1y ago

What common grocery item(s) is it absolutely fine to buy the cheap/unbranded version of?

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- Worst comment on here. Not using poison to keep of pests and having to have some decency about how abuse methods are for the land you work on is usually a good thing. The eco labels in the EU mean something. We could argue about how they could be even better, but they’re certainly better than not having any. I don’t know about other places though. Something to avoid is made up labels or esoteric bs like Demeter.
  
  In the US, organic-labeled products typically used way more pesticides than non-organic because organic growing is much more vulnerable to pests. They just need to be approved "organic" pesticides. It's a meaningless label here.
  
  To add on to this explanation, the food industry in the US is chock full of fake marketing terms that are designed to get more eco-conscious consumers to fall into their trap. This is a problem across large swathes of the food industry, but one of the most egregious is chicken.
  "No antibiotics" is supposed to mean the chicken was never given antibiotics (shocker, I know). There is no regular methodology for verifying this label is accurate outside of random sampling of poultry at slaughter.
  "No hormones" is a completely useless label you'll see used all the time. Hormones are not allowed in the production of chickens for slaughter in the US.
  "Cage free" is another tricky one. Chickens are almost never kept in cages when raised for slaughter. Hens are frequently kept in cages for egg-laying purposes. If you see this on chicken breast packaging it probably doesn't mean anything.
  "Free-range" means the chicken had some kind of access to "outside." There are no standards for how much "outside" space is required or what that "outside" space has to look like.
  So unfortunately a bit more legwork is required to make sure product labeling statements are actually worth something. That's a problem in the US, but the opposite side of the coin is problematic too (like how many people now attribute "GMO" as meaning "toxic").
  
  My brother in law works as a biologist for a large processed food company and he has to measure and track all the different batches of food they process. According to him it’s the exact opposite, there are measurable amounts of pesticide in all of the non-organic foods they get in (apples, sweet potatoes, etc) and absolutely zero measurable amount of pesticides in the organic food they receive.
  I used to think the same as you until hearing it from him that it’s an actual measurable difference and the exact opposite of what I thought.
  
  Not being soaked in RoundUp is a win.

119 comments