Ashton Ellis
Staff Writer
Walking through a Whole Foods grocery store is like getting an invitation to sit at the cool kids’ table — you are just a better person for being there.
Like Starbucks’ fair-trade coffee, Whole Foods lets you feel good by spending more. Instead of subsidizing Juan Valdez, you get to prop up family farms growing food the way nature intended — organically. But before you drop in for another pound of chipotle hummus, consider whether organic food is worth the increased cost.
First, some definitions. Many people think that organic means fresh as opposed to processed. Not so. Organic food can, in fact, be both. “Fresh” denotes food that is seasonal and perishable. In the organic food context, “processed” means that the food items contain some amount of added organic ingredients. Products such as milk, cheese and eggs are examples of “processed” organic foods. Though it may sound like foodie apostasy, thankfully there are limits to unprocessed “freshness.”
For most of its history, organic farming was conducted by small family farms selling to individual customers through farmers’ markets. Definitions of organic foods grew through firsthand experience and word of mouth. Eventually, someone called the government and an attempt to standardize (i.e. regulate) the industry was underway. Once the US Department of Agriculture became involved, corporate agriculture interests (“Big Farm”) saw a new venue for profits and quickly began out-producing the original organic food growers.
There are, of course, some positive developments accompanying the increased interest from Big Farm and the Feds. The most immediate is the expansion of organic foods into previously untapped markets. Compared to more traditionally processed food, organics must be sold within a much smaller radius from the growing site. This is due to organic requirements prohibiting the use of synthetic chemicals or artificial preservatives. A by-product of this non-practice is to decrease the amount of time between harvesting and spoiling, thus limiting the sale of organic foods to places within a short drive of the growing source.
Enter Big Farm. Sensing potential profits, the industry began buying up organic farms and repurposing some of its own vast growing fields in order to expand the organic food market to a wider range of customers. According to reports from MSNBC and The New York Times, the move paid off. Where traditionally processed foods see sales increases of 2 to 3 percent a year, organics continue to yield yearly increases of 17 to 20 percent.
And then there is health. Many people opt to buy organic because it seems to offer a better way of eating. After all, soil-to-mouth consumption worked for thousands of years. But consider this — in the past 100 years, pesticides and artificial preservatives helped reduce the occurrence of disease and increase life expectancy. Preservatives also allow world-wide food shipments, which helps ease hunger around the world. Those are results that “living off the earth” cannot provide.
So does the product justify the increased cost? A basic rule of business says increases in the cost of production are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. For instance, the more pesticides used to clean food or artificial additives used to preserve it, the more likely you will pay a premium at the checkout stand. Organic food flaunts this thinking because it charges more for inputting less.
Of course, it all comes down on how you prefer to spend your dough. Some people spend money on food because they like the taste. Others prefer to exchange dollars for membership in an elite club.
Whatever you choose to spend your meal money on, remember — food is fuel, not a status symbol.
09-28-2006