As a dietitian, I rarely recommend anything to a client that I wouldn’t do myself. So when it came to eating and recommending organic food, my previous stance was, ‘it’s not going to make a difference’.
There have been no definitive studies proving that organic food is significantly higher in nutrients than non-organic (keep in mind we’re talking about organic, not local — those are two different things), and because of the price point and lack of evidence I felt was relevant to prove that Organic is better, I was reluctant to recommend it as well as to buy it for my own family. Things have changed for me over the past year though, and I have to admit that I have had a change of heart.
Through my research about organic foods and in speaking to some farmers and apiarists, I discovered more about GMO foods, which led me to change my mind about eating organic.
My position on GMOs is that they should be labeled, and in Canada, they are not. In Canada and the United States, however, if a label states that a food is organic, this means that the product doesn’t contain GMOs. So if you’re in Canada, and you don’t want to eat GMOs, you need to buy organic.
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My problem with GMOs is that of pesticides. I recently learned that the seeds of many conventional grains, fruits, and vegetables are treated with “systemic pesticides”, which then grow into all parts of the plant, including the parts we eat. Systemic pesticides have been in the news lately because they’re being implicated in the deaths of millions of bees, and when bees die, 75 percent of the crops we eat don’t get pollinated, which is deadly to the plants and to the ecosystem.
Of course, the reasonable side of me remains a bit conflicted, because the price of buying organic food for five people is extraordinary (organic foods cost around 20 percent more than conventional). So I buy organic when I can, and when I think it’s worthwhile.
Read the full, original article: Why I changed my stance on eating organic food
