Organic vs. Processed Foods



Organic vs. Processed Foods

Introduction

Processed food is constantly the ridicule of health enthusiasts, vegetarians, and diet advisors. Processed food is stereotyped by many as unhealthy and full of chemicals-and that's partly true. While organic food is rumored to be the healthy choice, free of hormones and chemicals-again this is only partly true (Healy, 2004).

Organic food is typically the "healthier" choice, as coined by many health enthusiasts, due to the drastically reduced amount of outside chemicals and products. Organic food is said to be "completely-free" of those chemicals, yet the USDA defines 'Organic' as having BELOW a certain number or percentage of outside products (Bakr & Gawish, 1997). Many organic foods are not what you perceived to be "organic", as long as the manufacturer uses below a certain quantity of products it is considered to be organic and can be sold and labeled as such; which leads into the next topic, Price. Organic food is typically much more expensive than processed food due to the increased time spent cultivating and raising it, and the extra precaution taken in preserving non-chemical treated agriculture, not to mention the fact that people will willingly pay double the price for a product they believe is devoid of life-shortening chemicals and hormones. Despite the fact that, regardless of what you consume-short of being self-cultivated-you are ingesting a number of unhealthy outside product; Organic food is still the healthier choice (Healy, 2004).

While the majority of organic foods still maintain some level of chemical insert, they still have a drastically smaller amount of product in them. For example: An "organic" hamburger may have a small amount of toxic antibiotics and preservatives; while a processed burger is almost guaranteed to contain any number of growth hormones, preservatives, and chemicals added to it, which the human body was not created to sustain over an extended period of time. This leads to the rumor that vegetarians sometimes exhibit "glowing, radiant, and healthy" skin. This is because vegetarians aren't exposed to the immense number of life-shortening chemicals that are put in processed meats, and even organic meat (Auclair & Zee, 1995).

This paper will discuss the organic/natural food vs. the processed food debate; which is better and good for our bodies and minds? Is processed food really harmful and why is organic produce beneficial? Further it will highlight the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of processed food and organic food.

Discussion Analysis

What are processed foods?

The era of food processing began about 2 million years ago when our distant ancestors put flame to food and “discovered” cooking. After that came fermenting, drying, preserving with salt, and other primitive forms of food processing. This ultimately led to the modern food processing methods of today, which give us an abundant, safe, convenient, affordable and nutritious food supply.So the first question to address is, what exactly is processing and what are processed foods? Foods are usually processed for the reasons of safety and prolonged shelf life. The methods used include freezing, refrigeration, canning, dehydrations and ...