Destroy the Planet: Buy Organic | Hacker News Reader

Destroy the Planet: Buy Organic

blogs.law.harvard.edu

26 pointsspottiness24 comments

Personally, I find that this was unnecessary:

  > Who knew that “sustainable” would mean a polyester
  > shirt and a bag of Fritos?

What does a bag of Fritos have to do with organic vs non-organic produce?

That said, 'sustainable' is a lot more just 'how efficient is our growing process?' A few things that he fails to mention:

- Dealing with run-off from industrial pesticides and fertilizers into our water ways (including the 'dead zones' that form at the mouths of rivers due to this pollution).

- The amount of energy that we waste in raising livestock. A good portion of the land that we use for growing (i.e. not grazing land) is used to grow corn/etc that is used exclusively for livestock feed. How much energy does it take for us to grow all of this food and then funnel it into the mouths of livestock? What is the amount of energy that we get in return for the amount we invest? How does this differ from just growing vegetables/fruits on that land and foregoing livestock?

- The amount of food that we consume that is totally unnecessary. If 100% of the people on earth ate as much as the average person in the US did, that wouldn't be sustainable. That 'bag of Fritos' is unnecessary. How much essential nutrition does it actually give you? If you really want to talk about sustainability and efficiency in our food supply chain, maybe we don't need to spend so much focus on comfort foods. Or at least focus on comfort foods that provide us with more than just fat + sugar + salt.

- The under-handed, rent-seeking tactics of GMO companies like Montsano. <sarcasm>Forcing farmers to remain dependent on a single company through technological means[1] and legal means[2] seems like a pretty efficient use of our time and resources to me!</sarcasm> (Read the full Wikipedia page for all sorts of nonsense -- e.g. toxic waste dumping, suppression of damaging studies, etc)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Terminator_seed_contro...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff

"How much essential nutrition does it actually give you?"

Well, let's see... a 1 ounce (28 gram) serving of Fritos contains 15 grams of carbohydrate, 10 grams of fat, and 2 grams of protein = 27 grams. All of these are nutrients, so quite a lot, actually. The remaining gram is mostly fiber, which, although not a nutrient per se, is a good thing to eat nonetheless.

I think you're using a non-standard definition of nutrient here.

I was thinking in terms of vitamins and minerals. Also 'protein' is rather nebulous of a term (though I imagine there is some government-approved definition that you have to use when generating those labels). Beans have 'protein,' but would should really have something like beans and rice to have 'complete protein.'

Those are more along the lines of micronutrients. Your body runs on carbohydrates. In a pinch it can create them from fat or protein, but that's pretty inefficient.

The "complete protein" thing is a myth, at least in the sense that you need to eat (e.g.) beans and rice at the same meal. You do need to get all of the essential amino acids at some point, but they don't have to come in one slug.

Also, the third world diets that you advocate tend to be, to a first approximation, pure carbs. They don't get organic baby vegetables from Whole Foods in January. They get brown rice, or wheat, or, yes, corn meal, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every day of their lives with occasional bits of other foods to relieve the monotony.

  > In a pinch it can create them from fat or protein,
  > but that's pretty inefficient.

[citation needed]

See vitamin B-12 and vitamin C, for example. On the other hand, in a pinch your body can convert fat/protein into energy rather than carbs. Though your urine may be smelly from the chemicals it uses.

  > The "complete protein" thing is a myth, at least
  > in the sense that you need to eat (e.g.) beans
  > and rice at the same meal. You do need to get all
  > of the essential amino acids at some point, but
  > they don't have to come in one slug.

I wasn't referring to the idea that they need to be in the same meal. I mostly calling out the fact that 'we' always tend to refer to 'protein,' but it's possible to eat tons of protein and still be missing out on some essential amino acids.

  > Also, the third world diets that you advocate tend
  > to be

Huh? Where did I advocate that? I was using 'rice + beans' as an example. Also, where did I say anything about Whole Foods? You seem to be constructing a bunch of straw men arguments based on the idea that I'm some person that fits into some sort of 'bucket' with other people you disagree with.

WRT to your request for citation, I can point you toward this[1] (not sure about the protein/ muscle claim) wikipedia post, and quote a portion:

"Ketosis is deliberately induced by use of a ketogenic diet as a medical intervention in cases of non-responsive epilepsy.[6] Other uses of low-carbohydrate diets remain controversial."

What I find interesting is the assumption that everyone operates with an intentional diet. I forget to eat all the time.

EDIT: Maybe I should elaborate to say that I had unintentionally adopted a "ketogenic diet" by accident, and it took me 4 years to figure that out.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis

Ketosis talks about converting fatty acids to energy (when your body runs out of glucose/glycogen). It says nothing about creating vitamins and minerals out fat+sugar+salt.

If your body could get all the essential nutrients out of nothing but carbs and/or fats, then malnutrition would be a fictitious condition, as would be scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency).

I'm all for listening to contrarian arguments, but this seems a little inconsistent:

"Organic farmers won’t use Roundup and other herbicides, so they plow the weeds under, which kills a lot of small animals"

In other words: herbicides are good, farmers should use them.

"Standard industrial cotton has Bacillus thuringiensis (“bt”) genes mixed in and these kill pests, cutting the need for sprayed pesticides in half."

In other words: pesticides are bad, farmers should not use them.

"Organic farmers won’t use standard fertilizer, but only manure from cows, which means we’ll need a lot more cows running around"

By the same argument, recycling is bad because we'll need a lot more garbage to recycle.

You miss the point of the cow manure. There is only so much of it to go around, we can't feed the world's population using it.

And if cow manure actually was the only suitable material for organic fertilizer, you might have a point. It's called COMPOST, and it can be made from almost any organic waste.

I don't think you quite understand the scale of the problem. We don't have enough usable organic waste of any sort to put on our crops.

Agreed. Personally it seems they made purly emotional decision to hate a trend and found "logical reasons" to support their whimsical supposition. I think most offensive is the implication that it is our duty to devastate our lands with pesticide and the chemical waste that go with it. This has to be one of the most contra logical articles I have seen in some time. I am for careful genetic engineering but so far it seems to bu used for noting more than a form of hydraulic despotism.

In principle, gmo is a fine idea--why not hack nature to suit our needs? In practice, the genetic modifications are often used to enhance resistance to pesticides (not pests). Then, more pesticides can be sprayed without endangering the health of the plant. But no one has modified us to tolerate the pesticides, which we then consume.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-disappearing-male/

And eventually, a few kinds of pests evolve to resist those pesticides.

It is true that the first generation of GMOs are mostly directed at that sort of enhancement. However lots of newer GMOs in the design or testing phases are aimed at a wide variety of benefits that will improve things for both the growers and the consumers. For example that big cuddly corp Monsanto has a Soybean that has had omega-3 added, as fish stocks dwindle planet derived omega-3 will be more and more important.

Think of it like we are at the same stage as computers were in the 1950s, what is happening today is nothing compared to what will be happening tomorrow. And it will happen in less time than it took for us to get the internet.

This is a pretty heavy handed interpretation. Sure, the definition of agriculture is humans messing with the genetics of plants and animals. Since the first seed was replanted, we have been involved in a process of selecting and mixing desirable genetic traits.

BUT. This is all just the application of technology. And like all technologies, not every application of technology is better than the last. There was a time in the pharmaceutical industry when it was OK to mix industrial solvents and addictive substances into a deadly cocktail. Then we dialed that back, said that wasn't so good. Some pesticides and GMOs are looking a little scary, sometimes "is that kerosene in my cough syrup" scary.

There is a good compromise with GMOs in my opinion. First we do the genetic sequencing to unravel the secrets. Then we use traditional hybridization to mix the strains for desirable properties without exposing ourselves to the risk of full blown genetic hackery.

That's without even bringing up the topic of genetic patents. I find it far more objectionable than software patents but it is rarely discussed. There was a good New Yorker article on it for any patent haters that want to raise their blood pressure.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/27/070827fa_fact_...

This is a total side note, but I find the reference to Fritos as something non-organic or unnatural amusing, because they're one of the most natural snack foods on the martket. Look at the ingredients on a bag of Fritos sometime. IIRC they are corn, corn oil, salt. Now compare that to something like Doritos.

Over simplification.

There are alternate strategies to reduce the impact of pests or to fertilize fields, or to just make those fields deplete at a slower rate. In some cases we would need the very useful pesticides or chemical fertilizers but right now they are just used by default. A lot of those GMOs aren't to make things have better nutritional value, or make it that you need to use less external help to grow produce, they exist to make the farmer buy more of something else. The roundup ready seeds are the best example of that; they make it possible to use herbicide by default, without having to mind it too much.

For some produces, organic growing is actually cheaper, its just dumb that they still charge us extra for it.

This article does offer little back ground argument or cite any true hard information. However the organic vs non organic debate is a large topic. The overall argument of this post is not worthless. The amount of land used to feed the maximum amount of people is significantly less using modern technology vs organic methods.

throughout history we consumed organic and we were fine so the by experimentation we know organic produce is generally safer (if handled cleanly).

GMO on the other hand maybe causing many things (jury is still out) and we won't know that for a while probably so I wouldn't risk the entire human population just so that we can have more food which kills us rather than enough food which sustains us.

and comments on that forum have listed that organic can have enough/comparable yields just that its labor intensive sounds like a job creation plan no body is mentioning :)

Totally agree. Same argument for paper vs. plastic. Takes more energy to create a paper bag that a plastic one!

Extremely little (none?) actual science or evidence presented in this article. If this wasn't from the Harvard domain it wouldn't get a second glance.

It's from a particular person who is recognizable to the HN community. That's why it got a second glance. Agree that it's a worthless article.

The 11th Rule: Any Greenspun commentary on a sufficiently complicated social issue contains ad hoc, appeal-to-emotion, bug-ridden statements regurgitating half of "Atlas Shrugged".

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