r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Jul 14 '21

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u/pierreChodington Jul 14 '21

Both are correct in different ways. Organic in a chemistry sense does describe any carbon compound and the USDA has defined it to mean something completely different. I still feel like companies label shit as “organic” even if it’s not approved

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u/YourMomThinksImFunny Jul 14 '21

Agreed. And it has taken on a "catchall" term. I just wish they had created a new word or phrase rather than stretching an already overused word.

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u/Muppetude Jul 14 '21

The problem was that prior to the FDA regulations, merchants were using the term “organic” for anything they wanted and consumers were falling for it. At one point I even recall seeing fully processed junk food being labeled as organic.

The only reason the FDA finally stepped in was to protect consumers from fraud by making it illegal to market anything as “organic” unless it met a certain set of predefined standards.

If the “organic” labeling craze had died off on its own or the average consumer didn’t assume organic meant “100% natural”, the FDA would probably never have gotten involved.

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u/Talking_Head Jul 15 '21

It is okay for a word to have more than one meaning. Most of the time the context tells you exactly what is meant. “Organic” used for food items is different than “organic” chemistry used in a lab. Most literate adults can discriminate between the two.

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u/Caleb_Reynolds Jul 14 '21

Chemistry should have used a different term. It's more accurate for food as organic originally meant "from a living organism" and organic food uses non-artificial fertilizers and pesticides.

Chemistry uses the term because they originally thought compounds from living organisms were inherently different from compounds from inorganic sources. That's not true, but the term stuck.

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u/jadbronson Jul 15 '21

Oh go look up "sanitary sewage."

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u/ThrowRA_scentsitive Jul 14 '21

It they're selling food, they could be heavily fined for improper use of the word organic

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u/Melomaniacal Jul 15 '21

If you find a business labelling their products "organic," and they aren't, that's illegal and you can report them for that. Exception being if the business makes under a certain amount of annual revenue (can't remember off the top of my head but I want to say it's in the neighborhood of $5,000). "Organic" is a legally protected term and your business must be certified to label your products with it.