2 ms·
>It's not clear what exactly are you referring to with "organic" I'm referring to both, and more. All of it. Here is the definition from wikipedia [1] > Organ
by luc4sdreyer 6y ago
>It's not clear what exactly are you referring to with "organic"
I'm referring to both, and more. All of it. Here is the definition from wikipedia [1]
> Organic food is food produced by methods complying with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming features practices that cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Organizations regulating organic products may restrict the use of certain pesticides and fertilizers in the farming methods used to produce such products. Organic foods typically are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or synthetic food additives
>This alone is a big deal, and just based on this, organic as a whole is definitely healthier.
This is the appeal to nature fallacy I referred to originally. Just so we're on the same page [2]:
> The appeal to nature is a logical fallacy that occurs when something is claimed to be good because it’s perceived as natural, or bad because it’s perceived as unnatural.
> For example, a person using an appeal to nature might suggest using herbal remedies when treating a serious medical condition, despite what research says on the topic, simply because they perceive the herbal remedies as more natural than modern treatments.
> It’s important to understand this kind of fallacious thinking, since it frequently plays a role in people’s internal reasoning process, as well as in debates on various topics. As such, in the following article you will learn more about the appeal to nature fallacy, and see what you can do in order to counter people who use it, while also making sure that you won’t use it yourself.
The linked page has many examples, you can find more here [3]. In response to your points in particular:
1. Additives aren't healthy or unhealthy. It simply describes a category of food. Anything can be an additive: sugar, salt, apples, uranium.
2. The meaning of "natural" and "chemical" isn't well-defined here. Everything in nature is composed of chemicals and chemicals are natural. The meaning you're giving to these words are basically natural is good and chemical is bad. If not, please provide a rigorous definition of the two words.
3. Refined probably refers to "processed"? It's similarly vague, allowing anyone to make it mean whatever they want. So if we go with the definition:
> "Processed food" includes food that has been cooked, canned, frozen, packaged or changed in nutritional composition with fortifying, preserving or preparing in different ways. Any time we cook, bake or prepare food, we're processing food
Then no, it's not bad to process food: [4], [5]. Some forms of processing may be bad yes, but please specify what you mean.
> but I wouldn't be surprised if there were higher standards in the food chain (e.g. less freezing time, no freezing at all etc.)
Again, which standards? My point being that standards enforced by organic farming _are not_ about improving taste, cost, or health. Of course they claim that, but there is insufficient evidence for this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food
[2] https://effectiviology.com/appeal-to-nature-fallacy/ https://effectiviology.com/appeal-to-nature-fallacy/
[3] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature#Examples https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature#Examples
[4] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/not-all-processed-foods-are-unhealthy https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/not-all-proce...
[5] https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-processed-food https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-processed-food
- pizza234 6y agoI'll simplify and generalize the concepts, in order to avoid semantic squibbles. If one compares a significant range of non-organic food products with organic ones, the latter will correlate with lack of some ingredients, or replacement with comparable ones. This can be verified easily by anybody who lives in a country with a meaningful presence of the organic market/brands (I'm not sure what's the situation in USA; I wouldn't be suprised if the average presence is negligible). Considering that nutrition is "not really" a science, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that if something has been approved by the food institutions (e.g. FDA), they don't have a negative impact on the body, therefore, organic and non-organic food products have essentially the same. For the same reason though, the opposite is also reasonable. If I can choose between, say, packaged bread with and without, say, hydrogenated fats and corn syrup, I prefer the latter, but as I wrote, I don't think that who chooses the former is wrong, ignorant, or so. Regarding the standards, the same principle holds. Enforcing, there's not absolute truth about, say, crops rotation and forbidding antibiotics/hormones (this are some of the rules dictated by organic organizations) can be believed or not (I don't doubt there's straight snake oil in some practices). There was an Scientific American article on HN correlating modern agriculture practices to lower nutritional properties of crops, therefore practices mandated by the organic standards have a sense, but I doubt that there is a rigorous scientific investigation on this, so anybody can be reasonably reject the argument.