Organic Yes or No?

I grew up eating organic a) without) knowing it and b) before anyone was talking about it. It happened on the lush and green country side in Austria, with food coming from my mothers garden. When I went to college I moved to the metropolis Vienna and was on my own food-wise. Not to mention that I was not doing the home cooking like my Mum, I also did not buy "organic". Two years into it I developed a skin irritation that was here to stay: Neurodermitities. School medicine only offered Cortisone (but that is a different story). With patience and persistence I got symptom free. A big part of that I claim to my going back to eating organic.

For years I listened to the old debate whether buying organic is worth it. Like the chain smoking Grandfather of 100 years worldwide quoted by smokers it became the cheating organic farmer (you know the choke about what´s the difference between an organic and a conventional farmer? The organic farmer puts the fertilizer on the fields during the night...) mentioned in a newspaper to the non-believers in organic food. I say, I take that risk that once in a while I pay for an organic apple that is not 100 % organic. If I don´t buy organic I will 100 % have NOT organic.

I hardly ever participate in discussions like this, after all, everybody believes in what they choose to believe in. The only thing I recommend is to eat a conventionally grown carrot and an organically grown carrot. If you are at all preferring great taste, you will go organic for that single reason.

Only lately this topic came to a grotesque peak: Chatting over dinner (homecooked and organic at our house), a friend with a PhD in Biochemistry exclaimed on the topic whether organic is worth it: "I would rather put chemicals in my body than encounter a bug in my food!" That left me speechless. If you grow up on the country side, you would never say something like that. Life comes with bugs, THAT is normal. Chemicals - not so normal, because harmful.

At the end it all comes down to you making that simple choice: Bugs vs. Chemicals.

Are you a Bug-Person or a Chemicals-Person?