The Science of Organics: Peeling the Onion to Reach Core Truths (continued)
Zoe Helene Interviews Dr. Charles Benbrook, Chief Scientist of The Organic Center
ZH: Have you noticed a significant rise of interest in understanding organics?
CB: It is a relatively recent phenomenon that people have come to question the quality of the foods they’re buying on a daily basis. Ten years ago the majority of people might have heard about certain foods with potential risk. Once in a while there was a food poisoning episode that was widely covered by the media, but for the most part the general public bought into the idea that American food was the best quality, most diverse food in the world and that it was also the safest and cheapest food in the world. For the most part, American food tasted pretty good, was convenient, and most people were getting – or so they thought – all the nutrition they needed.
ZH: Too much empty food?
CB: Clearly, measured by dollars and cents, or by impacts on human well being, excessive caloric consumption is now the nation’s number one public health problem. Ironically, as USDA explained last year in a little-noticed press release, the U.S. population is both overfed and undernourished.
The USDA has released detailed nutrient intake estimates that show that the average American consumes inadequate levels of about 2.5 essential nutrients each day. Some of the deficiencies are surprisingly serious, especially for pregnant and nursing women, for the elderly, and people fighting certain chronic diseases. Just in the last few years, the media has begun to focus on the decline in nutritional quality in the conventional food supply. Emerging insights have triggered open discussion among scientists and in the food industry about declining food quality. Protein levels have declined in many crops. Vitamin, mineral, and antioxidant levels in conventional produce have declined. Fiber levels have dropped. A growing share of fresh produce doesn’t taste good, especially in the middle of winter. Much of our food is highly processed and contains outrageous amounts of added salt, sugar, and saturated fats. So yes, we eat too much food containing high levels of the wrong nutrients, and not enough whole foods containing high levels of the nutrients we need more of to promote life-long health.
ZH: So many Americans think they’re eating well but they actually are not.
CB: The newly revised, widely publicized dietary guidelines have opened the eyes of a lot of Americans. The growing evidence of decline in the nutritional quality of conventional food is beginning to get on the radar screen of the average American. At the same time the proven benefits of organic are also getting more attention and acceptance. It’s this combination of factors that is leading more people to look for greater diversity in their food choices and more discipline in their dietary patterns.
ZH: So much of the conventional produce is just so tasteless.
CB: People are coming to realize there have been some quality compromises in creating the kind of food system we have today. Because of this recognition, they are much more open to new information from all sorts of directions on food quality, food safety, and organic food and farming. Awareness of food quality problems arises from many sources. For example, a mother buys a five-pound bag of conventional apples at the supermarket for her kids, only to discover her kids were dumping them in a waste basket at school after taking a few bites. Being inquisitive, the mom tastes the apples herself and discovers that they are mealy and almost tasteless. The first few times this happens, most people brush it off as an aberration, “Oh well, it’s a big food system, maybe these apples just weren’t stored right or were stored too long…” But after several such let downs – that picture-perfect peach that tastes like left over oat meal – people begin to recognize patterns and this leads to new questions and greater openness to information out there about food quality. I think the ranks of the unsatisfied food consumer are steadily growing and that many people are looking for and finding welcomed alternatives with a little green logo from the USDA.
