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Do you buy organic?

D

Demon Hunter

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 30, 2004
2,284
39
I try to buy organic when I can. I think it's easily worth the increase in price. MSG scares me! My favorite is probably Annie's Homegrown pasta. Yum.

I'm a conservative on almost all the issues, except organic food! *hops on the hippie bandwagon*
 
I don't usually go out of my way to look for organic, but one of my favorite stores is Trader Joe's, which carries a majority of organic foods.
 
I do when I can. Some things are just too expensive to justify the cost (3 lemons for $2.99 versus a bag of 12 conventially grown for $2.99).
 
I try to, mostly because organic produce seems to be much better looking and tasting than conventional. Not sure if it's entirely because of a lack of synthetic chemicals, or just because the (generally) smaller organic farms handle things less or better than the big packers...
 
Demon Hunter said:
Really? Where can I get one of those? :p
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When you have a headache for 21 straight months, methadone, morphine and other pain killers don't work, and you live on anti-nausea pills.

Still want one? :p
 
I buy the Annie's stuff because there is a bunny on the box, and Kraft ruined their version ages ago.

I'd still buy Annie's if it was made from petroleum byproducts, provided that they were yummy petroleum byproducts and there was still a bunny on the box.
 
I do whenever I can. It's not as cheap, obviously, but I feel the health benefits and the environmental benefits are worth a small sacrifice on my part.
 
I don't look for organic because the price differential is a bit much, as iGary mentioned above.
I'm sure once I'm not on such a fixed budget, I'll actively buy organic stuff just because I hate thinking of all the chemicals and preservatives I'm ingesting.
 
I don't buy organic...

But it seems like everyone in Vancouver does....and pushes it like it's some kind of drug...

It annoys me,

Organic (to me) tastes worse, and costs more.....

I figure, if I'm gonna get all health conscious and go organic, I should probably quit smoking first......
 
I would like to be in the situation to buy organic exclusively, but there are times when I don't. I do try and buy some vegetables (and various other things like coffee or chicken) organically, that I know are higher risk from being contaminated. I do find the cost prohibitive for a lot of things, but I think some of that cost at supermarkets in the UK is due to the way they're sold. For instance, I don't necessarily want to buy a 5 pack of flat mushrooms - I just want one or two. They sell the non-organic ones separately, but the organic ones come in overpriced 5 packs, with massive amounts of unnecessary packaging. A few pence more per mushroom isn't much, but a 5 pack for £2 is a lot more than 60p for 2 mushrooms. And I just don't agree with the plastic tray covered with clingfilm convenience type packaging under any circumstances – I'd rather choose my own fruit and vegetables.
 
Lau said:
I would like to be in the situation to buy organic exclusively, but there are times when I don't. I do try and buy some vegetables (and various other things like coffee or chicken) organically, that I know are higher risk from being contaminated. I do find the cost prohibitive for a lot of things, but I think some of that cost at supermarkets in the UK is due to the way they're sold. For instance, I don't necessarily want to buy a 5 pack of flat mushrooms - I just want one or two. They sell the non-organic ones separately, but the organic ones come in overpriced 5 packs, with massive amounts of unnecessary packaging. A few pence more per mushroom isn't much, but a 5 pack for £2 is a lot more than 60p for 2 mushrooms. And I just don't agree with the plastic tray covered with clingfilm convenience type packaging under any circumstances – I'd rather choose my own fruit and vegetables.
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My local health food shop just has trays of organic veg,you select and weigh it yourself stick the price on the paper bag provided and bob's your uncle.The same with herbs and spices they come in large sweet jars and you weigh and price it yourself also no new carrier bags people just bring in the used ones from home when they've collected a bundle.Must be similar places around the UK,there's several I can think of within a few miles of me,mostly they're cooperatives so the prices are pretty reasonable.As you point out supermarkets make you buy too much at a time and half of it gets tossed.
 
Organic foods are like recycling, acupuncture and hybrids.

It's just stuff that costs people assloads of money to feel good about themselves for doing absolutely nothing good for the world. Whatever you do, don't stop consuming, don't conserve, just buy differently (and more expensively) and everything will be okay.

The crackpots pushing this stuff on the hard sell have an agenda to eliminate modern farming technology -- technology that has saved many billions of human beings from hunger and starvation over the past 50 years.

They're the cruel elitist nutters who give real environmental and health concerns (with real science behind them) a bad name.
 
Peterkro said:
My local health food shop just has trays of organic veg,you select and weigh it yourself stick the price on the paper bag provided and bob's your uncle.The same with herbs and spices they come in large sweet jars and you weigh and price it yourself also no new carrier bags people just bring in the used ones from home when they've collected a bundle.Must be similar places around the UK,there's several I can think of within a few miles of me,mostly they're cooperatives so the prices are pretty reasonable.As you point out supermarkets make you buy too much at a time and half of it gets tossed.
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I know, this has been a bone of contention ever since I moved to Bath. :mad: :D Having lived in Edinburgh and London (Tooting Broadway) before with loads of good quality greengrocers, especially various Indian greengrocers with tons of brilliant veg and huge bunches of herbs, this dump has been a bit of a nightmare - there's 3 greengrocers – one is really low quality and the other 2 are in the surrounding villages. :rolleyes: I'd rather buy non-organic veg from a decent greengrocer than big bulk packs of organic supermarket stuff.

5 days and counting till I move back to a proper city...:cool:
 
pseudobrit said:
Organic foods are like recycling, acupuncture and hybrids.

It's just stuff that costs people assloads of money to feel good about themselves for doing absolutely nothing good for the world. Whatever you do, don't stop consuming, don't conserve, just buy differently (and more expensively) and everything will be okay.

The crackpots pushing this stuff on the hard sell have an agenda to eliminate modern farming technology -- technology that has saved many billions of human beings from hunger and starvation over the past 50 years.

They're the cruel elitist nutters who give real environmental and health concerns (with real science behind them) a bad name.
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I'd have to say that I buy organic for not one reason you've mentioned, but I would guess some do.

I just prefer not have pesticides or toxins on my food if I can avoid it, which I know is not always a real possibility. I could care less about the world, it's going down the crapper anyway.
 
pseudobrit said:
Organic foods are like recycling, acupuncture and hybrids.
Click to expand...

I've just finished 48 weeks of chemo and believe me you don't want to know about the side effects,the main thing that got me through it was acupuncture,full body once a week provided free of charge by the NHS they seem to think it's cost effective.If you think it's crap fine I could care less,but it works extremely well for me.
 
iGary said:
I just prefer not have pesticides or toxins on my food if I can avoid it, which I know is not always a real possibility.
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I don't buy organic for those 'hippy' reasons either. I buy it because I like to know that my beef wasn't fed with pellets made from sheep's brains and that my eggs didn't come from chickens huddled 5 to a foot wide cage and that my chicken breasts haven't been injected with water/fat mix to make them look pinker/plumper. And food with the organic mark, at least in the UK, has gone through some pretty stringent Soil Association benchmarks. Where I can get a similar provenance from non-organic, I'll buy that and I'll pay more to do so.

I'm not against farming technology but I'd say I was against intensive farming where the farmers are being screwed so much by the distributors/stores that they have to cut corners...
 
eva01 said:
When you have a headache for 21 straight months, methadone, morphine and other pain killers don't work, and you live on anti-nausea pills.

Still want one? :p
Click to expand...

I think I'll stick with MSG. :eek:

iMeowbot, I heart you.
 
MSG... I get cravings for it. So I can't really avoid it.

As for organic foods, yeah, I don't really much care either way. There is a local farmers market so I get things there some times. Buy eggs occasionally off of a friend who does free range chickens, (when he has a surplus, he is under contract to a bakery for most of his production)

I don't really seek it out. Well some times in the fall when the corn comes in I buy it off the back of truck.

Oohh... Gotta gets me some cider this year.

In general though, no.
 
Peterkro said:
I've just finished 48 weeks of chemo and believe me you don't want to know about the side effects,the main thing that got me through it was acupuncture,full body once a week provided free of charge by the NHS they seem to think it's cost effective.If you think it's crap fine I could care less,but it works extremely well for me.
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A peer-reviewed, mainstream medical study conclusively proving its efficacy (like the ones you can find proving that chemotherapy works) would go a long way.

There are none; "alternative medicine" is a billion-dollar industry with no science behind it, only money and marketing. It astounds me that people will pay thousands to get their backs cracked (chiropractic) or for a nice rubdown (massage therapy) and think they're getting medical treatment when there's zero scientific evidence behind it.

It's much the same with organics. Where's the science? I know where the money is.
 
pseudobrit said:
A peer-reviewed, mainstream medical study conclusively proving its efficacy (like the ones you can find proving that chemotherapy works) would go a long way.

There are none; "alternative medicine" is a billion-dollar industry with no science behind it, only money and marketing. It astounds me that people will pay thousands to get their backs cracked (chiropractic) or for a nice rubdown (massage therapy) and think they're getting medical treatment when there's zero scientific evidence behind it.

It's much the same with organics. Where's the science? I know where the money is.
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You mean mainstream studies like the one who said Thalidomide was safe and useful drug (actually it's recently been used again for some illness,with very strong warnings about pregnancy obv). The chemo treatment I was on works in about 50% of cases and this of course has reams of paper to show it does.They don't know of course why it works.Sounds a bit like acupuncture does it not perhaps you think the five thousand history of it's use and success doesn't line up against a medical study where most of the participants are in the pay of the multi-pharmas.You have a charming and naive faith in the infallibility of scientific methodology that faith is not born out by scientific studies of course.The peer reviewed studies you refer to remind me of various studies of how many angels fit on a pinhead,theology the science of the time,sure we've moved on but science in the future will be looked on as much as religious mumbo jumbo is today(by thinking people obv.)
 
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