Organic

[FitnessBrat]

Does anyone here do all or partial organic?

I'm not being bandwagon or all gung-ho weirdo, but I am going to start buying specific things organic. A major one is milk. My son pretty much only drinks milk or water, and it's something I've questioned for years.


Scrum? Do you have thoughts/insight into specific fruits/veggies, etc?

[Bouncer]

It's certainly not a bad thing, just an expensive thing.

[FitnessBrat]

Yeah, very expensive. But with just the three of us it shouldn't be THAT bad, I don't think.

[Juiced1]

You should be able to taste and feel a huge difference on Organic. When I lived in Ukraine, everything there was organic straight from the farm. Now in the US, I can't eat the shit they have at grocery stores, even some of the organic stuff. You can tell a big difference once you know.

[Scrumhalf]

There is no evidence that organic has any health benefits. Organic farmers also use fertilizers and pesticides too, just organic ones, which of course does not mean that they are any less harmful to you if ingested.

So, I usually don't bother with organic. I just make sure I wash everything very well before cooking or eating them.

I don't have enough knowledge on the subject to determine whether organic has some other 2nd order effect on the environment, like for example, organic fertilizer manufacturing has less environmental impact than inorganic or whatever. But what I have found is that calculating the total environmental impact is often very difficult and non-intuitive. Often local farming may actually be more impacting than shipping stuff from elsewhere, for example, in terms of total impact. So, I don't lose too much sleep over it.

[blm]

There is a good article on WCBB about all the chemicals, hormones and drugs (including prozac) found in chicken. I'll copy it when I get by a computer and repost it.

[blm]

What's in your chicken?

Is pink slime just the tip of the corrupted food iceberg? In an April 4, 2012 article in the New York Times, journalist Nicholas Kristof spotlights two recent studies that have found many unappetizing (to say the least) chemicals lurking in poultry.
Related: Some processors label beef containing pink slime
"We were kind of floored," Keeve E. Nachman, a co-author of both studies and a scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future told the Times. "It's unbelievable what we found."
Nachman's team examined ground chicken feathers from six states and China (feathers, like human hair and nails, contain traces of the chemicals an animal has been exposed to). One of the most troubling substances they identified was a broad-spectrum class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones that the FDA banned for poultry production in 2005. Antibiotics are given to industrially raised meat and poultry to make them grow more quickly. This particular class of drugs breeds so-called "superbugs" which cause antibiotic resistant infections in humans.
Arsenic, a known carcinogen, was found in every feather sample. "It has no place in the human food system," Sonya Lunder, Senior Research Analyst at the Environmental Working Group, told Yahoo! Shine. Arsenic is fed to chickens and hogs to improve the color of their flesh.
The majority of samples also contained acetaminophin, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and one-third of the samples contained the antihistamine used in Benadryl. The samples from China also showed traces of Prozac. Kristoff explains that all these substances are administered to chickens to reduce stress because that can slow their growth. The feathers also contained caffeine, presumably to counteract the effects of the other substances.
Kristoff points out that the research doesn't actually reveal how much of these chemicals the average consumer is actually eating and says more work needs to be done. In the meantime, if you are concerned about the possible ill health effects of adulterated poultry, you should buy organic. Lunder explains, "Organic chickens cannot be given antibiotics and hormones and therefore are a better option for those who can afford it." Nachman agrees: "I've been studying food-animal production for some time, and the more I study, the more I'm drawn to organic," he told the Times. "We [he and his family] buy organic."
Lunder thinks the meat industry is doing things backward by administering pharmaceuticals and other chemicals to animals that should be raised in better conditions in the first place. "There are countless recent examples of the problems caused by unsanitary facilities and the drive to make animals grow as fast as possible," she told Yahoo! Shine. "Animals are treated with high levels of antibiotics to promote growth and combat unsanitary conditions. We soak meat in ammonia, i.e. make pink slime, instead of requiring cleaner food processing centers."

[Bouncer]

Scrum there is a distinct taste difference between organic and none organic from eggs, to meat, to vegetables. Seems to me that something that taste more "pure" is better.

[Scrumhalf]

I can't say I have done a careful comparison, but to me, the taste and freshness has more to do with the locally grown food vs. the stuff that is frozen and shipped across the country, especially for things like tomatoes. Also, my experience is of course only on veggies - not sure about organic vs. inorganic for meat.

[Juiced1]

There is no evidence that organic has any health benefits. Organic farmers also use fertilizers and pesticides too, just organic ones, which of course does not mean that they are any less harmful to you if ingested.

So, I usually don't bother with organic. I just make sure I wash everything very well before cooking or eating them.

True Organic farmers don't use pesticides. Also, you can taste and smell a difference between the two.

[FitnessBrat]

Aside from pesticides, I'm concerned with the antibiotics and the hormones in the milk/meat.

[hilton]

Somewhat, but like apples have a lot of vitamins in the peel, so depending on whether or not it was juiced with the peel, it might or might not be the same.

[funniirishman]

Interesting topic, its been a pretty significant debate in my advanced nutrition and diet class. Organic has significant benefits in relation to hormones and antibiotics. My five year old eats a whole food organic diet primarily, a decision I made when she was born and primarily because she is female. In beef there are currently about six types of hormones approved by the FDA: estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, zeranol, trenbolone acetate, and melengestrol acetate...so as you can see having a little girl this stuff scares the shit out of me. And thats just beef. Plus 12 year olds walking around with D cups and starting their periods at 9 is also a consideration. There is a ton of information on the internet and it bears educating yourself,at least to see what is actually out there, but to each their own.

The bigger concern is the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria that are developing (most beef is tested for antibiotics residue..poultry and pork are not)... which are requiring second and third line antibiotics on initial treatment rather then the initial ones that were used to great effect early on. You can't overlook the insertion of these antibiotics into our food supply, and the trend to use them at the first provocation of illness as a direct line causation of these bacteria developing strong resistant to our current antibiotics. As a medic overseas, I handed out Cipro and Z-pacs like they were tic-tacs simply because no one could afford to be down for any amount of time. Makes me wonder...

So long story short, if you are going to buy one thing organic make it your animal products, at least from the research that I have done it makes a ton of sense.

[Bouncer]

Interesting topic, its been a pretty significant debate in my advanced nutrition and diet class. Organic has significant benefits in relation to hormones and antibiotics. My five year old eats a whole food organic diet primarily, a decision I made when she was born and primarily because she is female. In beef there are currently about six types of hormones approved by the FDA: estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, zeranol, trenbolone acetate, and melengestrol acetate...so as you can see having a little girl this stuff scares the shit out of me. And thats just beef. Plus 12 year olds walking around with D cups and starting their periods at 9 is also a consideration. There is a ton of information on the internet and it bears educating yourself,at least to see what is actually out there, but to each their own.

The bigger concern is the antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria that are developing (most beef is tested for antibiotics residue..poultry and pork are not)... which are requiring second and third line antibiotics on initial treatment rather then the initial ones that were used to great effect early on. You can't overlook the insertion of these antibiotics into our food supply, and the trend to use them at the first provocation of illness as a direct line causation of these bacteria developing strong resistant to our current antibiotics. As a medic overseas, I handed out Cipro and Z-pacs like they were tic-tacs simply because no one could afford to be down for any amount of time. Makes me wonder...

So long story short, if you are going to buy one thing organic make it your animal products, at least from the research that I have done it makes a ton of sense.

Good info, thanks bro

[FitnessBrat]

I agree! I buy chicken with no hormones or antibiotics, and eggs that are from vegetarian hens. I honestly can not even recall the last time I bought red meat. I just don't really do it. Thanks for sharing :)