Organic Food: What is it? How is it made? How does one know what is or isn’t organic?
We hear the term ‘organic’ all around us these days, but what exactly does this word mean? Organic food is food that has not been tampered with during the preparation process. This would include fruits and vegetables that have not been genetically modified or mixed with any chemicals or devices intended to improve taste, quality or portion. Meat, eggs, and dairy items are also considered organic when the animals producing them have not been tampered with either. Nowadays, traditional farming techniques have crops produced with synthetic fertilizers or other biomedically engineered ingredients to increase efficiency during the production process. These methods are generally less costly and benefit better from sales so most farmers raise crops or animals this way. However, with the recent public desire for more “natural” products, there is still a market for organic food so it is important to know how to identify what produce is organic and what isn’t.
Vendors make shopping a lot easier by labeling everything. While in the produce section, you may have seen the round, green seal stamped on individual fruits or vegetables with the words “100% Organic” or “USDA Organic” in dark green letters. These stamps ensure that the products have been approved by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
You can rest assured that anything with this seal in place has been through a thorough process to be certified as organic. This process begins with the farmer. Preparing the land to be fit for growing organic food takes up to three years. Organic produce must be grown under specific conditions to count as organic. To ensure this, inspectors visit farms to make sure the produce is being grown to the specifications of organic products. This produce is once again inspected at the distribution process, where any entities handling the produce must be certified to handle organic produce before it reaches the market.
When they reach the marketplace, the price of these organic products depends on a variety of factors. Organic farmers typically do not receive funding from the federal government to boost production mainly because production is more costly than traditional farming with pesticides, genetically modified organisms, chemicals, and the like. These factors all play into the price of organic products and may result in a higher price than other foods. In some cases, the price difference is fairly minimal.
Now that you know what organic food is and how to identify it, you can make a better informed choice about whether you would like to adopt this into your diet. While the entire debate of information on organic food cannot be included in this writing-and boy is there a lot-we invite you to do some further research on this subject. If you are more concerned for your nutritional health, you can start with checking up on the debates of organic food’s supposed superior nutritional value to more traditional produce and decide for yourself if it is right for you.