Next on the grocery-store list: syrup. Ah, here it is.
I eyed the choices, then did a double-take. The high-end brands were at eye level, and boy, were they high end. One variety asked a price of nearly 10 bucks for about 12 ounces. Farther down, near the floor, I found what I wanted: the lowly store brand — twice the quantity for less than two dollars.
How can anyone sell syrup in such small amounts for $10? Easy: It’s organic. It’s imbued with innocence and purity. It’s free of the vile corporate taint. Fellow shoppers, this syrup was lovingly made by happy elves deep in an ecologically harmonious old-growth forest.
Or something like that.
This store shifted toward the upscale end of the market some time ago, and the aisles now bristle with little signs that pop out announcing, “Organic!” or “Natural item!” Big deal. Snake venom and crude oil are natural, too.
Even so, I like the store’s extra choices and the exotic foods, even if I avoid them most of the time. Choices are good, even if rarely exercised.
But the whole organic thing strikes me as over the top. Surely, something so baseless will eventually collapse of its own weight.
On reflection, maybe not. People who buy organic are getting something they value. They’re paying a stiff premium not for only for a product but for psychological reassurance. Organic, they believe, is safer, or perhaps they feel the higher price is something to be paid as a penance for the excesses of consumerism.
There’s a parallel here with fear of flying. Commercial air travel is the safest means of conveyance by far; thousands die on highways each year while airline fatalities are rare.
Yet statistics mean nothing to those inclined to worry. Some people are convinced the chemicals used to produce food on big farms will eventually make them sick, even though the risk is virtually nil.
The evidence on this point is overwhelming. In 1996, to cite one of many examples, the National Research Council published a big report on carcinogens in food. The authors concluded that most “naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals in the diet” appear in such low amounts that “that they are unlikely to pose an appreciable cancer risk.”
Lifestyle choices pose far bigger risks. If you’re worried about cancer, you should lose weight, cut down on coffee and alcohol, quit smoking, stay away from red meat and processed foods.
I have to admit I’ve become more careful about what I eat. My daily cheeseburger has given way to the turkey sandwich, and sometimes I can be found in the supplements aisle of a certain midtown health-food store. I think some part of what I’m buying with those high prices is the illusion that I’m enjoying greater control over my health. Maybe it’s even true.
But consider what might happen if we got rid of all pesticides. As Bjorn Lomborg writes in The Skeptical Environmentalist, we might save about 20 lives a year at a cost estimated at more than $20 billion. At a minimum, that’s $1 billion per life. Isn’t that worth doing in a rich country?
If we can cut back on pesticides at a reasonable cost, who could object? Unfortunately, the trade-offs aren’t attractive.
Without pesticides to ward off insects and fungi, crop yields would drop, especially for fruits and vegetables. More land would have to be plowed. Rising food prices would mean fewer people consuming healthy produce, especially among low-income families. With fewer people eating fruit, cancer rates would rise.
As Lomborg notes, we’d be eliminating a minuscule cancer risk at the cost of more than $20 billion, while allowing additional cancer deaths that would number in the thousands.
Lomborg, a former Greenpeace member, drives many environmentalists nuts because his analytical methods frame issues as trade-offs and hard choices. That’s a direct attack on the movement’s core emotional impulse — that facet of environmentalism that resembles religion. For some people, I suspect, going organic is about more than good health. It’s one of the ways you’re saved, for crying out loud. It’s redemption. Some things are just taken on faith, such as the belief that eating non-organic food is risky.
If people want to buy that stuff and pay the high prices, fine. Just make sure there’s a good supply of regular bananas for the rest of us.
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