Conspiracy Theorists Are Huge Fans of the Local and Organic Food Movements

I guess it isn’t surprising that Americans—contentious and swift to judge as we are—are prone to conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to medicine. A new survey from researchers at the University of Chicago found that half of Americans believe in one medical conspiracy theory or another: one-third of us believe that the FDA is holding back a natural cure for cancer at the behest of drug companies; a fifth of us believe that health officials are holding back evidence that cell phones cause cancer at the behest of large corporations; another fifth believe that vaccines do cause autism and other psychological disorders, but the government and doctors are vaccinating anyway. It doesn’t say why the government and doctors want to endanger your health, but just taking a stab in the dark, I’m going to say that some corporation is probably behind it.

But maybe that’s not that exciting, and what’s interesting is who held these beliefs. Medical conspiracy theorists aren’t limited to one side of the political spectrum—35 percent of those who agreed with a conspiracy theory identified themselves as liberals, 41 percent said they were conservatives. But aside from believing conspiracy theories, this group did share other tendencies: they didn’t wear sunscreen as often. They took herbal supplements more often. And what I found really surprising, the more conspiracy theories they believed in, the more likely they were to buy organic or farm-stand food.

The organic food one is fairly striking. Is it just that people are meeting up on Alex Jones’s dating site and strolling through the farmer’s market?

I never considered the link between conspiracy theories and organic food, but it actually makes a lot of sense. There are people who eat organically because they believe it is better for the environment and more sustainable, but then there are also people who eat organically because they believe the food is healthier. Thing is, there isn’t any proof that the organic arugula you’re buying is any healthier for you than the non-organic.

In 2012, researchers at Stanford did a meta-analysis of 240 studies and found that “the published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods.” There are benefits of organic food, but the amount of vitamins in your organic food isn’t one of them.

As I think over my conspiratorial friends who are both pro-organic and anti-fluoride (as opposed to, say, my 9/11 Truther friends), it occurs to me that both impulses come from the same, “appeal to nature” fallacy, which states that as long as its natural it must be better. It’s the same fallacy leads some people to want GMOs labeled so they can be avoided, without evidence that GMOs are any less healthy.

It’s easy to imagine how this impulse and trust in “nature” and the “natural” would make the more human, and therefore “unnatural,” mechanisms of governments and corporations seem suspect as well, which the study’s authors can empathize with.

Eric Oliver, who led the study, told NPR that corporations and government institutions are complicated organizations with a lot of different motivations. "Public mistrust is understandable," he said.

Nevertheless, people who are inclined to believe in medical conspiracy theories aren’t adverse to taking care of their health, “they're just less likely to embrace traditional medicine,” Oliver said, which also explains why conspiracy theory adherents were less likely to get annual physicals.

I’m certainly as guilty as anyone of using the appeal to nature fallacy whenever it suits me—to explain my aversion to Google Glass or suburbs, for example. But there are enough benefits in organic farming that there really isn’t really any reason to pretend that the food that comes from it does something that it doesn’t. Labeling food as organic is a comment on how it was grown, not its health benefits. Anyone who tells you differently is probably selling something.

As Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman put it, "The organic label is a marketing tool. It is not a statement about food safety." Sounds like there’s some corporations behind this misconception too.