By KIM SEVERSON
ATLANTA — Lisa Todd’s grocery cart reflects the ambivalence of many American shoppers.
Ms. Todd, 31, prowled the aisles of a busy Kroger store here last week.
Her cart was a tumble of contradictions: organic cabbage and jar of
Skippy peanut butter. A bag of kale and a four-pack of inexpensive white
wine. Pineapples for juicing and processed deli meat.
The chicken, perhaps, summed it up best. A package of fryer parts from
Tyson, the world’s largest poultry producer, sat next to a foam tray of
organic chicken legs.
The conventional food was for her boyfriend, the more natural ingredients for her.
“We’re not 100 percent organic, obviously, but I try to be,” she said.
“He doesn’t care, so I’m trying to maintain happiness in the
relationship.”
Like many people who are seeking better-tasting, healthier food, Ms. Todd had heard about a recent study on organic food from Stanford University’s Center for Health Policy.
Based on data from 237 previously conducted studies, the Stanford report
concluded that when it comes to certain nutrients, there is not much
difference between organic and conventionally grown food.
But it also found that organic foods have 31 percent lower levels of pesticides, fewer food-borne pathogens and more phenols, a substance believed to help fight cancer.
For Ms. Todd and countless other shoppers, the study just added to the
stress of figuring out what to eat. And it underscored the deep
divisions at the nation’s dinner table, along with concerns among even
food purists about the importance of federal organic standards.
“There’s complete confusion,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior food
analyst for Mintel, a global marketing firm. “Most people have a
randomly arranged set of diet principles. They buy organics sometimes.
They buy based on price sometimes. Very few people are completely
committed to any one cause.”
For some, the report gave credence to what many already believe: that
organic food is not worth the price. Only 26 percent of Americans
regularly buy organic food, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center
poll. Price is usually why they do not. But it is a difficult choice for
people who are trying to eat better.
JoAnne Grossman, 66, lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she spent a day last
week working to turn a bumper crop of garden squash into zucchini
bread. She and her husband, Steven, have been eating more organic food
over the last year.
Her son has something to do with it. He is a high school teacher in the
Washington area who also runs an organic farm. Still, the Stanford study
made Ms. Grossman feel a bit better about not always going organic.
“It’s not cheap,” she said. “But the big thing for me is that I don’t
like the pesticides and the chemicals they use to grow things like those
monster red peppers. They’re too perfect.”
For the crowd that spends weekends at the farmers’ market and knows that
Humboldt Fog is a type of cheese, the study was, at best, misunderstood
and misinterpreted and, at worst, an indication of a conspiracy driven
by large-scale, conventional agriculture.
“I was like, ‘Are you absolutely joking?’ ” asked Jeremy Bethel, 30, an owner of the Capra Gia Cheese Company.
A constant at more than a dozen farmers’ markets in the Atlanta area,
his company sells milk and cheese from 350 goats raised in Carrollton,
Ga., and eggs from 400 chickens in Rome, Ga.
“They want to make organics sound bad because they see such a movement
of people moving away from big agriculture,” Mr. Bethel said.
Yet among some farmers who reject conventional growing methods and
customers who seek out their products, organic food — at least as it is
defined by federal legislation signed in 2002 — is losing its luster
even as the interest in healthier, more natural food continues to rise.
“You’re just paying $3,000 to the government to use the name organic,”
said Mr. Bethel, citing what it might cost to certify an operation of
his scale.
People have moved beyond organics, those on the forefront of the local food
movement say. Over the last couple of decades, food has become a
platform for social issues and environmental causes, a rallying point
for improving schools and a marker of cultural status. Farmers’ markets
are seen as an indicator of community revitalization, and visiting them
is a regular weekend activity for families. The Department of
Agriculture has counted 7,864 of them this year, an increase of 174
percent from 2000.
But organic food, especially products processed by large corporations,
has become less a player in the front lines of the movement.
Though organic food has long been a rising star in the food industry,
growing by almost 8 percent from 2009 to 2010, certified organic food
still makes up less than 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales,
according to the Organic Trade Association.
Farmland certified organic under the federal guidelines makes up less
than 1 percent of all land used for crops and livestock, according to
the Agriculture Department.
And increasingly, small-scale farmers like Greg Brown, who for six years
has been growing okra, green beans and other vegetables on a few acres
in Barnesville, Ga., are opting not to apply for federal organic
certification.
He thought about going for an organic label, but the packet of
requirements was more than an inch thick and the cost to get certified
too high in proportion to his profit. Instead he farms under the less
expensive certified naturally grown
label, a national program that has sprung up as an alternative to the
federal organic program and that has nearly 800 farms as members.
The program, which relies on farmers to inspect one another’s farms,
does not certify processed foods like cereal. It requires that farmers
use most of the same techniques as the federal organic program, but
without the paperwork.
Customers seeking out Mr. Brown’s Greenleaf Farms okra and green beans
are not really looking for a label, anyway, he said.
“They want food from healthy soil, and they want a direct line between
the grower and their food,” he said. “Taste is up there, too.”
That, in many ways, was the idea behind the organic movement, which
began as a postwar response to the effects of chemical fertilizer and
the rise of industrial-scale farming. In the 1970s, Alice Waters and
some other West Coast cooks started looking for produce that tasted
better than what most restaurant supply companies were offering.
They found a small community of environmentally minded organic farmers
who were picking their fruits and vegetables when they were ripe and
were growing varieties designed for flavor, not shipping and storage.
From that relationship came California’s organic laws, which in turn
became the basis for the national organic standards.
“I didn’t intend to seek out organic local food, said Ms. Waters said in an interview. “I was looking for taste.”
Like others, she thought the Stanford study was too narrowly focused on nutrients and had been largely misinterpreted.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/us/would-be-healthy-eaters-face-confusion-of-choices.html?_r=1&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065
