Organic food sales are up an estimated 15 to 21 percent from last year. Typically, organic food costs up to 30 percent more than produce in a regular produce section.People seem to be more concerned about the types of food they are putting in their bodies, but is it because they really care or because it’s what the mainstream person is doing?
Most everyone strives for the “Hollywood” body – tanned, toned and thin. We do this by dieting or even succumbing to eating disorders.
If it is not worth starving yourself to look like a celebrity, why is it worth it to spend 30 percent more on your groceries just because the famous are?
Eating organic foods reduces the risk of eating pesticides and chemicals that nonorganic foods usually have, but it has not been proven that it improves health, said Dr. Emily Senay, on the Early Morning Show on April 2.
If it doesn’t improve health, it must make people feel better about themselves or they wouldn’t spend the extra buck, right?
Probably not. Many people are falling into the trap thinking that what they eat makes them a certain type of person that somehow feeds their ideas that they are better than they were before they began eating organic food.
The USDA does not offer any suggestion or opinion on whether organic food is better or healthier than nonorganic food. It simply states that the regulations have been met to consider certain food to be organic.
Many people work hard to get their peers out of the mindset that they have to do what “everyone else is doing” in order to fit in. Educators, doctors and even parents struggle daily with this issue.
Whether we eat organic food could be the next problem we encounter. Those who have the extra dollar to buy organic foods usually do, but why?
They do so because “everyone else is doing it.” If people see someone eating organic food on campus, they think to themselves, “Now that person has a healthy lifestyle.”
They have made a judgment about that person based on what the person is eating. They do not know if that person exercises or if he or she eats greasy hamburgers for lunch. All they see is that he is having a “healthy” snack.
Is it now an option to go eat a brownie? More than likely not. People will go to the grocery store, down the snack aisle and only select food that says “organic” across the front.
People have succumbed to the mainstream.
Instead, we need to realize that everyone is made unique and for a certain purpose. In the end, it does not matter whether we eat organic food while we are in college.
We need to own up to ourselves. If we don’t want to eat organic food, then we shouldn’t spend the extra money to impress others. It is not our place to impress worldly ideals. Our lives are much bigger than that.
Marissa Warms is a junior advertising/public relations major from Irving. Her column appears Fridays.
