Why eat organic foods you may ask yourself, it’s a lot more expensive than the supermarket variety, you have never noticed any difference in the taste, and it often looks as though it has been munched on my insects.
Hopefully I will be able to present you with a strong argument for the benefits of eating organically produced food.While your preference may be for the pristine presentations of supermarket produce, you perhaps should ask yourself how the farmer managed to grow such perfect produce.
Grow any vegetable under normal conditions, and you soon discover that you have provided a meal for a variety of insects with voracious appetites, which cling tenaciously to those lovely green leaves as they munch their way down to the bare stalks.
Growing food for a competitive market requires the farmer to implement numerous strategies for dealing with insects, fungi, and whatever else which may be likely to attack the
crops.
From the first treatment of seeds with anti-fungicide, hopefully not genetically modified,they will be planted in soil which has been laced more often than not with superphosphate fertilizer,which may help the crops to flourish, however, the produce from that soil will be contaminated with cadmium.The amount of cadmium contamination being dependent on from where the phosphate rock was sourced, some areas have more cadmium contamination than others. Also not all vegetables will be equally affected, some have a much higher uptake of cadmium than others.
If you are by now beginning to wonder about the benefits of eating organic produce, then read on, for the foregoing was but the tip of the iceberg. Before leaving the subject of
cadmium, it’s important to mention that in some highly contaminated soils, broccoli and canola are grown in a process called phytoremediation to decontaminate the soil.
I am not suggesting that this produce is sold to consumers, but it’s mentioned here just to add emphasis to the fact that scientists are aware of how efficient plants are at taking cadmium into their root systems, and yet farmers continue to use phosphate fertilizers which are a source of cadmium.
During their lifetime in the soil, plants are heavily sprayed with a number of insecticides, pesticides and fungicides.Most of these pesticides are hormone disrupters, neurotoxins, some may be carcinogenic, while others may cause genetic mutations.
So far the argument for eating organic produce grows ever stronger, and Iam not done yet, for supermarket fruit and vegetables are subjected to further post harvest spraying and dipping with more toxic chemicals, worse still the produce in many cases is subjected to irradiation, gamma-rays from cobalt 60 are passed through the produce, one is only left to wonder at the possible damage done to both produce and consumers by this process.
Unfortunately many people are under the impression that if they have a glass of carrot juice daily, they will be certain of increased health. But if those carrots have been grown on cadmium contaminated soil you may be decreasing your health not increasing it, for you consume a lot of carrots when you drink it in juice form.
Organic fruit and vegetables is grown free of pesticides, insecticides and fungicides, sure it may not taste any better than the supermarket variety, but most importantly it does not contain pesticide residues. One reads about the acceptable levels of pesticides and heavy metals which are allowed in fruits and vegetables for the consumer, it reads like the recommended daily dosage for vitamins. Keeping this in mind, what might be the long term consequences of consuming produce on a daily basis with any level of pesticide residue? Hopefully you will be convinced of the benefits of eating organic produce.
