Organic Foods: America is Making Healthier Food Choices Essay -- Nutri

Many people in America believe that we should eat healthier foods. However, a large portion of the advertising created for food in America is focused on unhealthy foods and products, many of which are nutritionally poor and easily accessible to much of the population. This results in a contradictory ideal towards improvement of health, where individuals will constantly eat unhealthy foods and struggle to lose the weight that they will knowingly gain. If people in the modern American society were to focus more on consuming organic foods and products, people would be healthier, reducing high medical costs and improving the overall well-being of Americans. The benefits of organic foods should also be introduced to children in schools so they will be given the choice to shape their own eating habits for the future. The use of harsh chemicals in large-scale crop production is a common issue with non-organic crops. Intended to prevent pests and insects from destroying crops, pesticides and insecticides are often absorbed by the crops and are ingested by humans. Paige Parvin, a writer for Emory Magazine, addresses this issue in her article â€Å"Poison Apples†. In a study done by Chensheng Lu, assistant professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, focused on suburban children being exposed to organophosphate pesticides in food, a chemical linked to nerve gas that is used in farming (Parvin). Lu states, â€Å"What really surprised us is that the outcome reflects the hypothesis that by switching to organic produce, there would be no exposure to pesticides,† he says. With a simple change from eating nonorganic products and gradually introducing organic foods into the diets, similar to th... ...issued by nations on GMO’s and any possible need for their use in mainstream food markets, due to lack of testing and the assurance of any negative side effects associated with consumption of these modified foods. Spears, J.F, Klaenhammer, T.R, and Petters, R.M. Genetic Engineering of Food, Feed, and Fiber: Understanding Genetic Engineering. North Carolina Cooperative Connection Service. N.d. Web. 5 Mar 2011. This article was chosen for the positive outlook towards genetic engineering of crops, which help create more crop yields, longer lasting crops and specific variants of a crop resistant to pests and diseases. Though beneficial to the Earth, the lasting complications of ingesting genetically modified foods are a highly contestable topic in America, leading to the holistic and organic food movements.