Organic Foods – Understanding The Label

If one sees the statistics would clearly understand that although US is a country to abound in over-weight people it is as well a country to present people that lack their necessary amount of minerals and vitamins inside their body.

In this respect, organic farming takes note of the fact that due to the decline in nutrient density contained in the conventionally obtained crops, people are more prone to lack the necessary nutrients that fuel their health status. As result, organic food tends to be the one more required on the markets and as such introduced in the food market system as an accessible one to a larger number of consumers.

It has been outlined in the organic farming that the use of composting and other ways to increase the value of a soil, other than the chemical fertilizers and pesticides, improves the quality inside the crops that will definitely lead to a healthy food product.

Even if a non-organic product is released on the market having the safety label on it (regarding the taste and the density of the nutrients) the consumer can never know how that specific food product has been processed in order to obtain a good taste and color that most of the times resemble to the natural ones.

But consumers have to know that when a food product presents a label that is specified as “organic” this thing can represent actually the way of processing the product and not necessarily the natural quality and characteristics of the food product itself. Taste is one such example, since most of the times one might take taste for the freshness of a product which has just come in into the market but has no connection whatsoever with the organically producing of the food product in question.

Therefore, we need to know that the features of a product describe a product as being entirely organic are:

- the growing process has been done without the use of pesticides.
- no addition of chemical fertilizers.
- the soil was the one to be nourished with natural mineral fertilizers.
- the growing has been made without using various hormones, or preservatives.

The practices performed by the organic farmers are designed to allow soil to conserve the water, at the same time the farmers keeping the soil away from the pollution. As to the livestock, farmers prefer to spread manure or mulch in order to keep the weeds away that might damage the crops that feed the livestock.

Apart from this, we have to take note of the fact that US Department of Agriculture has settled a series of standards that need to be applied on the organic product label to let people know of its authenticity:

1. the label specifying “100% organic” next to USDA seal is known to be authentic organic.
2. “95% organic” means that the rest of 5% is not delivered in an organic form.
3. the “70% organic” label is the percentage of the organic ingredients that need to be described.
4. the food products that have less than 70% can describe only the list of ingredients that are mentioned as being “organic” next to their names.