Explained: The Benefits of Buying and Eating Organic Foods

Is it Healthier To Eat Organic Foods?

The health benefits associated with a diet of organic products and health foods have as much to do with what you’re not putting in your body as what you are. Certain organic foods can be more nutrient rich than their conventional counterparts, and there is also a notable health benefit as a result of avoiding the pesticides used in conventional farming. Yes, you’re making a difference when you go organic - here’s how:

 

Eating organic greatly limits your exposure to harmful pesticides and fertilizers

To earn the organic label, foods must be grown without the aid of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. These artificial substances are common in conventional farming in order to protect foods from crop destroying insects and produce higher volume harvests. While these materials help farmers produce more, this puts carcinogens, heavy metals, and toxins in your foods that can produce a variety of health problems including some cancers, diseases, and developmental problems, when consumed over long periods of time. Products with the USDA Organic label are grown without most of these substances, therefore by choosing organic foods you are greatly limiting your exposure to these potentially harmful materials.

Lost health is a difficult thing to replenish. Going for organic foods is a great investment to make in yourself that will reward you for life. Consider this a responsibility to your future self, our collective health, and the wellbeing of the planet.  

 

Organic farms greatly reduce environmental impact

The artificial pesticides and fertilizers used in conventional farming affects the surrounding ecosystem. These materials are harmful to beneficial insects like bees, which pollinate the foods we eat and are also important to crops consumed by other animals. This is a major contributing factor to the well-documented, sharp decline of the bee population. 

More broadly, certain pesticides are designed to move through the soil, and their movement is not necessarily limited to the soil the target crops are growing in.

Pesticides can transfer to natural water supplies, adjacent farmland, and throughout the local environment. When you buy and eat organic foods, you’re directly supporting farms that are helping to conserve the health, purity, and beauty of the natural world. 

 

Organic farms grow more nourishing, nutrient rich ingredients

All living things deserve healthy foods, but sadly, not all foods are grown to be the nourishing materials nature intended them to be. Going organic makes a difference in what you’re actually getting out of your food.

By practicing crop rotation - which gives soil a season to replenish itself with new organic material - and by using natural, regenerative fertilization techniques like composting, organic farms maintain more nutrient rich soil, which in turn helps to produce more nutrient rich foods. In order to maximize production at all times, conventional farming doesn’t allow the soil to accept new organic material, and as a result the soil is degraded, lacking in nutrients, and is more susceptible to the effects of drought. 

To address this, farmers use chemical fertilizers to compensate for the degraded soil. Over time, this farmland becomes unusable for organic farming methods. The nutrient gap between organically grown and conventionally grown foods can vary depending on the foods being compared and their respective sources, but the general rule of organic foods being more nutrient rich has been well established across many studies like this.

 

Currently the ingredients we use, and the sources we choose, are certified organic. Our never ending mission to create better lives for individuals, and a better world for everyone helps form the core of Our Story.

 

 

References

“Health benefits of organic food, farming outlined in new report.” Harvard School of Public Health, 8 February 2017, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/health-benefits-organic-food-farming-report/

“Save the Bees.”, Greenpeace, https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/sustainable-agriculture/save-the-bees/

“Should you go organic?” Harvard Medical School, September 2015, 

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-you-go-organic