Do you really need to eat all organic food to be healthy?

Over the weekend, I was driving the countryside with my mother-in-law and we spotted a flock of wild turkeys, which always makes me crazy happy. We never used to see turkeys when I was a kid and that's all directly linked to the environmental impact of DDT on the Wisconsin wildlife. No turkeys, no hawks, no pelicans either, but now they're coming back and it's a beautiful thing. I found myself branching into a litany about the evils of pesticides, which then devolved into a rant about HFCS. Then I realized that the words coming out of my mouth sounded eerily very similar to a speech I'd heard from a crazy homeless person, only he brought his argument back around to Jesus, while mine cited the gospel of Michael Pollan. I apologized for getting on a soap box and then changed the subject, but I was left wondering how much of my crazy hippy childhood is now coming to the surface. When I was a kid, I purposely bucked against my parents' bulgar fantasies of organic foods, fetishizing Wonder Bread and Cap'N Crunch, but now I find myself gravitating toward simple ingredients lists and feeling very distrustful of The Man that hides behind the cheery faces of Betty Crocker and Sara Lee.

Boost your cancer-fighting potential by choosing produce grown without synthetic pesticides.

My husband always makes fun of me when I pass over the $3 gallon of regular milk to take the $7 gallon of organic milk. "Don't you know where milk comes from? It's all freaking ORGANIC." Well, no, not in the truest sense of the word, it's not. In the scientific world, "organic" means that the item contains carbon, or was produced "of the earth." "Organic" in the consumer packaged goods industry is a shorthand way of saying that the item was produced without hormones, chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Besides, I buy just one brand of organic milk because it tastes better, not because it's necessarily organic. But truthfully, if the prices were the same, I would buy organic every damned time without even batting an eye. The word "organic" has come to be some kind of benediction of health in my mind, even though I know that it's not always the case.

Take for example, this recent article in The New York Times about Dr. Alan Greene, who performed a three-year experiment where nothing but organic food passed his lips. After three years, he found that he's feeling much more healthy, is resistant to colds and flu bugs, and has very yellow pee (um, thanks for sharing). He credits the inherent organic-ness of his food choices, but also mentions that he had to cut back on the amount of meat he was eating in order to keep the costs down, which probably had something to do with his increased energy as well (as Chow astutely pointed out). One of the primary things I noticed when I was a vegetarian (eating distinctly non-organic fare, because I was so very poor) was the increase in energy and the immediate decrease in energy whenever I'd consume meat. Also, I would assume that Dr. Greene was eating more fruits and vegetables after going organic, too. (Don't forget about these exotic winter fruits that will keep you energized.)

Eating organic or not is a personal and financial decision for everyone, but it's frustrating to see confusing messages like "you must eat organic to feel better" coming from a health professional when really, there were at least three variables to Dr. Greene's amazing health improvement. Claiming his health benefits are all due to organic food is shoddy root cause analysis. The important take away is not "buy the $7 milk" but rather, look at the amazing stuff that can happen when you eat mostly plants. Whoops, there I go quoting Michael Pollan again. Look...turkeys!

Related:Don't eat these over-processed foods for breakfast!

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