Organic, locally grown pesticide-free food is best

By Graham Terry

October 22, 2007 | The saying "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" is a lot easier to abide by when you like apples. For years, I didn't. Or so I thought. Every time I bought an apple, it would end up being mushy, in the case of "Delicious" apples, or too sour, with "Granny Smith," or too soft, or too bruised.

An apple from the tree in my neighbor's backyard is about one-third the size of the apples they sell at Smith's. It's also about two-thirds more flavorful. The flesh is unfailingly crisp. I am convinced that these apples would defeat the supermarket apples 100 to one in a blind taste test. The only penalty for growing them without using carcinogenic pesticides? A handful of apples in each 5-gallon bucketful have worms. Big deal.

Patrice Surley, owner of Sweet Peas Market in downtown Logan, said, "Over the past 60 years agriculture has made this move toward uniformity and having a long shelf life. Apples are an annual crop, so they pick them all and store them all in cold storage where they fix the atmosphere so they're not oxygenated and kind of frozen in time."

So the result is a massive, swollen apple that tastes like garbage by the time it gets to the consumer. Given the choice, why would anyone choose an inferior product? I believe the reason is rooted in politics.

Let's play word association. What do you think of when you hear "organic food?" Hippies, commune, dirt, hemp, bicycle, beard, tie-dye, body odor, etc, etc. Everything in America eventually gets co-opted by political interests, and it can be difficult to separate real interests like sustainable consumption of foodstuffs from the perception that the gay rights people, abortion doctors and organic farmers are all in bed together.

Surley said it is a misconception that only hippies and other smelly ragamuffins prefer organic food. "I get a lot of really conservative people that shop in here," she said. "It's not an appropriate assumption that people who are into organic stuff are liberal because I think a lot of conservatives and right-wing people are concerned with the purity of their environment."

If you think about it, what is conservative or Republican about blindly accepting that whatever the FDA says is safe is in fact safe to consume? In a more traditional, Barry Goldwater-esque sense, the Republicans are supposed to be the ones who don't trust the government. Yet many Utahns, who wear their badge of conservatism with pride, are sucking from the agribusiness teat without question.

Skip Astrove, who sells his produce at the Farmer's Market every Saturday in Merlin Olsen Park, acknowledged that many people will always be suspicious of organic food, but, "I can't fault them to tell the truth, it's a personal choice and everyone should be a personal advocate for their own health care."

The recurrent theme as I spoke with Astrove and Surley was they aren't pushing their food preferences on anyone. "I think that there's a couple levels of suspicion," Surley said. "If you've never done any kind of research or been educated about organic food and you're just scared of it from the get-go, people have to learn things on their on time and of their own accord. I'm not a very good saleswoman. But I feel that a good consumer is always going to question their sources. You always want to know where your food is coming from."

For consumers concerned with what they're eating, it goes beyond simply buying food with 'organic' labels. There are myriad advantages to buying food from local sources. It cuts down on carbon emissions. It supports the local economy. It helps prevent the rapid transmission of food-borne illness. Plus there is the simple, unavoidable fact that fresh food tastes better.

Surley said she is committed to stocking her store with local products as much as possible. "We had a company that I buy a lot of frozen foods from, and they just recently purchased a 5,000 acre farm in China. They're importing a lot of their frozen peas, sugarsnaps, corn, things that we grow here. I have chosen not to do business with them anymore even though their track record is immaculate. I just don't think that is what consumers want. There's nothing healthy about shipping something 6,000 miles away. And for them to be able to sell those products cheaper than products that are made here in the United States, there's something wrong there. They're either not paying their laborers, or they're cutting costs somewhere."

Neither Astrove or Surley proffered me a marijuana cigarette while I interviewed them, nor did they exhibit any of the other telltale signs of being a hippie, such as asking to borrow something or odors emanating from their persons. But for those who are still unconvinced that the organic food movement has caught on with anyone but wide-eyed flower children, here is what Sharon Palmer wrote for volume eight, number 10 of Todaysdietician.com: "Dismissing environmental and health concerns related to food production as marginal is no longer a play dietitians can afford to make. Growing evidence is linking our current food system with chronic disease," Palmer wrote. "Industry vets are getting in on the game, including Wolfgang Puck, who recently pledged to support humanely raised livestock, and Tyson Foods, Inc, which announced that all of its fresh chicken will be raised without antibiotics."

So when I purchase a choice cut of beef tenderloin from Lau Family Farms, or when I enjoy a bowl of cereal with milk from Rose Hill Dairy, what am I avoiding? According to Palmer, "Estimates indicate that approximately two thirds of American cattle raised for slaughter are injected with hormones to make them grow faster. Dairy cows are given a genetically engineered hormone called recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to increase milk production. Scientists fear that these hormone residues can disrupt human hormone balance, cause developmental problems, interfere with the reproductive system, and even lead to the development of breast, prostate, or colon cancer. In addition, 70 percent of all U.S. antibiotics are given to beef, cattle, poultry, and swine as feed additives. Such overuse of antibiotics has led to scientific consensus that antibiotic use in food animals contributes to resistance in humans."

So it's not just a matter of enjoying the taste of food more, or supporting local merchants because of some capitalist ethos. Keep on eating the hormone-fattened meat from Smith's, and you could very well be tacitly contributing to the total annihilation of the human race by pandemic disease.

For another opinion, see Save your money, don't buy organic.

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