Euler's Not so Organics

Part of: There, I Said It!

We all like organic food, but how organic would your "organic" food be?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allows the use of the term "organic" under Part 205 -- National Organic Program. To simply state the regulations, the term organic can be used differently depending on the composition of the product in § 205.301.

- 100% Organic Composed of 100% organically produced ingredients by weight

- Organic Composed of ≥95% organically produced ingredients by weight

- Made with Organic Ingredients Composed of ≥70% organically produced ingredients by weight

- Includes Organic Ingredients Composed of ≤70% organically produced ingredients by weight; can only list specific ingredients as organic

The phrase to look at is "organically produced ingredients". What defines an organically produced ingredient? What if the organically produced ingredient is determined to be organic through its composition by § 205.301, which has been simplified above?

 

This diagram should help you understand.

 

 

So with every sub ingredient and level we go down, the final % of organic material in the product decreases.

*Note that organic is being defined by USDA regulations, not the scientific definition of organic. We can model the decrease in the function y = 100 × .95^x or y = 100 × e^(-.05 × x). y = 100 × .95^x                         y = 100 × e^(-.05 × x)

The equations' graphs are displayed respectively above. It is basically a negative interest model. Let's call this the Euler's Organics Model since we are using the natural number of e, Euler's Number to draw the second graph.

We will use the diagram further above to clarify. Going 1 level down, assuming that component A is only 95% organic due to X and Y components not being organic, only 90.25% of the final organic product would be organic. And so on. However, due to the nature of the functions above and reality, the final % of product that is truly organic will never reach 0% — just approach it.

Continued on the next page Page 1 — Page 2

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Develops and markets iOS apps at Apparent Etch.
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