[bluGill]

You seem to be mistaking organic for ripe nutritious food. Organic just limits some specific chemicals. That is it. You can replaces those limited chemicals with other "natural" chemicals which may be (and often are) much more harmful.

Organic does not save the earth. Sometimes is does, but other times it is more harmful than the conventional practice.

Organic is not more nutritious. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is less (because the farmer cannot replace the nutrients last year's crop took out)

Organic is not fresher or better tasting. Sometimes it is, but that is not a reflection on organic, it is a reflection on conventional farmers not finding it worthwhile to sell fresher.

[kentosi]

Can you back the claim up that natural chemicals are being used and are harmful?

I thought the whole point of organic is that there are no pesticides being used in the first place.

[SteveNuts]

Organic foods can still use "chemicals", you just can't use synthetically created additives (ferts, pesticides, etc.)

AFAIK they could spray the crops with arsenic and it could still be "organic".

[chc]

Look at the standards for organic foods. They're quite specific in forbidding synthetic pesticides, and even that has exceptions. Naturally derived pesticides, like pyrethrin, are allowed.

[bluGill]

Non-organic: roundup (from http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-gly...) The toxicity of the technical product (glyphosate) and the formulated product (Roundup) is nearly the same. The acute oral LD50 in the rat is 5,600 mg/kg [Rat]

Organic: vinegar (http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9922769) (LD50): 3310 mg/kg [Rat]

Of course there are hundreds of different chemicals to look at, and LD50 is not the only measure. It is enough to back up my claim though.