If you spend any time on the internet in spaces where people talk about food, nutrition, and the environment, you’ve probably seen some hot takes about organic food — that it’s not worth the price tag, that it’s all a scam or that it’s somehow worse than non-organic. Regardless of who’s presenting them, the same few arguments tend to pop up. We take a look at those here.
Some of these claims start with a grain of truth but often distort that to make organic look like a racket, an excuse for charging higher prices while being no better than conventional agriculture. In the broader context of organic’s philosophy, however, most of these facts don’t end up undermining the program’s standards or its integrity.
It’s also worth remembering that many of the people who start arguments on the internet are making money by doing so, whether they’re getting engagement-based money from platforms or being paid by organizations who stand to profit from eroding public trust in organic.
