A Dream On a Rooftop

An email was going around a while back about dihydrogen monoxide. This scary chemical, the email warned, was a major component of acid rain, had been found in cancerous tumors, tobacco, and made up a large portion of industrial waste. Frighteningly, it was also found in every major infant formula as well as breastmilk, and every person sampled had dihydrogen monoxide in their blood. It's even been found in pristine mountain streams, suggesting the contamination is severe. The email ended calling for a federal ban on dihydrogen monoxide, and asking you to "sign a petition" to that effect.

It was a joke, of course, and all the chemists in the family are laughing, because "dihydrogen monoxide" is a way of writing H2O. That's right-- it's water. Everything I said about it in the paragraph above is true, but that doesn't make it dangerous.

Keeping in mind the lesson of dihydrogen monoxide, when I became pregnant with Miss Boo I began looking into this business of "organic" food. (Another term that makes chemists laugh; as the Husband says, what's the alternative? Inorganic food?) Was organic food really better? If not, why were people willing to pay more for spotty carrots and wilted beets?

First off I discovered that all the parenting and pregnancy books I had recommended that I buy organic if at all possible. If, they reluctantly conceded, I was unable to afford to pay triple the cost for my produce, I was to at the very least buy "The Dirty Dozen" as organic. ("The Dirty Dozen" is a list of the produce that typically requires the heaviest pesticide use.) Otherwise, I was going to be giving my unborn baby poison to ingest. Since I was supposed to be eating a good bit of produce, I would be presumably eating a lot of poison with conventional produce.

So I looked into what the FDA has to say about organics, which is... not much. They don't regulate what calls itself organic or not and they let the CDC worry about the E. coli scares. The USDA does regulate organics, and they stress there has never been a benefit proven to consuming organic produce. In other words, in no study has consuming organic over conventional produce been shown to provide more nutrients, fewer toxins, or be "better" in any way.

"Yeah," say the proponents of organics, "but just look at what they put on the produce! Pesticides! Chemical fertilizers! Petroleum products! It just can't be good for you to be exposed to all that stuff, because if you think you can wash it off, you're just deluding yourself."

Well, I thought reasonably, it's not logical to assume that organic farmers put nothing on the plants. If they don't use a chemical fertilizer, what might they use? (Discovered: copper, which stays in the ground forever, eventually poisoning it, and manure, both animal and...er, well, sludge from the water treatment plant.) If they don't use a chemical pesticide, what might they use? (Discovered: they use chemical pesticides, just not the same chemcials as everybody else.) If they don't use petroleum products... but wait! They do! Almost nobody runs a tractor on soybean oil, it appears, even if they grow soybeans. And if you think you can wash it all off, I snidely thought, you're deluding yourself.

Take your pick--chemicals or poo! Ain't farming wonderful?

So all this made me start thinking. Why were people willing to pay so much extra for food that was, at best, equal to conventional produce, and, at worst, was inferior to it?

Well, for one thing they were being told by everybody to do it, at least for their kids, "just to be safe." For another, buying organic immediately puts you into a sort of club. The People Who Care About the Environment Club, also known as The People Who Really Care About Good Nutrition Club, also known as The Good Mothers Club. Buying food becomes not just a nutrition or a chemical issue, it becomes a righteousness issue.

I'm not kidding. I've been in real and virtual discussions with mothers who felt free to comment on the intelligence, laziness, or education of other women in the checkout line with them, based on whether the others had conventional macaroni n' cheese in their cart ("she doesn't care what she does to her kids's health") or Annie's Organic Mac n' Cheese. They stress about making their husbands see that it's really worth it to spend $600 per month on food, because "you can't put a price on your family's health!"

In a way, a lot of people feel about food the way Peter did when he had his dream on the rooftop, and God showed him all the unclean animals and told him to eat some. Peter was grossed out. He was kosher, what was the Lord thinking?

I understand that the Lord was making a bigger point than "come on, Peter, it doesn't matter that much what you eat" --namely, Gentiles can be Christians, too-- but I think the point about food stands. It doesn't make us better people because we eat organic food, nor does it guarantee our health. People who eat conventional food are not stupid, lazy, or unsophisticated. The science is, to put it kindly, not supportive of the idea that organic produce is the better product; at the moment, it is merely a status symbol.

For me it came down to the money. If conventional and organic produce cost roughly the same, I could have accepted the argument to buy organic "just in case." But for me, if I had switched to buying everything organic, my grocery bill would triple. I can't afford to triple my grocery bill, not if I want to have other things like heat and the ability to tithe. So I decided that any carrots were better than not buying carrots at all, and bought the strip-mined carrots from Ecuador, or wherever they're from.

Peter had the kosher system, which had the advantage over organics in that it was actually divinely ordained. If that method of eating didn't make him a better person, then buying organics is hardly likely to make me a better mom.

And that's my rant of the week!

Cheers,

Breanna