¶ … Organic Food
Today's world is becoming increasingly more complex and fast-paced, which has caused many people to adopt a catch-as-catch-can attitude towards their food. We have become accustomed to receiving things instantly, hence the popularity of fast food restaurants, and we have also become accustomed to receiving larger portions of food. Food today is more processed, refined, pre-packaged, and instantly available than it ever has been at any time in our history to date.
However, such convenience and processing comes with a price. Fast foods, prepackaged foods, and other "convenience" foods are loaded with fat and sodium, not to mention all the chemicals, preservatives, and additives they contain. One source (McGraw, p.133) estimates that eating out at fast food restaurants five times a week compared to having a healthy meal prepared at home adds an additional 280 calories a week and 14,560 calories a year to a person's diet. This translates to a weight gain of four pounds in a year! While this might not seem like much at first glance, this weight gain can quickly add up. Children, especially, are fatter now than ever before, and they learn their eating and health habits from their parents. While it is a generalization, it is quite likely that people who eat out at fast food restaurants five times a week are probably also people who have other poor health habits, such as lack of exercise, smoking, and drinking.
Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other problems often related to overweight and poor nutrition are reaching epidemic proportions in the United States, and as a result, some people are turning to organic foods as a means of combating this. Research on "fruits and [vegetables] grown organically show significantly higher levels of cancer-fighting antioxidants than conventionally grown foods, according to a new study of corn, strawberries, and marionberries" (Byrum). In addition, biochemist John Paterson found that "organic vegetable soups contain almost six times as much salicylic acid as non-organic vegetable soups. The acid helps combat the hardening of the arteries and bowel cancer" (Soil Association).
An analysis of several hundred studies shows that "organically grown fruits, vegetables and grains may offer more of some nutrients, including vitamin C, iron, magnesium and phosphorus, and less exposure to nitrates and pesticide residues than their counterparts grown using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers" (Organic Connection).
However, organic foods are not just about weight loss and fighting disease. There are several reasons why people choose organic foods other than for health-management reasons. Some people prefer to know the origins of their food, in other words, the path the food took, whether it be animal or vegetable, to get ultimately to the dinner table. Others either don't want to consume pesticides and chemicals along with their food or have an extreme sensitivity to such things. For example, studies show that "our daily diet is now reported to contain residues of some 30 different artificial chemicals, and a supermarket apple may have been treated up to 40 times with any of 100 chemicals" (Maxted-Frost).
Still others turn to organic foods because they want to help the environment and try to leave the earth a better place than when they found it. For example, the company Nutiva had a rather extensive list of the benefits the planet -- and we by association -- receive from organic gardening. It includes such things as a reduction in toxic farming runoff, which keeps our water sources clean; a buildup of topsoil, which combats the "worst topsoil erosion in history due to our current agricultural practice of chemical intensive, mono-crop farming"; and the preservation of biodiversity (a variety of species), which is the result of "organic farmers and gardeners collecting and preserving seeds and growing unusual varieties for decades."
Taste is yet another reason -- most people agree that organic food simply tastes better. There is overlap among the reasons people choose organic foods, of course, but everyone who chooses organic does so because they believe that the benefits from organic foods far outweigh any...
Organic Produce & Farming For most of history, farming was organic simply because of the available materials used in agriculture. Only during the middle to late 20th and early 21st centuries, with the advent of synthetic chemicals, was a new process for fertilizing and preserving foods available. This more recent style of production is referred to as "conventional," though organic production has been the convention for a much greater period of
Data Analysis 1. The taster determined 11 of the 14 samples correctly. Three samples were incorrectly identified. Thus, the taster received a statistical score of 88%. 2. The results failed to support the null hypothesis. There was obviously a difference between the organic and conventional food items. 3. This output indicates that while there is a difference, the margin of 10% is too small. 4. The test indicated that for greater than 50% of
The ambition is to promote organic chocolate and its implied benefits outside of historically niche markets. One year marketing objectives include a penetration of U.S. sales markets, where it is predicted that by 2011, the organic chocolate market will have experienced a 71% increase in sales over five years. It is the ambition of Everday to have accounted for every 20th bar of chocolate bought in the United States by
Organic Foods The idea behind organic food is a good one, in that it implies there is food that is free from pesticides and other chemicals that would be found on more "standard" food. Going organic can also imply the way a type of food was raised, and how it was cared for during the process. People who buy organic produce want items that are free of residue, and people who
217+). It is not only the consumer, then, who might be affected by cost; producers also might be reluctant to grown or process organic foods unless they believed that consumers would continue to be willing to pay the price of the organic foods. Their study focuses "on the benefits associated with segregation and labelling strategies that are commonly gauged by the size of premiums consumers are willing to pay
Some of these nutrients are extremely valuable to humans, such as the salicylic acid that can be found in tomatoes and is the same chemical found in aspirin (Worthington 990-991). Considering the benefits identified with aspirin use, who wouldn't rather get the same effects from a natural and pleasant tasting source instead of a bitter pill? Not only can organic produce provide valuable nutrients better than traditional produce, but the
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now