Organic food is everywhere these days, you can’t walk through a produce isle in a grocery store without tripping over some organically grown veggies. Organic food has been available for a while but I never really took notice until a few years ago when my son was born. I started doing some comparisons and found that the organic prices don’t seem that different than the conventional side and it's hard to tell any difference in taste. So what is wrong with the conventional food anyways. I’ve spent the last twenty five years eating the regular stuff and don’t feel too bad. If I’d been eating organic food until now would I be healthier, thinner, taller, stronger or smarter? Should I be feeding my kids organic only or is the conventional stuff okay?

There is an overwhelming amount of information about why I should eat organic food versus conventional on the internet. Pesticides, which are a big part of conventional food growing are on top of the list of reasons to eat organic and it seems like a lot of scary stuff out there but most of the info wasn’t backed up with research or facts. Isn’t the government supposed to be protecting us in some way? Do the EPA personnel approve these chemicals and then secretly only eat organic food because they know it’s harmful to them?

Within the maze of pro-organic sites I did find some information defending pesticide use which proved interesting. According to Bjorn Lomborg, an environmentalist and former Greenpeace member, pesticides are more beneficial than harmful to humans. He argues that pesticide residuals cause a very small number of deaths in the United States per year, maybe as low as 20. However, if pesticides were banned in the United States the volume of healthy crops would sharply decline and in turn food prices would rise quickly. High food prices would limit the amount of healthy and cancer preventing fruit and vegetables consumed by the average citizen. This would drive up cancer cases dramatically, he says to numbers around 26,000 cases per year. To me I’d rather take my chances with the 20 cases versus the 26,000.

What about the government, are they protecting us and our children from these chemicals? The International Food and Safety Council states that when approving a chemical for use on consumers food the EPA will look for it’s potential risk of causing cancer, birth defects, and reproductive disorders on humans and wildlife. It may take a single chemical years before each chemical has the EPA’s stamp of approval and it will go through 140 different studies and cost the chemical manufacturer up to $70 million dollars to complete. This is comforting to me knowing that my food is being tested so thoroughly and that the manufacturers have such huge incentive to get things right the first time.

After all my digging and hunting for information my decisions haven’t become any easier. I am happy that the government is doing a good job regulating our food and I can rest a bit easier when feeding my kids food from the produce section. 

» Washington Post