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How scientists love to tell us how stupid we are.
This week, hot on the heels of Delia Smith's antiorganic comments, BBC2's Horizon is telling us that there is "little evidence" that non-organic foods are harmful. Well, Horizon, I don't care.
Aside from the fact that it tastes better and smells better (tomatoes, particularly, are transformed) the idea of organic food is much more cheerful.
Of course one cannot always prove the effect one way or the other of food on one's health. But unlike many things, one can control what one puts in one's mouth, or, more importantly for mothers, what goes into our children's mouths. Feeding one's children, as all mothers know, is a highly emotive issue, and surveys that try to tell you that crushing pesticide-laden carrots for your baby is no worse than organic ones with the leaves still on are as pointless as telling you the baby won't remember if you sat it in front of Sweeney Todd instead of reading Beatrix Potter. All mothers, but perhaps particularly sensitive working mothers, need to feel they are doing the right thing for their children ? and diet is key.
If you trot off to work in the morning you can fill your child's day with activities and pick wonderful nannies or nurseries. But you don't quite know what they'll get up to on a minute-byminute basis. You can, however, decide what their lunch and tea will be.
I made my first nanny write a diary of all my daughter's activities and everything she ate when she was a baby. It was a work of art; the nanny chose to write it in my daughter's own voice.
"Today I went on the swings, and when I got back I enjoyed organic chicken stew with mashed potatoes and peas & and was keen for more!" it read.
At 18 months, she couldn't verify "her" entries, and my husband found the whole thing nauseatingly twee, but I found it blissfully reassuring. Until the day when I came home from work early, unannounced, to discover this corn-fed toddler sitting in her high chair clutching a large piece of Ginster's pork pie, the sort you might buy in a service station. The nanny froze, I froze, and my daughter chomped merrily on with the air of a child who'd long been fond of a Ginster's. The beloved food diary was a work of fiction.
Admittedly her Ginster's phase doesn't seem to have done her any harm, but this in no way contradicts my view that my youngest will only eat organic. And if I'm making more work for myself by making mush at the weekend, then so be it. As scientists will discover, mothers aren't for turning.
Catherine Ostler is editor of ES Magazine..
