Honor Earth Day year ’round by eating your way to health
In honor of Earth Day, we thought we’d re-visit a subject that has been dear to us in the past: organic and natural foods. This time, rather that emphasize the benefits of wholesome foods, we thought we’d spend some time telling you where to get them.
If you’ve been paying attention, you are no doubt aware that not all organic foods are created equal. You may also know that Whole Foods, the largest “health food” retailer in the United States, has increasingly come under fire for being more interested in profits than principles. For about the past seven years, Whole Foods has been largely focused on taking over its remaining competitor—Wild Oats. The antics of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in this regard have been anything but amusing.
Readers may or not be aware that Mackey’s actions made headlines in July 2007 when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission revealed that the executive had posted messages on a Yahoo! chat forum under an alias for years. In those posts, Mackey extolled the virtues of his company while trashing Wild Oats in an attempt to lower Wild Oats’s stock price. Wild Oats had turned down a buyout bid from Whole Foods in 2001.
We mention all this just to make readers aware that there is nothing sacrosanct about buying organic foods. We wholly endorse buying organic, but don’t think that just because the label says organic—or because a vendor sells a large quantity of food labeled organic—that you can close your eyes and just assume that all is well.
We ourselves shop at Whole Foods and have long been concerned at the quantity of conventional produce and products the store carries. Since not all produce is available as organic at any given time, this does make sense for a store whose main function is selling groceries: if you go to the store looking for beets, for example, you may well accept conventional beets if organic beets are not available. We have also outlined a way by which consumers can limit the expense of converting to organic foods by avoiding the most contaminated conventional varieties and purchasing their organic counterparts instead.
So, we accept that not all produce available at Whole Foods is necessarily organic. You simply have to pay attention to the signs and labeling to make sure you know what you are purchasing.
Buyer beware
Of greater concern to us is the assertion that Whole Foods may carry products that contain MSG, for example, when MSG is on the store’s list of unacceptable ingredients. The same source also points out that rBGH (genetically engineered bovine growth hormone) is not on the Whole Foods list of unacceptable ingredients. This is particularly alarming in light of the fact that “conventional ” grocers such as Kroger and even WalMart have taken a stance against stocking dairy products that contain rBGH. Safeway, Chipotle and Starbucks have also jumped on this bandwagon. For Whole Foods not to ban rBGH seems unconscionable.
Dairy cows injected with this artificial hormone are forced to produce more milk than they would normally (on average, a gallon a day per cow) with dire consequences to their health. Cows injected with rBGH are far more likely to need treatment with antibiotics and to end up as “downer” cows entering the meat supply. Not only is it inhumane to subject cows to this treatment, it shows a flagrant disregard for the health of consumers.
At any rate, you get our point. If you are at all concerned about your health, you have to be concerned about what you eat. In order to assure that you consume the highest quality foods, you should not be limited to your local supermarket, and not even to your local Whole Foods. The truth is that the supply of truly healthy food in this country is so limited that there is not enough to supply the major outlets. So you need to line up your own sources as soon as possible.
As consumers have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing sources of healthy dairy, meats and produce, the demand for such foods has increased dramatically. If the supply of these healthy foods does not increase phenomenally, the enforceable standards—particularly for organic foods—will be sacrificed. Therefore as a consumer you must be increasingly vigilant as you make your purchases.
WalMart, the world’s largest retailer, recognized at least two years ago that organic foods were the place to be. Because WalMart exerts so much pressure on suppliers, the large food manufacturers such as Kraft and Kellogg are ramping up fast to supply organic-labeled products. For the most part, this is silly. Will packaged organic macaroni and cheese be that much healthier than the non-organic varieties currently available? We suppose we should support any effort to produce food that results from sustainable agriculture, but we cannot help but question how sustainable such efforts are.
Remember, organic foods are produced without resorting to pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers or artificial hormones, as well as being free from irradiation and genetic modification. The idea is to produce food that is entirely natural not in some legalistic sense, but in the most wholesome way possible. Manufactured food is not healthy food. Chips made from organic ingredients are no doubt preferable to those made from conventional ingredients, but we do not believe that is enough to classify them as health food. They simply have become marginally less unhealthy. So while simply re-manufacturing current manufactured foods with more wholesome ingredients is laudable in some ways, it totally misses the point. The end result should always be greater health for us and for the environment, which is, ultimately, the same thing. We cannot remain healthy without a healthy environment.
Groups such as the Weston A. Price foundation have recognized these principles and make them the cornerstone of their practice and teachings. But before we go on to discuss such organizations, let’s review one other basic tenet of healthy living that has become of concern much more recently: consuming locally grown.
A rose is a rose is a rose…
In principle, it matters not where your food was raised if it is nutritionally dense. That is, for the immediate purposes of your health, an organic apple from, say, Nicaragua is no different from one from Oregon or from a farm ten miles from your home, assuming each was raised in healthy soil and so on. The problem arises when we consider sustainability and the very practical matter of transporting that apple to your home.
Foods that are transported long distances are less likely to be equally ripe and fresh. Fruit that is to be transported long distances will likely be picked earlier in the ripening cycle so that it will not be over-ripe when it arrives at its destination. What is more, the carbon footprint of an apple that travels thousands of miles is necessarily greater than that of an apple that you buy at the farm and then take home. The notion of a carbon footprint is normally applied to humans or groups of humans, but our point here is that transporting food necessarily contributes to environmental deterioration as well as contributing to the deterioration of the food itself.
Viewed in this way, the apple from ten miles away may look a lot better. If the farmer avoids pesticides and the soil is reasonably rich, the local apple picked when ripe will be your best bet. But what if instead of a relatively small apple orchard, the farm in question has hundreds or thousands of acres of apple trees that are maintained using mechanized techniques so that trucks or airplanes apply pesticide sprays and powders at regular intervals? Now your local apple doesn’t look so good, does it?
Research has shown that conventionally grown produce has only about 83% of the nutritional value of the organic equivalent. What’s more, rats fed an organic diet fared better than other rats fed the same foods of non-organic origin.
Farming on a smaller scale
One of the primary differences between locally grown and distantly grown food is that you yourself have the option of inspecting the farm. Or you can rely on the sticker “certified organic” to do that inspection for you. Farming in the United States has become an operation performed increasingly on a large scale. Even family farms seem more likely to be large, industrial-scale farms these days. To some degree, this is an inevitable result of consumers’s priorities. The average consumer is probably still more concerned with the price of the apple than with its pedigree or nutritional content. In the United States, we have become accustomed to our food being relatively cheap, and the food price inflation of recent years has been a scary experience for most of us.
At the same time, it is easy to see that as the scale of the operation becomes larger, the involvement of the farmer with any individual element becomes drastically reduced. A farmer with a dozen hens will likely recognize them all and might even give them names. A farmer with a thousand hens or more isn’t even going to interact with them all directly. It is easy to see why those who are concerned with the fruits of the farmer’s labors favor farming on a smaller, more personal scale.
Having said our piece (for the time being, at least) on the issues involved in the way our food is raised and distributed, let us go right to the main subject here: where you can find sources of meat, dairy, poultry and produce that inspire confidence in the nutrition you will receive.
And the winners are…
One of the organizations that emphasizes healthful local sources of food is the Weston A. Price Foundation. Weston A. Price was a dentist who spent his vacations traveling the world and studying the traditional diets of indigenous peoples. He reasoned that the best way to determine what constituted a healthy diet was to examine people who enjoyed good health and see what they ate. The foundation that bears his name was founded by Sally Fallon, a writer and nutrition researcher, and Mary G. Enig, PhD, a nutritionist and expert on fatty acids (lipid biochemistry). Enig, the Foundation’s vice president, has authored over 60 technical publications and serves as President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association.
Together, Fallon and Enig wrote two books that are recognized for their contribution to practical nutrition. The first, Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
The second, Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats
We highly recommend visiting the Weston A. Price website. It is full of information and links and you can find out there how to join or start a local chapter, which will enable you to obtain organic food delivered to your area by an organic farmer. One of the primary goals of the Foundation is to make raw (unpasteurized) milk, butter and cream available to its members. If you’ve never had coffee with real (raw) cream, we highly recommend trying it. You will probably never resort to Half and Half again, except in emergencies.
We have found the organic meats available through sources we contacted via Weston A. Price chapters to be the best meats we have eaten. The commercially available product—including those we’ve purchased at Whole Foods—simply did not come close in overall quality.
To find a family farm near you or to explore the local farmer’s markets—care to start your own?—check out localharvest.org. Here you can also find a list of local farms participating in Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) which allows you to establish a relationship with a farm to receive or pick up weekly deliveries of groceries during the growing season. You can also find lists of farmer’s markets, restaurants and co-ops in your area and other useful information. This site belongs on your bookmark list unless you grow all your own organic food yourself. Even then, if you ever like to eat out, this site will tell you where you can go to find food that is up to your standards.
The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service also maintains an online list of local farmer’s markets you can peruse. This site is not so user-friendly as the local harvest site mentioned above. However, it does provide additional information and we list it for the sake of completeness.
Beef the old-fashioned way
For those who want to sample grass-fed beef and haven’t yet found a local source, check out Tallgrass Beef, which supplies grass-fed beef by mail order. We can’t say we’ve tried it—we’ve found a local source for naturally raised beef, pork and poultry—but this looks like the real deal. We were lucky enough to grow up with grandparents who raised livestock the old-fashioned way, and we think it’s the only way to go. The quality and taste of the meats we obtain direct from the farm simply is not like anything we’ve found in a store. And since grass-fed, free-range livestock provide meats much higher in vitamins, minerals and omega-3s, they’re much healthier, too. You simply can’t beat it.
Remember that the spirit of organic farming is really more important than the USDA certification. A local farm that you can see for yourself uses de facto organic farming techniques may serve you better than a certified farm hundreds of miles off.
And what better time than the week of Earth Day to make a commitment to better health for yourself and your family through eating more wholesome, sustainable food? That is the best way to support the spirit of Earth Day year ’round.
You can leave a comment here, or a trackback from your own site.
