How “Organic,” Really, Is Organic-Certified Food?

I know you often wonder if organic-certified food is worth the money.

If you’d rather watch this, rather than read it, the video version is here.

It is, because they cannot use genetically modified ingredients, and they can’t use the most toxic of herbicides, such as Roundup.

However, you may want to know what they CAN put on our food. I went on a little Googling and AI journey, and wanted to share with you what I found.

You can do all this searching on your own, to verify what I’m showing you here. Which is a great exercise to know, anyway, in finding the truth about your food and products and supplements.

I recommend you take five seconds to look at each screenshot of my web search, before moving on to the next section.

So, first I asked Google, what the standards are. So as you use AI, push past anything vague, with another google search.

So in this first screenshot, notice they prohibit the use of “synthetic materials and genetic engineering.”

Good, we like that. But notice that they don’t say they ban ALL synthetic materials.

And since I knew they do allow plenty of synthetic materials, even if not Roundup, I pushed past that, with my next search.

So we like this. They want livestock to not be fed growth hormones and antibiotics. We don’t like preservatives.

But we still don’t know what these “prohibited” substances” are. And, banning “artificial flavors” is good, but “natural flavors” are not nearly as natural as you’d like to think.

Generally made from GMO corn products, and unknown other substances. (Good luck trying to find out what they are. But it’s pretty obvious corn doesn’t have a wide variety of flavors, right?)

As you can see here, Google doesn’t easily cough up what the “prohibited substances are.” In this next screen, I learn that to get an organic certificate:

I have to apply; have an on-site inspection (I don’t know what they’re inspecting for, exactly); pay a certifying agency to review my application and inspection report; and receive a certificate from them.

This is less than helpful. I know the steps but I still don’t know what they allow and disallow. To be put on our produce, and ingredients for all the packaged food that is most of what Americans eat.

So let’s go deeper. Here are some of the things that ARE allowed to be applied to organically grown produce! You see that “pyrethrins” are made from chrysanthemums, which makes sense, since any decent gardener puts marigolds, similar to chrysanthemums but smaller, in their garden here and there, as a natural insect repellant.

But I searched around and I find that “pyrethroids” are an entirely chemical product molecularly similar to the natural insect repellant found in marigolds and chrysanthemums, or “pyrethrins.”

Anyway I don’t want to overestimate your interest looking up ALL of these chemicals that ARE allowed on organic produce, but let’s take this last one, sodium hypochlorite, and look up its toxicity.

So as you can see, death of tissues, or necrosis, or your whole body becoming acidic, are among the possible side effects of exposure to this chemical. There’s also burning of the eyes, nose and throat, and swelling in your respiratory system.

Just to circle back, I don’t think you can use the entirely synthetic pyrethroids on organic produce, but for your future awareness, whatever they find in plants, that does something they want to bottle for some purpose … I always find that they find chemicals to mimic it.

Even if you believe they are molecularly the same, and they really don’t have to be, they can just be similar … there’s the problems with all the acids and solvents and reducing and “purifying” chemicals that are used, and some of it ends up in the product that you eat.

So if the reason the pyrethroid kills insects, is that it paralyzes their nervous system till they die, shouldn’t we also ask, what does it do to humans’ nervous systems?

Here we find that there are 6 chemicals that make up the “pyrethroids.”

So you can find where the CDC has posted information about the toxicity of the substance used on our food. I looked there, and clicked in, to look at the known effects of pyrethroids on human health.

As you can see, CDC is well aware that these chemicals cause nervous system and brain damage to humans. Causing confusion, headaches, dizziness, and lack of awareness. But, they don’t dare do studies on humans, but animals show reproductive harm.

In conclusion: it’s not very fun to discover that even our organic produce may be sprayed with chemicals we would never want to eat or feed our children. And I don’t want to scare you so much as educate you.

And yes, certified organic is still better, worth the money–and also far from perfect. To be certified organic, you aren’t limited to the old way of growing crops that involves just manure and decayed plant matter we call “compost.”

So what to do? Animal products have far higher concentrations of the toxic chemicals sprayed on plants, versus plant foods. Not to mention that the vast majority of them are fed or injected with GMO foods, vaccines, steroids, hormones, and antibiotics.

So, eat the fruits, vegetables, greens, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds God put on the Earth and that people have successfully eaten for thousands of years, before cancer went from 1 in 200 to 1 in 2. And autoimmune and neurological disorders went exponential.

So, support organic whole foods, by buying them and being one of the few remaining willing to prepare your own food. It gives you better health and some pleasure in making your family’s food.

And, grow some of your own! We’ll put a link to our favorite tower below, to grow greens and herbs inside or in your garage or on your porch.

Green smoothies are a great way to get lots of foods in your diet that have dozens of compounds known to help your body detoxify and to support good health! People always ask me if I sell green smoothies for a living. Actually, I’ve never sold a green smoothie in my life, because it’s something you need to make in your own kitchen.

Some year-old (by the time you eat it) powdered greens product doesn’t come anywhere close, nutritionally. So I don’t sell that, either! Those greens powders are made from the throwaway parts of the greens that don’t get sold in the grocery stores and used in restaurants.

Grow truly organically in a garden, if you have a yard. Grow in buckets or boxes or even bags, on a sunny porch if you don’t have a yard and live in an apartment or condo! And, wash the produce before you eat it.

Thanks for following GreenSmoothieGirl and supporting my work, the last 18 years. I hope this is helpful to you.