Food or diet?

Some people say that "there is no such thing as a "good food" or "bad food", just bad diets". Usually after that they say something about another kind of low-fat, balanced diet which will let you reach your 100' birthday in good health. Most of this "wonder diets" became sooner or later another dietetics mistake and are replaced by new ones, which, after some time, are also replaced, because of the new revelations in the dietetics.

And so it goes on and on, making people who want to live healthy life more and more frustrated, but still believing that the most important thing is not what lands on their plate, but the amount of it. Today, when there are so many kinds of food on the market, we should not only care for the calories, but also look carefully at what we are actually eating.

Difference between organic, conventional and genetically modified food

We all know that organic food is healthy, conventional food is accessible and genetically modified food can be solution to the food problems around the world, but when asked for details only few people can answer precisely what this is all about. Organic food is produced using ecological methods of farming.

That means no pesticides or fertilizers with synthetic ingredients for the plants and no growth hormones and antibiotics for the animals. When you buy certified organic food, you can be sure that all of the above won't land in your stomach and affect your organism. However because of the slower production process and lesser efficiency this kind of the food is more expensive and even if all the farms would start its production it wouldn't be enough to feed people all around the world.

Conventional food is produced using almost all available technologies provided by the science, save genetic modifications. Still, because of the intense production process, many chemicals and medicines are involved to guarantee that crops or animals will grow at the appropriate rate. Some of these "stimulants" can be found in the final product which we buy and may affect our health (notably the growth hormones in meat).

Anyway, conventional food can be found in almost every kitchen around the world and some of the scientists start to wonder how could we feel without this additional dose of antibiotics and artificial poisons which we involuntary eat.

Genetically modified food is the most controversial. The process of growing it is similar to the conventional, the only difference is that in GM food a part of the DNA is transferred from another species in order to change its characteristics into desired one without some long-lasting and sometimes in vein inbreed process.

All scientists working on GM food projects say that everything is under control, but a few accidents when transferred genes didn't behave as they predicted show us that it may not be as safe as they want. The real advantages and flaws of the GM food will be known only after long time, all we know today is based only on theory and laboratory tests, not the real life.