Health Benefits

How your food is grown or raised can have a major impact on your mental and emotional health as well as the environment. Organic foods typically contain more beneficial nutrients (e.g. amino acids), polyphenols (antioxidants), and transient beneficial microbes than their conventionally-grown counterparts; people with allergies to foods, chemicals, or preservatives often find their symptoms lessen or go away when they eat only organic foods and from a more intimate supply chain.

Organic produce contains no synthetic pesticides. Chemicals such as fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides are widely used in conventional agriculture and sometimes residues remain on (and in) the food we eat.

Organic food is often fresher because it doesn’t contain preservatives and additives that make it last longer for transit. Organic produce is often (but not always, so watch where it is from) produced on smaller farms near where it is sold.

Organic farming is better for the environment. The best organic farming practices reduce pollution, conserve water, reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility naturally, use less energy, and even sequester/store carbon. Farming without synthetic and dangerous pesticides is also safer for nearby birds, insects, and other animals as well as the people who live close to farms. Bees and other native pollinators, an integral part of our food ecosystem, have been imperiled by the prolific use of chemicals in agriculture.

Organically raised animals are NOT given antibiotics, growth hormones, or fed animal byproducts. Feeding livestock animal byproducts increases the risk of mad cow disease (BSE) and the sub-therapeutic (for fat gain) use of antibiotics can create antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria (e.g. MRSA), a looming epidemic in the US. Most organically-raised animals are given more space to move around and/or access to the outdoors, which is healthier. Truly pastured animals can even forage and graze their natural diets just like the native American cow – the Buffalo.

Organic meat and milk are richer in certain nutrients. Results of a 2016 European study show that levels of certain nutrients, including omega-3 fatty acids, were up to 50 percent higher in organic, grass-fed meat and milk than in conventionally raised proteins and dairy products.

Organic food is GMO-free. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) or genetically engineered (GE) foods are plants whose DNA have been altered in ways that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding, most commonly in order to be resistant to herbicides or to produce an insecticide within a plant (e.g. GMO corn).

Want to learn more? Visit www.modernepidemic.org.