Organic vs. industrial food Essay

Organic foods, although stereotypically known for having a bland taste or having no taste have been shown to improve one’s quality of life be decreasing some health risk such as cancer or heart disease. If you haven’t realized it, organic fruits and vegetables taste better, and the flavor is crispier. The health consequences of genetically modified food, when examined closely, will convince you to change your eating habits. The shelf life of food depends on four main factors: formulation, processing, packaging and storage. Change any one of these conditions and you can change the shelf life for better or worse. Shelf life has many attributes: bacterial control, color stability, yeast and mold inhibition, flavor stability, textural stability and aroma stability. The appearance of shelf-life problems can be wide, as well, including oxidative browning, oxidation of flavor compounds, or liquescence. To increase the shelf life of more unstable foods, such as low-sugar jam, low-salt condiments, low-oil salad dressings, prepared fresh produce and deli meats, food companies may take steps to reduce bacterial load from ingredients before they process the final food. To grow, thrive and survive, microbes need a friendly environment; this usually includes moisture. Lowering moisture creates a hostile environment for bacteria by decreasing the available medium for them to grow in. There are a number of new ingredients to help regulate water activity in foods with a reduced fat phase. â€Å" Generally, the water activity of a minimally processed food needs to be about 0. 07 or lower, water has an a W rating of 1. 00, and most products preserved with sugar, measure about 0. 07, with the excess water bound so that bacteria are under osmotic pressure too great to survive(Katz, February 4, 2006). † Whenever you buy food, you have decision to make: Healthy or cheap, organic or industrial. If organic food was not so expensive, that decision would be easy, everybody would buy organic food, for a healthier body. Unfortunately not everybody can afford it, making it look like healthy food is becoming a luxury good. In the rush to produce more and more food for the people on this planet, chemicals came into play. Farmers begin by trying to sell the highest percentage of their crop and therefore often use pesticides, gen-manipulated corn, chemicals etc. The farmer’s investment in pesticides, hormones, and chemicals tends to pays off, earning more, their fruits look better and costumers are happy with huge pest fee fruits and vegetables. When a farmer says no to chemicals, he runs the risk of losing a harvest because of pests. The only way to compensate the cost is a higher price for organic food. You can’t ask everybody to pay higher prices, and a lot of people would starve to death without the use of chemicals which protect harvests against pests. Every time you eat something, you consume pesticides, these substances are added in order to produce and sell more efficient. Fortunately there are strict rules for the use of chemicals. Organic foods are produced following practices described in the USDA National Organic Program (NOP), a marketing program with a certification process throughout the production and manufacturing chain. The NOP describes the practices that are required for labeling a product â€Å"organic,† but it does not address nutritional benefits or food safety issues. Even when you buy organic food, you are consuming these substances, but the bar is set at a different height and you are consuming less harmful substances that could be particularly hazards for high-risk groups such as pregnant women, infants, young children and farm worker households. Since organic food is not prepared using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, it does not contain any traces of these strong chemicals and might not affect the human body. People strongly believe that organic food tastes better than non-organic food. The prominent reason for this belief is that it is produced using organic means of production. Further organic food is often sold locally resulting in availability of fresh produce in the market. So how bad is industrial food? Let’s take a look; there are maximum residue limits on all pesticides and chemicals. The department of health determines how much of each substance is ok. Eating organic food lowers the risk of getting hit by a similar scenario, but it’s not a 100% guarantee (Are Organic Foods Better for You. 2010). However, getting seriously sick from cheap food is not that high of a risk as long as you read food labels you can eat cheap and healthy at the same time? If you are eating organic food only, you are still eating unhealthy foods. Almost everyone is aware that foods grown according to organic principles are free from over exposure to harmful pesticides, but that is only one small aspect. A larger part of organic agriculture is the health of the soil and the ecosystem in which crops are raised. Organic farmers know that healthy, live soils significantly benefit crops. Synthetic chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, and/or fast acting inorganic fertilizers applied to or around crops interrupt or destroy the micro biotic activity in the soil. Organic farming reduces groundwater pollutants, decreases pesticides that can end up in your drinking glass; in some cities, pesticides in tap water have been measured at unsafe levels. The Farmer’s Market is a growers’ market, meaning everything in the market is homegrown, but Richard Bowie, an experienced organic grower is not convinced that all the food being sold is homegrown. â€Å"The market’s slogan ‘100% Homegrown makes us different’ is used as a gimmick, said Bowie† (Shreve, October 3, 2011). Vendors have been seen carrying produce and selling it to other vendors at the market bringing the term organically grown in to question and without certification, and but by law they cannot say they are a certified organically grown vendor. Most vendors cannot afford the certification process and want consumers to look past the term organic there for focus on the soil used or nutrients used. Almost everyone is aware that foods grown according to organic principles are free from over exposure to harmful pesticides, but that is only one small aspect. A larger part of organic agriculture is the health of the soil and the ecosystem in which crops are raised. Organic farmers know that healthy, live soils significantly benefit crops. Synthetic chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, and/or fast acting inorganic fertilizers applied to or around crops interrupt or destroy the micro biotic activity in the soil. Organic farming reduces groundwater pollutants, decreases pesticides that can end up in your drinking glass; in some cities, pesticides in tap water have been measured at unsafe levels. We should choose farming methods that truly address our real concerns safety and sustainability, not simply methods that satisfy an arbitrary marketing label. To whatever extent these practices include methods that are permitted under organic rules. But there’s never a case when a safe, more efficient, and sustainable modern technology that feeds more people worldwide should be disallowed for no logical reason. Eating â€Å"organic† alone doesn’t guarantee 100 percent healthy . The truth is that most Americans eat so badly that we get most of our calories from soft drinks, more than we do from vegetables; the top food group by caloric intake is â€Å"sweets†; and one-third of nation’s adults are now obese. It’s not unimportant, but it’s not the primary issue in the way Americans eat. To eat well, says means avoiding â€Å"edible food-like substances† and sticking to real ingredients, increasingly from the plant kingdom. There’s plenty of evidence that both a person’s health as well as the environment’s will improve with a simple shift in eating habits away from animal products and highly processed foods to plant products and what might be called â€Å"real food. † From these changes, Americans would reduce the amount of land, water and chemicals used to produce the food we eat, as well as the incidence of lifestyle diseases linked to unhealthy diets and greenhouse gases from industrial meat production. And the food would not necessarily have to be organic, all it takes is paying attention to what you eat and read your labels more closely. Participation on our part to be more aware of what we buy and to raise our voices, if need be. We can let our opinions be known even in the simplest ways. A good example is when we shop, if there is no substitute for the product we need, let the store owners know, they will surely change their products. Organic food is better as it uses natural farming techniques. It is similar to preferring natural remedies when suffering from a disease as compared to eating chemical antibiotics. So, the question of organic foods vs non organic foods; which is better, is clearly answered. Organic food surpasses the conventionally produced foods. References Katz, F. (Febuary 4, 2006). Formulating for increased shelf life. Retrieved November 22, 2011, from http://www. foodprocessing. com/articles/2006/039. html Are Organic Foods Better For You?. Retrieved November 19, 2011, from http://preventdisease. com/home/tips61. shtml Shreve, S. (October 3, 2011). Does organically grown produce really matter?. Retrieved November 21, 2011, from.