Also…just because it is organic does not mean it is healthy. My father loves to try to appease me by buying organic when I go to visit. Problem is, he’s buying organic potato chips and THINKS he’s eating healthy! LOL!

For more information like this visit http://wellnessparadigm.blogspot.com

Anyway, let me offer you a suggestion for another show on why choosing organic/natural food over conventional food is worth it despite the (seemingly) higher prices. Provide examples of what you get for each product and you will certainly demonstrate that, at least with some items, you are actually paying MORE, relative to cost of raw product, when you buy conventional. For example, pure orange juice versus orange “drink” – let’s say 5 bucks versus 1 buck 50 cents … However, when looking at the ingredient list and what you are actually getting, you’ll find that you are paying, at $1.50, an extremely high price for high fructose corn syrup. In the end, you are paying MORE , in relative terms, for low-quality ingredients. And, of course, you are paying for the consumption of those foods in other ways, e.g., poor health leading to higher medical bills, etc. I don’t have the time to do the research and perform a comparative study of this, but perhaps you can get together a few examples for a show. THANKS for what you are doing already! Take care.

Kevin you are the Man!
See you in Newport!

I think in addition to this (how organics affect you the consumer of the fruit or vegetable) there are lot of other reasons to eat/promote organics including effects on the soil/future generations and dependence on an oil based economy (many/most of the non-organic pesticides are synthetic petroleum based).

However, though I’m in total agreement with your underlying point, there is still a problem from switching from non-organic industrial farming to “organic” (read USDA approved organic) industrial farming. Yes, the food meets organic standards, which don’t get me wrong, I still think are a lot better than non-organic standards. However, this falls way short of small farm, locally grown, diverse vs. monoculture, permicultured, etc. farming that hopefully is the gold standard that we should be shooting for. It always kills me when you see some of these industrial farmed monoculture salad companies show a photo or drawing of their idealistic, bucolic farms with the farmer, his two sheep, old wooden barn, bird on the white fence and a butterfly floating above a beautiful meadow in the background when in fact the farming for these firms is really just a huge industrial farm as far as the eye can see of monocultured lettuce (or fill in your favorite organic product here).

I’ve found myself eating a lot more locally grown, IPM fruits and veggies over the past year…may not be USDA organic, but is often “organic-like” farmed (just can’t say organic legally) or the farmer does use some non-organic bad stuff, but may do it once before the fruit is on the plant and hand sprays in small quantities or only sprays one infected tree or a small group rather than carpet bombing the entire farm. It’s nice getting to know your farmer and understand their ideology. So it may not be Certified Organic, but I’m eating it the day it was picked which means the most nutrients, lowest transportation/energy impact and I know that it has been grown on a small farm, with high diversity by someone who is ensuring he is using as little nasty pesticides as humanly possible for growing that in this area and leaving the land as good or better than when he found it.

Great job.

http://www.vegparadise.com/news58.html

We can’t always buy everything organic, but we do our best to stay away from the worst offenders.

My blog partner(waving at Jenn!) and I have been working on a string of articles on organic living for the blog!! I’ll definitely have to incorporate this video into our posts!

I wanted to mention that another way to tell if your fruits and veggies are organic is by the little sicker (bar code sticker) on the produce. It will always start with the # 9 if its organic.

I belong to an organic co-op and get most of my fruits and veggies there. I spread the word about the co-op to anyone that will listen.

I thought your piece on eating organic was fantastic. But it does bring one thing to my mind that has been bothering me for quite sometime regarding organic foods. I work as a food scientist in the food manufacturing industry and know a bit about what it takes in order for a food producer/provider to be able to declare their products as organic. Thus, I am quite aware of the upcharge associated with the foods that are labeled organic. It concerns me that one day only the upper middle class and affluent of the country and the world will be able to afford to eat without the fear of poisening themselves. This is completely unfair and the saddest thing to ever face our world. But, if that isn’t sad enough, if farmers stop using pesticides, their crop yields would drop so low that we would have a dramatic drop in available produce and again a whole bunch of us will simply not have fruits and vegetables available to us. Finally, if farmers were required to grow organic crops, I predict that hundreds of thousands of farmers and farming industries would simply stop growing produce. It just stresses that we must think about the far reaching issues that come with all foods being produced organically. Can we afford to pay that price? I agree completely that we should eat organic whenever possible. I just wonder how many of us can actually do it.

Letha