CAM - complementary and alternative medicine - is taking quite a battering at the moment. The forces of rationality have seen a UK parliament committee recommend that we don't waste NHS money on homeopathy , while the chiropracters have seen their attempt to use libel law to suppress criticism by Simon Singh collapse . At the same time, Prince Charles' foundation to try to impose alternative medicine on the health service is in trouble . So perhaps this isn't the best time to liken organic food to complementary and alternative medicine. But I think it's something we ought to do. This isn't a direct comparison. Organic food is usually good food, where CAM is not good medicine. But the organic movement uses many of the approaches of the alternative bunch, to its detriment. In this post and the next I want to look at two ways organics parallels CAM - in the second I will be looking at the way it depends on magic rather than science. In this first post, I want to l...