When eating natural fruits become risky

Yunusa’s friend is right. Health experts are beginning to raise an alarm that organic (natural) fruits/foods are being turned into inorganic (unnatural) fruits/ foods because of the chemicals used in growing and preserving them. These chemicals they say pose health problems that could lead to diseases like cancer. Mrs Serah Abagai, Head of the Dietetics […]

Yunusa’s friend is right. Health experts are beginning to raise an alarm that organic (natural) fruits/foods are being turned into inorganic (unnatural) fruits/ foods because of the chemicals used in growing and preserving them. These chemicals they say pose health problems that could lead to diseases like cancer.

Mrs Serah Abagai, Head of the Dietetics Department at the National Hospital collaborated this. “When fruits like apple are going to travel from distant places, it has to be packaged to preserve the shelve life of the fruit. Hence, some chemicals are used to preserve the products to make sure they are in good condition when they arrive their  destination. Fruits like apples, grapes which need to remain fresh before they get to their destination loose their organic life as a result.  So they are no longer natural because they have foreign matter that can be injurious to health. Organic foods are natural foods cultivated through natural means. But inorganic foods have a lot of chemical influences in their cultivation, processing and in their packaging.”

Organic foods are foods that are grown without synthetic chemical pesticides or fertilizers: consumers who buy organic are looking to avoid dietary ingestion of such chemicals. The organic industry has been surprisingly contentious, with some media reports claiming organic foods have just as many pesticide residues as conventionally grown foods. However, a 2002 study by Consumers Union (CU), New York-based publisher of Consumer Reports magazine showed that customers who buy organic foods are exposed to about as many residues as those who buy conventionally grown foods.

There is no conclusive evidence on whether or not levels of pesticide residue that remain on conventional produce are high enough to be harmful. Most experts agree that the amount of pesticides found on fruits and vegetables pose a very small health risk, especially if you do not wash or peel your produce before eating them.

But Mrs. Damkor does not agree totally as she argues that, “We are talking of cancers from genetically engineered foods; we are talking of chemicals in preservative agents. They are harmful chemicals that are not good for the body. That is why in developed countries, people try to spend so much money trying to do organic farming. They come together in groups to grow vegetables in gardens without the use  of fertilizers. I think the best you can do for your self is grow your own backyard garden, where you water your vegetable and put the chicken wastes as manure.  And for fruits we cannot grow like apples, we should wash them properly before eating, so as to avoid ingesting chemicals that is injurious to the body.