Well, I just finished reading "A Field Guide to Buying Organic" by Luddene Perry and Dan Schultz. Since Jimmy got sick, Kate and I have been on a mission for healthy food. 38-year old healthy men just don't get cancer. Something had to have caused it! We're poisoning ourselves with our food. We can fix this! Well, we couldn't fix it, and 38-year old men do get cancer. Some of them die. Reason - unknown. Hopefully someday, they'll figure this one out.
Anyway, I guess it was time to really examine my panicked attempt at healthy eating, which I forced upon my family. January 1st seems as good a time as any. Mom very generously gave me this book for Christmas, so luck came together with reason, and I cracked open the book.
It was a great book - a fair shake to both conventional and organic foods - loaded with LOTS of facts and data. You know how I love facts and data! Organic food is, in many instances, more expensive than regular food. So I've been making choices about what foods I buy organic and which I buy conventional. Well, I certainly had it all backwards. Just about everything I've been buying organic, I could've purchased conventional, and vice versa! Mark's going to read it next and then we're going to sit down and decide what's important to us to buy organic. We'll be buying conventional milk and eggs again, but staying with our coffee and teas. Not because they are organic - but because we prefer the taste and they display the Fair Trade symbol. I feel I'm able to make informed food choices now, instead of the panicked, fear-based ones I've been operating under the past year and a half.
One thing we'll try to continue - we bought part of a beef cow. Raised in my sister-in-law's side yard. The meat has been delicious. Much better than anything we've purchased at the supermarket.
3 comments:
Judith,
Keep me updated on what you find out about organic. Or maybe I will just borrow the book after Mark has finished with it:)
Amy
Judi-
Please share what you've learned. I would love to hear that I don't need to eat deformed looking fruit anymore. (Why aren't organic apples round anyway?).
And why is conventional milk OK?
Linda
Hi Linda -
I'll post my summary of the book. The interesting thing the book stressed was that there really isn't a black and white answer to whether or not you should buy a particular item organic. There's value judgments and personal feelings you apply to the data. Although with the apples, you might want to keep eating the organic ones...I think there's something like 25 different pesticide residues that show up on apples.
Judi
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