8 Reasons To Go Organic
Article by Katie Pierce
Photo by Denys Mikhalevych
We live in an age of paradoxes. Despite the abundance of access to healthy food, many people are still struggling to live organic lifestyles. Depending on your area, going organic can certainly cost more, but with a proper diet and smart budgeting, an organic diet is far from impossible.
The key thing to remember here, however, is that going organic isn’t going to be for health reasons. Truth be told, the nutritional differences between organic and non-organic food are borderline negligible. The real reasons to buy organic aren’t just to improve yourself, but the environment around you. Here are the reasons why:
Support Sustainability
This is by and large the best reason to support organic food. Organically grown farms are far more likely to follow ethical and safe methods of farming versus industrial farms. Industrial farms are responsible for a huge chunk of greenhouse gas emissions, and while you alone can’t affect that, following and promoting an organic lifestyle tells businesses where you’re putting your money.
Sustainable farming is not just a nice thing to do, it is a necessary thing to do to save our planet. Organic farming is better for the environment as it makes proper use of natural waste and approved pesticides to minimize impact. Even more, than personal health, going organic ensures that you do your part in keeping the planet healthy.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is an important aspect of our ecosystem. Industrialized farming discourages biodiversity, or at the very least, minimizes its presence in their farms. Biodiversity ensures that ecosystems remain stable.
If a certain species were not present on a farm, then other fauna would explode, causing an imbalance that could threaten everything. Organic farming ensures that the product is made in a healthy and diverse environment that breeds healthy species of plant and insect life.
Generally Tastes Better
This one is admittedly subjective and depends on the quality of local organic farms, but generally speaking, organic produce tastes better because of the way they’re grown. Sure, they’re slightly less durable on shelves than industrial, but this is simply because organic foods are always picked more recently than industrial.
Freshness always affects the taste of food, and organic produce tends to be picked on or close to the day, it goes on market shelves. These organic foods are meant to be eaten ASAP. Fresh produce means much better-tasting food, simple as that. Whether it improves skin texture or helps prevent cancer is just a bonus.
More Consistent Quality
Smaller, organic farms tend to put a lot more care into the quality of their products because they have to compete with much larger corporations. That means it’s far less likely for organic farms to put out disappointing or bad produce because it affects them a lot more than it would a corporation.
If a corporation has a bad product, it can always lean on the fact that it’s cheap and has a slightly longer shelf life to get it by. In the age of refrigeration and easy groceries, however, this is becoming less of a benefit. Organic products are more likely to be quality because they have to be to find success.
Improves Local Economy
Whether it’s buying natural and organic skincare or fresh fruits, organic businesses are a much better choice for the local economy than buying from some corporations. Small farms existing ensure that corporations don’t have as much of a grip on the market as they already do. Not to mention, it incentivizes other local farms to follow suit, seeing the success that organic farming brings.
Gets You In a Healthy Mindset
The mind is a strange thing. We get our sense of self-worth from healthiness, and even with studies saying that organic food doesn’t affect our health that much, it certainly feels like it does. Why else would so many people go organic when eating healthy?
It’s simple. Eating organic spreads to all of their other activities in life. If they’re eating organic, they might as well go all the way in the other aspects of their life. That means better exercise, better sleeping habits, and overall improvements in the discipline.
Avoids Toxic Pesticides
In this study of organic agriculture, it was found that organic food had fewer pesticides than industrially grown food. While the studies are relatively recent, and industrial food is safe for the most part, there are still cases out there of industrial food that had unapproved pesticides which caused harm to those who ate it.
Even if the risk is small, there’s no point in taking it in the first place. With all the reasons listed above, there are plenty of reasons to just go organic anyway. When given the option between a little bit of poison and no poison at all, it’s better to go for the latter. Do note, that organic farming uses pesticides, but the difference is that they are federally regulated and thus, much more suited to human consumption.
Conclusion
Going organic isn’t just for our own sake. It’s for the sake of the environment and economy. Organic farming promotes good practices that ensure higher quality products and also ensures that the things we consume don’t end up consuming our planet.
Katie Pierce is a teacher-slash-writer who loves telling stories to an audience, whether it’s bored adults in front of a computer screen or a bunch of hyperactive 4-year-olds. Writing keeps her sane (most of the time) and allows her to enjoy some quiet time in the evening before she walks into a room of screaming kids (all of whom she loves dearly) the next morning.