4 ms·

I don't eat organic vegetables due to a lack of preservatives. I cook only for myself, and I often find my irradiated, preservative laced, genetically engineer

I don't eat organic vegetables due to a lack of preservatives. I cook only for myself, and I often find my irradiated, preservative laced, genetically engineered food going bad. If I bought organic, I'd never get to eat anything. :/

mattmaroon 17y ago
Preservatives are found in processed foods, not vegetables. Organic vegetables generally don't last any less long than normal ones. They make lots of organic frozen prepared foods. You can get organic macaroni and cheese in a box that's just like the regular (but tastes better). There are organic canned soups, pasta sauce, frozen burritos, etc. You name it you can buy it.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Be careful with this. You can get the "USDA Organic" logo with less than 100% organic ingredients. So it's possible that your frozen dinner has preservatives and other crap in it that you are trying to avoid by "going organic". Read the ingredients to be sure. If it's something you can't buy and add to your food yourself, it's probably in there for the seller's benefit; not for yours. (Less spoilage == higher profit margin.)
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    Umm, not legally. The USDA regulations specifically forbid artificial preservatives. (Natural ones like citric acid are fine.) They can and sometimes do cheat, even though the fines are enormous, but reading labels won't help with that.
joeyo 17y ago
An alternative is to buy locally produced food, which often is also organic. It may have a shorter shelf life, but it's sitting on your shelf most of that time, not on the shelf at the grocers waiting to be bought.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Local produce is almost never organic. Locally produced prepared foods also almost always have preservatives and flavor enhancers as well. Locavorism also saves so little in shipping energy and cost that it's almost worthless in any health or environmental sense.
  - joeyo 17y ago
    I guess it depends on where you live, but at my local farmers market there is a sizable percentage of the vendors that either meet the FDA organic standards or meet a fraction of them (no pesticides or no antibiotics). With respect to preservatives and flavor enhancers, I have no specific knowledge, but I would imagine that whatever are applied to local produce would necessarily be less than or equal to whatever is normally applied when something has to be shipped from across the world, absence of any evidence to the contrary. Finally, with respect to your energy/environmental argument: I am not advocating buying local as a way to save on energy costs; I am advocating buying local as a way to get significantly fresher produce. With that said, even if buying local saves a single cent per pound of produce (not unreasonable [1] at current gas prices) that could be savings of upwards of $5.4B per year if every american shopped local ($0.01/lb * ~300 million amercians * ~1800 lbs of food consumed/american/year). 1. http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/04/buy-local-vs-shop-local.html http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/04/buy-local-vs-shop-l...

mattmaroon 17y ago

Preservatives are found in processed foods, not vegetables. Organic vegetables generally don't last any less long than normal ones. They make lots of organic frozen prepared foods. You can get organic macaroni and cheese in a box that's just like the regular (but tastes better). There are organic canned soups, pasta sauce, frozen burritos, etc. You name it you can buy it.

jrockway 17y ago
Be careful with this. You can get the "USDA Organic" logo with less than 100% organic ingredients. So it's possible that your frozen dinner has preservatives and other crap in it that you are trying to avoid by "going organic". Read the ingredients to be sure. If it's something you can't buy and add to your food yourself, it's probably in there for the seller's benefit; not for yours. (Less spoilage == higher profit margin.)
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Umm, not legally. The USDA regulations specifically forbid artificial preservatives. (Natural ones like citric acid are fine.) They can and sometimes do cheat, even though the fines are enormous, but reading labels won't help with that.

joeyo 17y ago

An alternative is to buy locally produced food, which often is also organic. It may have a shorter shelf life, but it's sitting on your shelf most of that time, not on the shelf at the grocers waiting to be bought.

mattmaroon 17y ago
Local produce is almost never organic. Locally produced prepared foods also almost always have preservatives and flavor enhancers as well. Locavorism also saves so little in shipping energy and cost that it's almost worthless in any health or environmental sense.
- joeyo 17y ago
  I guess it depends on where you live, but at my local farmers market there is a sizable percentage of the vendors that either meet the FDA organic standards or meet a fraction of them (no pesticides or no antibiotics). With respect to preservatives and flavor enhancers, I have no specific knowledge, but I would imagine that whatever are applied to local produce would necessarily be less than or equal to whatever is normally applied when something has to be shipped from across the world, absence of any evidence to the contrary. Finally, with respect to your energy/environmental argument: I am not advocating buying local as a way to save on energy costs; I am advocating buying local as a way to get significantly fresher produce. With that said, even if buying local saves a single cent per pound of produce (not unreasonable [1] at current gas prices) that could be savings of upwards of $5.4B per year if every american shopped local ($0.01/lb * ~300 million amercians * ~1800 lbs of food consumed/american/year). 1. http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/04/buy-local-vs-shop-local.html http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/04/buy-local-vs-shop-l...