Organic Shmorganic

I always get a little thrill when my mom decides to go grocery shopping at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's or New Seasons, knowing that there are so many more options and bigger selection than our local Hank's Thriftway. I'm also filled with an inch of pride knowing that we're choosing to buy "organic" food that is healthier and better for the environment. But is it really?

 

While reading Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I started to question my pride and my "do good" feelings. Pollan mentions that while organic foods are most likely healthier (or at least healthier than the genetically engineered so-called food, which will be discussed in a future post) they aren't always necessarily better for the environment. In most cases organic foods are delivered the same way industrial farm foods are, and therefore use the same amount of fossil fuels. They also may be labeled as organic, free range etc. but as Pollan explains, you can't really tell unless you're actually at the farm/packaging plant. Basically he's saying you can't always trust what the label tells you, which throws my pride right out the window. 

So local foods are better? Maybe so, but they're also more expensive, harder to come by and aren't necessarily pesticide-free. It seems to me that there's no perfect option, you have to take the good with the bad. You can buy from your chain supermarket for cheap prices but with food that's sprayed with pesticides and imported; you can buy from your local farmer's market to become more sustainable but with high prices; you can buy from Whole Food's to get "organic" food but pay sky-high prices; or you can grow some of your own food but lose the convenience factor. I want to feel good about where my food is coming from and the price I'm paying for it, but there doesn't seem to be a clear winner, so I suppose I'll continue doing a mixture of all of them until one clearly becomes more advantageous all around. 

I've always had the notion that products from Whole Foods and the like, were just plain better than anything that I could get at my local supermarket. Omnivore's Dilemma is showing me just how wrong I was. However, I don't think I'm ready give up the feeling I get from shopping at Whole Foods just yet.