When delegates from 192 nations arrive in Copenhagen in December for the UN COP15 summit, they will confront a 181-page draft negotiation text, 2,000 bracketed passages still in dispute, and just 11 days in which to come to some sort of consensus. To power them through these discussions, Denmark has promised a smorgasbord of ecologically minded fare: All water will be tap (not bottled), tea and coffee will be fair trade, and the food menu will be no less than 65 percent organic.

Though undoubtedly well-intentioned, this last provision is troubling, but not because anyone really cares about the provenance of Ban Ki-Moon’s turnip greens. Rather, it suggests a willful and dangerous ignorance about the tenuous state of global agriculture, and the prospects for feeding 9 billion people while also addressing biodiversity loss, water shortage, and, yes, climate change. Organic foods are enjoying skyrocketing popularity in the US and Europe, as are their ill-defined sidekicks, “natural,” “whole,” and “real” foods. Yet popular notions that these foods—and the agriculture that begets them—are at once better for people and for the planet turn out to be largely devoid of experimental support. Worse still, “organophilia” tends to go hand-in-hand with technophobic skepticism towards the very sorts of scientific approaches most likely to supercharge an ailing food system while leaving our planet intact.

No one can argue with the merits of paying more heed to where our suppers come from. At its best, the organic movement is about reacquainting ourselves with the origins of food—appreciating that chicken is an animal and not just a shrink-wrapped package in the refrigerator case. It’s also a reaction to an industry that has, under the banner of “food science,” swung in a silly direction: Note the rise of squeezable tubes of Go-Gurt; granola bars souped up with soy protein, omega-3’s, vitamin D, and zinc; and perhaps most oddly, Splenda’s new fiber-infused incarnation. At the prices these products command, it’s perhaps not surprising that companies would be so eager to concoct them.

But do we really need to get our roughage in our coffee or all four food groups plus a multivitamin in a snack ostensibly made of honey and oats? Michael Pollan’s response, elaborated in his 2008 book, In Defense of Food, is a resounding “no.” “Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he offers instead—a simple mantra that simultaneously disqualifies products like Splenda with fiber and obviates the need for them in the first place.