Column: What's really on your plate?

Farmers are to pesticides as Taco Bell is to beef. Industrial farmers are now barely a whisper of our once kindly, overall-wearing neighbors, and the Taco Bell “beef” product is now only 35 percent meat.

Industrial farmers have transformed America’s grocery stores into a site for a sore immune system.

Conventionally manufactured produce, meat and grains are coated with pesticides, which can cause a variety of negative health effects: early-onset puberty, an increase in cancer and asthma, to name a few.

The organic food movement combats these negative effects by limiting the amount of pesticides used to grow some produce.

In 2010, University of California-Davis researchers reported organic corn beat out conventionally grown varieties in terms of nutrient content. The organic variety contained more vitamin C and phenols.

Phenols, which are health-promoting phytonutrients, are considered beneficial in the prevention of chronic diseases.

Despite this perk, the organically produced corn produced increased the supermarket shelf price.

According to the Organic Consumer Association, supermarket organic products cost about 20 percent more than conventionally grown produce. Non-organically grown produce is typically about 25 percent less nutritious.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a system for labeling organic foods, but this system can be misleading.

Products labeled “100 percent organic” contain only organically produced ingredients and processing aids.

Products labeled “organic” consist of at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients.

Processed products that contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients can use the phrase “made with organic ingredients” and list up to three of the organic ingredients or food groups on the product’s display. Soup, for example, made with at least 70 percent organic ingredients and only organic vegetables may be labeled “soup made with organic peas, potatoes and carrots,” or “soup made with organic vegetables.”

Processed products displaying any of the 100/95/70 labels cannot be produced using excluded farming methods, sewage sludge or ionizing radiation.

These estimates and these labels, however, ignore the hidden costs of eating chemical food. Damage to one’s health, climate change and environmental damage are all conventional negative effects.

Americans eat to get full but lose nutrients along the way.  

­— ntepper@indiana.edu