What's Holding Back the Organic Revolution? from the Organic Consumers Association provides a nice summary of the state of the organic food industry in the US. Along with discussing the size of the industry, it also discusses the various challenges facing the industry and why it's not taking off as quickly as it could:
- Cost of the food -- can be onerous for lower income families. However the author points out that it can be a trade-off between pay now (for food) or pay later (for poor health).
- Lack of time for meal preparation and easy access and availability of processed foods.
- Lack of expertise (both at a nutrition and culinary level) for preparing meals with ingredients from scratch which causes people to depend on food from restaurants (mostly chain restaurants).
- Fraudulent marketing and advertising, e.g. labeling foods as "all natural." See, for example, this video by Only Organic.
Foodbabe is an excellent resource of what really goes into processed foods for both off-the-shelf products as well chain restaurants, along with tips for eating healthy.
