As Bill Clinton noted so eloquently on Wednesday night, even broken clocks are right twice a day. As I have written in the past, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen is rarely right twice a decade, let alone during a 24-hour period. But every now and then even he can score a bull’s-eye. Cohen has been deceived by some of the most transparent villains on the planet, such as the Islamist regime in Iran that he disgracefully sought to whitewash in 2009 and even claimed they were not anti-Semitic. Cohen is also a dependable supporter of the Palestinians and has little patience with measure of Israeli self-defense.
However, there are some frauds that Cohen is too savvy to accept. Though organic food is all rage among the fashionably liberal and precincts where his left-wing views are received with applause along with the rest of the output of Times writers, Cohen will have none of it. As he writes today, after four decades of research, Stanford University has issued a study declaring that foods labeled “organic” have no greater nutritional value than other food. The same is true for organic meat. Nor are any of these trendy items less likely to have dangerous bacteria like E.coli. As Cohen rightly puts it:
The takeaway from the study could be summed up in two words: Organic, schmorganic. That’s been my feeling for a while.
Cohen does have some nice things to say about the organic food movement. He likes the fact that it has encouraged small-scale farming, though I think here he is just falling prey to the usual romanticism about old-style agriculture that has little to do with common sense in terms of food production. He also extols its environmental impact, though he acknowledges that organic food requires more land to raise food and that cuts down production and efficiency. He’s right that the organic has led to better labeling and certification.
However, he pretty much nails the foolishness that is at the core of this phenomenon:
Still, the organic ideology is an elitist, pseudoscientific indulgence shot through with hype. There is a niche for it, if you can afford to shop at Whole Foods, but the future is nonorganic.
To feed a planet of 9 billion people, we are going to need high yields not low yields; we are going to need genetically modified crops; we are going to need pesticides and fertilizers and other elements of the industrialized food processes that have led mankind to be better fed and live longer than at any time in history.
I’d rather be against nature and have more people better fed. I’d rather be serious about the world’s needs. And I trust the monitoring agencies that ensure pesticides are used at safe levels — a trust the Stanford study found to be justified. …
Organic is a fable of the pampered parts of the planet — romantic and comforting. Now, thanks to Stanford researchers, we know just how replete with myth the “O” fable is.
Cohen is right on target when he places the welfare of mankind over the pointless and often pagan reverence for notions of nature that have little to do with science or sense. The point of the agriculture industry is to feed the hungry. Organic food may not do much harm but it is largely nonsense.
While I don’t place much hope in the possibility, a column like this leads one to imagine that it might be possible for Roger Cohen to see the light on other topics. Perhaps if we’re patient we may all live to see him right on something else sometime before 2020.
Why it took so long?Who paid to this 40 years research, monsanto?American food is regulated by FDA. Food and drugs administration. European union do not except most of the American food due to herbicides and pesticides in it, not because of nutritional value. Monsanto vise president is now czar of FDA. Do you think you will see food labeled “genetically modify”? No way. We not Europeans, we not have the rights to know what in our food.If people get cancer and fat from the patented food it is just doing business as usual. To tell that organic food as nutritious as no seeds genetically modified products that forbidden to be sold in Europe is misinformation.
I never herd of this Cohen that supposed to be a smart man. Palestinians not producing much just trained to fight and brainwashed by islamists.they usually have 2-3,wives and many kids. Average Palestinian woman has 8 children. Genetically modified food can control berth rate without berth control pils. They can also control people. You are what you eat. You eat funny mushroom and you get high or down. No one knows why they made this food for Americans. I think they want Mexicans make less babies.
Now u2026 we know just how replete with myth the u201cOu201d fable is.r nr nAnother u201cOu201d ineluctably comes to mind when reading this. Pretty ironic coming off of Roger Cohenu2019s pen.
Now … we know just how replete with myth the “O” fable is. n nAnother “O” ineluctably comes to mind when reading this. Pretty ironic coming off of Roger Cohen’s pen. n
Nutritional values do not count of amounts of pesticides in the food. Both GM foods and so called foods raised on the herbicides and pesticides are leading to cancers in rats. LEBEL GM food!!! It is a war on the poor Americans to feed them with the pesticides and herbicides foods and GM products without there knowledge.
Hi Jonathan,
I also give you and Cohen full credit, as far as you’ve gone, but I think this an actual moral failure by lefty enviros:
- EU has pressured those (relatively) few developing countries they import food from to ban *ALL* GMO crops (particularly roundup ready corn), based on theory that some of the GMO ‘stuff’ might spread to crops intended for export to EU.
> this has pernicious effect of reducing yields of *all* crops for which any fraction is considered a possible export to EU, which reduces food available locally.
- EU (and America, to a lesser degree) maintains despicably high sugar price supports, which effectively lockout one of the few crops that is well suited to poor equitorial countries seeking foreign exports.
> morally unjustifiable
Best Regards,
I have never fallen for the "organic" BS. The Stanford study has borne out my suspicions that organic is more fad than anything else. It seems that just because the word "organic" is printed on a box or label doesn't make it so. In other words, the whole organic scheme is fraudulent. Anyway, I've tried organic apples and I don't like them.
What has a pinnace and GM food in common? They want to staff it in to your throat. What poor people you talking about? This patented non tested genetically modified organisms infecting and destroying normal crops.It has no seeds.It designed to make hunger and food shortage. Indian farmers had it and lost farms due to this products. Europeans are not dumb. They would make a revolution if secretly force fed GMO (genetically modified organisms ) as it is done now to Americans.
Absurdity is the hallmark of our age. n nWe have never, in the entire sretch of human history, been healthier. Never before have we enjoyed such longevity, high levels of nutrition, freedom from famines or such safe, cheap and plentiful food. And in the midst of this miracle there are millions of apparently normal and intelligent adults who think that going back to inefficient, expensive "organic" grubbing around with outdated, and wasteful technologies, on a small local scale, will be magically better for us. We have sailed on, leaving the Age of Reason far, far behind.
It's apparent that the Stanford article left out, intentionally, the most important reasons people buy Organic: to avoid GMO's, pesticides and growth hormones. Why are these things not addressed? Because it's propaganda, paid for by the food industry that wants to hoodwink us all. And sadly, the writer of this article has been hoodwinked, too. (Or paid off….)