• Question: why is organic food better for you? and can we have orgANIC plastic?

    Asked by bechope to Mariam, Leo, Jo, Iain on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think there’s actually any good evidence that organic food is any better for you than non-organic food. Of course pesticides are bad for you in large amounts, so I always wash non-organic fruit and veg well before eating it.

      I’m not sure about organic plastic really… plastic is a chemical that’s manufactured rather than being made from something that’s grown, so I’m not sure you could do anything to make it ‘organic’.

    • Photo: Iain Moal

      Iain Moal answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Well, it is debatable whether or not organic food really is better for you. Organic foods are grown without pesticides, and people often have a gut reaction that pesicides are ‘bad’ simply because they are unnatural. Some organic food have even been shown to be less nutritious that their counterparts, although the converse is also true.

      We can’t really have organic plastic, because plastic isn’t made from anything that is grown. There might be some confusion in language here, because when we talk about organic food, the word ‘organic’ means something completely different from what is does in chemistry. In chemistry, organic means a compound containing carbon and hydrogen, so all food is organic in this sense, and so is plastic.

    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I’m not sure I believe that organic food is better for you. Especially if you always wash fruit and vegetables before you eat them.

      I’m not sure you can get organic plastic if you mean natural, plastic is usually man-made (sometimes from oil) using a chemical process. Natural rubber comes from trees, so that could be organic. I also found something on the internet about bio-plastic made from natural materials, so that might be able to be organic, but I don’t know enough about it to be sure.

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