• Question: What’s the difference between regular food and organic food?

    Asked by pricee to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Great I love this topic! I do not support the commerialisation of organic food as it is marketed as better for you and the environment and in fact this is not always the case. Organic food just doesn’t have a certain level of pesticides on it, but it can have other kinds of things on it to grow. Farmers can not sustain organic farming as it just takes up so much more land and often they will lose a whole harvest each year. Organic chickens have been found to have more bacteria in them than in conventional chickens.
      I do believe supporting local farmers and yes free range farming can produce good crops but to market it the way it is and charge twice as much – it is just for the middle class – who else can afford it? All produce in Africa is organic but they don’t have any other option as they have no money and so can’t grow much stock. We should try and improve conventional farming so we can feed the world rather than support all the organic farms and feed just a few who can afford it!
      Just as an addition remember some organic foods are GM foods in case you are not aware. I also support GM foods so I probably have a different point of view to most of you here!

    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Organic food is grown without using any chemical fertilisers or pesticides, whereas ‘conventional’ food is.

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Well, this is a good question. I am no expert on the exact legal criteria for a food being organic or not, but basically to be called an organic food, it musn’t have ingrdients in it that have been treated with pesticides.
      The scientific jury is still out on whether organic food does have a health advantage over non-organic food though…..

    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      There is no much of a difference really. Perhaps the only difference has to do with the method of production rather than the final product. I think for the whole it is a bit of a marketing ploy by the food industry to sell things more expensive.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      These days organic food can mean a lot of things but generally that the producers have kept to a set of guidelines concerning pesticides, animal welfare and lack of additives in the production fo foods

      hope this websiet helps ( the FSA are a good place to start for lots of food queries)
      http://www.food.gov.uk/foodindustry/farmingfood/organicfood/

Comments