Why Fear Pesticides?

I had a commenter ask this:


"I've gone primal, but I still don't buy into the organic movement. Maybe it's its association with PC elitism, or its suspect health benefits, but I think tomatoes are tomatoes. Pesticides are good because they keep plants disease free. I understand the opposition to hormone treatments, but not the antipathy to pesticides. If science enables us to create more from less -- and we can always wash our fruit/veggies -- what's the big deal?"  Tom from NY


Excellent question, Tom!  So I've spent the last five days trying to research answers for you. Not that I don't know in my own mind the answers, but I tried to find real meaty answers (cause we're primal, and that's how we roll), but all I could find were the extremes. Either way too fluffy "so, like, yeah, stay away from pesticides!" or way too difficult and technical.

So I'm linking you to a blog: Why Organic? which has the best of both worlds, simple, yet serious. 

And also to a radio show--The Robert Scott Bell Show. He's so well informed about foods, medications, hormones.. everything! that it's always worth listening to his shows. Even if you don't agree with all he says, you will find something in every show.  The episode I link to is not an in-depth discussion, but it does some some good bits. You might--if you're interested--go through his website and see if you can find anything else of interest. 


Deciding about whether or not you're going to ingest pesticides is like, everything else in life, a personal decision, but should be a well-informed one. 


I personally believe they are the cause of a many metabolic issues. The fact that the bags the pesticides come in have huge warning labels saying to keep it away from kids, makes me worry, since they don't taste great, and kids wouldn't eat handfuls of it, I'm going to assume that even small amounts of it is harmful to children. Why would I feed my kids something that is harmful? 

Also, I would suggest you watch the movie Food, Inc. An eye-opening documentary on how food is handled, grown, manipulated here in America. I really couldn't believe how much I learned from this movie. 


Thanks for reading and thanks for the comment!