Organic doesn't always pay off





“It's the biggest challenge,” said Michele Whiteaker, a mother of two from Laguna Hills who writes the mom blog FunOrangeCountyParks.com. “Parents are the ones who really want to see their children the most healthy, but we're probably the most restricted on budget.”


Even the most fervently pro-organic advocates acknowledge that fresh fruits and vegetables are safe whether they're organic or not. But prices can vary widely from item to item, store to store. One answer is to pick your food carefully, because the label “organic” is more important for some foods than others.



“Strawberries are so porous that they absorb whatever's around them,” said Anna Soref, a natural-foods writer from Ohio who consults for many natural-products companies. “That's one fruit on the list that you always really want to try to get organic.”

When the nonprofit Environmental Working Group released its “Dirty Dozen” list of the foods that contain the highest number of pesticides, strawberries once again were high up there, at No. 2. At the top are apples, with grapes coming in third, celery fourth and peaches fifth.

The group also publishes a “Clean 15” list, with many of the thick-skinned foods on it, including No. 1 asparagus, followed by avocados, cabbage, cantaloupes and sweet corn.


“We recommend consumers enjoy eating both” organic and conventionally grown food, says Teresa Thorne, spokeswoman for the Watsonville-based Alliance for Food and Farming, a trade group representing both types of farms.



“What we urge people to do is look at the actual USDA and EPA data, and not the EWG's manipulation of that data,” Thorne said.

One flaw in the most recent report is that it doesn't include apples or strawberries, which the USDA last sampled from January 2008 to December 2009.

The EWG, on its website, says, “Eating conventionally grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all.” But it notes that hard data about the effects of long-term exposure to pesticides in the body is lacking.

Soref says the price of organic actually has come down a bit, as mainstream supermarkets stock more of it to satisfy increasing customer demand. But there are a lot of costs associated with organic farming that the public never sees.

For one, it's more labor-intensive, and the natural-based insecticides and anti-bacterials allowed for organic farms can cost a lot more than the synthetics used by traditional farms.

Certification, by the National Organic Program (which is run by the USDA) and California Certified Organic Farmers, can bring extra expenses, as well. For instance, land must remain free of conventionally grown crops for three years before seeds labeled organic can be planted. In Orange County, it can be prohibitively expensive to let a patch of land lie fallow for that long, generating no income.

“There's just not that much land available,” said Anne Manassero, who has run Manassero Farms with her husband, Dan, since 1976. They have plots of land in Brea, Cerritos, Irvine and Tustin, growing corn, strawberries, tomatoes and other crops.

At the miniature red barn in Tustin, surrounded by a tiny corn field, customers poked through boxes of fruits and vegetables. Betty Hinchman of Dana Point got out of her white Beemer and went straight for the strawberries. A friend's daughter was about to get married, and she needed some choice ones for chocolate-dipping. She paid $19 for a 6-pint “half flat” of strawberries, about the same as the strawberries down the street at Vons.

Hinchman said if she sees “organic” on the label, “it usually means I don't buy it. … It's just not a big issue for me.”

She might have been surprised to know that she just bought organic. The strawberries were grown organically, but the word “organic” doesn't appear on the box.

Sometimes, you pay for the label.

User Agreement

Comments are encouraged, but you must follow our User Agreement


Programs & Promotions
Business Directory
Ads by Google