To Habana, With Love

BusinessWeek recently posted an article on organic foods in this country, and the blurring of the line between organic and conventional foods (the original article can be found here). Companies like Stonyfield Farms, who use methods of processing that push the boundaries of the organic food label, are confusing the issue and making it hard for food-health-conscious consumers to hold true to their food choices.

As food companies scramble to find enough organically grown ingredients, they are inevitably forsaking the pastoral ethos that has defined the organic lifestyle. For some companies, it means keeping thousands of organic cows on industrial-scale feedlots. For others, the scarcity of organic ingredients means looking as far afield as China, Sierra Leone, and Brazil -- places where standards may be hard to enforce, workers' wages and living conditions are a worry, and, say critics, increased farmland sometimes comes at a cost to the environment.

Comments were left by a few people, but one in particular stood out to me. A poster by the name of "Habana" claimed our food was the "healthiest and safest in the world", and that organic food serves marginal if any benefit. I responded, as below, and am posting here more for my own entertainment:

Habana: I don't know whether the majority of your post is more foolish, or ignorant, but it's certainly both. Anyone who has spent any time learning about the differences between conventional and organic food is wise enough to know that the standard definition of "food" in this country is ridiculous.

We do not have the safest and healthiest food in the world here in North America; in fact, I would argue that we have some of the lowest-quality food in the entire world, and probably as much so in the history of human existence. The "food" that you find here is typically no more than flavor-enhancer-ridden (so we don’t vomit when we eat it), fully-substituted (cheaper than the original), nutritionally deficient combinations of chemicals and processed ingredients designed to _maybe_ "keep us alive" for a little while but certainly in no way nourish us. If you really think that injecting our animals with hormones and steroids and then filling their stomachs with antibiotics so they won’t die from the shock of it, or dousing our crops with pesticides is healthy, then you are truly a fool. Don’t try to come off as some sort of knowledgebase on food in this country; you’ve already made clear your understanding of the subject.

Oh, and by the way, I don’t disagree with everything you’ve said; I just find your words typical: “Eat less junk and exercise more. Organic food, what’s that?” It frustrates and saddens me that people are so deceived about food, what it should be and what it actually is. Then companies like Stonyfield blur the line between conventional and organic and cause confusion. My wife actually once witnessed a person say that “the organic label doesn’t mean anything; they just say it to make people feel better about buying [the product]”. No wonder people are literally falling apart in this country.

Anyway, that's it. I just had to get this down.