When the Menu Says ‘Organic,’ but All the Food Isn’t

Barebuger claims that it now serves a 100% organic beef burger from “Vermont Country Farm” in Shelbourne, VT. But if you do a search, instead up comes NPCprocessing inc. which is a giant industrial meat processing warehouse, that processes meat from many sources and places. It is in VT and is in the “country” but no farm. Nothing on its website npcprocessing.com indicates that it processes organic meat and only states “all-natural”. I live near a bareburger and walk my dog and my pet loves smelling bareburger’s garbage. Wondering how they do “organic” in NYC in last winter I did take a good look at its recycling and I saw nothing organic at all. I guess building a brand on fraud works- it worked for Trump for decades.

You would be very surprised how many foods are marked “organic” on a menu, but are not actually organic. Most “organic” food are twice the price of the regular food. The organic industry is mostly targeted at the middle and higher class men because they can actually afford the food and paying twice the price for it. The FDA is surprisingly very lenient on their food labels, that is why there is so much fake organic food. They are trying to trick your minds that you are eating healthy when actually you are just eating regularly food. It is known that “organic” is the biggest scam since the oil industry. “Organic” is recently the most used for marketing. Humans that work as marketing representatives get so much money for just labeling “organic” on a food product and making you pay twice the price for regular food. Restaurants such as, “Bareburger” are losing customers because of their fake organic menu and people not enjoying their food. A lot of people became and becoming upset because of the fake organic industry and how it is a mind trick. Thing such as, “Organic Lamb” and “Organic Bison,” are labeled on menus when there is no such thing. So, that tells you right there that the organic industry is fake.

Organic=fancy new word for "markup" and nothing more. OTOH it's pretty obvious that the whole world can't be fed using Iron Age farming methods.

Organic Burgers. Hmm. Seems like an oxymoron to me.

With the insanely high overhead in NYC it is not possible to do a restaurant (even a 10% organic menu) it is not profitable and as real as VW's clean diesel engine. Bareburger states that organic fruits and vegetables are available only when in season. So in NYC during eight months the chances of them being organic are next to zero! Who is Euripidies Pelakanos? See Stavroulakis vs. Pelakanos You can't make a "organic blend" of 70/30 and call it an "organic burger" since it violates USDA organic laws. None of Bareburger's burgers are USDA organic because it is too expensive to do in reality and customers won't pay. He sold his franchisees and the public a fraud and promotes alternative facts!

For all the chumps and their fads, remember that the world cannot be fed on only organic gardened food. Plus, the 'organic gang', Adelle Davis, J. I. Rodale, George Ohsawa, et al, died relatively young compared to my folks who ate chicken fat sandwiches on white bread most of their lives and outlived that crew.

Bareburger, regardless of any of its labels, sell overpriced sub-mediocre products, accompanied by pretty awful service. Burgers for tools.

I’ve only eaten inorganic food for decades- salt, a little water.

Hu Kitchen does the same thing - implies everything is organic when actually only some things are. It’s misleading. And restaurants can charge double the price. If no one digs under the surface. The guy in the article actually did do a little digging (literally) and now there is an NYT article about this practice. I myself did a little digging at Hu Kitchen and found out they do not use organic almonds and their almond supplier is in the US. This is a big deal because back in circa 2006, the FDA passed new regs for domestic grown almonds. All non-organic almonds are sprayed with a chemical that is banned in EU and Canada because its a probable human carcinogen. I forget the actual name but this info is easily found in an internet search. See why Hu Kitchen’s use of non-organic almonds is a big deal? I personally cannot eat anything from Hu Kitchen that has almonds in it as i would break out in itchy lumps somewhere on my body after consuming. I questioned a higher-up person at Hu in person about what type of almonds they use (non organic) and where their supplier was (california). The higher-up didnt seem too interested or concerned when i emailed her links to info on non organic almonds grown in usa. Why? Because it would cut into their profit margin no doubt. The best answer to this issue is an educated consumer/restaurant patron. And yes, one will have to play “detective” for now, until someone starts a website database....

While Mr. Rosenberg is certainly free to eat organic if he chooses, it would have been helpful for author Krishna to explain how his being "prone to infection" is connected to organic food - particularly when we learn later that the infection-prone Rosenberg took it upon himself to spend time going through the restaurant's trash.

This organic world is thrown around way too often. As well as local and sustainable. Please stop!!!!!!

I’m sorry but much of this organic food craze is a huge ripoff. Food companies stamp ‘organic’ on a product and sell it for twice the price of so-called non-organic food. The whole organic food industry is targeted at the middle class and the upper middle class who can afford the high cost of this mostly fake organic food. Americans have no idea how lenient the FDA is with food labels. It’s all just a big scam brought to you by food companies and endorsed by the FDA.

'Organic' is the biggest money making scam since the oil industry years ago put 'old' field oil into 'new' barrels and sold it at a premium. PT Barnum would just laugh.

Alberto Gonzalez de Gustorganics before going on the news should have compensated those of us who believed in the project and helped with our savings.

He says “we’ve never said we’re all organic” etc. but ignore you go into any Bareburger anywhere and ask any member of the staff if the burgers and condiments etc are organic they will all and always says “yes, absolutely.”

It stinks that ‘organic’ is meaningless when the majority of consumers believe it to have significant meaning. It stinks further to use it to dupe people out of their money by using that significance. Bareburger is doing more than that though. As shown in the article, they’re using ingredients, condiments and toppings that are readily available as organic and using cheaper alternatives. That’s fraud.

Organic just another way to fleece unsuspecting and naïve people.

As with so many things, Americans think they have the best health care system, the best cars, the best cities, the best military, the best of everything. Unfortunately, most Americans are misinformed about how the U.S. stacks up against the rest of the world. One particular problem in the States is that the diet is broken. The food system is nothing more than a mass production assembly line of overly processed, genetically and chemically modified products. The stuff Americans consume daily isn't food anymore, it's a mass of "formulations" masquerading" as food. It doesn't really matter if food is marketed as organic, natural or homemade. We should treat everything we consume with skepticism.

Organic, more than any other term in recent memory, has been used as a marketing tool. The American people have fallen for it hook, line and free range sinker. Too many have also fallen for the notion of organic farming vs. sustainable production that keeps fresh foods in the markets year round and continues to eradicate world hunger.

I am a classically trained chef and have worked in the food business for 20 years. I lost all confidence in anything labeled as organic when years ago I bought an "organic" limeade. It did not taste all that good. So curiously I looked at the ingredients and the fourth one was 'organic lime flavor'. Confused I looked that up and found how a flavoring could carry the organic designation. Needless to say the USDA is just lining their pockets if a derived product, not food, can be organic. Now when I'm not buying simple ingredients to cook at home, I only buy foods where the ingredient list is made up of items I could buy separately. Organic means nothing and to date I've seen ingredients called organic like xanthan gum, vanillin, tartaric acid, and natural flavors. A little simple advice from a chef. Buy real whole ingredients, wash your fruits and veggies, grow a garden if you can, and don't focus on labels such as organic or local or sustainable or homemade/homestyle.

Food marketers invariably shade the truth about their products, emphasizing the good attributes and not mentioning the bad ones. And restaurants use cleaning products that I suspect may be more impactful to consumers than whether the food is organic or not.

Here in St. Petersburg, we had a plethora of restaurants claiming to be "local, sustainable, farm to table". Many were using the the terms fraudulently. Laura Reiley at the Tampa Bay Times did a fabulous investigation. It's a long read, but well worth it. http://www.tampabay.com/news/farm-to-fable-a-times-investigation-into-ta....

There is absolutely no excuse in this modern day and age to play games like this with the consumers. If they want to call themselves organic, then they ought to go the extra mile and become organic. If they can't get an organic ingredient then they ought to be honest with the customers or look for another supplier. The best thing to do is to make your own organic burgers with meat from a supply you trust. Or thoroughly investigate the restaurants suppliers and see if they offer an all organic alternative.

Of course many restaurants are going to claim 'organic', 'gluten-free', etc. because it means they can upcharge on the item and they are cashing in on the fad. My favorite is a pizza place that has a 'gluten-free' pizza with dough that is made elsewhere because they cannot make it locally with all the flour in the pizza shop. A person with celiac disease will get sick from their 'gluten free' pizza because, while the pizza may indeed be gluten free, they cook it in the same oven as the other pizzas.

The statement that the use of the term organic “seems like an attempt to deceive and an attempt to defraud” is not only true in the context of a restaurant, it is true as a food label. Is organic healthier? No. Safer? No. Are organic foods produced without the use of pesticides? No. Are they more expensive? Yes.

We stopped eating at Bare Burger after like 3 times in a row we had bad experiences with the food, including totally raw burgers, and bone in the burger. The place seems like more flash than delivery, and skepticism about their practices does seem prudent.

Such idiocy of those who want organic foods and such, since CHEMICALLY all foods ARE "organic". What these ignorant exaltees mean to say is that they want to ingest foods that do not have manmade chemicals on or in them (even though those chemicals are, in fact, themselves totally "organic"). I suggest they take a two semester course on organic chemistry to understand what I mean.

Mr. Rosenberg is obviously a shake down artist.

"51 year old Rosenberg went thru the restaurants garbage to look for labels"....Does anyone else see the absolute absurdity of someone doing this? I didn't go thru their garbage, I went to their website and read their FAQ about their food. I think they've done a good job with their food transparency. Wish more places looked at their food sourcing practices the same way.

"Mr. Pelekanos said he didn’t think Bareburger needed to stop using “organic” entirely. “Why are we going to run away from a word, when we have spent so much time and energy over the years to serve so much organic food in our restaurants, and we charge a premium for it?” he asked." Maybe you shouldn't charge a premium if it's not really organic. Maybe you shouldn't think about the time and energy you put in and instead you should consider that some people choose organic food for a reason and deserve honesty and transparency from your company.

Building a brand on fraud is not the way to do business! BB's franchises use the word "ORGANIC" with their TM logo blazoned on their store fronts with bright illuminated signs. They display "ORGANIC" on their windows. BB's awnings state "organic salads", "organic sandwiches", "organic grass fed-burgers". "Burgers" is plural and means more than one-right ? The Impossible Burger that BB serves is GM. Do you think they use a different cooking surface to cook their Impossible Burger with their other burgers as the genetically modified heme seeps out? It is a burger & fries joint that calls itself "Organic Bareburger" yet very few of the items served are actually USDA organic! I have past BB menus that claim to serve "Organic Bison" and "Organic Lamb" when no such things exist! So their ketchup is organic as well as their coffee, ice tea concentrates, salad dressing, certain cheeses and ice cream - but what about the burgers, onions, buns, french fries, pickles, mayo, sauces, mustard, tomatoes, guacamole, bacon, lettuce, jalapenos, onion rings and canola oil? If you go into a restaurant and very few items on the menu are organic, don't use the word "Organic" all over the place! When I asked, owners & employees they lied to me! The Chicago BB closed down and I guess people in IL wised up. BB could have simply used the words "All-Natural", but that does not bring in customers at $16 a burger.

We should support restaurants that strive to bring us local, sustainable, and mostly organic meat, dairy and produce--and Bareburger is doing just that. No one is complaining about "farm to table" restaurants, that seem to operate without really putting a label on anything and hoping you won't ask. I'm grateful Bareburger is so transparent and making local, sustainable, and--when available--organic comfort food.

Didn’t Anthony bourdain warm you all about eating at the restaurants? I don’t remember exactly what he said but “if you are too demanding of quality and such from a restaurant he said you better stay home and make your own food “! Bon appetit!

Perhaps Mr. Rosenberg should change his career and lobby Congress to work for better labeling laws. Why badger the little guy?

At what point on the slippery slope does food no longer qualify as organic? The management at Bareburger appeared to have best intentions when starting out but succombed to cutting corners with 75-80% organic patties as they grew. Mr. Rosenberg has a fair point if along the way the company reduced its committment to a 100% organic food sourcing but didn't tell the customer.

I don't have a lot of confidence in the FDA anymore, but I would prefer that food labelled organic is actually certified organic. The people running these restaurants know what they're serving, and if all of it isn't from an organic source they shouldn't be calling it organic. We have been buying organic produce for years, and at least avoiding any conventionally grown products that can't be peeled, such as strawberries, blueberries, lettuce, broccoli, etc. When we patronize an organic restaurant or cafe, we assume that they are following an even more stringent protocol and that everything they serve is organic. We are going out of our way to find organic food and we are often paying extra for it. Serving some food that is and some that isn't, and claiming that all of it is, is unethical.

If Mr. Rosenberg is so afraid of not eating a 100% pure burger, he should either make his own to stop eating burgers. He seems determined to get both attention & $$. Living in CA, every week the list of places closed for rats, cockroaches, poor sanitation, incorrect temperatures, etc. is posted in the local newspaper. Many if not most of these places are either places that serve a specific ethnic food, or places that proclaim their organic produce,etc.

I thought at least the NYT still knew the difference between "All the food isn't" and "not all the food is". I agree that a 75% organic burger maybe should not be labeled "organic", and that a clearer definition should be found, but to say that "all the food is not organic" is not merely misleading but plain wrong.

Why am I reminded of the Titanic and an image of a few well-meaning deckhands arranging the furniture?

My first impressiom is that the heavy tattoos on the forearms of Mr. Pelekanos and the logo on his T-shirt are sufficient to turn customers away from any food that he handles. The distinction between the so-called "organic" and other foods is in the methods of raising the animal and growing the plant ingredients. Some years ago, DuPont chemical company had an ad: "Better things for better living -- through chemistry". A day will come when various meats, fish and vegetable roots will be synthesized from the chemical elements in the air and minerals. Then the Judaic, Roman Catholic, and Jain clergy will have a fertile ground for endless debates on whether such synthetic foods are ritualistically admissible. In my irreligious opinion, synthetic ham, synthetic fish on Friday, and synthetic carrots should be acceptable by each religion, respectively.

This is addressed to Mr. Vladimir Grinberg. Yes, we have known about organic foods, stores, and restaurants since, at least, 1968. We didn't call organic then, we called it Health Food. I had friends in Palm Springs who grew health foods. (organic). There were two restaurants in PS that were Health Foods only and that is right down to their coffee. When I grocery shopped it was at a Health Food store in PS and I often ate lunch there because their food was delicious. Before that, 1968, I ate at my grandparents houses. My grandmother's kept kitchen gardens and one grandmother kept chickens that were free-roaming and supplemented with grains my grandfather grew for some of the milking cows. He believed that the milk from cows fed with 'healthy grains and fodder' gave better tasting milk. My Dad had a garden of fruits and veggies. He used chickens for pest control and compost for soil enrichment. We have know about organic farming and production for a very long time. Probably a few millenniums. There will always be people who want whole foods, naturally grown, treated humanely. I like it because it is more diverse. Oh! In France it is called Bio. In order to place that Bio label on the item, the soil it is grown it must be tested periodically.

"Organic" does not mean much anywhere -- it is just a marketing gimmick to entice gullible consumers to pay more.