Organics: More Than Meets the Eye
The next time you’re at the grocery, pick up a conventionally grown apple and an organically grown apple. Smell them. While the organic apple will be more fragrant, there won’t be much difference in the way they look.
But what you can’t see can hurt you.
Pesticides – in “conventionally grown” fruits and veggies – are powerful endocrine disruptors. They affect your delicate hormonal system – which, in turn, affects everything from your weight and mood to your risk of cancer and infertility. And most Americans eat over a gallon of these health-harming chemicals each year.
Pesticides (and other endocrine disruptors) are measured in nanometers (nM). Professor Michael Mackay helps put the miniscule size of these compounds into perspective by using a Post-It note.
Hold a 3 x 3 inch Post-It note out in front of you – at arm’s length. Now imagine how small that Post-It would look if it were halfway around the world from the spot where you are standing. Pretty small, huh? That is 3 nM – the size of one molecule of a pesticide.
In times of economic uncertainty, it’s smart to jettison unnecessary expenditures. But paying a little more for healthy food is not an unnecessary expense. Choose only organic produce, wild fish, and organic pastured meats to stay healthy, strong, and mentally balanced – no matter what the economy does.
[Ed. Note: Extending your life and living out your years in tip-top health is really a matter of making simple lifestyle choices - like choosing organic, pesticide-free fruits and veggies. For more easy-to-implement expert advice on how to lose weight, stay healthy, and live a longer, fuller life, sign up for ETR's natural health e-newsletter.
One of the best ways to stay in peak condition is to eat good foods. Nutrition expert Kelley Herring has collected dozens of her healthiest and most delicious recipes in her e-book Guilt Free Desserts. Pick up your copy today. ]
The amazing thing I find about the promotion of organic foods is the avoidance of what is not said, and should be.
I always come up with the same questions in my mind?
1. Never use pesticides–what happens? Allow uncontrolled expansion of natural food predators and you enter agriculture hell. Fruit trees are destroyed, fruit is destroyed–and same with all foods we use in one way or another.
It would slowly destroy the farming economy and businesses, the occupations of those who do farming, decreases the world supply of available foods that haven’t already been destroyed in a world of hunger–unless we all agree to eat apples filled with worms and consider worms and other pests good natural protein. And maybe that’s a good thing?
2. Molecular biology as it applies to pesticides and human consumption of foods leaves me in doubt about where the truth lies. I may be uninformed as yet, but is there unquestionable scientific proof available to document pesticide effects on humans—or are the writers extrapolating the information from certain scientific studies (biased in their direction) that seem to be proof of the effects?
And then, what does the body do with the pesticides during the metabolism of the chemicals? Are the chemical by-products created in the break-down of pesticides that cause the harm–and proof of that–or just assumption?
And then, how much pesticide which is found on grocery store bins of foods does it take to cause harm to humans, or animals? Is it known, or assumed?
Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be of great benefit to consume foods that aren’t contaminated with pesticides. However, the downside of all this, of preventing pesticide use, may cause greater harm to human societies in the long run for many of the not as obvious reasons that no one wants to bring into the conversation.
Even the marketing of organic foods cleverly avoids the arcane aspects of the effects of the “No pesticides Manifesto.”