What's your opinion on organic vs. non-organic?

23 Replies
Uniquity said

I don’t eat certified organic but I do eat local and for me that is better. No pesticides or preservatives, supporting sustainable farming and ‘shipping’, and I can talk to the person that grew my food and raised my meat. I also make my own bread and try to cook with as many unrefined items as I can. To me, this way of eating is good for my health as well as the environment and also supports local farmers and best of all results in tastier food. I look forward to someday living in the country and growing my own food. For now I content myself with my windowsill basil.

All that aside, I do not primarily source organic tea. It is nice but not a requirement for me and I do believe that the organic requirements in North America are a joke and too easy to work around. Nonetheless, less pesticides can never be bad! :)

Valerie said

Seconding this: eat local if you can! :D

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I personally won’t limit myself, and have an aversion to rigidity and dogma in food and in life. That being said, I PREFER not to add any more carcinogens or chemicals to my daily life than I inevitably have and will. Do I think the certifications matter? Some, maybe. Not much. But I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to minimize the damage we do. I think how we farm matters, to the earth, and to people’s lives. There are a ton of options out there, organic is just one of the many, but it’s a start.

There are GMOs in the corn chips I ate with my chili last week but I normally don’t buy processed foods. Hell, I smoked Marlboro reds for most of 14 years and I will probably use 6 different potentially deadly caustic chemicals cleaning the bathrooms this weekend but if there are preservatives in it I won’t put it in my pantry. If I suddenly had responsibility for children, or had to live on only my income I couldn’t do it, but right now I have the luxury of choosing. Three years ago a week’s groceries might’ve been a carton of smokes, a few frozen pizzas and two boxes of shells and cheese. Now I buy all the meat I cook with from a vendor who’s policies I respect in a local farmers market and I have a favorite farm that I think is great, but isn’t ‘certified’ organic. I spent an hour of my life recently reading labels in a cosmetic store looking for a moisturizer that wasn’t made with poisons and two years ago I gave my microwave to Goodwill. This planet is weird and a little dumb, but so am I, I kinda like it here, and I’m trying not to make it worse, for me or anybody else.

Uniquity said

I haven’t had a microwave in four years and people think I’m nuts. Mostly I just like cooking too much.

I use mine for my herbal heat packs, and re-heating. Other then that, not much.

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BoxerMama said

I’ve never bought into the whole organic movement at all. I’m honestly more concerned with the food my dogs eat than what I do. Not that I do not eat healthily, I just don’t obsess over it. I just buy the tea that I think I would like.

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Donna A said

I’m somewhat relaxed about it, having lived through the days where poptarts were thought to be healthy because they had vitamins in them, and no one had a clue plastic containers weren’t good for you. My mom raised us on bologna and ham sandwiches, which we now know have cancer causing nitrates in them. And what about all the organic produce such as lettuces and alfalfa sprouts that seem to have e coli problems? I figure my body has been bombarded by all sorts of carcinogens my whole life. I just don’t have a lot of control over most of it. I’ve thought it might be nice to have a farm and grow all my own stuff, but that isn’t happening anytime soon. No offense to anyone intended, but one of my daughter’s friends just spent a semester in a huge tea producing country and says it really is just as polluted as you hear it is, and that America’s air looks clean in comparison.

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Lazey said

With all the junk I eat the chemicals are probably the least of my problems. But I do think those using chemicals on crops use more than necessary.

I can’t afford to buy exclusively organic products, though I did happen to buy two boxes of organic teas recently. I didn’t even notice that either were organic until much later. I wanted to buy some jasmine tea and try yerba mate tea, all the place had of both kind was organic. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the organic labels. They’re both good teas.

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