Yeah, apparently that one episode of Futurama was right, "organic" stuff is bug filled 
That said, no matter how many egg salad sandwiches I eat, I never turn into superman. Curse you, Futurama!
The sandwiches have to be purchased from a gas station bathroom vending machine in order to work.
I'm actually surprised by all the hate on organic food. That said, there are a lot of distinctions to be made, here. There is plenty of "organic" produce out there which is absolute garbage. Just a cash grab, as you say. Organic food which is grown properly (in small farms, using compost and manure as fertilizer, polycultured to take care of pests and disease) is way better. It tastes better (MUCH better) and is more nutritious. But it has to be done right, and it has to be fairly local (=fresh), otherwise you're being conned out of your money.
If you're trying to buy organic food from a chain supermarket, then yeah, you're being screwed. That's because this "organic" stuff is grown in exactly the same way as the non-organic stuff. On massive farms thousands of miles away. They just replace chemical fertilizer with "organic" fertilizer, chemical weed killer with "organic" weed killer, and chemical pesticides with "organic" pesticides, and plant giant monocultured fields (=one huge field with one type of produce, like a giant lettuce field for example). They plant, tend, and harvest them in exactly the same way as the other farms: with giant machines that use tons of fuel, spraying "organic" chemicals at regular intervals. This food is no better than the non-organic stuff, and no better for the environment.
To grow proper organic food, you can't just grow it in the same way and switch out the man-made chemicals for ones distilled from natural sources. Otherwise it doesn't work. The fields have to be polycultured. Different types of food have to grow together. For example, beans to feed the soil, marigolds to keep away pests, and other vegetables in between. Compost has to be worked into the soil before planting if you want the richest produce. Then you have to go through and weed it and such as it's growing. But because it's not a monoculture, you have to do it by hand. You can't use a machine to go down each row, because each row is different. You can't spray a targeted herbicide on the whole field that kills everything but the plant you're trying to grow like the big farms do, because you're growing more than one thing. This means the farms have to be smaller and actual humans have to do the work, rather than diesel-powered machines. It's more expensive to pay humans than to fuel machines (though not by a lot these days, and probably not for much longer as fuel prices increase). But it's healthier and tastier, because chemical fertilizers only give the plants the bare minimum they need to grow large, without regard for what that growth is made of; compost and good soil give them everything they need to thrive.
If you're not convinced, go to a farmer's market and find some good stuff. Talk to the owners of the stall, ask them how they grow it. Splurge just once on a proper organic tomato. You don't have to buy this kind of stuff all the time (in fact, that's probably not practical unless you're rich), but it's good to know the real difference, and the supermarket isn't going to show you that.
As far as bugs are concerned, polyculture farming takes care of most of them. I had a large garden years ago which was 100% organic and produced amazing food; I took care of pests by planting marigolds and relocating spiders to the fields. The organic produce I buy from farmer's markets is almost always totally bug-free. The only produce I ever find bugs in is lettuce, and that happens even when I get the non-organic stuff. And it's not that hard to just rinse it off before eating.
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Topic: Food Thread: Kitchen Chemistry (Read 550796 times)