Why Is Eating Organic Worth It?

Is Eating Organic Worth It?
The food we eat has a direct correlation on how well our body functions, if you eat unhealthy food your body will be unhealthy; if you eat healthy food than your body will function more efficiently. When people think of the word healthy the second word that most likely comes to mind is the word organic. Proposing the following questions, is eating organic actually healthier, and if so is it so much healthier that it is worth the extra cost? From my basic understanding there are some foods that are better for you when eaten organically, due to the number of ingredients and how the produce is grown and the livestock is raised. For example, organic peanut butter is purely made from peanuts, where as other peanut
To illustrate, Dr. Lawrence Robinson, who graduated from Drexel University College of Medicine claims that organic fruits are planted and grown in soils that are not sprayed with chemicals, and livestock is raised the same way they would develop in nature. Furthermore, organically raised animals are not given “antibiotics, growth hormones, or fed animal by products which can increase the risk of Mad Cow Disease and cause the animal to generate antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria”. To clarify Mad Cow Disease, scientifically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), affects the cattle nervous system, ultimately causing their brain to go “spongy”. Equally important is how consuming meat from a sick cow can put a human at risk for getting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which has the same effects as BSE but on humans, (“What's Mad Cow Disease?”). On the contrary, the risk of a human getting CJD from a sick cow is very unlikely, especially in the United States. Larissa Hirsch, a pediatrician in New York, makes it clear that there are many precautions taken in order to keep Mad Cow Disease from affecting humans. For instance, there is a testing system put in place designed to identify sick cows as well as a recall system that would pull any contaminated or potentially contaminated meat from store shelves. The upshot of all this is that
Has yet to be answered. While analyzing more research I found that answer to the question above is up for debate. Dr. Eric Zielinski, a public health researcher, leaves the answer up for discussion in his article titled, “The Difference Between Organic and Non-Organic Foods,” where he references The Mayo Clinic, and the British Journal of Nutrition. The Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit medical practice and medical research group based in Rochester, Minnesota, claims that organic foods are not in fact more nutritious than non-organic foods. Their claim is supported by “‘a recent study [that] examined the past 50 years' worth of scientific articles about the nutrient content of organic and conventional foods,’” drawing the conclusion that the difference in the nutritional value between organic and non-organic foods is so insignificant the answer can not be yes. In contrast the British Journal of Nutrition concluded that “‘organic foods are truly the healthier option because they contain up to 69% more antioxidants than non-organic foods.’” The British Journal of Nutrition came to this conclusion after evaluating 343 studies on the matter. When comparing the two sources, it is clear that the studies and scientists come from opposite parts of the world; which could potentially be the reason The Mayo Clinic and the British Journal of Nutrition have opposing