Welcome!

Welcome to the organic gardening tab of the Living Well blog! Thanks for coming; hopefully this can be a resource for you to enjoy/improve at gardening. I’d also like this page to be a sort of catch-all for other healthy living concerns that aren’t addressed under Denise’s or Jenna’s focus. So if you have something you’d like to read about, let me know and one of us will post something on here about the topic.

For my first entry, I thought I’d discuss some basic answers to the question, ‘Why organic?’ Of course, when talking about organic foods, we’re talking about foods that haven’t been treated with chemicals such as some pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers, aren’t genetically modified, have no additives, such as preservatives or food dyes and haven’t gone through unnatural processes such as irradiation. So why buy or grow food with all these stipulations?

Organic is healthier. Now, this seems like a no-brainer to most people, but organic food is actually even healthier than most people think. Most people view the health benefits of organic food in terms of their negative benefits: organic food has NO preservatives, NO food dyes, NO chemicals, etc. And I’m all for keeping that stuff out of your body and your environment. But what about the positive benefits?

Organic food actually contains more nutrients than food that’s been sprayed with pesticides. According to Jeffery Smith, author and researcher on pesticides, glyphosate, a compound commonly found in pesticides (esp. Roundup), was originally patented for its performance in a process called ‘chelation.’ Chelation is a process where compounds attach themselves to atoms, effectively changing the make-up of the original atom. In the case of glyphosate, it chelates to nutrients such as iron, zinc, magnesium, calcium and others, thus making them unusable to the plant. So plants that have been sprayed with pesticides have less usable nutrients than organic ones.

In addition to not receiving as many nutrients from the food we eat, I would imagine that glyphosate performs a similar function in human (and animal) bodies, robbing us of the use of our nutrients. Okay, so maybe we lose some nutrients. What’s it really going to do? Well, we might not see any detriment at first, but continued loss of these nutrients can have serious long-term effects, including (but certainly not limited to) growth retardation, improper hormone levels, bone loss, Alzheimer’s and cancer. But it’s a good thing we don’t have to deal with these problems in America. Ahem. (For more information on the adverse health effects of glyphosate, check out these articles.)

Of course, not only is organic healthier for plants and us, it is healthier for the environment. Avoiding and supporting the avoidance of environmentally harmful chemicals and processes should be a no-brainer for anyone with an interest in our planet’s well-being.

Read Jeffery Smith’s article on the dangers of pesticides.

Organic is cheaper. “Woah, woah, woah,” some of you are saying. “Organic isn’t cheaper. I’ve been to those hippie organic stores before!” Okay, it’s true that because of the unfortunate way the government subsidizes the food industry, it is initially cheaper to buy non-organic foods. And I’m well aware that in most households (as in my own) some compromises will need to be made. But I’ve become convinced that eating organic food will actually save you money. If eating healthier, organic foods can help you avoid serious diseases like diabetes, bone loss, Alzheimer’s, cancer and others, paying a little more now can save you heaps of money in the long run. And I think you’ll find that you’ll start to notice results sooner than retirement age. Healthier foods now will result in a healthier body now and the results will only increase with age.

Organic food is also cheaper on a systemic level. In his book, The Ecology of Commerce, Paul Hawken talks a lot about how natural living can enact a more efficient economy since it includes a view towards sustainability. His basic premise is that our economy is like any ecological system: unsustainable things that are introduced into the system eventually cause disruption. In terms of organic food, the ‘unsustainable’ thing is pesticides, which are a foreign substance introduced into the natural food cycle. The cycle is unable to break down the pesticides into usable materials as it would do with other ‘refuse’ (compost), which causes inefficiency in the system. Currently, this can be seen in the massive loss of topsoil in America and in the pollution of oceans around
deltas due to toxic spill-off. Ultimately, a responsible ‘ecological economy’ keeps these disrupters out of the system.

Organic tastes better. Obviously, this is a matter of preference. But I think it’s safe to say that most people will prefer the taste of organic over non. Few would argue that store bought food tastes better than food you grow yourself. A big part of the reason fresh grown food tastes better is there’s less distance (both time and space) from the ground to your table. At its best, one of the big strengths of organic food is the simplification of this ‘consumption distance.’ Not all organic sources are like this, however, but many excel at simplifying the process it takes to get food to your table. And it makes it that much more scrumptious.

We’ve only touched on the reasons to go organic. There are many other ethical, personal, ecological, moral and health-related reasons that make organic a better choice for you and for all of creation.