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“Natural” is another one. People look at food packaging as if it’s the result of a scientific study, but it’s all just marketing.
Natural is not regulated by US law on labels. Organic is though and has government requirements.
Organic is a marketing tool and make zero sense environmentally, nutritionally, or biologically.
The rules try to standardize the meaning for the trade of goods. It’s the same as USDA grading of fruits and vegetables.
Please read and see it is a actual regulated US government standard and to have it on your product you must follow certain by law guide lines.
https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/organic-basics https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/organic-food/art-20043880
You seem to be confused about what a USDA standard is.
A USDA standard is a MARKETING standard to facilitate interstate trade and increase crop prices. The USDA-AMS stands for USDA - Agricultural MARKETING Service.
Standards were originally created to standardized grading of foods grain, fruit, etc. to facilitate trade. The Organic Certification program is implemented and enforced by the Agricultural MARKETING Service.
The standards are for MARKETING purposes and have no basis in scientific, environmental, or nutritional basis. All claims of this sort are for MARKETING purposes only.
Organic food is generally more destructive to the environment by increasing soil degradation, nutrient runoff, decrease in yield/acre causing more land to under cultivation. It is also dependent upon factory farming of livestock and GMO crops.
Please site proof from official sources. Organic can protect you from things like and not limited to. Taken from links I already posted.
Materials or methods not allowed in organic farming include:
Artificial (synthetic) fertilizers to add nutrients to the soil Sewage sludge as fertilizer Most synthetic pesticides for pest control Using radiation (irradiation) to preserve food or to get rid of disease or pests Using genetic technology to change the genetic makeup (genetic engineering) of crops, which can improve disease or pest resistance, or to improve crop harvests Antibiotics or growth hormones for farm animals (livestock)Okay, a scientific literature meta-analysis. This is basically summary paper of all the references listed.
https://r.jordan.im/download/organic/tuomisto2012.pdf
I paper basically says
Organic farming’s does less damage per acre than conventional farming but it damages more acres.
On a per unit produced, it does more environmental damage. So for every organic vegetable you purchase, it’s more environmentally damaging than conventional.
Please link to official website and not a random document to download. No one should be downloading untrusted files from the internet.
No, it says “not necessarily per product unit”. Your characterization of the abstract is incomplete as it doesn’t definitely state what you’re claiming it states. It’s also a euro meta analysis, not a US analysis, so extrapolating your oversimplified conclusion is even more of a stretch since we’re talking about the USDA. I’m more concerned about carbon, water use, pollinator collapse, and a host of other metrics than NOx (which is a function of diesel emissions standards and crop yield, and can be fixed independently).
Cyanide is natural technically
Snake venom… perfectly natural!
As is anthrax.
And we can’t forget the best natural substance asbestos!
I only use organic gasoline in my cars.
Me too. GMO dinosaur goo really frightens me.
Asbestos is food-safe at least. It doesn’t react in your body, the problem is the damage it does mechanically, which is a lot easier to prevent than the chemical contamination of everything by indiscriminate use of polluting substances that don’t degrade.
It is phytotoxic and genotoxic.
True, I was remembering wrongly from incomplete information.
I wouldn’t eat asbestos but it’s scarier in your lungs than in your stomach.
So am I and I’m incredibly toxic.
I’ll need a source. Just based on anecdotal evidence, which is NOT scientific, you are a pretty rad person. You should be more positive and proud of yourself. Ergo, you lied and you should feel bad. Have a donut.
An organic donut?
While we’re making a list, can we do something about all the “uncured” meat products that are in fact cured with celery juice? It has the same carcinogenous nitrates and nitrites as any other curing process, but it tastes worse.
It has even more nitrates actually. Several times what you are legally allowed to add “artificially”.
FDA only regulated the quantity added directly, not the amount actually in the product that occurs “naturally”.
The entire ‘“health” food store’ falls into this category, it should almost be illegal for them to use the word “health” because nearly everything they sell is an overpriced scam and nothing they do would promote anyone’s actual health.
It isn’t meaningless, it’s just ridiculously inconsistent and sometimes not even what you expect it to mean, but there is actually a set of rules you have to follow for each type of vegetable. Unfortunately, it means that it’s a total crap shoot on whether it’s actually a set of rules that actually make a difference or not.
But for example, one plant it does actually make a difference for is tomatoes. Non organic tomatoes are picked unripe and gassed to artificially ripen them which is why they suck so much, as they weren’t given time to ripen naturally and develop sugars and flavors.
It isn’t meaningless, it’s just ridiculously inconsistent and sometimes not even what you expect it to mean
I believe thats the definition of meaningless
FYI: Shitty tomatoes in the grocery store is mostly from genetics.
Good flavorful tomatoes are full of aromatics and volatiles that are produced by the degradation of the cell wal triggered by an ethylene burst. Ethylene is a very important plant hormone that controls lots of complex processes including fruit ripening in some species.
The major downside of highly flavored tomatoes is a very short shelf-life and difficulty shipping. The market has been demanding better storing tomatoes to reduce waste.
The first attempt was utilizing the rin gene. This caused the complete shutdown of natural ethylene production in the fruit. External ethylene application was needed to ripen the fruit. Since the fruit could not produce it’s own ethylene the ripening process stopped once the fruit was removed from the gas chamber. AKA the original cardboard tomatoes. These varieties fell out of favor mainly because of the difficulty in evenly ripening them.
Since then breeders have been selecting for a reduction in expansin activity. Expansins are part of what cuts up the cell wall during ripening or growth. Reducing this activity makes the tomatoes firm and have reduced flavor, even when vine ripened. Genetically shit tasting on the vine, perfect for shipping 10,000 miles away.
And this is what the FUCK happens when we let corporations dictate regulation.
The push and initial intent for the organic label was clear in the minds of all proponents of it, and then money twisted it into a marketing fad.
Capitalism destroys everything it touches for nebulous profit, if we as a species survive this century historians will write volumes on how ignorant that economic system was.
No this is what happens when we make up rules that are based ideology not scientific evidence and data.
It arose out the justified concern for food safety with the “kill everything but the crop” mindset of the post WWII farmers. The majority of chemicals they were using in the 60’s and 70’s where truly terrible. In the 80’s lawsuits led to widespread banning of some of the worst active ingredients. Public opinion of agricultural chemistry sunk to the bottom.
So sellers started advertising products as “Natural” or “Chemistry free” with he normal amount of fraud associated with unregulated capitalism AKA close to 100%. The organic movement was an effort to regulate this rampant consumer fraud.
The issue is with who made the rules. It really was the 1960’s hippies all grown up. Organic rules are based upon ideology not scientific evidence.
Here’s a great article, with sources, highlighting why the tomato ethylene argument is almost pure BS:
That says that picking them green is still worse than ripening on the plant, but the ethylene is not the reason.
Relevant section:
Consider four types of tomatoes:
- Fully “table ripened” while on the plant.
- Picked “mature green” and ripened naturally.
- Picked “mature green” and ripened with ethylene.
- Picked “immature green” and ripened however.
It’s abundantly clear that type 1 tomatoes are the best (more nutritious and better-tasting) and type 4 tomatoes are the worst. However, as we’ll see below, there seems to be almost no difference between type 2 and type 3 tomatoes.
This is pretty apparent from anyone who has a garden. I’ve planted GMO and organic, and their taste is pretty much always dependent on when you take them off the vine.
Unfortunately last year we had a plague of grass hoppers who would devour my tomatoes as soon as they were ripe, so we ended up picking them early. Both the GMO and heirloom were about equally shitty. Though it seemed the GMO took a bit longer to ripen off the vine.
There are zero GMO tomato varieties on the market. The only ones that exist are in the laboratory.
Do you mean Hybrid tomatoes? That is very different.
Near as I can tell this quote is provided with no context in an article called “The Organic Food Hoax” by a Henry I. Miller, a tobacco industry doctor and member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that also promotes climate denial.
Moreover, Miller’s article was a polemic against GMO labelling - which Daniel Glickman was publicly in favor of. Which further makes me think this comment is being misrepresented.
Well it’s not an official position. It’s just the opinion of someone who used to talk to CEOs of food companies all day and is probably presently the CEO of a food company.
Besides which, it’s a straw man. Being nutritious is not the value proposition of organic food.
Besides which, it’s a straw man. Being nutritious is not the value proposition of organic food.
Yep. “Marketing tool” is a value-neutral description of all labeling schema and does not imply that it’s just meaningless marketing.
This quote is just the Secretary of Agriculture clarifying that organic food isn’t more nutritious and conventional food isn’t poisonous, which is obviously true, important for the Ag Sec to clarify and doesn’t speak to the many benefits to the ecosystem that make organically grown produce important to consumer.
does not imply that it’s just meaningless marketing.
Except it does because all fucking food is organic
Words sometimes have multiple meanings.
We’re not talking about chemistry. There’s no need to purposefully misapply the wrong definition for the context.
What a daft thing to say. As you well know the term “organic” has different meanings in different contexts, conflating those meanings (deliberately in this case) is illogical.
I would say being nutritious is absolutely part of the image they push. But you’re right, they lie/deceive about much more than that. Such as it being better for the environment, using no/safer pesticides, that gmos are bad, etc…
part of the image they push
Honestly, I don’t know what this refers to. How does who push what image? I’m not inundated with pro-organic propaganda every time I go online or go to the shop.
Often product selections include different options: low fat, low sugar, high protein, organic. People tend to overlay whatever preconceptions they like on to those variants.
I’m confused. You said that “Being nutritious is not the value proposition of organic food.” so you clearly have an idea of what the “value proposition” is. Where do you think you got this idea? If it was just from going to the store and seeing the packaging, well there ya go. That’s how they pushed the image onto you. But it’s a 60 billion dollar industry. The entities pushing this are the mainly the OTA, but other groups that stand to benefit from the naturalistic fallacy.
The value proposition, that purported by the industry, is merely that no artificial fertilisers or pesticides are used.
Consumers will apply their own ideas on top of that, but implied benefits like “more nutritious” are better left unsaid by the industry because they’re demonstrably false.
implied benefits like “more nutritious”
You seem to agree that they do imply other benefits outside of just not using artificial fertilizers. This would mean that pointing out that these implied benefit don’t actually exist is not really a strawman. It’s like saying Trump didn’t try to pressure the GA official to overturn the outcome of the election because he never explicitly said it, he just implied it, so pointing out his criminal behavior here is a “straw man.”
That’s more or less the opposite of what I said.
He was In office March 30, 1995 – January 20, 2001. A little out of touch you could say. Yeah if you actually check the official USDA Gov requirements https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/organic-basics it does a bunch of good things. “These methods integrate cultural, biological and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation and genetic engineering may not be used.”
And the post title then saying “USDA statement” is pathetic. Lemmy’s picking up big sister’s habits so quickly.
Yeah if you look him up he didn’t make it till years later in a random interview. After the USDA he went on to be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Motion Picture Association of America. His credentials are not that good.
This quote isn’t even saying what everyone here is hearing. It was taken out of context by a libertarian tobacco industry doctor named Henry I Miller to argue against GMO labelling, which Glickman supported. The quote is just saying that organic food isn’t more nutritious and conventional food isn’t poison. Which is obvious and not the intended value of organic food, which is about reducing the damage our food does to the ecosystem.
Any link to an actual article where Secretary Glickman actually says that?
This post just links to the same picture.
Pro tip: if you place quotations around a phrase into Google, it’ll return results that contain the phrase verbatim.
Pro tip: if you place quotations around a phrase into Google, it’ll return results that contain the phrase verbatim.
I’m aware, I am a computer programmer by trade, and use it often.
What I was doing was back handidly chastising the poster for not including it, trying to drive a whole conversation off a single picture without any facts to back it up.
Any protips for filtering out results without a certain word or phrase? Google used to use the “-” symbol, but, lately, I haven’t had much luck with it.
“USDA Organic” gets misrepresented a lot. It doesn’t mean there are no pesticides. Hell, if a pest problem is bad enough the program has provisions for using the big-gun pesticides that conventional agriculture uses. You just have to go through a process of gradual ramp-up and have an approved plan to minimize crop contact.
As for it being a “marketing term”: Yes, but that doesn’t mean what most people think. It doesn’t mean that it’s the same product with a different package. It’s a marketing term in the same way as “Certified Humane” eggs are, or “Fair Trade” coffee, or “locally-grown”. The actual product you receive has no guaranteed difference in flavor or nutrition–which is what the OP quote is about–the difference is in how it was produced. I’m not advocating one way or the other, and I understand that there are other issues that Organic can be worse for like production density, some organic pesticides potentially being more harmful in some circumstances, etc. I’m just saying that it’s a term that actually means something and isn’t just an expensive advertising label.
There are provisions for how pesticides may be applied, sources of fertilizer, fertilizer application methods and frequency, a requirement that mechanical pest control be attempted before chemical methods, land management requirements, and many many more things. Here is a link to the actual regulations governing it. I highly recommend at least skimming it. I used to roll my eyes when I heard the term “Organic”, but it does actually tell you something meaningful about how the crops were produced, if that’s important to you.
From the regs document: "Beak trimming. The removal of not more than one-quarter to one-third of the upper beak or the removal of one-quarter to one-third of both the upper and lower beaks of a bird "
Gross. Makes me feel like going vegetarian was the right call.
I work in an industry where certified organic can be a big aspect of a product line… when it comes to pesticides, its simply a lower acceptable limit. They are still very much present, you just standardize your product’s specs to be within that acceptable limit, and you get to write organic on the label.
Can you clarify the certifying body you’re referring to when you say “certified organic”? My comment only pertains to the USDA Organic program, as that is the subject of the original post, and I linked the regulations which govern that program. Most of those regulations are not related to pesticide use and its residual levels.
I believe they mean cannabis.
Is this saying there’s a US “organic” food label, but it doesn’t actually have any (meaningful) legal restrictions? Or is it rather saying that there’s technically no reason why ‘organic’ food should be better food?
There are requirements to be able to call yourself organic, but there’s no actual reason to think that it’s better or more nutritious food.
Basically, people had a wide range of food concerns and they wanted to generally “eat better food”. USDA (US department of agriculture) rolled many of those concerns up into a bundle and made them compatible with how food can actually be produced.
Fulfilling their role of making sure that consumers aren’t mislead, and that there’s a consistent standard associated with a consistent label attached to foods.USDA organic isn’t a “grade”, like “this is better than prime, this beef is organic”. It’s more “this beef met a minimum requirement for outdoor motion, and wasn’t given antibiotics as a preventative, only as treatment for a disease”. “This food was grown using only certain types of pesticide”.
The FDA (food and drug administration) doesn’t let anyone use anything that they don’t have good reason to believe is safe.
So as far as anyone can actually demonstrate, nothing prohibited by the organic rules is actually harmful.So we have a label that says “this food was produced in a fashion that basically complies with a vague set of preferences that a bunch of people kinda had towards food, and uses a subset of the safe food manufacturing techniques available”.
Nothing about being healthier, because they don’t let you sell food they think is harmful (in the dangerous sense, no one thinks poptarts are good for you, but they aren’t poisonous).It’s a marketing label in the sense that it keeps marketing terms uniform and honest, not that it’s meaningless.
Idk much about this quote, or this dude, of what year this quote is from.
Here’s what I do know, organic labels do have legal requirements.
Example: organic meat can only be watered with purified water, not just tap or well water.
There are chemical usage restrictions, there are requirements against medicines used for livestock, etc.
It takes years (7?) To get a farm organically certified, and requires soil testing and inspections.
Thats why you’ll see some people label their shit as “organically raised” because theyre following the guidlines, but they dont have the certifications.
How long do you need to water your organic meat for, before the cow patties start growing?
Lol, eh, im not changing the phrasing.
Would the waters of lake minnetonka be enough? Please, my cow patties must grow.
I mean why explain yourself on your porn viewing account
It takes 3 years to get a farm organically certified. This is because it longer than some of the longest lasting synthetic chemistries like Imazamox (26 months).
with purified water, not just tap or well water.
This actually gives me pause. Purified, as in distilled and deionized? That’s missing a lot of naturally occuring electrolytes and minerals.
It’s the agriculture secretary being very clear that organic food has no more nutrients and conventional food isn’t harmful.
Near as I can tell this quote is provided with no context in an article by a Henry I. Miller, a man who also claimed that nicotine is harmless and was called a key supporter by the tobacco industry. He’s a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that also promotes climate denial.
His article is here: https://www.hoover.org/research/organic-food-hoax - it’s a very slimy polemic against labeling GMO food. Incidentally, Daniel Glickman was strongly in favor of labeling, so I strongly suspect that Miller is intentionally being misleading with his quote.
He’s intentionally misleading several times in that piece:
“Many of those organic pesticides are more toxic than the synthetic ones used in ordinary farming.” - toxic how? To pests or to humans? Which ones? How many? What volumes of toxins are organic vs conventional farms putting into the ecosystem?
"His findings were extraordinary. In 59 of the 68 crops surveyed, there was a yield gap, which means that, controlling for other variables, organic farms were producing less than conventional farms. ” that’s not extraordinary, everyone knows synthetic fertilizer+pesticide increases yield. Claiming that organic is worse for the environment because if our entire food system was organic it would require more land is a crazy argument that ignores the amount of poisons like round up that conventional agribusiness pumps into the environment.
He conflates the entire organic food industry, government regulatory apparatus and GMO labelling proponents, using an Adam Smith quote to imply that labeling GMOs is part of a vast conspiracy against the public to raise prices. 🙄
This is just standard industry lobbyist tactics.
There are lots of rules for the label, the problem is that it’s not a consistent set of rules for all produce, each type of produce has completely different rules and sometimes they even allow pesticides. It’s so ridiculously inconsistent that you unfortunately would have to read the rules for every type of produce to know if it’s worth it. For some produce it’s totally worth it though, like tomatoes.
It’s a marketing tool, in blind testing people don’t differentiate between organic and GMO, nutritional value is the same or better, there’s less waste as crops are better protected.
Anyway, we’ve been breeding crops by mixing them for so long at this point that everything is technically a GMO.
There needs better regulations around herbicides and pesticides for sure though.
Interesting. Here in Germany, we have “bio” food, which I believe is similar in scope. And while it certainly doesn’t either regulate that it’s actually high-quality food that you’re buying, it has become somewhat synonymous with ‘premium’, so shops do often pander to the higher expectations. Like, the tomatoes that taste the best are from the farmer’s market, then bio tomatoes are still okay, and non-bio tomatoes often just taste like water.
Thing is, the farmer’s market/bio tomatoes would also taste like water if they could develop as much as the non-bio tomatoes and the non-bio tomatoes can taste the same as the others if they’re not getting boosted to make them as big as possible…
Truth is, we can’t realistically feed all humans on bio food, not if we care about waste.
In principle, I agree, but non-bio will long-term also not be able to feed all humans, as it’s so destructive to nature. Like, you probably know the relatively simple causality of pollinators dying from pesticides (and climate change).
Obviously, in theory, we ‘just’ need to find the correct poison, which only kills the insects we don’t like, but I don’t think that’s going to happen in practice. So, if the regulations are chosen sensibly and get enforced enough to matter, then I do think having an option to pay more for companies to be less shit, is good. (I am aware, that this is also somewhat utopian.)
Ultimately, I think, veganism could help us get everyone fed, because eating plants directly, rather than having them digested by an animal first, is essentially always going to be more efficient, in terms of land use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, required pesticides and so on. But yeah, that the majority of people switch to veganism in the next few decades, is also utopian.
So, ultimately-ultimately, I think, we’ll just do it like we always do: Procrastinate, do too little too late, and have people in foreign nations starve. 🎉
Organic != Non-gmo
Youre actually incorrect.
The use of genetic engineering, or genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is prohibited in organic products.
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2013/05/17/organic-101-can-gmos-be-used-organic-products
Well I don’t buy BIO products because they are healthier for me, but because they are healthier for the planet. Less pesticide and stuff.
That’s right, organic doesn’t necessarily mean healthier. But it definitely means that it was farmed with more sustainable practices, and that’s why it’s expensive.
No…just no. Most organic food is wasted because it’s not resistant to a lot of the stuff GMO foods are. It also usually uses more resources to grow, and most nasty pesticides that are “organic” to keep that label. It’s literally the anti-vaccine crowd just with food…
Welp…I guess I was wrong. But I think the truth is closer to something in the middle. I do know the organic certification is an intensive process.
it definitely means that it was farmed with more sustainable practices
Does it? Who’s the certifying authority?
USDA, there’s an entire process and it’s intensive. I once took a permaculture workshop, though organic was not the focus it came up a lot. If I remember correctly, for instance, the entire topsoil of your farm has to be replaced.
Anyways, here a link:
neat!
In rest of the world if company farms unsustainably it either will go bankrupt or regulator will make them bankrupt.
Hormones and antibiotics are one thing, but there won’t be any sustaining the ever growing human population without GMO.
But labeling something as non-GMO tells me a lot about the product. Like I should probably avoid it and look at other options.
That’s what the ‘organic’ and ‘naturally cured’ labels do too. They’re very handy.
Humanity is in a better place since balding men started to shave their head lmao look at this goober
Try to focus on the words the man is saying instead of his hairstyle.
Insulting politicians is one of my hobbies.
Organic quality most of the time is technically inferior to GMOs, especially in widely available produce because GMOs can be made to resist infection, last longer, and have greater nutritional value. Organic flavor is sometimes considered superior to GMOs.
The real difference is whether or not the GMOs were designed to resist the next roundup ready nuclear fire pesticide, which then you end up ingesting which could have potential health effects.
Or you know the insane amount of pesticide runoff that ends up in aquifers and contaminates other sources of food like chicken or cattle.
And no, just because it’s called Herbacide, doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect other organisms lol.
I think you have it backwards…
“Organic” foods have to use older, less safe, more harmful, sometimes longer lasting & more bioavailable “organic” pesticides and herbicides. They just have worse risk profiles overall vs their synthetic counterparts.
While GMOs often are able to utilize newer synthetic “safer” pesticides and herbicides that they have been genetically modified to survive. (They all still suck for you and I to be fair, some less than others)
Is there a valid/relevant “ecological” alternative label?
Nope.
I suggest going to the farmers market.
USDA organic is relevant, enforced and reduces the damage our food does to the ecosystem.
This quote is being used out of context by a libertarian tobacco industry doctor named Henry I Miller to imply some BS.
I don’t disagree but man that guy definitely has an AI generated look if you know what i mean.
Buy organic, pick non-organic at the self checkout.
Meanwhile in the EU we have an organic label that is if anything too strict, and is absolutely worth buying as opposed to some other random product.
The EU has done a hell of a good job marketing their organic label. The laws are very similar to the U.S.'s. Their fraud rate is also pretty high as well.
There are lots of member countries. Some countries follow the rules strictly, others not so much. Premium pricing always attacts fraud.
And even that label doesn’t make claims about nutritional value or food safety.
it has limits on pesticides and the kind of people who grow organic are likely to actually care about nutritional value, but yes, the label is about sustainable practices.
