The Big Issues: Is Organic Food a Sham?

A good friend asked for my thoughts today about this Gawker report (about a USA Today article about a meta-study and a University of Oxford study) which claims that organic food is no better (and in some cases worse) than non-organic food.

I get variations on this theme all the time, so this time I have actually written my answer down for posterity and for future reference - I will also tell you definitively whether I believe that Gawker is correct in its conclusion of "Science Suggests That Organic Food Is Largely a Sham". 

First though, I will frame my response to this specific article with three four observations:

1. (Edit) I believe that most studies, meta-studies, and popular discussion on the topic of "organic vs. conventional" miss the point entirely (including, disappointingly this recent TreeHugger article)
2. As someone who aspires to live sustainably, I don't give a shit about "organic food". I only care about "sustainable food".
3. As someone who aspires to live rationally, I trust scientists to report results correctly and factually, within the parameters of their study.
4. For the same reason as 3) I do not trust USA Today to report scientists' results impartially.

The Little Things: Trying to do better

Although this blog is supposed to be my ramblings, we're all too busy to waste time with bad writing. So, from now on, I will try to be more disciplined by leaning on a literary hero of mine...

George Orwell was one of the most important and powerful writers of modern times, and if you know him, you will know how beautifully he wrote on topics related to human flourishing. Did you also know how forcefully he campaigned against lazy writing though?

If you haven't read it, I highly recommend his Politics and the English Language essay, published in 1946, in which Orwell criticizes (amongst other things) "ugly and inaccurate" written English.

In that essay, Orwell even goes so far as to propose a "Remedy of Six Rules" as follows: