Organic Foods

[Franky]

Two very interesting facts:

The United States is the biggest market for organic foods and beverages in the world and is projected to reach sales of over $43 billion by the year 2010.

Right behind the US, the Asia-Pacific region is estimated to be the fastest growing organic foods and beverages market on the horizon!


PS: Natural cookies category is up 17.3% and natural crackers up 35% in the US.

[Sadsack]

It's only a matter of time before there is no such thing as organic. As long as the wind blows seeds around, and bees, etc, cross-pollinate, GMO's will be introduced into all the crops. Cross contamination is already being reported.
SS

[Sadsack]

Just curious - how many of us eat organic? I had been very strict, but the cost and availability is making me compromise.
I'd love hear about people who are doing well without going strictly organic.
SS

[Sadsack]

I'm just bumping this up because no one answered before. The cost of this stuff is getting outrageous, and I have started eating non-organic but hopefully "healthy" otherwise, like salads, etc.

SS

[Kritters]

SS,
I eat organic whenever possible. There are only a few foods that it doesn't matter if they are, like bananas. I agree. the cost is ugly. So, now that monsanto has put the roundup inside the food, what's the difference! It's gonna get us all one way or another. I say eat what you want and keep your blood from becoming overly-acidic and keep taking the vitamins and other good healthy stuff we talk about here.

Besides, our Morgies will kick *** with any new kid toxin on the block.

Kritts

[Baraka Obam]

I believe they made the code word organic from another set of words, bad crop, the farmer looks at his crop destroyed in the field, frost, no rain and a word slips out of his lips, ORGANIC. I look at all the plants in nature, they look big and healty, how is it then that EVERY ORGANIC looks dam near rotten, small or just plain sickly. Nature is organic and it does not look like that in the forest. Somthing is just a little funny with it.

[Kritters]

That's because they've either irradiated non-organic food, or put something into it to look fresh and for shelf life and organic food has no preservatives and isn't bio-engineered. I kept some baby spinach I bought from the supermarket and I kid you not...it lasted a month. I knew I had frankenspinach at that point.

I get organic food that looks beautifully fresh and is. It used to be that no one would care about organic or pay the extra money. So the food sat there on the shelves and started to deteriorate. Now more people are buying organic veggies so there's less rotting.

It also dependes on which store you shop at. I usually buy from a local healthfood store or a supermarket in the next town that has a lot of activity and people know they carry organic food as well.

[Baraka Obam]

The organics look better in Walmarts than they do at the la te da health food store. I just don't know about them. If they are all natural, the farmers are not learning natural farming or it is cost prohibative. What exactly do they use for fertilizer?? If they use horse or cow dung it will have to be gotten from anuimals that are not fed processed animal feed. This is almost impossible for the farmer to do. THEN what ground is he growing it on and how long has it been since pestiside and unatural fertilizers were used. Natural food growing tecniques are cvertainly in their infancy, at least to modern man. Think also about this, do any of these farmers that use animal dung allow it to compost!!!! The dung must be composted before use and a 20 foot high by 100 feet long pile of dung will compost to about 4 feet high or less by 100 foot long. If you compost that is eveident, worms, beatles, roaches and nature do their job very well. I think that is the real problem, they spread uncomposted manure, it is not enriched yet and also has harmful patogens in it. They say not to use human waste for food, what makes animal dung so much different, parasites, disease is also in animals, especially with all the steroids and antibiotic they give them. i juice alot so either I buy a tiny bit of sickly supposed nature carrots or the geneticly mutate taste just like carrots, carrots. Right for now I am with the latter as I 1. can afford to do it, 2. untill they get organics straitened out I feel they are but a sickly unatural carrot. Time will show improvement I am sure, but it will also show new money based rules on growing ORGANICS as usual. When money is involved so is greed!!!

[Kritters]

I also have wondered about the fertilizer. Wouldn't they use 'organic' ingredients in it? I never liked the idea of manure supplying the nutrients to my food, but it's what they do I guess. You obviously know a lot about the stuff. BTW the health food store I go to is anything but la te da. Bare minimum prices possible and they really care about getting the freshest food to sell. They even make organic soups daily and are appreciative of the people who shop there to keep them from closing in the winter months when business is off. You have a point about how it looks. I think one minute it was beautiful and colorful and the next minute it has decayed.

[Sadsack]

Manure is not the only option, however there ARE organic cows - that's where organic milk and other dairy products come from, as well as organic beef. Composted organic vegetation is an option.
Organic standards require that the land used has not had pesticides applied for at least 7 years. Organic chickens (and their eggs) have eaten nothing but things grown organically. That also means no GMO's, no hormones, as well as no petrochemical pesticides, preservatives, radiation, antibiotics; all the things they have done to our food to poison us. "Natural" pesticides, such as predatory insects which eat other insects but not vegetation are one method of control.
I won't go into a dissertation about what goes into genetically modified foods in addition to lateral transfer of genetic material through agrobacteria (yes, the same thing found in US). Read up on it and you will be horrified.
I have two health food stores I shop at for fresh foods, and they are very down to earth. In fact, some of their items are cheaper than the organic line sold in the supermarkets.
I am finding organic products in more and more places, even super Walmarts.
Yesterday there was a news story about a doctor who "experimented" by eating only organic foods for 3 years, and he was totally amazed at the transformation (improvement)in his health and is now telling all of his patients to eat organic.
The first time I ate an organic strawberry I was shocked. The taste was familiar - like what I remember from my childhood over 50 years ago; same with the tomatoes.
It's just such a nuisance to go looking for it (not around the corner) and the cost, combined with the price of all the supplements, is really killing me.
Oh, well...I've lived long enough.
SS