How bad in inorgnic food?

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liva

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Loved one DX
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UAE
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DUB
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Dubai
Hi



So, how bad inorganic food is in fact? I mean, it's kind of impossible to find a lot of things in the organic shop, specially when it comes to fruits and vegetables, it's near to none (at least where I live :( ). So I did a little study and it seems to me we should stick to organic meat and chicken and deep sea water fish but when it comes to fruits and vegetables, there isn't much difference between organic and inorganic. Specially if you make sure to peel the skin off..


Is that true? any thoughts?


Much appreciate it
A
 
Hi, A. Where I live the is an abundance of organic fruits and vegetables. There are a lot of health food stores around. The skin of fruits is where the fiber is esp in apples. I try to do organic when I can but sometimes I just can't. You do what you can when you can.
 
Firstly, there is no such thing as certified organic fish in the US, at least. There is no required practices or standards for labeling fish organic here, so if the same is true in the UAE, you are just paying for a pretty label.

Organic meat is the real deal, with better standards of raising and the like, so if you have the money it is worth supporting. You are supporting good practices, like not keeping cattle constantly dosed up with low level antibiotics that breed medicine proof diseases. Cage free is a good practice too, for many it is worth supporting the extra cost of having space for the chickens to move. Both organic and cage free have a small taste increase, but the health benefits aren't really personal to you - more like health benefits to society in general.

For vegetables and fruit, it varies wildly between specific foods. The general rule is that if it has a thick or tough inedible skin, organic isn't that different. So an avocado or banana has a skin that absorbs/repels whatever chemicals you wouldn't want to eat anyhow. If you eat the skin normally, organic is a big step up - strawberries, apples, etc. Being less artifically preserved, some organic plants go bad or show age faster. Personally, I have found organic potatoes to be much crisper raw, harder to cut but also they cook up much nicer. So you'll have to choose per food in the plant category, and try it out.

If you don't have local organic foods available (and they would be expensive in Dubai, no local agriculture there!), wash your fruits and veggies really well. It is still better to be eating them inorganic than avoiding them, and you probably won't notice a big difference in quality of life. The good parts of less pesticide and the like take place on a level fairly below human perception of our bodies and far beyond most human's understanding of the world food system.
 
So that last post was the practical, down to earth info on organics. This is the eagle's perch view.

I'll spare you the details, but lots of things we do to mass produce food are unpleasant or have bad side effects. The Green Revolution upped bushel/acre numbers, but it also stripped whole countries of their top soil, ran us through a lot of fossil fuels, and poisoned the world's flora and fauna. Movements like the organic movement are trying to step back from that, but with demand rising due to population increase and affluence in population dense regions like India and China, we can't functionally go organic on a mass scale. Organic farming works in microcosms, but with the world situation, not in macrocosm right now.

From a macrocosm perspective, the most helpful thing the average guy can do is eat less meat. If every person ate a typical north american diet, and distribution systems were uncorrupted and set up well, we could feed 2.8 billion people on our currently cleared arable land. If everyone was vegetarian, we could feed 10.2 billion people the same number of calories and full nutritional spectrum. As there are more than 6 billion of us, we can't all be north americans in our diet or half the planet starves. Alternatively, we could pay more for our meat - grass fed cattle are a carbon hazard, but don't hurt the world food system or demand more of the amazon be chopped down for corn/soy meal. Grass fed beef is more expensive for a reason, it takes several years more to grow them to full size, a lot more overhead for the rancher than a factory farmed soy fed cow.

I understand there are few willing to go full monty, even just cutting meat to once a day or once every other day would help a lot, if done in mass. Different animals waste different ratios of their calorie intake. I'm doing these numbers off of memory, but the priority order is right: beef is the most wasteful, conveying to you only 10% of the calories it took in per lb, pork is in the middle at 25%, and chicken is the clear winner at a nearly 50% conversion rate. (These apply to corn/soy fed factory meat, not your cousin's dairy farm, a local hog raiser, or a grass fed ranch.)

Fresh water is the next tacky issue, ignored by many for now in my country. (UAE is actually paying attention, and doing ok, but we can't all use desalinazation plants.) Constant new purchases of bottled water have drained US aquifers - the biggest one is down to 20% and will take at least a thousand years to refill. Cheap gold is also something to avoid, as it is often obtained by blowing the glacial tops off of mountains, lowering rainfall in previously lush regions. Manufacturing of any kind is water intensive at some point, so just buying less stuff would help.

Anyhow, being a good citizen of earth is pretty much impossible to do right, you can only do your best. Even that is a life work in and of itself!
 
Beky,

1ce agaikn, U come throuhg with a brilliamt pioece of work! I jhad actuiallu Bcome a true vefetrariam a few uyrs ago. Thjen I jheard irt from tjhne familu! & now withj thje swaollwimg issues I am baxk 2 it W/out amy1 makimg tjhe rude comments.

My SIL has alwauys grown our veggioes & some fruits W/olut thje chemicals & Yes, I jhace notived thjat 1ce picked muist B consumes quivklu. But jhacing a cery large familu, thjerr is vceru little wsate!

We also do mpt use bottlde H20. I purchjasd everu1 in our huosehold as well as my grandchikdren a Tervi s Tumnbler & we use filtred H20 from thje refrigreTOR. Our Church rexently worked on a prohject wjhere we biult a well in Africa, so tjhat tjheey wuold hace fresjh H20. I beliece it was CLEAM WATER. org. Grear organizatoin: All monies go 2 get tjhe wells dug. Tjhey ecen use tjhe lovals & teacj tjhem a trade. We got 2 see "OUR" well eimg dug lice. It wsa amaxineg!

We also recylce all of our wsates & gettimg reday 2 start a street curb sied recyclimg project dome y my 2 yuongest. Our ciyt does not hjace curb sied recucl8ing, so we R providimg our neihgors on our st. a bin 2 put thjeir recyc. im & ecery Sat my 2 kisd will picl it u8p, sirt it & take it 2 tjhe recyc ctr. Tjhe alum. & metal cams we will tale & get paid 4 it & thjat $ is giong 2 a missoin trip 2 Jamaica whjere my husnands soccre team gose & work on differmt pro9jevts. This [past July, thjey worked on an orpjhanage & hospital.

1 perdon 2dau, amother persom 2morroe. Ecery littel thing hjelps!
 
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