Organic food is food that has been grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers. It has no genetically modified components.
In principle, I would say that organic food is better than conventionally farmed produce. I do buy organic food myself. However, there are some caveats.
Getting organic certification is expensive and so it can be out of reach for small farmers. So there are some small farmers who produce chemical free food but don't have organic certification.
What happens to your produce after it leaves the farm? Fruit and veg can potentially be in cold storage for 9 months or more. It looks good and tastes OK but how much of essential nutrients like Vitamin C actually remain? It does vary but for example Vitamin C in an orange degrades significantly in a matter of weeks. So if you buy an orange that's been in cold storage for months, the chances are that it has little or no vitamin C left, regardless of whether it's organically or conventionally farmed.
Is your certified organic produce really organic? There are always people who will try to rip others off and we'd be naive to think that won't happen with organic produce.
So what do I recommend?
First and foremost I believe it's important that you either grow food yourself or source it from local farmers as much as possible. It's more likely that your produce will be fresh if you buy it directly from a small farmer, rather than a large business. Increasingly small farmers are selling directly to the public, so the profits go to the farmer rather than being drained off by middle men.
There are a significant number of local farms that are using regenerative farming practices. They won't necessarily have an organic certification, but they don't use things like Roundup and the produce you receive is not stored for any length of time. You'll only be able to get fruit and veg that are in season from these small farms, and that's what we should be doing anyway.
Let's talk a bit about meat.
Cows for example can be kept in a feedlot and fed on organic grain and their meat sold as organic beef. Even though it's organic it's definitely not a good option. Firstly, from an animal welfare point of view and secondly from a health perspective. Cows are meant to eat grass, not grain. When they eat lots of grain, they're not healthy animals and whether we're eating meat or butter or milk, it has different nutrients when it's grass fed. It's also important that they are grass fed and finished.
Many farmers feed their animals on pasture and then send them off to a feedlot to be fattened up. So technically they’re grass fed, but for the last weeks of their lives they've been on grain, with all the issues that grain creates. So grass fed and finished is really important. Sometimes it'll be called pasture fed and finished.
Eggs are another issue. In my opinion, the label free range on eggs is meaningless. What you need is chooks that are running around on grass. They will be fed some grain, but they need to be able to scratch, and eat bugs and greens. So you need pasture fed hens for good eggs. Organic eggs may be pasture fed, or they may be almost as bad as cage eggs, the only real difference sometimes is that they were fed on organic grain.
Farmed fish are fed on grain. It's the same problem. Fish are not meant to eat grain. The best option is sustainably wild caught fish.
I recommend you buy as much food as possible from local, small farmers who only produce organic or regeneratively farmed produce. If a farmer produces conventionally farmed produce and organically farmed produce, then it suggests to me that they're not using organic farming practices because they have any conviction that it's a better way to farm. I'd guess that they're simply in it for the money.
I have a client who worked for an egg producer. They sold organic eggs and also cage eggs. He told me that when they had more organic orders for the day than they could fulfill, they were instructed to put cage eggs into the organic labelled cartons. I don't know how widespread this kind of thing is, but my recommendation is to go with small farmers that only do organic or regenerative farming. Get to know your food producers and have a look at their farms. Just be aware that organic farms usually look messy compared to conventional farms. This is because they don't use sprays to keep the weeds down and they may use things that look like weeds to us but those weeds may be harbouring essential insects that do the job of pesticides.
What about organic packaged products?
I've seen many packaged products that have an organic certification but still contain nasty things. So let's take a biscuit as an example. It might be made with organic wheat, and organic butter but it still has a chemical preservative or a flavour or whatever. You can't trust that the organic certification is a guarantee that the food is good. All the certification on the label says is that some of the ingredients in the product are organic. As with fresh food, many brands have both organic lines and non-organic lines. I try to buy from smaller manufacturers who only do organic food.
Organic certification is a good start, but you still need to read ingredient labels and know where your food comes from as much as possible.
So, organic can be good but sometimes there are better options. It comes back to you educating yourself and making informed choices about the food you eat.