Persuasive Essay: Organic Foods

Persuasive Essay: Organic Foods

Introduction

The organic versus non-organic argument has ranted and raved for decades (Belasco, 2006). Even in 1970s, biology professors in various universities were extremely skeptical that there were any major benefits of organic meats, vegetables or fruits over their non-organic equivalents (Belasco, 2006). However, beyond the production system, organic food has for most of its proponents' two important advantages for the human or animal consuming it. The pioneers of organic farming viewed organic food as having more life-enhancing qualities than its nonorganic counterparts (Belasco, 2006). At a time when little was understood about vitamins or trace elements, the claims were that organic food was better because it had additional properties either opaque to science or, in some instances, mystical, so beyond the reach of science (Belasco, 2006). Though, the additional benefits of organic food, defined, would be transmitted to the humans eating them, with positive impacts on their health.

Discussion

Organic food often appears in marketing and journalism as a simple product that is food grown without the use of artificial fertilizers, growth hormones, pesticides, irradiation, fungicides and genetically modified organisms (Fromartz, 2006). Organic foods have been promoted over time via diverse interest groups seeking to advance social change. The premise and philosophies underlying organic agriculture and foods serve to magnify not only the problems inherent in industrial agriculture but in the larger, dominant social systems that create it. Organic foods are one aspect of a multifaceted social movement that strives for the betterment of the world through changing how foods are produced, valued, and consumed. As opposed to “natural” foods, which are limited in additives and preservatives, “organic” foods (Canavari & Olson, 2007) are the product of an entire system of agricultural production, distribution, and marketing, thereby having wider, systemic impacts on the food system (Canavari & Olson, 2007).

Benefits of Consuming Organic Foods

The advantages of consuming organic fresh vegetables and fruit whenever possible, in place of non-organic, cannot be brought to light since they contain a number of vitamins in adequate quantities that is needed by a human body in order to function properly. Nowadays, with soil missing in the essential nutrients and minerals a human body requires, it is documented that the healthiest means to consume vegetables is either in their uncooked state which offers the required vitamins, enzymes, fibers and minerals to the human body (Fromartz, 2006), or by consuming some vegetables and fruits with their peels intact by reason of the minerals and vitamins being present under the external peel.

The differences are much more severe in case of meat. Being comparatively well-known the food chain from animal to vegetable culminating in marauder, meat animals combined large quantities of toxins in their tissues, in particular the fatty tissues. It is not surprising that majority of the costly cuts of meat is disposed to be high in marbling content or fat as it is known (Barnett & Malpass, 2008). Thus, taking this fat in can be very harmful and damaging and is best kept to a ...