Your 9 top questions about organic food

What about the cost?
Organic food prices represent the true cost of growing nutritious, high-quality produce. Foods grown using modern intensive methods may be cheap, but have very high health, social and environmental costs, such as that of clearing up water pollution. Unfortunately, organic foods are often unfairly judged against mass-produced foods, which distorts the value for money you are actually getting. However, the ever-increasing production and availability of organic foods is rapidly making them more affordable.

Are organic manufactured foods entirely organic?
The vast majority of organic foods on sale are 100 per cent organic. However, standards allow for a small proportion of some non-organic ingredients to be used temporarily, in certain circumstances. Any non-organic ingredient is clearly labelled as such on the packaging.

What about GM foods?
Organic standards exclude genetically modified organisms (GMOs) of any kind from the growing, processing or manufacture of organic foods. This ban includes all derivatives as well as the GM enzymes used to make rennet for vegetarian cheese. Many organic manufacturers also test their products independently to ensure GM purity.

Source: Organic Living by Lynda Brown (Dorling Kindersley)