How Organic is Organic?

How organic is organic? I’ve been giving this a lot of thought since I read an excellent two part article in the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal (some name, huh? Think it assumes all its reader’s are intelligent enough to know what intelligencer means? Don’t worry I had to look it up too). The article by Mary Beth Schweigert has lots of side bars filled with data and some good reporting on the truth behind “certified organic”. It was a lot to digest, but I’ll share some of the facts that caught my eye.

“Certified Organic” means that a food contains at least 95% organic ingredients. That 5% is leeway allowed just in case there is no organic version of a necessary ingredient, but it definitely creates a pretty big loophole for the clever, profit-driven manufacturer to duck through.

There are currently 245 “exemptions” that can be claimed by “certified organic” producers that include food additives, processing aids, cleaners, animal medications, and pest controls. The consumer has no way of knowing just how many exemptions have made it on to their plate because labels do not have to reveal any of this. Two of the exemptions include tetracycline and copper sulfate. I’m familiar with these two because I’ve encountered them in my own farm life. I used copper sulfate last summer to (unsuccessfully) battle the tomato blight because I had read it was approved for organic farming. According to its Material Safety Data Sheet, copper sulfate is an algaecide that is toxic to fish and potentially dangerous if it enters public water systems. Tetracycline I recall from my days as a vet assistant years ago. We used it to fight off infections by injecting it directly in to a horse’s blood stream. Turns out it is also used on fruit trees to control fire blight, and its Data Sheet says it is toxic to the human liver and reproductive organs. Might have been good to know that a few decades ago. There are 243 other exemptions that may or may not be as frightening. A few years ago there were only about 75 exemptions, but as organics have become big business (and big business has jumped in to organics), the number of exemptions keeps multiplying. Hmmm….makes you wonder who’s qualifying these exemptions and who pays their salary.

Pesticides approved for use on certified organic farms are made from chemicals found in nature instead of chemicals created synthetically. Arsenic is naturally occurring in nature, but I’m sure none of us would like to find traces in our food. The list of approved pest, weed and disease controls is eight pages long.

All of that in itself would be alarming, but add the fact that currently there are only 16 people paid to run the entire government organics program and one can only imagine the potential for shenanigans in the organic world. Thankfully, my favorite president, nearly doubled the organics budget for 2010 and there will soon be 30 people woefully underfunded and overworked attempting to supervise this industry that reached 23 billion in food sales in 2008 and is projected to grow by at least 18% each year.

Now here’s what bothers me the most. (And I don’t need you to tell me that this was the obvious thing that would happen if organics became profitable). Just about every one of the top food manufacturers in North America (think Kraft, Nestle, Kellogg, Coca-Cola) have all acquired one or lots of the top organic companies. Kelloggs owns Kashi and Morningstar Farms. Heinz owns Earth’s Best, Celestial Seasonings, Health Valley, Walnut Acres, and Spectrum. Probably since I started preparing this post even more successful organic companies have been bought up. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with this. Maybe these companies will support the original intent of a brand like Spectrum. Maybe these companies won’t be petitioning the FDA to add even more exemptions and loopholes to allow them to make more money and pay off more congressmen. Maybe. We just have to hope for the best, because the 30 people who are charged with supervising these companies are only human and have an entire budget worth about 5% of the annual profits of any one of these companies.

The impact of these large corporations’ marketing reach can already be felt in the organics aisle of your neighborhood grocery store. There you find an amazing number of new organic “convenience” foods, with new products coming to market almost weekly. I’m not sure if this is a good thing. Most “convenience foods” are processed food and like it or not, organic processed food is still processed food. I would imagine it’s very easy to hide two or three or ten “exemptions” in a list of complicated ingredients and it might be necessary to hide behind a loop hole or two when you’re trying to manufacture vast amounts of food at once.

What it comes down to is something I found scrawled on a piece of paper in my files – Farmers need to respect the land. Manufacturers need to respect the customers, and customers need to respect the farmers. I wish I knew if this was an original thought or something I read somewhere (I’m guessing the latter), because it gets to the core of the fundamental problems in our food industry. If farmers would farm in such a way as to respect the land for what it is and can be, the food they produced would be the better for our collective health and the health of our planet. If manufacturers would produce food in a way that respects the consumer, creating food they take care to make as safely, fairly priced, and healthy as possible (maybe imagining that this is the food they will serve their own children), we could trust the products on the shelves. And if the consumer would respect the farmer enough to pay him what his products are truly worth, the farmers could afford to raise food that is good for us.

So what’s a consumer to do (besides write your congressperson imploring them to add some teeth and funds to the agencies governing the organics industry)? The only thing you can do – get to know the farmers and food manufacturers near you. The only way you’ll ever know exactly how organic your organics are is to meet the person who grew them. And make your own food. Don’t give in to the convenience of organic processed food. Not only does organic processed food cost more than conventional processed food, it isn’t a whole lot better on anything except your conscience.

It’s easy for me to say, “Make your own foods,” but I know for many people this just isn’t feasible, so we do the best we can with what’s available to us. I implore you to find out what’s available to you. There are farms and companies all around us who grow and create healthy, whole food. These farmers and local companies don’t have the advertising budget, the lawyers, or the influence that the big corporations have in spades, so you have to do your homework and seek them out. The web is a great resource for finding them, but just talking to people is another. And once you find a local source of good food, support them. I will tell you upfront that local, handmade, homegrown products sometimes cost more than the food you find in the grocery store packages. But the reason we have such unhealthy, empty caloried, cheap food in the store is because we won’t pay the cost of real food. Maybe what we need to do is pay more and eat less. I’m just saying.

In Pennsylvania we have a great resource in the website www.buylocalpa.org where you can find lists of restaurants, wineries, caterers, farms, farmers markets, and shops that sell local and sometimes, but not always, organic food. You can find a Buy Fresh Buy Local chapter of your own by logging in to the website at www.foodroutes.org and click on the Buy Fresh Buy Local button. Buy Fresh Buy Local is a powerful movement that is growing fast. Be a part of it and begin to bring change that benefits your community and your health.

www.gowild.com is great resource for finding locally grown grass fed meat and dairy products, including eggs, cheese, milk, pork, beef, lamb, and chicken.

www.localharvest.org is another site that helps connect you with local farmers, CSAs, and producers in your area.

www.eatwellguide.org will help you find local healthy food where you are or wherever you travel. They have an excellent blog called GreenFork.

www.organicconsumers.org will keep you informed on the organic industry and ways you can get involved. This site will alert you to what’s going on in the industry near and far, in addition to helping you find the organic products you need.

In all my surfing I even discovered a delivery service that delivers local, organic products to your door (for a price I’m sure), plus green gifts and “plantable gift cards”. Since I survive with dial up, I can’t follow every link I encounter, but you can at www.greenling.com.

Happy Snacking!

Yesterday I read a New York Times article my husband forwarded to me that really said what I tried to say in my post A Cheese Curl is Not Just a Cheese Curl. It pointed out that just because something is labeled certified organic does not mean it is necessarily better for you. Sometimes the certified organic milk you purchase in good faith was ultra pasteurized in New Zealand. I’m fundamentally opposed to overheating my food, but beyond that consider the carbon footprint left by the effort of bringing this milk to you. But it’s organic, you cry. True, it’s technically organic, but it’s not organic in the true spirit of the organic movement.

The organic movement was born from a desire to do the right thing – for our bodies, for our land, for our animals, and for our world. It’s simplifying our lifestyle, knowing what goes in to the food we eat, and caring about future generations. My motives for going organic were purely selfish (to fix my son’s health), but I’ve grown to understand and be committed to all the other pieces of living an organic lifestyle. So it bothers me when it is assumed that an organic lifestyle is simply eating foods that are certified organic. As I pointed out in a previous post, a cheese curl may be certified organic, but that doesn’t make it good for you.

So don’t be blinded by the little green and white certified organic symbol. Healthy and locally grown means more. Feed your family whole foods and stay away from the processed foods as much as possible. Your kids don’t need to eat cheese curls and soda. Even if the cheese curls and soda are organic, they’re still bad for you. True, it’s a fact that my kids want them (I’m sure yours do to) so the challenge is to find foods that they like and have a certain “thrill” factor. A carrot stick does not have the thrill factor, but fresh raspberries and a few carob or grain-sweetened chocolate chips in vanilla yogurt does. My kids munch on popcorn most afternoons after school. They take it outside to share with the chickens and have great fun seeing what kinds of predicaments you can get a chicken in to when it is chasing popcorn. Recently we made homemade pretzels after school. We hadn’t done it in awhile (probably since one of the older ones was learning his letters and we practiced making his name). Baking soft pretzels takes no time at all. Here’s one simple recipe:

Miss Sally’s Pretzels (Miss Sally was Brady’s 2-year-old teacher – thanks Sally!)
11/2 C warm water
1 envelope (2 ¼ teaspoons) yeast
4 C flour (I used half organic unbleached white and half whole wheat)
1 t salt
1T sugar (I used succanat)
Coarse salt (coarse ground celtic sea salt)
1 egg

Mix warm water, yeast and sugar.
Set this mixture aside for five minutes. Pour salt and flour into bowl. Add yeast mixture to make dough. Roll dough in to shapes (this is the part your kids will have fun with).
Brush egg onto the shapes with pastry brush and sprinkle with coarse salt.

Bake at 425 for 12 minutes.

Other great snack ideas:
“Ants on a Log” celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins
Toast with honey and cinnamon
Pooh Sandwiches – whole grain crackers or graham crackers with peanut butter and honey
Power mix – cashews, sunflower seeds, raisins, grain-sweetened chocolate chips, and any other nut or unsweetened sugar mixed together
Pretzels dipped in mustard
Frozen blueberries (or grapes or cherries)
Dried apricots dipped in melted dark chocolate and sprinkled with pistachios
Fresh strawberries
Oranges already sliced up (for some reason kids will gobble up oranges if you do the work for them, yet ignore the bag of them in the fridge)
Hardboiled eggs served in egg cup (remember those cute little egg cups that your grandmother used to have? You can still get them and for some reason they make eggs much more inviting especially if there is an assortment to choose from)
Pickle platter (put an assortment of pickles arranged artfully on a plate and surprise your kids – let them use toothpicks to eat them, even better)
Nachos (whole grain corn chips with raw milk cheddar cheese melted on top, add chopped tomatoes or olives if your kids go in for that sort of thing)

If you’ve got a great snack idea, please comment to this post with it – I need more ideas!
Also, if you’d like to check out the New York Times article mentioned above see www.nytimes.com. The article is called Eating Food That’s Better For You – Organic or Not by Mark Bittman and can be found in the March 22 edition.

It's What You Put In, not On

Yesterday I made my monthly trek to Trader Joes. As I made my selections it did occur to me that some of the food I was choosing cost significantly more than a similar version in the grocery store. But the food I selected was pesticide free, hormone free, additive free, preservative free, and in many cases certified organic. Organic food costs more. I won’t tell you any different. I will extol all the ways you can spend less through your own efforts, resourcefulness, gardens, and preserving, but the bottom line is it may cost you more, especially in the beginning. This should not be a deterrent because this is life or death we’re talking about. Feeding your family healthy food will protect them for a lifetime. There is no cost too high for avoiding things like cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and diabetes. And you’ll never know if you dodged these bullets because you ate and lived well or because you are lucky. Science has yet to connect all the dots, but we cannot afford to wait. Trust your instincts and common sense. And eat things that you recognize. Best not to take chances on your health.

So how do we afford it? Well, maybe we need to take a long hard look at the budget and figure out how to save in other areas. When I confessed to my mother-in-law that I was shopping at Goodwill these days (and that’s a whole other post – have you been there lately? As my son would say “It’s the bomb.”), she said that makes perfect sense to her. She pointed out that you should care about and spend more on the things you put in your body than on your body. Amen.

Choosing to live a healthier, more planet conscious life will cost more in some ways and less in others. You can save money by making and growing much of your own food and by cleaning with simple inexpensive products. But there will be some things that cost a premium. It's a balance you have to find for your own budget and your own life. If may be "cheaper" for you to pay the high cost of an organic item versus make it yourself. Your time is worth money too. As the world has finally begun to get onboard, I truly believe the cost of organics will go down as the options increase.

We find ways to afford the things that are really important to us. It comes down to priorities, and maybe a little creative bookkeeping. So I shop at Goodwill, swap books with friends or use the library, and wait for movies to hit the $2 movie house. Meanwhile, my family eats grass fed, organic filet mignon, local hormone free milk, and organic pesticide free strawberries. Seems like a fair trade to me.