It’s a trend so inescapable that it’s transforming the food industry and changing how we get our food. Eating organically — and for some, also locally — has become its own subculture, with people adjusting their eating habits and the sourcing of their food as they’re confronted with the unpleasant reality of how much of our food gets to our tables.
It’s not just because of the Monsanto horror stories you or your friends might’ve heard about, or because of some misplaced hipster conviction to eat better food than the plebeians in the dark; though for some people, both could in fact be considerations. People looking to start an organic lifestyle have a wide array of reasons to do so.
During the course of the semester, one of my classes has focused on the issues surrounding food. So as part of it, I decided to try going organic for a week — and the results might not shock you.
As part of the weeklong experiment, I knew I needed to start off by having something to compare. I recorded what I ate during a normal week in college and, if anything, that’s probably what prodded me to reconsider what I eat after everything was said and done.
I eat out a lot — and it adds up in dollars and cents. But also eating out saves time, a lot of it. It also doesn’t help that Bloomington has fantastic restaurants that will spare you the set up, the clean up, the odor and disappointment in bad-tasting food.
Some of the deeper implications of not eating organically, however, lie in the sourcing of the food, the carbon footprint of getting it to your table, the preservatives used to get it to survive the journey and the power of “big food” — which doesn’t even include the realm of GMOs and the controversy behind their use.
Meanwhile, eating organically does have its benefits. For one, the food you eat is vastly more likely to be fresh compared to the produce shipped in from other parts of the country, if not the planet. As a result the extent of processing in our foods can be ridiculous.
Something as simple as orange, one might expect, would be pretty straightforward. Yet our orange juice (not from concentrate) is stripped of oxygen before being put in storage tanks where it can stay for upwards of a year before being injected with artificial flavors to make up for the ones lost, according to wnyc.org.
Consequently there is a level of satisfaction that comes with shopping and eating organic food, and more importantly, from gaining the knowledge to make those decisions. The downside is unfortunately its practicality, its costs, accessibility and a sustained amount of effort that, for a lot of people, simply might not be sustainable.
Eating organic is great. But before it can be the norm rather than the exception, organics will need to overcome a system skeptical of costs and benefits.
edsalas@indiana.edu
