn't really an exact definition because various groups define it differently. The general idea is that it is food that is grown without the use of chemically engineered pesticides or herbicides being used to fight off its natural predators.

But how do you even define chemically engineered? If you combine a bunch of ingredients that you find all around you, you can call it natural, but someone else may call it chemically engineered. For example, many of the pesticides that disqualify a food for organic labeling are based on extracts from plants that naturally fight off insects. So whenever you read about organic foods, you need to recognize that it is a general principle with varying definitions.

Is Organic Food Healthier?

If you've seen organic foods at a grocery store, you already know that they cost significantly more than their rivals. Many people spend extra money for the assurance that no chemically engineered pesticides were used on their foods. But there really hasn't been any scientific data to definitively state that this is the case.

One thing that is common to most organic farms is the effort to provide a healthy growing environment. Typically they will avoid things that may be harmful to the food, while making sure to maximize the availability of nutrients. On the other hand, you may want to watch out for those that use manures, which may contain disease causing bacteria, such as E. coli.

While we know that eating a variety of pesticides can have unpredictable negative health interactions, we haven't measured these effects scientifically. We do know that direct contact with pesticides or pesticide residue before it reaches half life can cause cancer, but we don't know how their indirect application to humans via fruits and vegetables impacts health.

Of course, sometimes pesticide residues find their way into the food chain. This is why the USDA has guidelines for how much pesticide residue can be in food. The problem is that they don't really know how this residue impacts health. One important thing to note is that the USDA puts much stronger pesticide residue restrictions on foods that are sold as organic.

There have been some studies that showed organic foods from various locales had more vitamins or more minerals. On the other hand, organic foods are not typically fortified with vitamins, so the end products may not have as many vitamins as mass produce.

From a health standpoint, what we know scientifically is that the body can only use so much of a nutrient. So getting excess nutrients does no good and may do harm in some cases. So all we really know scientifically is that current science has no answer for whether organic foods are any healthier. Still, intuition tends to lean in that direction, which is why many nutritionists do recommend organic foods when the cost is not prohibitive. So really, it is up to you to decide whether organic is worth the cost.

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