5 Easy Ways to Go Organic…and hundreds more thoughts on the subject…

An blog post on the New York Times web site, Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, has folks talking. And talking. And talking.

The post is short, and it suggests that if people can only buy a few organic items, they should choose these five:
1. Milk
2. Potatoes
3. Peanut Butter
4. Ketchup
5. Apples

The post seems a little flawed to me — the logic behind #4 is that in some households, ketchup accounts for a majority of vegetable intake, and about 75% of tomato consumption is in the form of processed tomatoes. Seems to me that if a family’s vegetables are coming almost entirely from ketchup, they might have bigger changes to make than simply switching to an organic brand, but…whatever. What’s most interesting to me is how this short list has got people talking. In 3 days, they’ve pulled in almost 300 comments.

Some of the comments are familiar — food miles and carbon footprints, industrial organic vs. non-organic local foods, foodborne pathogens, treatment of animals and farm workers, etc. Some ideas were new to me (there’s apparently some question about whether organic peanut butter actually has higher contamination with aflatoxin, a carcinogenic byproduct of mold that may be lowest in conventional peanut butters). But the comments go on and on and on. It’s like a festival of people-who-overthink-what-they-eat.

Truthfully, reading through all those comments made me a little dizzy. Like: Wow — how passionate people are about their foods! And also, like: Whoa — how exhausting this all is. I’ll be the first to admit that it can all just be too much sometimes. Just too much to think about, too much to consider, too much to absorb. And here I am — a part of it all, talking about food, thinking about food, writing about food, to the point that it can, admittedly, become wearisome.

So, now, exhausted from reading the article, and all of the people who have thought about this article, and commented on it, and argued about it, I will say this: go eat something. Go eat something that tastes good, because you like it. Because you really, really like it. Don’t do it because it’s the right thing to do, or because you are afraid of every other option, or because someone made you feel like a jerk for not doing it.

Just go pick up something and eat it, and enjoy it.

Later, we can go back to talking too much. Later, we can chat and research, and overthink. But now, just eat something you like. Please. For my sake.

Me? I’m about to bite into some chocolate. Some 70% cocoa dark, almost-bitter chocolate. Okay, it happens to be fair trade (old habits die hard), and okay, I can’t even right the words “70% cocoa” without the words “Antioxidants! Phenols!” springing up in my brain like the annoying kid who shouts out all the answers in 7th grade social studies (Be still, nagging voice! Be still, shouting 7th-grader of my brain!). Nonetheless, my plan is to savor every bite. Because I like it. No, wait: because I love it. Not because it was the conclusion of 300 commenters, and too many books read, and endless thinking and thinking and thinking.

Watch me. Here I go.