Time for a good ol' fashioned rant!

I'm pretty sure most of the population of Las Vegas would starve to death if they all decided to only eat locally sourced food.

Maybe you are getting eye-rolls because you refer to pastured eggs/chickens. I live in a state with lots of farms and ranches and some of them raise chickens. Very rarely do you see a chicken in a pasture. Just saying.

"Free range" is the term used when not fencing in your hens. This means they are free to roam the farm yard and adjacent fields to pick up bugs, grass and weeds. But, keep in mind that if those hens are on a crop farm, they could easily be venturing into a field of corn, wheat or soybeans that is planted with GMO seeds and sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. I'm happy to report our deer and pheasant population is thriving but I know that people have a terrific fear of GMO.

Actually I recently learned that the term free range is often a marketing ploy as well.

Free run = no cages
free range = controlled access to outdoors, which in many cases is 1 or 2 hours a day
pastured = generally unlimited access to grass, bugs and sunlight and unconfined access to and from a pen

BUT I also know - almost with 100% certainty we SHOULD know our farmers we SHOULD eat locally and seasonally, we should be eating pasture raised eggs etc etc etc.

your "shoulds" are a bit judgmental. Not everyone has your mindset. If this is your interest and passion...hooray! Doesn't make you morally or ethically superior.

Or healthier, for that matter. Science has shown time and again that "organic" is just marketing, and there's very little difference from a nutritional standpoint.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Do you know how much pesticides things like apples and tomatoes absorb? That was a truly stupid comment. Try doing some reading on the "dirty dozen," the vegetables that are actually more harmful to humans than helpful, when grown in ways that don't qualify as organic. Not true for all fruits and veggies, but that was one ignorant comment to make...

ETA: read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen, where he goes into detail about how apples and other fruits from the past, prior to genetic modification, pesticides, non-organic fertilizers, when those fruits and veggies held 3-5 times more nutrients than they do now. You literally have to eat something like four apples to get the nutritional content of an apple grown in the last century or two.

I would just like to ask you if you have ever tried to grow produce as people did a 100 years ago , without pesticides? Most people would not buy it since it's full of bugs, worm holes, mold, lopsided--in other words unappetizing for the majority of people. Especially now since people are used to perfect fruit and vegetables. There are "naturale" ways to combat these problems, but they are time-consuming and costly. Farmers can lose an entire crop to "bugs". So in my opinion, to feed the masses, we need these awful products, or the price of food would skyrocket.

Yes if you are growing hundreds of acres of one crop, it selects for bugs that love that crop. But if you have MANY different plants and animals on the farm, and use crop rotation methods, you don't run into as many problems as you might think. If the farmer is conscious of the way ecology works you really don't need pesticides or fertilizers.

your "shoulds" are a bit judgmental. Not everyone has your mindset. If this is your interest and passion...hooray! Doesn't make you morally or ethically superior.

Or healthier, for that matter. Science has shown time and again that "organic" is just marketing, and there's very little difference from a nutritional standpoint.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Do you know how much pesticides things like apples and tomatoes absorb? That was a truly stupid comment. Try doing some reading on the "dirty dozen," the vegetables that are actually more harmful to humans than helpful, when grown in ways that don't qualify as organic. Not true for all fruits and veggies, but that was one ignorant comment to make...

ETA: read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen, where he goes into detail about how apples and other fruits from the past, prior to genetic modification, pesticides, non-organic fertilizers, when those fruits and veggies held 3-5 times more nutrients than they do now. You literally have to eat something like four apples to get the nutritional content of an apple grown in the last century or two.

I would just like to ask you if you have ever tried to grow produce as people did a 100 years ago , without pesticides? Most people would not buy it since it's full of bugs, worm holes, mold, lopsided--in other words unappetizing for the majority of people. Especially now since people are used to perfect fruit and vegetables. There are "naturale" ways to combat these problems, but they are time-consuming and costly. Farmers can lose an entire crop to "bugs". So in my opinion, to feed the masses, we need these awful products, or the price of food would skyrocket.

I wouldn't pretend to know what's best for the whole world or even the country. Was speaking in defense of the OP and of my own personal choices. I, too, get eye rolls when I talk about this stuff and I get so sick of the flippant responses. We can all agree to disagree on this one, but I have no idea how anyone can say I'd take chemicals over non-chemicals, especially when we're talking about personal choice and a type of produce that, in my experience, is quite readily available. If you can't afford it, I get it. If it's unavailable to you, I get it. But I can't know that some of those things could be harmful to me because of inorganic materials and continue to eat it.

In defense of In Defense of Food, my father, such a ridiculously headstrong, proud and very right wing kinda guy, who never admits when he's wrong, even to his children, read the book and started buying organic. It is full of very compelling, very common sense arguments.

ETA: And, yes, my wife and I do a garden every year. It's nothing fancy. We use organic soil, just from Home Depot. We use organic fertilizer and we even used to make our own compost. None of it was fancy or tricky, very basic. We didn't get enormous yields and I understand it could be because we didn't jack it up with more fertilizer, organic or otherwise. We love to garden and homegrown produce tastes 100 times better than inorganic store bought, especially the tomatoes. Homegrown heirloom and cherry tomatoes are the best. With homegrown basil and a little balsamic reduction, some nice mozz, they make the best caprese I've ever tasted.

BUT I also know - almost with 100% certainty we SHOULD know our farmers we SHOULD eat locally and seasonally, we should be eating pasture raised eggs etc etc etc.

Why?

your "shoulds" are a bit judgmental. Not everyone has your mindset. If this is your interest and passion...hooray! Doesn't make you morally or ethically superior.

Or healthier, for that matter. Science has shown time and again that "organic" is just marketing, and there's very little difference from a nutritional standpoint.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Do you know how much pesticides things like apples and tomatoes absorb? That was a truly stupid comment. Try doing some reading on the "dirty dozen," the vegetables that are actually more harmful to humans than helpful, when grown in ways that don't qualify as organic. Not true for all fruits and veggies, but that was one ignorant comment to make...

ETA: read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen, where he goes into detail about how apples and other fruits from the past, prior to genetic modification, pesticides, non-organic fertilizers, when those fruits and veggies held 3-5 times more nutrients than they do now. You literally have to eat something like four apples to get the nutritional content of an apple grown in the last century or two.

I would just like to ask you if you have ever tried to grow produce as people did a 100 years ago , without pesticides? Most people would not buy it since it's full of bugs, worm holes, mold, lopsided--in other words unappetizing for the majority of people. Especially now since people are used to perfect fruit and vegetables. There are "naturale" ways to combat these problems, but they are time-consuming and costly. Farmers can lose an entire crop to "bugs". So in my opinion, to feed the masses, we need these awful products, or the price of food would skyrocket.

I wouldn't pretend to know what's best for the whole world or even the country. Was speaking in defense of the OP and of my own personal choices. I, too, get eye rolls when I talk about this stuff and I get so sick of the flippant responses. We can all agree to disagree on this one, but I have no idea how anyone can say I'd take chemicals over non-chemicals, especially when we're talking about personal choice and a type of produce that, in my experience, is quite readily available. If you can't afford it, I get it. If it's unavailable to you, I get it. But I can't know that some of those things could be harmful to me because of inorganic materials and continue to eat it.

In defense of In Defense of Food, my father, such a ridiculously headstrong, proud and very right wing kinda guy, who never admits when he's wrong, even to his children, read the book and started buying organic. It is full of very compelling, very common sense arguments.

ETA: And, yes, my wife and I do a garden every year. It's nothing fancy. We use organic soil, just from Home Depot. We use organic fertilizer and we even used to make our own compost. None of it was fancy or tricky, very basic. We didn't get enormous yields and I understand it could be because we didn't jack it up with more fertilizer, organic or otherwise. We love to garden and homegrown produce tastes 100 times better than inorganic store bought, especially the tomatoes. Homegrown heirloom and cherry tomatoes are the best. With homegrown basil and a little balsamic reduction, some nice mozz, they make the best caprese I've ever tasted.

It drives me CRAZY that people who want/choose to eat organically and locally or want to know their farmers or choose not to eat processed foods are considered pretentious hippies.

I'm not saying I eat like this all the time or even half the time. I DO NOT tell people they need to eat this way. I do not condemn processed foods as cancer causing garbage, I do not avoid that stuff - because it is part of an enjoyable life.

BUT I also know - almost with 100% certainty we SHOULD know our farmers we SHOULD eat locally and seasonally, we should be eating pasture raised eggs etc etc etc. And yet I get eye rolls and scoffs and people think its ridiculous. It has nothing to do with weight loss, I know enough to know that a calorie deficit is all you need. I'm just sick of feeling ashamed of wanting to eat "clean" or whatever the hell you want to call it. It doesn't take a genius to know that it is not ideal to be eating some of the garbage you can get these days.

Like I said, I do not eat perfectly, sometimes I eat cookies and crackers and cake and chips - but it doesn't change the fact that someone who chooses not to eat those things is considered pretentious or elitist or something.

okay. thats all, out come the trolls to argue. Its just my educated opinion...