The hippies have it all wrong. Organic food is no better for you than regular food. The only thing organic food does is give crunchy, Teva-wearing Californians a superiority complex.
It turns out that the organic food industry, which raked in $28.6 billion in 2011, is just a load of crap.
According to a study published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, organic food is no more nutritious than conventional food and both have the same risk for bacterial contamination, USA Today reports.
“[T]here isn’t much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you’re an adult and making a decision based solely on your health,” said Dana Brevata, one of the lead researchers on the study.
Researchers discovered that organic food and conventional food have the same levels of vitamins A, C and E.
One of the big tenants of eating organic is that organic food has less detectable pesticide than conventional food. While this is true — pesticide residue was found on seven percent of organic food compared to 38 percent of conventional food — the level of pesticide residue on conventional food does not exceed levels instated in Europe.
Basically, it is not harmful if a person ingests a small amount of pesticide, and the chemicals used today are not nearly as harmful as they once were.
Organic foods currently make up 12 percent of fruits and vegetables in grocery stores and six percent of dairy products, which often cost more than regular old Granny Smith apples.
Even though research suggests that eating organic offers no health benefits, people really like to believe that it does.
A 2010 Nielsen poll found that 76 percent of people who chose to eat organic food did so because they believed it to be healthier than conventional food, and 51 percent chose organic food because they believed it contained less toxins. Forty-nine percent of respondents said that organic farming was better for the environment.
So the next time you see a hipster reaching for an organic, eight dollar avocado, just know that you have a much bigger brain and a much fatter wallet.