This past week, I butted heads with a good friend over the issue of organic foods. As soon as I explained why, she understood where I came from and seemed less adverse to my reasoning for opposing organics as presently constituted.
As a graduate student, I studied secondary metabolism deposition in plant tissues. We measured volatiles and terpenoids primarily in root, shoot, and berry throughout the vegetative process through to post-veraison. Results for Vitis vinifera varietals demonstrated how secondary metabolites are processed.
My problem with organics is how they come to market. We could track based on chemical properties to the exact day when fruit was ripe and ready for picking. Many organics are, like the foods they replace, picked before they are ripe for transport. Our research demonstrated that most of the chemoprotectants for which we consume plants (like tocopherols, resveratrol, etc.) remain in tissues we don't consume until the plant is absolutely certain the fruit will be set. A day or two prior to ripening, the plant starts shuttling these metabolites from leaves and stem to the fruit, and not before.
For this major reason, organic foods come to market as bereft of the nutrients for which we eat them as their inorganic counterparts, offering no added nutritional benefit, often at much higher cost. If you eat them because they come without hormones or inorganic phosphate, fine, but if you think you're getting better nutrition, consider from whence they come.
The best way to get pure unadulterated foods is to grow as many of them yourself as possible. That way you control the food you eat from seed to salad. You raise it without exogenous chemicals. You pick it at the height of ripeness. You consume food that you know meets all of your criteria. If you buy it because it says organic assuming it's better for you, it might be, but chances are it's just a more expensive fecal precursor than that which your neighbors buy and offers no more chemoprotectants to countermand assaults on your health than inorganics. Caveate empor.
As a graduate student, I studied secondary metabolism deposition in plant tissues. We measured volatiles and terpenoids primarily in root, shoot, and berry throughout the vegetative process through to post-veraison. Results for Vitis vinifera varietals demonstrated how secondary metabolites are processed.
My problem with organics is how they come to market. We could track based on chemical properties to the exact day when fruit was ripe and ready for picking. Many organics are, like the foods they replace, picked before they are ripe for transport. Our research demonstrated that most of the chemoprotectants for which we consume plants (like tocopherols, resveratrol, etc.) remain in tissues we don't consume until the plant is absolutely certain the fruit will be set. A day or two prior to ripening, the plant starts shuttling these metabolites from leaves and stem to the fruit, and not before.
For this major reason, organic foods come to market as bereft of the nutrients for which we eat them as their inorganic counterparts, offering no added nutritional benefit, often at much higher cost. If you eat them because they come without hormones or inorganic phosphate, fine, but if you think you're getting better nutrition, consider from whence they come.
The best way to get pure unadulterated foods is to grow as many of them yourself as possible. That way you control the food you eat from seed to salad. You raise it without exogenous chemicals. You pick it at the height of ripeness. You consume food that you know meets all of your criteria. If you buy it because it says organic assuming it's better for you, it might be, but chances are it's just a more expensive fecal precursor than that which your neighbors buy and offers no more chemoprotectants to countermand assaults on your health than inorganics. Caveate empor.
