YESTERDAY, I stood in a supermarket aisle with a packet of chicken breasts in each hand. In my left, organic, free range chicken. In my right, regular mass-reared chicken. The first cost twice as much as the latter and I asked myself: Is it worth it?
Apparently I am not alone in questioning whether eating organic food is worth the extra expense. Statistics out this week show that, in Britain at least, consumers are switching away from organic foods. Partly it’s the economic crunch.
As money becomes tighter, one way to save money is to switch to cheaper foods. But it is also due to confusion about whether or not organic foods really are better for your health. Is organic food a luxury for the middle classes or a necessary step toward better health?
For some, organic food is more than just food; it’s a lifestyle. It’s part and parcel of being more environmentally aware. It is a lifestyle that weighs the ethical pros and cons of everything we consume, from the provenance of the foods we eat, to the clothes we wear, the energy we use and the products we buy. It’s a pretty admirable way to be, but frankly these issues are far from my mind when I buy groceries.
I buy organic food because the idea of it is appealing. I like the purity of an apple that has not been sprayed with 30 different kinds of insecticide, or of a leg of lamb that has not been fed growth hormones and antibiotics. The fruit may not look as good, but often it tastes better. Organic meat and chicken certainly taste better. It kind of feels more natural to eat food that has been grown this way, it panders to my old-fashioned ideas of what farming should be like.
Moreover, I have long been convinced that it is better for my health. I’ve heard so many claims about the benefits of an organic diet, from claims that organic fruit contains more antioxidants and vitamins than nonorganic fruit, to claims that eating an organic diet will protect you from diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
So what is the evidence? Unfortunately the evidence is somewhat nonconclusive. Eating organic certainly does you no harm, but does it improve your health? It’s hard to say for sure. There have been some studies that point to organic foods being more nutritious, up to 25 percent more so.
There is also some basis for the claim that organic fruit contains more antioxidants, up to 40 percent more so. Organic milk has also been found to have a whopping 60 percent more antioxidants than nonorganic milk. But there is very little scientific evidence that an organic diet will protect you from diseases such as cancer.
But a lack of scientific evidence does not negate the possibility that eating organic foods will make you healthier; it simply points to a lack of data to prove it. Partly it is because it is something difficult to prove, and partly it is because the money to fund research is more likely to come from the other side of the fence. All in all, even if it is more instinctive than scientific, I still believe that it is better for you to eat an organic diet.
I do wonder, however, whether at a time when the world is facing a potential food crisis encouraging a method of agriculture that produces lower yields is such a good idea. It’s all very well for the rich to worry about levels of antioxidants in fruit, but not for the poor, being hungry. And if such methods as genetically-modified crops — the very opposite intellectually at least to organic — can not only produce bigger yields but also deliver food that has been designed to be more nutritious or to deliver specific health benefits, should we perhaps stop thinking of GM foods as Frankenstein foods that are somehow unnatural and scary and start thinking of them as an innovative modern way to produce better food?
