While conventional food practices highlight our desire to manipulate fresh produce and spur growth in livestock, organic food practices presume Mother Nature can get it right.
The most common foods we can buy today, the conventional fare, is whatever the local supermarket has to offer. Modern conventional food practices, which well predates American history and can be traced back to the abundant soils and full harvests of Mesopotamia , has always maintained its key objective - to produce food surpluses. Since the early 1900s huge corporate food brands and franchises were founded with the goal of maximizing food efficiency while lowering the costs of production. From Nabisco to Nestle, from Monsanto to McDonald's and from Campbell's to Frito-Lay, conventional food companies are fueled by machinery, oil and transportation, producing product that often tastes as good as it sounds.
Organic food, a label that was first introduced in 1939 by Lord Northbourne as "organic farming", is essentially a return to the food processing practices made popular by colonial American farmers: non-chemical, minimally processed, natural foods.
In addition to conventional and organic processes, there is a "Demeter" classification in Germany, which is a stringent process that requires rigorous treatment of the soil, as well as "farmers market" systems which bring food to local neighborhoods on a daily basis or, in many cases, on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
But the real question is what necessitated all of these terms? Whatever happened to the plain wholesome foods from colonial times, arriving on the plate without the labels and the fanfare, naked and direct from Mother Nature?
Making the conventional grade and passing the Food and Drug Administration standard created a new dawn for big businesses and corporate food suppliers who would soon use the system to pass off all kinds of edibles for mass consumption. New food products simply needed an FDA seal of approval in order to find their way into a neighborhood grocery store. Today, it's worth noting how influential the FDA has become and how much its policies impact American lives. The administration states that the products it oversees "account for about 25 cents of every consumer dollar spent".
But common sense has told us that the proliferation of disease, namely heart disease, diabetes and obesity, to name a few, continues to plague us. Conventional food standards have made a lot possible. They opened the door to convenience foods, fast foods and synthetic foods. And in so doing, they've compromised our health. Such standards have set the bar too low. They've made artificial ingredients too plentiful and they've made actual, natural food sources too contaminated.
Common sense has also told us that if we are to be good stewards of the bodies we're given, we need to establish our own filters for food and figure out our own ways of separating the real wheat from the worthless chaff.
The colonists who flocked to the New World created independent agricultural settlements that flourished without Starbucks, supermarkets or shopping carts. Living their simplified lifestyles, they had a different appreciation for the soil, the wind and the rain. Breakfasts, dinners and suppers were prepared without the conveniences of microwaves and styrofoam. Staple foods such as wheat, barley, oats and corn were harvested locally and nourished entire households. These independent farming families experienced the kind of autonomy with their food supply that relatively few Americans enjoy today.
That all changed by the late 1760s. The population explosion reshaped society as the colonies had to accommodate rapid growth. Their numbers went from roughly 466,000 colonists in 1720 to roughly 2.7 million by 1780. Farming was radically changed as the farming families disintegrated and new forms of distribution arose, giving way to mass production of American food supplies.
Today, we are roughly 308 million strong. Greater population density has changed our everyday habits and routines, and has largely given way to a food supply that is more expedient and less wholesome. Whole foods, which the colonists consumed on a daily basis, have gradually gotten replaced by fast foods. Approximately 30% of all children aged 4 to 19 eat fast food every day of the week, introducing young bodies to 9 more grams of fat, 190 added calories and 26 extra grams of sugar (Bowman, Gortmaker, Ebbeling, Pereira, & Ludwig). Likewise, the average American diet consists of conventional red meat, coffee, soda, frozen dinners, microwaveable vegetables, potato chips, French fries and lasagne, all of which has taken up space once reserved for wholesome foods.
Conventional food, our primary source, is a mixture of natural food, the pesticides that are used to kill bugs, the hormones that are used to fatten livestock, the genetically modified organisms that are used to make fruits and vegetables more resilient, and the chain of chemicals that are used to preserve or otherwise enhance our foods. In other words, conventional foods are the products of biotech. While some biotech measures can be considered safeguards, others are strictly for profit.
Yet they are conventional methods nonetheless because we've gotten used to them. We dump the pitfalls and problems onto our health care. Indeed, the health care system, for better or worse, is where today's biotech food experiment gets cleaned up whenever it goes awry.
A continental breakfast with a deli sandwich lunch and a ribs dinner will pack in several servings of chemicals and additives. Growth bovine hormones are ever present in milk, preservatives are in breads and deli meats, monosodium glutamate puts the tang into sauces and partially hydrogenated oils put the yum into baking ingredients. Supermarket beef is riddled with ingredients that our bodies often do not appreciate. It's not about being a vegetarian. It's about taking into consideration how the livestock has been raised and fed. Conventional practices allow livestock to eat feed that contains antibiotics and other contaminants. The cows ingest it; we eat it.
The organic food process is a way to restore food to its roots, the Mother Nature provides it -- corn without advancements or enhancements, apples without wax, eggs without antibiotics. Organic foods raise the bar, producing edibles that are more in line with our bodies, but often less in line with our pocketbooks. While an organic food item is devoid of hormones, preservatives, pesticides and other chemicals which, many will argue, makes the food taste better, it costs more. Our challenge is to weigh the short-term savings against the long-range benefits.
Imagine if we were to subject our bodies to the modern rigors of conventionally processed foods. If we were show up at the dinner table, we'd all be wrinkle-free, unblemished, resistant, overly large, devitalized and tasteless clones of one another. There's a lot to be said for imperfection and keeping it simple. When there are long lists of ingredients with unutterable words on the package, it's time to make a modern-day attempt to turn back the clock, revisit the farm and get a taste of the soil. It's a good time to go organic and to remember that a real apple a day keeps the doctor away.
