Jamie Oliver Says Organic Is “Normal”, Gets Ass Handed to Him

[progressoid]

On September 25th, Jamie Oliver, British celebrity chef, media personality, and self-styled “food campaigner”, published a blog post entitled, “Vote for Organic Food”. And with it, sadly, he demonstrated his dire lack of knowledge about agriculture, plant breeding, the food system, and the reality of the landscape of life for average families. And the worst part is, Oliver has a massive platform; everything he writes is immediately disseminated to millions of fans.

“Organic food is natural food, where nature has been allowed to do its thing”, Oliver’s Facebook page declared above the link to the blog post. “Putting natural ingredients into our bodies is only going to be a good thing.”

The celebrity food activist is either cleverly disingenuous, or has no idea what the word “natural” means. Admittedly I’m not a “roughing it” kind of gal; when nature is doing its thing, you’ll often find me running for the comfort of air conditioning and a delicious bowl of microwaved leftover stir fry. My followers alerted me to Oliver’s post, so I responded as follows:

http://skepchick.org/2015/09/jamie-oliver-says-organic-is-normal-gets-ass-handed-to-him/

And more...https://www.facebook.com/jamieoliver/posts/10153351064869807

[Trajan]

1. Well, it's rare I find someone who prefers to eat insecticide

There has to be one, and you're it ...

Good luck with that ...

[yellowcanine]

2. You seem to think Organic = No insecticides. Wrong.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/06/the_biggest_myth_about_organic_farming.html

[progressoid]

3. It's not a matter of preference.

"Natural" "Organic" "Industrial" They all have it.

About 99.9 percent of the chemicals humans ingest are natural. The amounts of synthetic pesticide residues in plant food are insignificant compared to the amount of natural pesticides produced by plants themselves. Of all dietary pesticides that humans eat, 99.99 percent are natural: they are chemicals produced by plants to defend themselves against fungi, insects, and other animal predators.

We have estimated that on average Americans ingest roughly 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides and their breakdown products. Americans eat about 1,500 mg of natural pesticides per person per day, which is about 10,000 times more than the 0.09 mg they consume of synthetic pesticide residues.

http://potency.berkeley.edu/pdfs/Paracelsus.pdf

[Nailzberg]

4. Seriously. Who would eat produce sprayed with Rotenone or Copper Sulfate?

[HuckleB]

5. You might want to check into reality on this one.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage/2015/09/23/the-role-of-organic-pesticides-in-california/

This piece should give you a good start.