undeather

Is Organic Really Better? (Organic food vs conventional)

16 posts in this topic

Found this video to be quite interesting and non dogmatic!
 

 


MD. Internal medicine/gastroenterology - Evidence based integral health approaches

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

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Organic is the right idea, but just like many other right ideas its not sustainable right now.

Im being hypocritical since I personally buy as many of my foods and oils as organic, but truth is that at its current state organic farming is not efficient enough to provide enough nutrition for everyone on the planet.

The video makes really good point. We need to eat more vegetables, organic or not. Just like modern humans should eat more fat, poor fat or not (Preferably good fats though)

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Organic doesn't imply it is automatically better than none organic food but it has a reliability factor due to GMOs not bring tested/used for as long. But I see the GMOs route growing as we become more knowledge to bend nature to suit us.

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Eating organic food is important for your health, as pesticides are toxic and will remain in your body for a long time. Non-organic agriculture is not sustainable as it drains the soil, which is the bottom for the plants to grow on. Plants will become more susceptible for diseases which in turn will create more pesticides. Artificial fertilizers increase this process, as they fail important micronutrients for the plants to grow healthy. The plants in turn contain less micronutrients.

Less fertile soil means less bugs and insects, less insects means less birds, less birds mean... etc. Pesticides also kill flowers and other plants, which means there are less bees, when there are less bees there is less cross-fertilization. In this way we are slowly destroying all life on the planet. I believe that in America even more pesticides are allowed than in Europe.

GMO is even worse for our health, as you mess with the DNA of food, which is metabolized in our body, which means that it will mess with our DNA. Long-time effects for us and for the next generations are not clear yet, but it seems likely that these foods will be the cause of cancer, abnormalities in different organs and abnormalities in growth in general and may even cause our body to be unable reproduce in the next 3 to 4 generations.

In Europe GMO is not allowed. In America it is already applied in soja Bean's, corn and wheat. These products are the main food for animals we eat, so the GMO will also turn up in animal-based food.

We cannot bend nature to suit us, nature will set us straight in the long run.

Organic food is sustainable and we are able to solve the world hunger problem with it if we stop eating animal-based food. If the food which is fed to animals for our meat and milk is given to humans, the hunger problem would be solved immediately. Also our polution would be solved for a big part as livestock is a big polluter. I can recommend the documentary 'Cowspiracy, a sustainability secret.' 

Also we don't need animal-based food. If you want to know more about this and a healthy nutrition in general, read this topic:

https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/30271-a-holistic-view-on-nutrition/

Edited by Emanyalpsid

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7 hours ago, Emanyalpsid said:

GMO is even worse for our health, as you mess with the DNA of food, which is metabolized in our body, which means that it will mess with our DNA. Long-time effects for us and for the next generations are not clear yet, but it seems likely that these foods will be the cause of cancer, abnormalities in different organs and abnormalities in growth in general and may even cause our body to be unable reproduce in the next 3 to 4 generations.

@EmanyalpsidPlease be careful with your assumptions. DNA is broken down into nucleoside bases as it's metabolised so a direct DNA to DNA modification is not possible. So far there have been no biological problems with GMO (politically and ethically it's another matter). Yes, long -term effects are not known, so how can you assume that these foods will be "likely" to cause what you mentioned? 

Edited by Cepzeu

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I heard Leo say that cheap fruits and vegetables contain heavy metals which cloud your judgements by remaining in brain.

If you have heavy metals in your brain, your judgements and creativity decrease, and your ability to make money decreases.

Edited by CreamCat

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I am not a specialist in this area and I should indeed be careful with my assumptions. But as far as I understand DNA, it is the design of proteins, which are the building blocks for other cells. So it seems that if you change DNA, the whole organism is influenced by this, and future generations. Because we digest and metabolize these organisms and transport their molecules and atoms into our cells, it seems a small step to assume that this leads to serious unnatural changes in our cells and alter our DNA.

You might know that cancer is caused by problems in cell division and because DNA is main factor in a normal cell division. It seems likely that GMO will cause major abnormalities in the body and therefore diseases, maybe not in 5 years, maybe not in 10 years, maybe not in 30 years, but probably in a couple of generations. Depending on the amount of GMO intake and the composition of the nutrition in general.

Furthermore, GMO could lead to use of different types of pesticides which have other unknown health effects for us.

Besides all of this, GMO is unnecessary for our food delivery. We only allow it because people want to eat cheap animal-based food. If everybody ate organic plant-based food we would not even be discussing this and there would be no hunger in the world.

However, these are still assumptions, but I would put the burden of proof to the other side, let the corporations who want to use GMO prove that there are no negative long-term health effects over multiple generations. ...But this could lead to people becoming test subjects... Anyways, I wouldn't take this risk with my body and my children (not that I have any yet).

There is no good excuse to mess with nature for our food production. We are able to produce enough for the whole world even with organic agriculture. Conventional agriculuture slowly destroys all life on this planet. People should however see the importance of our food to make this turn. Ah the diseases we suffer from will eventually bring us back to natural organic food. Could take some generations though.

Edited by Emanyalpsid

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12 minutes ago, Emanyalpsid said:

Because we digest and metabolize these organisms and transport their molecules and atoms into our cells, it seems a small step to assume that this leads to serious unnatural changes in our cells and alter our DNA.

I don't think GMOs have DNA-editing machineries unless those machineries were included in GMO at the design phase.

Also, before GMOs, there were other ways to manipulate DNA, such as plant cross-breeding.

 

Edited by CreamCat

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Yes and these have shown to badly reproduce, but they have a good yield. So the big coroporations, like Monsanto, who sell these seeds have a billion dollar business, because farmers need to constantly buy these seeds.

Also the health effects from eating these plants for us humans in the long-term, and over multiple generations, have not been researched. Is almost impossible to research, and nobody would finance these, so is not going to happen in the near future.

But the amount of diseases in humans keeps rising in an exponential rate and we are getting these diseases earlier; children who already have rheuma etc.

Don't believe the propoganda from big corporations, they only want to make as much money as possible. They give shit about your health.

Edited by Emanyalpsid

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@Emanyalpsid It is a tradeoff. Eating burnt meat is more dangerous than GMOs because burnt meat contains benzene which is carcinogen.

Most diseases can be attributed to bad habits such as eating at mcdonald everyday and not exercising often.

I highly recommend that you learn about GMO in more details if you are that worried. Learn biological mechanisms of GMO. Learn more about food.

Unless you have knowledge, you are going to keep worrying.

Edited by CreamCat

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While there is a great degree of scheming and rule bending going on everywhere, generally those who are part of Organic associations such as "Soil Association" in the UK do really have to undergo rigorous process, get tested randomly, have to submit a lot of reports and use very standardised agricultural practices. Of course this is not 10% and there is always ways to go around but generally organic should mean your food is cleaner. 


“If you find yourself acting to impress others, or avoiding action out of fear of what they might think, you have left the path.” ― Epictetus

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Look I am not trying to convince people, everybody has their own path, most people do not seem to care anyway.

The cause of diseases go further than mere bad habits. If you are seriously interested in your health, why not take a look at the topic I posted?

Why make a tradeoff?

Bye, I've got other stuff to do!

Edited by Emanyalpsid

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Organic is premium treatment of your food and you should pay premium for what you put in your body. 

You can even taste the richness of an organic fruit. 

Edited by SgtPepper

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  • Most genetic modifications are done to make products need less pesticide. We eat organic foods to reduce exposure to pesticide. GMO makes organic farming cheaper. GMO organic food is not an oxymoron.
  • non-GMO food is equally as likely or unlikely as GMO food to alter your DNA because both non-GMO food and GMO food contain DNA which is merely a sequence of nucleotides. DNA is a sequence of nucleotides. Altered DNA is still a sequence of nucleotides.
    • You're going to ingest DNA no matter what. There is no difference between natural mutations and artificial genetic modifications.
  • https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2016/05/gmo-safety-debate-is-over/ says "If you vaccinate your kids and believe that climate change is real, you need to stop being scared of genetically modified foods."
Edited by CreamCat

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I think people don't have to pass through 4 years of college and read tons of books to understand that non-organics are bad.

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