Friday 28 October 2011

Going Organic: Can you afford not to?


I love heading down to the organic markets every Sunday morning, there is something so liberating about actually knowing where your food has come from. And I would much rather give my hard earned cash to a local farmer than a big corporation like Woolies or Coles.

I’m going to be honest, I often find little creatures in my greens but I’m absolutely fine with that. It means it’s good enough to eat! And YES, it IS more expensive, but for under $150 I have more than enough food to feed myself and Joe for a week. It’s a rare site to see one of us in a ‘supermarket’, we don’t spend money on processed food, so I have no hesitations spending $8 kg on apples. At the end of the day our overall shopping bills are probably less than the average person and we live organically and as close to nature as possible:
 
So here’s why you should too:

1. Organic produce is not covered in a cocktail of poisonous chemicals. The average conventionally-grown apple has 20-30 artificial chemicals on its skin, even after rinsing.

2. Fresh organic produce contains more vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other micro-nutrients than intensively farmed produce.

3. Going organic is the only practical way to avoid eating genetically modified (GM) food.

4. If you eat dairy or meat products, going organic has never been more essential to safeguard you and your family's health. Intensively-reared dairy cows and farm animals are fed a dangerous cocktail of antibiotics, growth promoting drugs, anti-parasite drugs and many other medicines on a daily basis, whether they have an illness or not. These drugs are passed directly onto the consumers of their dairy produce and meat.

5. Organic produce simply tastes sooo much better. Fruit and vegetables are full of juice and flavour because they haven’t been artificially ripened.  

Did you know:

  • The white garlic you find in the supermarkets (imported from China) has been bleached to make it look cleaner/whiter. Always purchase garlic that is grown in Australia and is purple or brown in colour. At the markets I spend $50kg on organic garlic – yes a lot compared to the $2 bleached variety.
  • The most heavily sprayed fruits & vegetables are: stonefruit, apples, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes, capsicum, lettuce and potatoes.
  • Australian strawberries have been genetically engineered  with Salmon(fish) DNA to enable them to grow in cooler months and to make them grow bigger.
It’s scary what scientist are doing to our food these days.. and without us even knowing. So the only way we can take back control is by going organic.. we can’t afford not to.