Organic? Why, What, When, and When Not
Eating organic is extremely important for certain foods. I know that buying organic is insanely expensive and not realistic for most people, or pretty much anyone on a budget. I definitely struggle with prices of groceries, let alone health food, let alone ORGANIC health food. I thought I’d write a quick lil blog on organics because it’s super important to understand WHY buying organic is a necessity for CERTAIN foods, especially for people with health issues.
Is It Even More Nutrient Dense?
Lots of people ask: is organic food actually more nutritious than regular produce? The answer to that, is yes.
Multiple studies have found that organic produce IS in fact are more nutritious than conventional produce -the largest study done to date on organic food, showed that it also has 40% more antioxidants and beneficial nutrients.
One study found that organic berries contain 52% more polyphenols (cancer fighters) and vitamin C
There was found to be 54 pesticide residues found on the conventional strawberry - carcinogens, hormone disruptors, neurotoxins, developmental or reproductive toxins !!!
Toxic Load / Barrel Effect
Every human being has their own personal toxic load limit
When this limit is reached, or our barrel has filled up, thats when we become sick. Throughout time, exposure to toxins through the air, food, water, everything from household cleaners and skincare products, to free radicals and additives in processed food to bleach in tampons and random mould in our basement and just LIVING in general, slowly fills up our barrels, over-burdening the body’s ability to detoxify, decreasing liver function, destroying enzyme systems and increasing our toxic load. It’s important to do everything we can to keep our toxin barrels from overflowing, such as decreasing the amount of chemicals we consume in our food.
5 billion pounds of pesticides are applied globally on agricultural fields, parks, schools, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, hospitals, nursing homes, houses, and gardens. Many of these chemicals have been banned in the US and Canada, but because of their bioaccumulation in the body over time, which is passed down, causing irreparable damage to the human body as well as the environment.
It is so important to decrease the amount of pollutants we have that are adding to our toxic load in any way that we can, our bodies are bombarded with chemicals every single day, eating organic is a simple change that we can make that will directly impact our future health.
Environmental Reasons
Organic farming is much better for the environment for both its farming processes and its effect on soil health, and creating sustainable food production processes.
Organic farms don’t work with the any of the same intensive chemicals that conventional farming systems do, and they also don’t use up the copious amounts of energy that conventional farming does. Those manufacturing processes rely heavily on fossil fuels, and organic farms rely on renewable resources in locally organized agricultural systems.
Unlike agricultural farming, organic farming improves the soil quality by nurturing its many integral pieces that make up the quality of the soil - bacteria, funghi, organisms that turn nutrients into the form that plants use. Organic farming maintains soil diversity by minimizing its degradation and erosion, decreases pollution, and maintains biodiversity within the ecosystem. The decreasing soil quality of conventional foods is part of the reason why our produce is becoming way less nutritious than it used to be!
Why is it so much more expensive?
Organic farming has much higher production and labour costs. It’s not subsidized by the government, the demand is usually higher than the supply, and a lot of organic crops have lower yields.
How to manage it
Follow the clean fifteen and dirty dozen lists. These tell you exactly which 12 foods are heaviest in chemicals, and if you’re gonna pick and choose what to buy organic, this is the list to stick to! And the clean 15 is a list of stuff that are the cleanest, and do not need to be bought organic. Changing your exposure to toxins and ultimately prolonging your health can be done through making little changes.
Dirty Dozen- buy organic
Strawberries
Spinach
Kale
Nectarines
Apples
Grapes
Peaches
Cherries
Pears
Tomatoes
Celery
Potatoes
Hot peppers
Gonna add a couple on here myself: anything SOY BASED! Tofu, Tempeh, miso, etc. Soy are one of the most heavily sprayed crops! Very important to be drinking organic soymilk and eating organic soy products
As many nuts and seeds that you can find (at bulkbarn for cheap!) in organic at a good cost. These are also heavily sprayed conventionally.
Clean 15- do not need to buy organic
Avocados
Pineapple
Sweet peas frozen
Onions
Papaya
Eggplants
Asparagus
Kiwis
Cabbages
Cauliflower
Cantalope
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Honeydew melons
The 15th one on the list is sweet corn but since the majority of the corn in North America is made from genetically modified “Bt Corn”, I would definitely recommend organic. Bt corn is manufactured GMO that is given genetic traits to kill bugs by disintegrating their gut walls after ingestion…. It’s ‘considered safe’ for humans but I’m not about to recommend ANYTHING that can explode a bug’s gut from the inside out. Especially with how pervasive leaky gut and just general gut health issues are right now (IBS, Chron’s, Colitis, and autoimmune diseases), GMOs haven’t been around long enough to really know the long term health implications of them.
Also,
Shopping at local farmers markets, buying in bulk, batch cooking, make your own milks, dips, dressings, and buying in season is also a great way to cut costs!