I love bananas as much as the next mom. But when the grocery store is ready to charge me three times as much because those bananas are organic? You can keep them.
I don't buy organic, at least not as a rule. There are occasions — when there are no "non-organic" bananas left that aren't browned and smushed and my daughter is begging for bananas — I might be convinced to make the buy. But our mattresses are not organic. Our clothes are, by and large, not organic. Needless to say, our milk is not organic. So a New York Times article on a mother fretting over just how organic the mattress her baby boy is sleeping on should have made me feel bad, right?
Not really. Because for all the maternal guilt I can muster over things I have and haven't done for my daughter, I have enough other pressing things to worry about: The hole in the ozone layer. The mortgage. The reason the cat has started turning up her tail at the litter box instead of inside of it.
Sure — if you could tell me that buying organic and only organic was the best thing for my daughter.
Except, no one can.
Not the USDA. They oversee organic labeling, but they've remained mum on putting their own seal of approval on the O word.
Not a lot of scientists either. They say it's good for you — don't get me wrong. But better for you than anything else could possibly be? Not yet.
A study by the Danish government's International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems last summer found no differences in the nutrients present in the crops after harvest; nor was there any evidence that lab rats retained different levels of the nutrients depending on how the foodstuffs were grown. And no matter how many organic ingredients get piled into the mixing bowl, if you're making a cake, you're still not making health food.