Bittman, Mark. \"Eating Food That\'s

Bittman, Mark. "Eating Food That's Better for You, Organic or Not." Week in Review. New York Times March 21, 2009. March 27, 2009.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22bittman.html?scp=2&sq=organic&st=cse

A few weeks ago, my frugal mother walked into Whole Foods -- and walked straight out. "It's too expensive to eat healthfully these days," she complained. By 'healthy' she meant organic. And it is this misperception that food writer Mark Bittman attempts to address in his March 21, 2009 editorial to the Sunday New York Times Week in Review editorial section entitled "Eating Food That's Better for You, Organic or Not." Bittman believes that the emphasis of public relations campaigns that stress eating organic, often more costly produce and other foodstuffs is misplaced and unduly influenced by commercial agriculture and big corporations. Instead, Bittman persuasively argues that the unbiased food media should stress the importance of eating a healthy, varied diet, rather than stressing organic foods.

First and foremost, the cost of organic food is often prohibitively high, he argues, which can act as a deterrent to poor and middle-class Americans from striving to eat healthfully at all. Also organic food is not a cure-all for our environmental crisis or the obesity epidemic. After all, organic food is sold at Wal-Mart -- there can be organic potato chips, for example, but food grown locally at a farmer's market may not be USDA certified-organic because the small farmer used some commercial fertilizer in his garden that does not meet the federal government's rigid standards for what is 'organically' produced food. What, asks Bittman, do you think is better for the environment -- why shopping locally, of course! But getting organic food to be certified by the government is a costly and bureaucratic process. A local farm might be organic, but simply cannot afford the paperwork. This also mean that "organic" doesn't mean "locally produced," even though eating locally grown food is actually better for the environment, given that it does not involve the use of fossil fuels in transportation. Organic salmon can be flown in from Chile and frozen vegetables can be grown in China and sold in the United States "no matter the size of the carbon footprint left behind by getting from there to here," Bittman says (Bittman 2009).

Moreover, organic food is not necessarily pure. What does organic mean? According to the federal government's standards, it does not necessarily mean "returning natural nutrients and substance to the soil in the same proportion used by the growing process (there is no requirement that this be done); of raising animals humanely in accordance with nature (animals must be given access to the outdoors, but for how long and under what conditions is not spelled out); and of producing the most nutritious food possible (the evidence is mixed on whether organic food is more nutritious) in the most ecologically conscious way" (Bittman 2009). In the case of Wal-Mart, Kellogg, and other companies that have introduced organic versions of processed foods, organic often seems more like a marketing technique, not a seal of health.

"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," he complains (Bittman 2009). Organic food has become synynonmous with health and a high price, and so health and high prices have become interrelated in the public's mind. Rather than enhance the public's desire to purchase healthy food, not being able to afford organic produce has become kind of an excuse -- 'I can't afford to buy organic, so why bother.'