Part of the problem with “organic” food (nonsense term, all food is organic by definition) is the fear-mongering around GMOs.

GMOs are going to be a big part of how we feed a population of 7 billion plus. Between the increased yield and lower requirement for pesticides, they have undeniable benefits.

Repeatedly, companies large and small have been caught passing conventionally grown vegetables as organic. When they get caught, they pay a fine that's far less than the profit they make, and then they move on with little notice.
Recently I read about a huge grain supplier (i think for general mills) that had been selling their conventional grain as organic for decades, so all the higher priced organic products made from it weren't actually organic, but there's no refund coming for customers.

This means store bought organic food is a Crap shoot at best.

If you want fresh, clean, eco friendly vegetables, grow your own. It's really the only way to be sure what you're getting.

Your video, Kurzgesagt - Is Organic Food Really Better or is It a Scam?, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

In Arizona, I was heading home, last day of work for 2 weeks... stopped at the the organic food store, somehow glanced behind me and noticed that the night sky was getting tore/lit up. Pulled out my phone cam started filming it while someone asked me "what is that?" I jokingly said it's a UFO, then I said it was a comet - but no shit I swear that a lot of people were thinking in the back of their minds - "WTF, North Korea about to start some SERIOUS SHIT!" lol

Too bad for that last one on organic food... kind of lessened my trust in the previous answers.

Thank you... You noted the number of recalls of organic foods; would have been even more valuable with a comparison of proportional illnesses/deaths resulting from organic versus conventionally produced foods.

Wait.. overweight people don't have control of their lives?

Good food isn't necessarily just rabbit food. Organic food for example, tastes wonderful. Yes it's expensive to buy pre-packated organic foods in the grocery store but joining a local co-op or community of organic farmers in your area can save a lot of money.

Cook with raw ingredients, significantly cut prepackaged or fast food/restaurant meals. A lot of things considered unhealthy just a few years ago are being revealed to be very good for you, like butter, whole milk (especially unpasteurized). Meats are fine in moderation, even red meat is really good for you if you reduce over-all consumption of it.

Healthy food can be absolutely delicious, it just takes a bit of prep time and some cooking skill. Eating healthy doesn't mean 24/7 salad with a side of salad.

What the fuck does "organic" mean anyway? ALL food is organic. Perhaps with the one exception: salt. Can anyone think of any non-organic foods?

Will it kill you? No. Is it even bad for you? No. Does it taste good? Yes. So who gives a shit. The stuff they use to keep its shape is probably not worse for you than the sugar they sweeten the product with. And that is a natural product. It is the same thing with the "Organic Food" trend. The naturalistic fallacy abounds in this day and age, even with all of the science that shows that GMOs are treated exactly the same in the human body as non-GMOs. People still believe that just because something has an unpronounceable name, it is immediately bad for you, when nature itself is the thing we have to fight against.

wut? Organic food refers to the process it goes through to receive organic certification - i.e. you were looking at the wrong wikipedia entry.

Try this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification

Essentially it's growing food without most of the harmful chemicals, it's therefore a sustainable farming practice. Less spray residue in the food, less toxins in the environment, better for pretty much everyone unless you are a worker at Monsanto or get paid by a political think tank.

Organic certification is not perfect however, some countries (like China) have poor certification protocols, and many countries labelling laws allow some non-organic food in an organic product and it can still be called organic.

Related: http://videosift.com/video/Organic-Food-5-Reasons-to-Eat-Organic-Food

Other interesting anti-science partisan issues are GMO/biotech, nuclear power, evolution, big bang, vaccines, AIDS, fracking, organic foods, vitamin supplements, and a host of others. Note that many of those are pegged in liberal circles as well, anti-science is a bipartisan issue, just depends on the issue.

I'm sure I'm going to elicit the ire from the sift for saying this but, for all of Beck's usual nuttiness, I actually think he's correct in this instance: we actually do not need an FDA to tell us what "organic" does or does not mean. At this point, the FDA has co-opted the label "organic" such that it doesn't mean anything anymore. In fact, the FDA now prohibits the use of the term "organic" unless it meets their lobby-prone restrictions (thereby driving up the costs). Even the (private!) Berkeley Ecology Center* (which keeps track of these kinds of issues and whose Farmer's Market Manager is actually a good friend of mine) agrees that the government-owned "organic" labeling system means little to nothing anymore.

So, as Beck is suggesting here, having private institutions that you trust can (and in many instances already do) provide you with the information that you'd want/need to get organic food at affordable prices.

For example, the Non-GMO Project (again, a Private organization) that lists and labels GMO-free foods are doing a great job, much better than the FDA care to or even could.

*The Berkeley Ecology Center are a private (!) "ecological think tank" and do not actively publish, but they will give you as much documentation as you'd like, if you request them, of any references, legislation, regulations, etc. and where to find them. If you need documentation, check out their public archive found here.
I'd say that their existence alone helps support Beck's argument here. The Ecology Center can tell you anything you'd want to know from the FDA (and much more that the FDA -- or even the EPA -- wouldn't want you to know) or they can tell you where to go to find out. They don't yet have the resources to conduct studies on their own, so at this point they are more like an "environmental 411" to point you in the right direction to do your own research.

In my opinion, having thousands of these centers throughout the country can do a much better job of tracking these issues than the centralized agencies could ever do.

Uhhh, how is Whole Foods supposed to do the 'right thing' and find 'organic' foods if there's no standard and the producers can simply claim 'organic'? Is he suggesting that all companies that want to sell 'organic' must do their own testing on each item? How else would they know? With the major food manufacturers insisting they not be forced to label their products (at least GMO's or organics), how is the consumer supposed to make an informed decision, Mr. Beck? (...or is it that they are not supposed to make informed decisions, but instead are being asked to make un-informed decisions based on 'trust' of a company that hides what's in it's products from it's customers based on the idea that the customer won't buy the product if they know the ingredients?)
Idiocy.

dude,
i totally appreciate the time you took to respond.

i was hoping to avoid the myriad directions and confluence of misinterpretation in regards to political and economic understandings may take.

we agree more than we disagree,believe it or not.
we agree we do not have a free market.
we agree that what we DO have is corporate socialism.

the reason why i dont feel a free market is the way to go is mainly due to the fact that politics and corporations have merged into one giant behemoth (plutocracy).

for a free market to exist there also has to be absolute liberty.-adam smith
we have neither.
IF we did,i would not be against a free market system.
at least not in totality.

i never really understood americans aversion to "socialism".its almost an allergic reaction and it bears no base in reality.
should EVERYTHING be subject to a free market?
police?
firefighters?
roads?

i feel this is where we diverge in our understandings.
to me health should be a basic part of civilized society,by your arguments you disagree.
ok..we both have that right.

another item we appear to diverge is HOW we view the system in place.
its all in the perspective.

you made a very strong argument on the current state of preventive medicine,health food stores and the like.
but lets examine where that perspective came from shall we?

the rich,the affluent,people with money and careers.
THEY can afford all those things you mentioned.

what about the poor,the working poor and the destitute?
where do THEY find the money to purchase items at the GNC,or at an organic food market?

what happens to them?

look man,
this is no simple issue and if i implied that it was i apologize.
my argument was not to suggest some utopian fantasy,as i assume yours was not either.
my argument is that some things should be a basic for civilized society.
in my opinion health care is one of them.

i deal with the very people that could NEVER afford you.
so my perspective is born from that perspective.
in a free market there will be losers.the one who always lose.
the poor,the homeless,the mentally ill.

the free market is still profit driven and the poor will have it no better,possibly worse in such a system.

you mentioned cuba.
ok...point.
how about france?germany?denmark?

again,i am not suggesting my idea is some utopian wonderland.this issue is complicated.the reason why i suggested medicare is because it is already in place.

two things would happen if this country went the medicare route:
1.health insurance industry would obsolete.
2.the pharmaceutical industry would find itself having to negotiate drug prices.

i may be a man of faith but i am a humanist at heart.for-profit health care will still have similar results as our current because the poor and working poor population is growing.

i am all for an actual free market but some things should be done collectively.
some we already do:police,fire,public schools etc etc.
i think many europeans got it right.
its not only the right thing to so but the human thing to do.

thats my 2 cents anyways.i could probably ramble on for a few hours but i dont want to bore you.
always a pleasure my friend.
namaste