Organic Food:
How It Can Improve Your Health
There is no way to ignore the growth of the organic food market today; it’s everywhere, whether we shop in a supermarket or at the farmers’ market, organic is, they say, the way to go. But why is that? What is it about organic food that makes it so much better for us than the standard food we usually quite happily consume?
The fact is, all food used to be organic. It was only after the Second World War that chemicals began to be used to grow bigger crops, and more of them, in order to feed a starving nation.
Now that we’re heading – or trying to head – back in the organic direction, what health benefits can we expect to see?
- Nutrition
- No Chemicals
- Better Quality
- The Taste
Organic food is scientifically proven to be more nutritious than food grown with chemicals. That means that nutrients like vitamin C are increased by up to 27 percent in organically grown food. The reason behind the science is that standard food is grown in old soil which has been used over and over and isn’t given time to rest. The addition of chemicals was once thought to be enough to add the lost nutrients, but it really isn’t. And when it comes to meat, organic meat is much leaner, and where there are fats they are healthier than non-organic types.
We all know that organic food is food grown or produced without the use of chemicals, but have you ever stopped to think about what those chemicals actually do to us when we do consume them? It’s not a pleasant thought. Non-organic food is covered in pesticides and herbicides, the main function of which is to kill living organisms. And this stuff can’t be washed off, no matter how hard you try (it is taken up by the roots, and isn’t just on the skin of a product due to spraying) which means that when we eat non-organic food we are effectively consuming poison.
Eating and drinking produce of a high quality is much better for our bodies than consuming lower quality products. It has more of the good stuff, less of the bad, and because it is grown in a less ‘enhanced’ way, we know that we are eating the pure fruit or vegetable, and nothing else. When it comes to meat and dairy the same is true; organic cattle, for example, are raised in much better conditions than their standard counterparts, and therefore the meat is automatically healthier, just as the cows were. When the news claims that eating meat is bad for us they aren’t talking about organic meat; instead they are discussing processed meat or meat that is reared using chemicals.
Food grown and produced without the aid of chemicals tastes better than any other kind. The flavour is completely natural and hasn’t been ‘washed away’ by the additives that are often included in non-organic food. Why does this make organic food healthy? It’s because if something tastes good you are more likely to want to eat more of it, and that’s no bad thing when it comes to fruit and vegetables, and it’s not even bad when it comes to organically produced meat and dairy. Good tasting, healthy food will keep you away from the artificial processed food that is pumped full of chemicals.
So organic food has a lot going for it; it tastes great, doesn’t harm the environment, isn’t full of chemicals, and can lead us to a much healthier diet. Let’s join the organic revolution.