Non-GMO is not the same as USDA Organic

I really like eating vegan meat substitutes, that is, plant-based sausages and patties. I had just assumed that all of these things would be organic. On closer inspection the other week, I did see that some of my favorite things like Tofurky sausages were non-GMO certified, but were not labeled organic. I looked at all of the meat substitutes on the shelves. None of them were certified USDA Organic!

That brings up a few issues for me. I really don’t want to eat “not-organic” foods, that is, foods onto which pesticides, fungicides, and other chemical compounds have been sprayed. These compounds are often carcinogenic.

I’d rather pass on eating plant-based sausages if they’re not organic, and just eat unprocessed foods. I also see that buying processed vegan foods increases my grocery bill, where I can just get the same amount of protein from lentils, chickpeas, broccoli, and so forth.

The benefit of plant-based meat substitutes is it fills an emotional void

I don’t miss eating animal meat. There was one instance last year that I ate a piece: while on vacation in Greece, island residents who are close friends with the family prepared some foods, a lot of which has cow meat in various forms, and I knew it would be pretty unsettling to turn away the food they spent time and love to make. That’s the only exception — I haven’t eaten meat here in the US for several years now. I can’t remember the last time I had a steak or a piece of chicken.

And, accidentally, this year (2018) I had a bite of veal, and that was at a fancy restaurant that served us something called “sweetbread” — being vegetarian, I was excited at the thought of some kind of flavored bread, but it turned out to be veal. Gross. Never going back there again.

Check the labels

Non-GMO certification is kind of a red herring. It is saying that the crop has not been grown from seeds genetically modified by human beings. But Non-GMO is not organic. It can still be sprayed with pesticides. Certified Organic cannot be.

Don’t assume vegan food is organic by mehron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International