The Food Police (12 page)

There is one troubling facet to the dubious “organic is healthier” claim touted by the food police. Because of the exalted status ascribed to organic, the research shows that people are readily fooled into thinking organic foods are much healthier than they actually are. Even when organic and conventional foods are labeled with the same caloric content, people believe the organics are somehow magically lower in calories. And if tasked to lose weight, apparently people believe it is more acceptable to give up exercise if they simply eat organic rather than conventional. These sorts of findings led one team of psychologists to conclude that organic is “biasing everyday judgments about diet and exercise.”
¹⁷
No wonder the following exchange was overheard in the checkout lane of a natural foods store:

“Mom, look! Organic gummy bears!”

“Yes, I see. No more sweets.”

“Mom, but they’re organic.”
¹⁸

But surely organics are safer because they don’t contain pesticides, right? The case is less obvious than it first appears. First, it is a complete misconception that the cultivation of organic food does not involve pesticides. Organic farmers are free to use “natural,” or nonsynthetic, pesticide, herbicide, and fertilizer. The trouble is that many of these “natural” pesticides are just as toxic and carcinogenic as their synthetic counterparts. For example, various “natural” yet toxic copper compounds are routinely used as fungicides, and “natural” sulfur is routinely used as a pesticide in organic agriculture. Moreover, many people fail to realize that plants naturally
make their own pesticides. These self-made pesticides protect the plant but are dangerous to us. In fact, 99.9 percent of the pesticides we consume are natural, while only 0.01 percent are synthetic. Many of these naturally grown pesticides are even deadlier than the synthetic ones we humans have devised.
¹⁹

In general (but not always), organic agriculture tends to use a lower total volume of added pesticides and herbicides than conventional agriculture, but there is really no way to tell for sure whether that organic apple you’re paying a premium for has more or fewer chemicals than the much cheaper alternative. One summary in the
Journal of Food Science
stated, “It is premature to conclude that either food system [organic or conventional] is superior to the other with respect to safety or nutritional composition. Pesticide residues, naturally occurring toxins, nitrates, and polyphenolic compounds exert their health risks or benefits on a dose-related basis, and data do not yet exist to ascertain whether the differences in the levels of such chemicals between organic foods and conventional foods are of biological significance.”
²⁰

As far as the synthetic pesticides on conventional fruits and veggies go, the government already places limits on the amount and type of residues allowed, and it uses a variety of scientific litmus tests to determine residue levels that are deemed safe. Moreover, simply washing fruits and vegetables can remove at least some of the pesticide residue. In the end, there is
some
legitimacy to the pesticide-reduction claims of organic, but the facts about the safety benefits are more equivocal than most realize.

So, you
might
be able to reduce risks from pesticides by eating organics, but how risky are these chemicals anyway?
Synthetic pesticides in food are a relatively small risk in the grand scheme of things. To put it in perspective, consider the fact that many foods we routinely eat contain large amounts of natural compounds that are far more toxic than the pesticides that farmers spray on them. It has been estimated that “three daily cups of coffee or one gram of basil a day is more than 60 times as risky as the most toxic pesticide at current levels of intake.”
²¹
All foods have naturally existing chemicals, and the research shows that the natural substances in foods such as coffee, basil, lettuce, mushrooms, orange juice, and many others are more carcinogenic than the typical amount of synthetic pesticide residue remaining from farmers’ attempts to ward off bugs.

If your choice is between eating conventional fruits and veggies sprayed with pesticides or eating none at all (perhaps because organic is too expensive), you are
much
better off eating the produce grown with synthetic pesticides. That ought to tell you something about the magnitude of the risk in question. To illustrate, some studies have estimated that using pesticides in food production causes about twenty deaths per year in the United States. Twenty deaths are a tragedy. What about twenty-six
thousand
deaths? That spectacularly larger tragedy is the projected effect of a ban on pesticides, which would drive up prices of fruits and vegetables (and thus drive down their consumption and increase cancer rates).
²²
Eating fruits and vegetables is much healthier than eating pesticides is risky.

A complete phaseout of pesticides is projected to cost U.S. consumers and agricultural producers at least $20 billion per year. If we spent $20 billion saving twenty lives by eliminating
pesticides, this means $20 billion less to spend on other things—such as tests for radon, which are projected to save about fifteen thousand lives for less than $20 billion. If the choice is to spend $20 billion saving twenty lives or spend the same amount saving fifteen thousand lives, I know how I will vote. In short, pesticide use in food is a legitimate worry, but let’s make sure our worries are properly prioritized.

There is more to food safety than synthetic pesticide use. Said one former FDA official, “Here is a misperception, I think with many people, that organic equals safer, and it’s just not. It’s dangerous, actually, because it creates a false sense of security.”
²³
The danger to which the official was referring was the presence of
E. coli
in organic spinach, which sickened about 275 people and caused 3 deaths back in 2006. In 2011, organic sprouts killed almost 40 Europeans and sickened at least 3,800 more. That same year, First Class Foods recalled 34,373 pounds of organic beef. These are just a few examples of organic food safety recalls.
²⁴

There are aspects of organic production that might make organic food more susceptible to bacterial contamination than conventionally grown food. Unable to use synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, organic growers often use animal manure, which, if not properly composted and managed, can contaminate fruits and vegetables with
E. coli
. One prominent study showed that the percentage of positive samples of
E. coli
was more than six times higher in organic than nonorganic produce (though prevalence rates for organic and nonorganic were similar). Some organic produce on farms with poor manure-management practices had a prevalence of
E. coli
nineteen times greater than that on other farms. The study’s authors
concluded, “The results of the present study do not support allegations that organic produce poses a substantially greater risk of pathogen contamination than does conventional produce. However, the observation that the prevalence of
E. coli
was significantly higher in organic produce supports the idea that organic produce is more susceptible to fecal contamination.”
²⁵
The jury is still out on the extent to which organics are generally more (or perhaps less) susceptible to bacterial contamination. However, the available evidence suggests that organic foods appear no less likely to be contaminated by
E. coli
or
Salmonella
than conventional foods.

As I see it, the noteworthy benefit of organic relates to environmental outcomes, but here, too, the purported advantages, while real, are overhyped. Organic producers often use no-till production systems (in which farmers do not plow the ground as often) and use cover crops that reduce the need for irrigation and help prevent soil runoff. No-till production is a real environmental benefit, but that’s why many nonorganic producers already use it. For example, nationwide, more than 35 percent of U.S. cropland is no-till.
²⁶
One recent survey in Oklahoma showed that only 38 percent of wheat acreage is farmed using conventional tillage practices. The remaining 62 percent is farmed using some form of minimal-till or no-till production.
²⁷
So, a key environmental benefit of organics, reduced or no tillage, is one that many nonorganic producers are already enjoying. The point: you don’t have to double your shopping bill to get the benefits of reduced land tillage.

One key problem with organics is that their yields are lower. A paper published in the prestigious journal
Science
, for example, reported 20 percent lower crop yields on organic
farms.
²⁸
A USDA study showed that organic dairies produce 30 percent less milk per cow than nonorganic dairies.
²⁹
Data from a large-scale survey by the USDA imply that yields were 35 percent lower for fruits, nuts, and berries; 30 percent lower for field crops; and 38 percent lower for vegetables on organic farms as compared with nonorganic farms.
³⁰

Many organic advocates like to dispute the yield-reducing effect of organic. However, if organics could actually increase yield and reduce input use, as organic advocates like to claim, what farmer in his right mind wouldn’t switch? Better yields, higher prices, lower input costs: organics should be a no-brainer. Yet less than 1 percent of all U.S. cropland is organic.
³¹
Either farmers are
really
stupid or the purported yield benefits are a myth. The truth is that organics yield significantly lower amounts of the food people want to eat per acre planted. Thus, to produce the same amount of food we currently enjoy, organic would require much more land. Switching to organic would likely mean bringing into production land that now sits idle. That hardly sounds like an environmental benefit to me.

The shouting match between organic proponents and detractors is a bit nauseating: show me your published study and I’ll show you mine. So, let’s put all the scientific studies aside and look at an incontrovertible fact facing us in the grocery store: organics sell at 40 percent to 100 percent to even 200 percent premiums to nonorganics. Economics teaches us that price differences are important though sometimes imperfect signals regarding resource use. The price we pay for food in the grocery store must reflect the costs that went into producing that food: from land rent to the value of the farmer’s labor to the prices of seed and fertilizer. Higher
prices for organic means that, somewhere along the line, organics used more land, more labor, more seed, more fertilizer, or more of any of the other inputs required to produce food. The prices of all these inputs were each determined by their scarcity relative to people’s desires to use them for other purposes unrelated to food production. So, when we see that organic is higher priced, it signals to us that organics are using many more of the resources society finds valuable than are nonorganics. Using up more resources is exactly the opposite of “sustainable.”

Normally the price mechanism is used to ration scarce resources and to show us how to allocate resources over time. Rising prices for increasingly scarce resources such as oil and fertilizer cause us naturally to back away from consuming those resources—thereby resulting in a “sustainable” future. The fact that we are now using a lot of oil and fertilizer in agriculture means these resources are currently in ample supply relative to demand. When the prices of oil and fertilizer rise, we’ll use less of them. The sustainability movement largely represents an elitist attempt to ration scarce resources using social pressure, guilt, and regulation.

I
f the benefits of organic are really so small and the costs so high, why all the fuss? Organics are the ultimate example of a culture that has turned eating into a status-seeking enterprise. Martha Stewart recently remarked, “Food has become more than one of life’s great pleasures. It has become a signifier of style, too … These days, it often seems that you are what you purchase in the supermarket or at the farmer’s market; your grocery list is a reflection of your values and your identity.”
³²
Not only does she hit the nail on the head; she’s driving the hammer.

In our modern world of variety and abundance, eating should be a pleasure, and not a
guilty
one. It used to be said that you are what you eat, a motto that stressed individual choice and responsibility. But now it seems that what you eat conveys who you are. What we eat, where we shop, and how we cook have become symbols for who we are as individuals. The modern consumer is forced into a search for meaning in her daily food choices. We are no longer able to define ourselves separately from what we eat. Eating is no longer a decision about how to fill our bellies; it has been made out to be a symbolic choice with moralistic overtones.

The food police have pronounced eating at McDonald’s a sin, not because there are tastier or healthier alternatives elsewhere but because eating at McDonald’s is a fashion faux pas. It would be unthinkable to question someone’s moral character because they chose not to drive a Mercedes or carry the latest Louis Vuitton bag. But when it comes to food, those who cannot display the appropriate level of status through what they eat are pitied and vilified. Martha Stewart doesn’t pull any punches when she reveals, “What’s in your pantry and on your plate have become a form of self-expression much like a fabulous pair of Christian Louboutins, or absolutely anything vintage.”
³³
Now that the progressive food elite have defined the morally acceptable food, it is said that it is unjust that the poor cannot afford to live up to the standard. A
Newsweek
article recently opined that “[a]s more of us indulge our passion for local, organic delicacies, a growing number of Americans don’t have enough nutritious food to eat.”
³⁴

Not only are the poor unable to keep up with the foodie Joneses, but the food police apparently think the poor are too dumb to realize what’s best for their pocketbooks.
New York Times
columnist Mark Bittman says “junk food” isn’t actually cheaper than what he calls “real food.”
³⁵
In a back-of-the-envelope calculation that is supposed to be taken for serious scholarship, he figures that a family of four can eat roasted chicken and vegetables at home more cheaply than dining at McDonald’s.