Attention Consumer Reports: Money Is An Object

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.
-- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

A Consumer Reports (CR) article --When it pays to buy organic -- has drawn intense criticism from fruit and vegetable leaders and return fire from the consumer group that publishes CR, according to Doane Agricultural Services, one of our web site’s content providers.

The CR article said that organic produce carries less chemical residue than conventionally grown produce. (Who’s surprised about that?)

The implication, according to the Produce Marketing Association (PMA) and other industry groups, is that non-organic produce is unsafe. That’s the obvious conclusion that the general public would draw from the article, although a spokeswoman for CR pointed out that "nowhere in the story does it say conventional produce is unsafe." Of course, it didn’t have to make that kind of direct statement. Just using the term “chemical residue” with the word “food” pretty much paints a dangerous picture, particularly for anyone who's two or more generations removed from farming. Many people visualize skulls and crossbones and tiny graves.

CR, though, showed no evidence that any of the residue levels that are found in fresh produce are at unsafe levels, either by themselves or in cases where more than one residue is present. The word "worrisome" was used by one environmental advocate to charactertize this combination of residues, but that doesn't constitute proof of anything, good or bad. The only real countering comment came from Joseph Rosen, a Rutgers food science professor, who said that the amount of pesticide exposure "in conventional foods is so low that it’s not a health threat.”

Spinach, one of the top sources of cancer-fighting anti-oxcidents, was cited as a food that carries a high number of chemical residues. There are enough reasons already to avoid spinach, as any 10-year-old will tell you.

(I’ll spare you more of the details, but if you want to read the full Doane account click here and the link in the first paragraph of this posting will take you to CR's original article.)

I’ve plowed through any number of articles like this over the years, with the back-and-forth banter between organic advocates like CR and groups representing conventional growers and/or industry groups like PMA. As noted in the Doane report, produce industry leaders said the report wrongly associated minute traces of pesticides on produce with food safety worries.

That’s the standard response, which is okay, but it never seems to go quite far enough.

For once, I’d like to see someone on the side of conventional production make the following statement:

“The problem with the American diet isn’t the fact that we are eating fresh fruits and vegetables treated with chemicals. The problem is that we’re not eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables, regardless of how they’re grown.”

The real health issue is the nutritionally poor, unbalanced nature of what we eat and how we eat it. Obesity, diabetes and various forms of cancer and heart disease have root in that simple fact. Our diet and long-term survivability wouldn’t be any better if we completely substituted organic meat, dairy products and vegetables for the conventionally grown stuff we now eat. Fat is fat and sugar is sugar, organic or not. If you’re not consuming enough fiber, switching to an equal amount of organic fiber still means your not eating enough fiber.

In an all-organic America, the average person would likely have a worse diet than he does now because it generally costs more to grow crops without conventional fertilizer and plant protection materials. People have only so much money to spend on food, and jacking up the price of apples means that people will eat fewer apples.

The CR report touched on the fact that organics cost more, and the writers gave vague tips about how to make better buys. The report listed one group of fruits, vegetables and processed products that consumers should buy from organic sources, presumably because those products tended to carry a wider range of chemical residues. There also was an optional group of produce and products CR's readers should buy from organic sources “if money is no object.”

Money, of course, is an object for most working-class folks, single mothers and people on fixed incomes. If you’re on food stamps, money is certainly an object and the organic section isn’t.

This kind of CR report, which garnered national newspaper and TV exposure, promotes a form of dietary chauvinism. CR’s audience can pay a little more for organic apples or baby food and still have enough money to cover the house note and upgrade the home entertainment center.

Sadly, CR’s report won’t really improve anyone’s health. The magazine set up a straw man and knocked him down. The hard truth for the magazine’s readers is that discipline matters more in our diets than how anything we eat is actually grown.