Scientific Truth: Knowledge-Based Health Benefits of Eating Organic

organic vegitables

In order for a food to be labeled as “organic”, the FDA has fairly high standards, requiring it to contain 95% organic ingredients. If you buy a bag of “organic” potato chips you can rest assured that just about everything, aside from maybe the salt, is organic. There are plenty of reasons to eat organic beyond just the healthy and fresh flavors.

Here are four well-documented and commonly known health-based reasons to eat organic for every meal.

1. Less Usage of Pesticides

The environmental and physiological impacts of pesticides have been heavily documented for years. They have been linked to diseases and disorders that can impact humans from womb to tomb. The chemicals that are in pesticides also harm the environment, which trickles down to our bodies.

Consuming pesticides has been linked to neurological disorders and chronic disorders. Their impact has been linked to birth defects, immunity disorders, digestive issues, and even a few types of cancer.

Knowing all of this, eating organic just makes sense. Organic foods give us the opportunity to live healthy by eliminating the amounts of pesticides we ingest. Organic foods can lead to better health and also lead to local ecosystems, free of pesticides floating in the air.

Unnatural chemical and mineral compounds are going to impact our bodies in ways that we haven’t had time to understand fully. We evolved over millions of years to adapt to the air, water, and ecosystem around us. With the introduction of pesticides, we have brought or exacerbated untold health crises.

2. Less Processing For Everyone’s Health

Since organic foods lack genetic modifications and processing that conventional foods are put through, they don’t contain any toxic additives. Since many preservatives and genetic modifications are meant to repel organic growth, we should be wary of their existence. 

When pesticide use is eliminated, natural growth and crop management practices are used. Natural crop management means that crops are rotated in ways that are good for the soil and good for the environment.

Pest control tactics like integrated pest management allow farmers to eliminate pests by introducing other pests. By getting closer to the land and ecosystem, they’ll get a better understanding of what the natural enemies of their pests are. By introducing spiders to a crop that can be eaten by small flies, you can introduce a healthy type of pest control.

Knowing how to defeat your pests without pesticides creates safer, healthier, and more attractive food. In the end, this means that the environment and ecosystem from farm to table will be healthier. When those pesticide covered foods reach landfills, they continue to spread their unhealthy chemicals into the environment.

There’s no point in trying to eat more superfoods when they’re not organic.

3. Better Immune System Health

Most pesticides function as something akin to neurotoxins. They function to attack the tiny brains of the insects that feed on the food being grown. While some of those pesticides are washed off by the rain, some of that inevitably leeches into the food and the soil.

In order to produce more food, these foods are also pumped full of hormones and chemicals. While we don’t know all of the impacts of those hormones and compounds, studies are being run. The challenge to these studies is that there’s a major food lobby to fight against and never enough dollars to run conclusive studies.

While there are food insecurity concerns to think about in the world, we need to be able to offer everyone safe and healthy food. If we’re compromising health for the sake of producing a bigger pumpkin, is that worth the risk? We need to be able to create bigger pumpkins that are also safe and healthy.

Foods that aren’t altered at all won’t affect immune systems negatively. They also contain a higher nutrient value, which helps to build health and heal us faster. The more nutrients we get through food, the easier it is for us to build up our immune systems or recover from sickness.

4. Antibiotics Work Better

The animals and plants that are used in conventional farming are organisms like anything else. They’re subject to disease, decay, and all kinds of vulnerabilities. Conventional or chemical friendly farming uses many substances that can interfere with how our antibiotics work.

Non-organic animals are given vaccines and growth hormones to help them to produce more meat, milk, and eggs. These hormones help to keep them healthy and grow beyond their natural limitations. When we eat their meat, eggs, or milk, we get the residual trickle-down of those substances their fed.

These substances aren’t prescribed by any doctor that we’d go to. If we ingest minimal amounts of hormones when we’re on a particular medication, we might not know the impact that they’ll have on our medicine. Since those impacts can be hard to trace back to their origins, our antibiotics are given an additional challenge to success. 

Indirect consumption of these vaccines, hormones, and antibiotics could account for a type of overdose that interferes with our own health. Most farmers aren’t required to disclose what they use on their plant s or animals. When this is the case, our health is in jeopardy.

Organic foods that are free from these chemicals and by-products won’t give us anything other than the vitamins and nutrients we expect. Our health will only benefit from eating these types of foods.

Eat Organic For You and the Planet

When you choose to eat organic, you’re making a choice that’s as great for the planet as it is for you. The lower the demand is for chemicals, pesticides, and hormones, the fewer of these things are produced and put into the earth. Eating organic creates organic waste and compost that can help to grow more organic food.

If you don’t think you can eat organic on the go, check out our guide to find out how.