How many of you have been buying organic produce for 20 years or longer? Have you noticed what I have… that there is no difference between the so-called organic and regular produce in your supermarket or health food store??? I have, I noticed a difference around 1998.
True organic produce smells, feels, and tastes very different than conventionally grown. The first clue that gave it away for me was the fact that real organic produce has much less water in the plants, noticeably less, so much so that you can see it with your own eyes and feel it with your fingers! When I noticed that the organic produce I was buying looked and felt as moist as the conventional, I knew something was wrong.
Organic produce also goes bad in the fridge much differently than conventional. True organic, pretty much dehydrates and becomes limp. Whereas conventionally grown rots, smells foul, gets moldy (from all the moisture), slimy, etc. In my unscientific tests I have found there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between the organic produce and conventional produce in taste, smell, touch, and going bad in my fridge.
Twenty or more years ago my organic produce tasted and smelled VERY different and went bad far differently than the organic produce of recent years. This isa wake-up call… we ARE getting ripped-off and paying sometimes twice the price for fake organics.
Here’s what The Daily Green has to say…
With organic foods raking in $16 billion and more annually, some are concerned that Department of Agriculture standards and independent third-party verification may be insufficient to prevent fraud.
Science to the rescue.
In a recent study published in Journal of Environmental Quality, Spanish scientists describe how they use “nitrogen isotopic discrimination” to determine if non-organic, synthetic fertilizers were used on sweet pepper plants. Because organic fertilizers derived from manure have compositions of nitrogen isotopes that differ from synthetic fertilizers, produce grown with different methods can be distinguished.
Organic foods are grown without the use of chemical fertilizers, which are often derived from natural gas and/or phosphates minded from the Earth; without the use of chemical pesticides designed to kill weeds, insects or diseases, and without the use of genetically engineered seeds.
The technique developed by Francisco del Amor would only work to identify fraud in the use of fertilizers, and if the cost of testing is comparable to the cost of testing for pesticide residue, it is unlikely to be instituted on a large scale anytime soon; still, it could be used to test for fraud when it is suspected for other reasons.
In the meantime, the USDA organic standards are widely considered to be trustworthy, given that independent third-party assessors check on farm practices, and the USDA has also recently cracked down on at least one large dairy that had received organic certification for its milk before its standards lapsed.
All of us who had been organic lover’s from twenty + years ago knew that as soon as the FDA took over the organic industry regulations and certification qualifications that the organic industry was going to go down the tubes, which it has. And you know it has when stores like WalMart and organic supermarket chains pop up all across the country.
We’re getting ripped-off and we are allowing it to happen every time we buy one of their fake organic foods. I’m not sure how we’re going to get the organic industry back to being truly organic again. Maybe we all just need to start growing our own and swapping with neighbors down the road??? What do you think we need to do? Post a comment and share your views…
Does MSG make you or your kids sick? How would you know?
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March 25, 2009 at 6:17 pm
tonymorinelli
Whole Foods Grocery Store
The name is itself fraudulent.
Go to the Deli counter. Ask for American Cheese. You will see that it is yellowish orange in color. Look at the print out tag. The cheese contains dyes.
NO cheese should contain anything other than the milk and the bacterial enzyme that creates it.
Look at their other products. Read the labels. How many are truly “WHOLE?”
April 30, 2009 at 3:15 am
Kman
And to strengthen your argument, a whole food is actually a food that hasn’t undergone any sort of refining. For instance: a piece of meat, a peanut, quinoa, an orange, etc… Refined foods is when you remove components of the foods. For instance: white rice with its removed coating, white flour with its removed coating, fruit juice without the pulp, etc… So the name whole foods would imply that alls they contain in the store would be the former mentioned foods, which in reality would make it the healthiest grocer there is. however, they have plenty of refined foods in addition to their whole foods. just because it is “organic” or ‘natural” doesn’t make it “whole”. their name is fraudulent advertising at its worst