Quote of the Day: Lisa M. Holmes on Organic Junk Food
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA 
on 09.12.07
Junk food is junk food and why bother to make it organic? But I tend to think there are varying degrees of junk food and I also believe that not all processed food is junk. As the busy mother of two children I like to know that I can offer them an organic alternative to some of the conventionally processed snack foods that take up so much aisle space in the grocery store.
Sometimes kids like to have a treat and maybe the best we can do with the limited time we have is a processed organic cookie. personally, I'd rather known there are organic choices out there for my kids than not. Fig Newmans over Fig Newtons? You bet. I work, take care of two kids, run a household, and participate in a host of community activities. I don't have time to bake fig bars every day, and to be honest, it's not even possible for me to procure all the organic ingredients I'd need to bake the equivalent here in my own home. ...
Just as with everything else in life, it makes little sense to condemn the entire organic processed foods industry because some of what's out there is junk. It's up to us, as parents, to determine which products are good and which aren't. There are some merits to a great many of the processed products we're seeing out there. I'm all for embracing the ones that make sense for my family and ... organic on a larger scale is better for the planet anyway."
—Lisa M. Holmes, Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children (2006, Collins)
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I don't understand "why bother with organic junk food?" That goes back to the red herring about whether organic food is "better for us." Though that's not irrelevant, organic food growing has so many benefits for groundwater, non-harmful plants and animals, people who live in areas where agricultural chemicals are used, farmworkers, etc. that it's really beside the point whether what we're growing organically goes into junk food. What's important is whether it's grown organically.
How much harder is it to buy organic apples, bananas, etc over organic cookies or other junk food?
"I also believe that not all processed food is junk"
That's a nice story; enjoy *your* reality.
Although I suppose we do need to make a distinction between "processed" and "refined". But even a processed food made from whole ingredients is going to be, by definition, less fresh and energizing.
So we can put "junk" and "healthy" on a spectrum and probably agree that various processed foods fall on different points of that spectrum.
But you have to be very careful when reading the ingredients lists. To take your example of Fig Newman's... they're made with refined flour, refined sugar, and non-organic dairy. Nutritionally they're really not different than Fig Newtons. While that doesn't mean they aren't a preferable purchase for non-nutrition reasons, they are, in fact, junk.