I've encountered many discussions (well, more than usual, anyway) about organic vs. inorganic things lately. It's not just food, because I think we can all agree that THAT discussion is getting a bit over-discussed now -- most people just settle for their view points and use the so called "discussions" not to listen to other people's opinions, but to browbeat others with their own. No, I'm talking about the other things -- the food additives, the pesticides, and so on. For the records, these are my thoughts on the subject matter:
Organic isn't always "safer" than inorganic. From what I can understand of it at least, many inorganic substances are easier to analyze, without the complicated mixture that permeates every single organic extract. You can get an inorganic food additive that may be safer than the organic kind because of the things that might show up, mixed in with the organic compound that you want. Inorganic poisons are effective, yes, but keep in mind we have some pretty effective organic poisons too -- mother nature, after all, has had a longer time to study chemistry than you and I. Taxol, for instance, is a cancer drug that is essentially a form of poison. It affects microtubule organization in cells and thus inhibits cell division. It's also an extract from yew trees. Foxglove extract is used as a vasodilator but in its more concentrated form will cause your heart to stop and no -- they are not there to poison us on purpose, they have these things in them to prevent themselves from getting chomped on by herbivores looking for a yummy green snack.
In other words: no, I don't think organic things are the miraculous cure-all harmless things that some people seem to think they are.
However -- and make no mistakes about it -- I am for the organic things. As I've said, mother nature has been at it for a longer time than we have, and has created, for her class projects, things of unimaginable complexity. For every single thing she has created that can be considered a poison, she has either an antidote or some other ways of take care of it. A dead foxglove, for instance, will not poison the land it was growing on. This is in contrast with many man-made chemicals that has no counter parts in nature and so can't be degraded or countered or whatever (DDT and diedrin come to mind). These things stick around and can't be reused and believe me when I say that our chemical garbage is kind of a big problem. Plenty of chemicals are as effective at causing mutations as radiation. Nature can clean up after herself. We are starting to learn how, but learning something is not exactly the same thing as doing it.
People buy organic food for this reason, though not everyone knows it. Organic foods don't have inorganic pesticides and growth hormones because those things are man-made and can build up in our bodies in lethal amounts, given enough time and exposure. But -- and I will repeat this -- people also shouldn't just assume things are fail-safe and fool-proof (personally I'm of the opinion that nothing in this world is truly fool-proof, anyway)just because they're labeled "organic."
My suggestion? Being an informed consumer. It's good for your body, it's good for your mind (in fact, you can go and impress people now with what you've learned about microtubules -- they are essential for cell division).
On a side note, organic phosphates in pesticide/herbicide/whatever doesn't actually mean it's derived from plants. It means organic in the sense of organic chemistry. The things that are considered "organic" by the common definition is usually listed as extracts of this and that.
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