Organic Food - Hope or Hype?

I'm off to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre tomorrow evening but we'll make a day of it....so...Borough Market is on the hit list along with the Dali Exhibitions at Tate Modern.

Which is more surreal Dali or the Organic food fetish?

Anyroadup, I'm taking orders. A bit of organic this and orgasmic that? Unpasteurised smelly cheeses? Sourdough un-Mother's Pride? Cloudy cold-pressed heritage apple juices. Carrots with tops and educated mud on.

I'll get the Soil Association kite mark tattooed on my right futtock while I'm there....Place your orders folks...

Really, is organic food all it's cracked up to be?

The Soil Association is a bit of a con... it's sort of soi-disant in its position. They make up the rules and charge a lot for accreditation.

Half the organic stuff you buy is maybe better for you (maybe not) but not as tasty. And has been shipped half way round the world and back. Then back again, half the time, to be put in a bag in the far east then flown home.

Food miles is another gripe, though.

Oooh Cogs... You've got a 2nd sigline..?

Hype! A lot of what can be called ´vintage´ is just products grown in the old-fashioned style. That is, in the style that many farmers were forced to leave years ago. It´s just labelled, and marketed, in another way.

and a lot of locally grown stuff isn't marked organic...

How can any one that does not grow organic, know if any food is organic?

Please tell me.

Easy, you maintain a flow chart of stool consistency and colour.

Hype.

How de know there isn't inorganic matter with our organic matters?

'Organic' only means 'not sprayed a hundred times with toxic chemicals' and 'chemical phosphates not added to soil in which the stuff is grown'. Also for organic dairy stuff - animals not given growth hormones and antibiotics routinely'. I thought everyone knew all this.

I'd rather not ingest chemicals.

It's an individual choice...best not to moan at those who buy organic, it's their business.

I went there a few weeks ago and it was bloody torture.

Never mind the organic stuff.

I would like lots and lots of smelly unpastuerised cheese, blue cheese, a plate of raw oysters, some beef that I can cook rare, all to be washed down with a bottle of their finest red.

Ta.

"How de know there isn't inorganic matter with our organic matters?

We don't. The European Community regulators relaxed the rules a few months back precisely to make it easier NOT to break them. If I recall the figs right: it was permissible for 0.3% of food items labelled as organic not be and it's now 0.9% - or for every 100 organic-labelled cauliflwers, say, one isn't.

But I too like to avoid the excess chemicals which is why I insist on organic lettuce or none at all - tho I've recently taking to gardening.

the way the weather is here tony, I'll soon be growing organic rice. My garden is a paddy field.

Home grown's best, though the winter's a little lean. I get a riverford box of veg and use the farmer's market -- we also have a fantastic farm shop 2 miles away where you can get potatoes the day they're harvested. My kids like looking at the piglets there too, though my youngest upset some squeamish toddlers by christening the 4 piglets bacon, sausage, ham and crackling.

which made me think... actually if they want to improve sustainability and quality, and probably obesity too, what they need to do is to educate kids to be connected with their food and its source.

That's a bit profound. I'll get my coat.

#13 That is more logical and sensible than profound! I saw "Supersize Me" lat night for the first time and am convinced that film should be shown at every junior high and high school in the developed nations around the world!

#14, agreed - even when the movie might just not be that precise in terms of presenting findings and stuff.

When I worked in a primary school, we had a healthy food lesson. Most of the 8 and 9 year olds there did not know what an onion was -- didn't recognise it, couldn't name it. The teacher (NQT) wasn't sure which was a courgette (zucchinni) and which a butternut squash. And in a year 9 (13-14yo) set to whom I was teaching a poem recently, few of them knew that potatoes grew underground, and quite a lot had no idea that chips (fries) were made out of potatoes.

My kids school has a gardening club -- they grow vegetables mainly. It's helped my youngest enormously -- he will now eat things he wouldn't from the shop. They're more at home with the meat-is-murder fallacy. Incidentally I had another rather sweet conversation with him, 2 springs ago when he was 6, and looking at the lambs in the field:

Coglet: Mum, are the lambs there the same as the ones we have for dinner?

Me feeling oh my god he's going veggie Well, yes, sweetheart. That's why the farmer breeds them.

Coglet: But we don't eat the fluffy stuff on the outside do we? Just the nice soft stuff in the middle....

That's my boy.

tony at 11, I should have known when the cabbage worms in the organic produce were dead and glowing. Homegrown is the way to go. Many of the organic farms are owned by large corporations now.

Who asked you to "show us the monet"?

He must here taking the Pissarro.

He must be here ...

Even though we hope he will take his hype elsewhere.

If 'El Greco' keeps Arp-ing on the Mods will Dufy him up again.

Miro Miro on the wall whose the greatest drip of all? Why, Jack the Dripper of course!

Click on the link and emulate the Master.....

Pollocks.

Pollocks?

That brings me right back from the edge where Art meets Life to Borough Market where they had a nice selection of fish.

Sod protected links! Nice painting "Fish Stall" by Frans Snyders...

Here's a different 'nice bit of fish'

Surly it must be possible to go to an organic farm and see for your self, then go to a non-organic farm and see if you can tell the difference, in the produce.

Just stop living on faith in a fools Paradise.

nicksun (at 17) - a few weeks back someone on here posted that Monsanto were big these on organic food - can't remember who posted but, if serious, I was shocked. I assumed 'twas a joke.

#27..Monsanto are big on GM foods....

tony this is one link about the experience of some UK Organics.
A google on Corporate Organic Farms has other odious instances.

Monsanto owns a company called Seminis who sells organic seed.

www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/seminis20205.cfm</a><BR><BR><a href="http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/productnews/news.asp?id=58965&k=monsanto-completes-purchase">www.foodnavigator-usa.com/productnews</a>

Jack the Dripper!!!
LOL

Thanks both: I live and learn - and despair.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>I live and learn - and despair.<hr></blockquote>

Don't despair tony, just use and save non-hybrid seeds.