So, you are in your local grocery store and you pick up some celery, rotate it to see if there’s any imperfection, you are satisfied with what you see, so you place it inside your cart. You stroll down the next isle and you see another stalk of celery that’s deformed and ugly but yet has an organic sticker. You scratch your head and wonder, what’s the difference?

So you find the nearest clerk and you ask him the question that’s puzzling you “what’s the difference between these two stalks of celery”? He/she respond by saying that you use pesticides with the inorganic celery while there are no pesticides used for the organic celery, which makes it healthier. Ok. But is that true? Nope.

In fact they use pesticides for both! And to popular belief, you’re not going to end up with some deadly amount of pesticides pumping through your body. The way it works is like this; inorganic crops are grown using synthetic fertilizers. These fertilizers main focus is to destroy bugs, bacteria, and pest that would destroy the crops without the presence of the fertilizer. Organic crops are also grown using fertilizer, yet the fertilizer used is more natural with less man-made chemicals ( i.e manure). In both instances the pesticides used for farming must first be approved by the government before being used commercially.

The government has to make sure the levels and the content of the fertilizer will not cause harm to the surrounding environment, and the chemicals are in low enough doses that they will have little to no effect on the consumers. So now you are thinking, what’s all this stuff in the news about “pesticide dangers!” and “fruits and vegetables that have high pesticide residue!”. I don’t want to say that’s a bunch of boloney, but I think it’s a bunch of boloney! Look, if you knew the process of every single bit of food that you ate, I guarantee your diet would change, dramatically.

The process they use on some of the foods we eat (I will talk about in a later blog) would blow your mind. There’s always going to be some form of residue left from the process of fertilizing produce. You just have to ask yourself the question “do the risks out way the benefits”? And in this case I would have to say no. You will be receiving such great health benefits from eating those fruits and vegetables that the risk I believe will be minimal to none.

Going back to organic vegetables, there has been questions raised on the pesticides used for those produces. For instance, manure is one of many different fertilizers that are used to fertilize organic produces. Yet, using the manure does come with draw backs, such as potential e. coli contamination. Another potential risk to organic foods are toxins produced by mycotoxins. This type of mold can occur when the crop is invaded by insects that are non-resistant to the pesticides, or some form of weather that damaged the crops. Now there is a debate that organic produce are less likely for a fungal attack than inorganic produce, since inorganic produce are feed with nitrates that increase the vulnerability of fungal growth.

So organic or inorganic? Look, this is what I believe; you are dealing with apples and oranges, literally! If you can afford to spend the extra cash on organic produce, then go ahead, do it. But if you don’t want to spend the extra cash and you feel that you are not at any higher of a risk eating inorganic then organic, then I am right with you. One of the most important things to remember for both of these products is to buy locally. Buying locally is important because you know where your produce is coming from. In case of an outbreak, you will know if you received any contaminated product. Furthermore, produce is better when its fresh, since as it ages their nutritional value also declines. In the case of inorganic vs organic, its only a win win! These are some of the best foods for the human body.

Checkout: http://www.rsc.org

-Phil