Food

These days organic foods and whatnots seem to be all the rage. And as usual, I can't really understand what the fuss is about. As a disclaimer, I have no firm understanding of the subject, but if I understood correctly, the core arguments from the proponents of organic food revolve around the notions that 1) organic food is healthier for humans and 2) organic food is more environmentally friendly. The first point seems to relate to the fact that with no pesticides, growth hormones, and other more or less interesting things the resulting food, be it vegetables or meat, is more natural and thus humans don't get exposed to all the unknown nasties in the non-organic stuff that are stuffed into plants and animals to get them to grow faster. The second point relates to the first in the sense that due to the limited use of fertilizers and other stuff, we don't pollute the ground as much.

I guess there may be some truth in both points. One question that springs to mind immediately concerns the efficient agriculture that we have going these days: can we organically produce enough food to ensure that everyone can eat and survive? Some argue that organic food is less efficient to grow and plowing down the rainforest is the only way to go organic on a global scale. To be honest, I can't judge whether this is true or not, but it does sound plausible. Secondly, the health aspect is something that I again find myself wondering about. My understanding is that due to the organic philosophy, farms that grow organic food have much stricter control mechanisms for ensuring quality. Which is good. But building on that, I would argue that non-organic food should perhaps be put through tighter quality requirements as well and mishandling of food should be punished more strictly. Perhaps this would drive the prices up, but then we would have higher quality food. As part of the stricter controls, perhaps even more emphasis should be placed on researching the stuff that goes into the foods.

Personally I'm not too concerned with the extra stuff that goes into foods as long as blatant mishandling and high quality are ensured in the production process. The thinking behind my view is essentially that if you look at the organic crowd, they're arguing for a return to the basics: no extra stuff in the food. But if you want to go back to basics, why stop there? I've recently been tuning in on some discussions about hunter-gatherers, and I guess the ultimate argument is that agriculture itself was the worst invention man has ever come up with (I believe someone attributed this comment to Jared Diamond). The idea is that since agriculture came along, we stopped acting in a way that was natural for humans, got lazy and fat and began focusing on things that seemed like good ideas, but ultimately had little to do with our health. So ultimately you should just run around gathering berries and hunting animals all day long. Not only would you then have a healthier diet but also focus on other important aspects of health, i.e. proper exercise and fitness. To be even more provocative, ever since we shifted into an agrarian lifestyle, the size of human brains has began to decrease, and the notions that IQs have risen are also meaningless since naturally people will adapt and become better at predefined tests.

I may not necessarily be that much of a hardliner in the above thinking, but it does sound reasonable. While I still may not necessarily change my eating habits too much, what I will do is think about the hunger-gatherer aspect in the context of exercise. That topic may actually warrant another entry after I think about it a bit more.