The Daily Procrastinator

The question isn’t really whether I spend my money on organic products.  The question is whether I buy into the organic theme.  And lately, I’m just not sure.

I’m an avid farmer’s market shopper, but as I make my buying decisions — $1 more per basket for organic vs. conventional strawberries, $1.50 more per pound for organic apples — I find myself hesitating.  Am I shopping at the market for organic produce, or am I shopping there because the items are fresh-picked and better quality than what I can get at my local supermarket?  More often than not, the answer is quality.

That’s not to say that I’m not concerned about pesticides.  When I grow my own veggies at home, I’m very careful to not use chemical solutions to fight against the wee beasties that may be trying to eat my sugar snap peas and tomatoes.  Yet somehow, when the pest battle happens at a corporate farm, I’m less concerned about the results.  Out of sight, out of mind?  Naive, yes, but I’m fairly certain that I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Still, I’ve been strangely attached to organic milk, for reasons that I can’t quite explain.  I’ve been fairly mindlessly picking up my organic milk each week, assuming that there was some sort of great benefit to it, but this week I finally caught a glimpse of the price difference.  My organic milk was 117% more expensive than its conventional counterpart.  117%!  No wonder they keep the organic milk in a separate refrigerator.  Did I really need milk that cost twice as much, especially when most, if not all milk here in California appears to be labeled  rBGH-free?  And why am I so weirdly fixated on organic milk when I don’t apply the same standards to cheese, yogurt, sour cream or ice cream?

There’s ongoing debate about the health benefits of organic vs. conventional, but it seems to me that the biggest distinction comes in the final paragraph of this article from WebMD:

“From these studies examining the differences between organic milk and regular milk, it seems clear that the diet of the cows may be one of the most important factors. Most organic cows are pasture-fed as opposed to grain-fed, and it’s their natural diet that leads to superior quality milk. So, it’s not simply organic milk that holds the prize, it’s organic, pasture-fed milk that does the body better.” [italics mine]

My milk doesn’t tell me anything about what the cows were eating.  Are they grass-fed cows?  How much grass do they have to eat before they’re considered grass-fed vs. grain-fed?  Is my organic milk any healthier than the stuff that costs half as much?

Next week, I’m going to read the labels and see what I can learn about my cows’ diets.  If I can’t find any useful information, then I’m going to be saving a few dollars on next week’s grocery bill.