The Lollipop Test

Posted by: m0ok on: March 19, 2010

• In: Food | Mook | Organic
• Comment!

While we’ve been ‘coming out’ as Organikals over the past couple of weeks, some people have said something like..

“Oh, but did you not see that TV programme/read that article/hear about that study that showed that there’s no nutritional difference between organic and non-organic food?”

Let me admit up-front: I don’t know if there’s a nutritional difference between a turnip and an organic turnip. I couldn’t say that an organic turnip has more fibre or carbs or micronutrients and we haven’t made the switch on that basis. We’ve made it on the grounds of all the extra stuff that’s done do or shoved in non-organic food – the artificial pesticides, antibiotics, hormones etc.

I suspect that the “nutritional difference” argument is a actually a bit of a diversionary tactic. After all, there’s only a word that needs to slip for “..no nutritional difference” to become, in someone’s mind, “..no difference”.

So how do I respond when someone puts to me that there’s no nutritional difference (and so by suggestion no meaningful difference? I offer the lollipop test.

I ask them to imagine two lollipops. A bit like this:

The lollipops have been made using exactly the same ingredients, made in exactly the same factory, packaged the same way and bought from the same shop.

The only difference is this: the lollipop on the right has been up my bum.

Now, nutritionally there’s no difference between them.

But which one would you be most likely to put in your mouth?