Organic Trade Association
A study published in the June 2010 journal Judgment and Decision Making should be taken with a grain of salt. By including a headline that reads “The “organic path to obesity?,” the study makes light of a serious health issue currently facing our society. To imply that there is a causal link between the serious problem of obesity and organic purchases is absurd. It is preposterous to think that this simplistic study conducted on a limited number of college students would be seen as showing a valid cause of obesity.
There are definite factors that have been linked to obesity, including a sedentary lifestyle, overconsumption of calories, and economic-driven factors. But, there is no proven correlation between the growth of Americans’ waistlines and the growth in U.S. organic sales, as study authors seem to claim.
In fact, the organic food segment experiencing the most sales growth in 2009 was that of organic produce. Sales of organic fruits and vegetables, which represent 38 percent of total organic food sales, reached nearly $9.5 billion in sales in 2009, up 11.4 percent from 2008 sales. Most notably, organic fruits and vegetables now represent 11.4 percent of all U.S. fruit and vegetable sales. To put organic sales in a larger perspective, remember that overall, organic food sales represent less than 4 percent of all food sold in the United States.
It is regrettable that this study conducted at the University of Michigan under the leadership of Jonathon P. Schuldt of the Department of Psychology and Norbert Schwarz, Professor of Marketing at the university’s Ross School of Business, is being touted to the media as implying that consuming organic food sabotages diet and weight-loss. Such studies waste time and resources, and only distract researchers from honing in on the real and complex factors related to obesity.
