Produce: Is Organic Always Best?

Take an inventory of my shopping cart on any given Sunday and chances are you will see a good number of organic products in it. But I do not exclusively shop organic. For this post I’m just going to focus on produce. Fruits and vegetables. Yes, I buy the organic mac n’ cheese, organic juices, and some other items, but it is the produce where I find myself having a hard time committing. It’s not so much the higher prices that bother me, or the limited selection. For me it’s all about quality.

My number one consideration when choosing ingredients is TASTE. The fresher a piece of fruit or a vegetable is the better it is going to taste. Much of the organic produce in supermarkets just doesn’t have the same quality of their conventionally grown counterparts. From the organic domain I’ve had woody celery, pulpy apples and pears, oranges that taste like they’ve been refrigerated and thawed multiple times, and grapes that were dead before they hit my cart. I am seeing a lot of organic produce wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam so that its shelf life can be extended. Since not as many people buy organic produce it has a lower turnover. Supermarkets pay more for this organic produce and lose more money when the organic goods expire. So they try their best to keep it on the shelves as long as they can. In addition to this a lot of the organic produce is warehoused and trucked from far distances because of limited number or lack of local suppliers. The longer it takes fresh produce to reach the supermarket and your kitchen the less fresh it is going to be.

What about the environmental impact of organic produce? I never thought much about it before, I always assumed that going organic would always be the green way to go. But there have been some studies that argue organic goods have a worse impact on the environment compared to conventional produce, this article in the UK talks about it. I strongly disagree with these findings and I am suspicious of who and what groups are behind these studies (I’m thinking big-time corporate industrial farms). The transportation of organic produce is cited as a big carbon emitter, but if you look at all the conventional fruit in stores this time of year – much of it is from South America! What if I want to eat a low-emission peach or nectarine? Do I need to fly to Chile? Oh wait, no that would use gas.