“Switching to organic is tough for many families who don’t want to pay higher prices or give up their favorite foods,” writes Tara Parker-Pope at The New York Times. “But by choosing organic versions of just a few foods that you eat often, you can increase the percentage of organic food in your diet without big changes to your shopping cart or your spending.”
Last fall, Parker-Pope spoke with pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene, who suggested five organic foods that can have a large impact on a family diet with minimal strain to the pocketbook:
- Milk. Some people are reluctant to drink mass-produced milk for fear of being exposed to antibiotics and hormones. Organic milk can cost twice as much as the regular stuff, though, which leads some to question if the benefits are worth it.
- Potatoes. According to the article, a commercially-farmed potato “has one of the highest pesticide counts” of all vegetables.
- Peanut butter. I’m a recent convert to grinding my own peanut butter at the health food store. It tastes great. (Though it needs a bit of salt.)
- Ketchup. Organic ketchup has double the antioxidants of normal ketchup. (That’s a good thing.)
- Apples. Kris and I grow our own apples, so I can attest to how difficult it is to grow good fruit without chemicals. Your average apple in the grocery store has probably been sprayed a dozen times. Organic fruit costs a little more — and isn’t as pretty — but brings peace of mind.
If you’re interested in budgeting organic foods into your life, start with just a few items to make the transition easier.
Actually, starting slowly is a great way to ease into most financial changes. If you’ve decided to contribute 10% of your income to your church (or favorite charity), consider starting with 3%, and then moving to 6% after a few months. If you’ve decided to start a Roth IRA, schedule a $25 monthly contribution. When you know that this is doable, bump the contribution to $50, and then to $100. Small steps can lead to big changes.
[The New York Times: Five easy ways to go organic]
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I’m a little late to the discussion, but I’d recommend a book I”m reading right now “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan. It’s an interesting read about the industrialization of food, and what it’s done to our health.
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Meijer in the midwest has shifted all their milk to rBGH-free stuff. I mean, within the last month or so–two gallons ago, the label was different, and then I bought I new one and hey, what’s that new picture on it? oh the caption says it’s rBGH free now. Cool.
Calder Dairy from Milan, Michigan treats their cows a LOT better than the organic farmers do. Organic farmers, if the cow gets sick, they have limited ways of treating it, so they just keep milking the cow until it dies because it costs less to buy a new cow than to treat it within the organics standards. There are MANY dairy farmers who will pull the cow from milk production, treat the illness with antibiotics if appropriate, and wait the specified period of time for the antibiotics to be out of their system, which is longer than the USDA organics standards. Organic milk is rarely antibiotic-free.
Buying from a farmer’s market can be expensive, especially for those who may buy their food with government assistance. However, many farmers practice organic farming methods, but refuse to go thru the hassle and cost of being certified. Do your research.
For those who prefer local produce, consider spending one weekend a month over the summer canning. I have friends who have a canning party every Saturday from April to November, and each week is a different food, depending on what’s in season and what’s available in large quantities. They go thru the local food co-op for their deliveries (because it’s easier than buying from a bunch of the same farmers that the co-op orders from), everyone who shows chips in or brings their own, plus a dish to pass! This would be a GREAT project for those who attend churches with huge commercial kitchens that go unused.
It’s also easy to find non-organic beef and chicken that has been treated better than organic ones. But it requires you to do your own research into the companies whose products you buy. If you have a farm locally the raises and butchers animals for food, see if you can visit their facilities–take the kids! Great free field trip. If you like what you see, find out how to buy their meat, even if it’s not organic. If there isn’t anything in your area, then research the ones readily available in your usual grocery store.
PS: Organic doesn’t mean the animals weren’t abused. Read the USDA guidelines on what qualifies as organic. Make your own judgments, but think very hard about what is completely ignored about those guidelines.
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I didn’t read all of the comments, but from what I read, I’m with Money Blue Book on this. I have seen scientific studies that show that organic food has less pesticide residue, BUT I have not seen any studies proving that the small amount of pesticide residue on my non-organic food causes any detriment to my health. I cannot make any comment on the difference in nutrients because I have not read up on it (I am sick of hearing about antioxidants though!).
Moreover, I have seen no studies that really show definitive proof that the hormones or antibiotics in meat are causing me problems either.
I am not saying that Organic is bad for those who want peace of mind, but I am just skeptical that it is as much better as some people want you to believe.
I would focus more on ridding processeed foods from your life before focusing on organics.
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Maria,
Are you really attributing your $0 spent on health care sick visits in a year to the raw milk you drink? That would be a very silly correlation to make.
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Why all the concern about difference in taste between organic and non-organic? Do you understand that organic means less chemicals? There is evidence to prove that the pesticides and herbicides are causing serious harm to our environment and to our bodies. I for one am unable to detect much difference in taste but as far as the milk I consume, I do not want to ingest the bovine growth hormone or the antibiotics in non-organic milk. As far as cost goes, milk is slightly more expensive, but produce, if you avoid the overpriced chains like Whole Foods, is equal to and sometimes less expensive than the corporate markets. I live in the midwest (Jewel and Dominicks are the local grocers) and there non-organic produce is usually much more expensive than the organic items we purchase at Trader Joes (where we do 98% of our shopping). During the summer months we join a farming co-op just a couple of miles from where we live. For about $28/ week we get a box load of vegetables grown without chemicals by a local farmer. Sure we spend a few dollars more than we would in the store but we get a much larger variety and the flavor is by far much better than anything store bought. We have three small children and they fight over who gets the broccoli every week so believe me when I tell you it is good stuff.
We also maintain our own garden every year using nothing but organic mushroom compost and water. A 2 inch layer of the compost turned into the soil every spring and regular watering always yields the largest zucchinis and cucumbers (some over a foot long and 4 inches in diameter) and more tomatoes than we can possibly give away to friends and families. Our garden is always the envy of all our neighbors who still insist on using sprays and fertilizers. They just don’t get it.
Sure we spend a little extra $$ on organics whenever possible, but we do it for the health and well-being of our family, both physically and mentally. If you really think about it, we are a society that has no trouble spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars on pleasure and entertainment (think mp3 players, flat screen tvs, sporting events and music concerts) don;t we owe it to ourselves to take the same attitude towards our health?
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We buy a CSA from a local farmer, which we like for a number of reasons: the food is organic, local, we get to visit the farm (so our city kids can see what vegetable plants look like, beyond our homegrown tomatoes), we have to use or lose the veggies and fruits every week, and we pay less than retail, and the farmer gets more than wholesale. We hit the local farmer’s market and food coop to fill in for what the CSA provides.
In the winter, we eat seasonal produce, like apples, pears, citrus (not local, but not from S. America, either), broccoli, squash, cauliflower, etc. We have a couple of fun cookbooks that are organized around the seasons.
If you’re goal is to eat as cheaply as possible, then organics probably won’t appeal to you. However, I find that the less convenience food we eat, the more money we have for organics/local produce at the local coop. Local food just tastes better, because it’s a day or two old when you get it — not a week or more from thousands of miles away. JMHO, though.
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Just about every misconception about organic is in this comment thread (and some of them were also in TPP’s original article). It’s about the environment — health benefits of organic have not yet been proven, though it does make intuitive sense that many organic foods may be more nutritious, and pesticides and chemicals are damaging to health. But as Dr. Alan Greene and others will tell you, there ARE clear risks to children from legally acceptable pesticide residues in some conventional foods. Begin by spending money for organic on the foods and beverages your kids eat and drink most.
http://www.lainie.typepad.com/organic
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for the nay-sayers and those who just don’t seem to “get it,” read Micheal Pollans, In Defense of Food – as several other have noted above. if you want to argue that the earth is flat, do it somewhere else.
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It’s an investment in your health. What could be more important?
Ian
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Interesting! I just wrote about this topic myself, but from a slightly different perspective. I have found that being frugal AND green at the same time can be very challenging.
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Bill and Courtney:
In dealing with raw milk, you’ve can’t go to just any dairy farmer. Cows that are pasture-fed can’t support e-coli in their gut if they aren’t getting any grain at all. Grain changes their intestinal flora. The typical dairy farmer feeding on grain and doing things the Big Dairy way isn’t going to be very clean or careful, so no wonder they wouldn’t give it to their own families. That’s not the case for those doing it a different way.
Obviously, big dairy farmers aren’t going to be pasture-feeding, because it makes the milk supply isn’t as prolific or steady on grass. They also aren’t going to carefully wipe down each cow’s teats by hand: they’ll hose them down if they clean them at all.
Courtney, you’ve “heard of outbreaks caused by raw milk”. If you look at the real facts, there haven’t been any in many decades–but there have been MANY caused by pasteurized milk, because all the antibodies present in milk are also killed by pasteurization. So if the milk gets contaminated after pasteurization, it’s dead and can’t kill the pathogens.
Many years ago, like over 100 years ago, big-city dairies were feeding cows on the spent hops from nearby breweries. These were downer cows–very sick, and their unpasteurized milk caused all kinds of outbreaks. The kind of cows whose meat was just recalled in the biggest-ever recall.
The obvious answer was to stop raising animals like that, and raise them in a healthy way. A group of physicians proposed just that, and made the standard for Doctor’s Certified Milk. It was not pasteurized and would be prescribed for many different conditions, right up to WWII.
But big dairies didn’t want to have to undertake all the testing and cleaning that certification would require. So they started pushing for pasteurization. Pasteur himself said he never intended it for use on milk! It reduces the nutrient content and destroys milk’s self-protective qualities.
Most small dairy farms and most doctors were against the efforts for mass pasteurization, but the big dairy concerns had better lobbyists. It’s a matter of record; links at the website below.
Plus its taste is great–complex, sweet–kind of like melted ice cream. We once had a couple of gallons where the cow had eaten some mint. Then it tasted faintly like mint ice cream. I added some chocolate syrup. Mmmmm.
Real information with links to good studies is at http://www.realmilk.com .
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I’ve found that buying organic food from a local CSA is cheaper than buying conventional produce from the grocery store. We pay $23 a week and get enough to feed an army!
Also, since you pay your CSA in the winter for the next season’s food (I just made my payment the other day) you are hedging against rising food costs. It’s a good deal all around.
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@ Triple E
1) I do not understand the raised on hormones comment. It takes about 2 years to raise a female dairy animal before she will produce any milk. What she is “raised on” does not have any bearing on what the milk tastes like or make up of the product.
2) All raw milk before processing is about 87% water to begin with. The type of dairy breed, varying amounts of the feed ingredients, or different feeding methods can alter the fat/protein levels.
@Scott B
1) Do you realize that every time you drink milk you “ingest” bovine growth hormone whether it is organic or not? No milk is “free” because all dairy cattle release this hormone naturally to produce milk. What some farmers do is supplement this hormone to maintain or increase production.
2) As far as antibiotics go, we have very sensitive tests for this. Each tank of milk is tested before it leaves the farm and all cows that have received antibiotic treatment(they are kept separate) have to pass a test before they are put back into the main herd. If the milk tests positive(very rare, if at all) the entire tank literally goes down the drain.
@womanwithmanyhats
I work on a 500 cow dairy in central NY and we milk the cows 3 times per day. 6000 teats are individually dipped with a solution to clean and prepare the teat for milking. Then each teat is is wiped with a clean towel(1 towel/cow) I don’t know how bigger farms do it but that is how we do it every day.
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[...] was excited to read what Get Rich Slowly had to say about An Easy Way to Go Organic. J.D. referenced a New York Times article that suggested switching to the organic version of five [...]
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as long as cow milk is of topic, it should also be known that cow milk is not really very good or digestible for humans anyway. goat milk is much more aligned wit human physiology. if youu can find it in youur area, you’re lucky. btw, no, i’m not a goat farmer.
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I’ve found only a few items that taste different when they are organic. Heinz organic ketchup has made me eat ketchup again, instead of just buying it for the kids – mmmm. Organic, free-range chicken eggs taste so much better that I find them worth the cost $3.99 and up, even though we go through a dozen almost every week.
Organic milk tastes like regular milk, unless it is ultra-pastuerized. We find the ultra-pastuerized milk has a slightly cooked flavor, and my daughter won’t drink it. The best-tasting milk we ever bought came in those glass bottles from a local dairy (not organic), but after dropping one bottle and spending hours cleaning up the shards from every corner of the kitchen, we switched back to plastic jugs.
Until recently, the organic carrots at our local store cost only 10 cents more than the standard carrots. Now they are much more expensive – what happened?
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This is a little late, yet no one has mentioned any info on baby food being oganic. Is it necessary ?
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I follow the “Dirty Dozen” list. I try to buy these organically. The Environment Working Group said this, “…people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by avoiding the top twelve most contaminated
fruits and vegetables and eating the least contaminated instead….” I don’t worry as much about buying other one organically.
Dirty Dozen
Peaches
Apples
Sweet Bell Peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Lettuce
Grapes (Imported)
Pears
Spinach
Potatoes
http://www.foodnews.org/pdf/EWG_pesticide.pdf
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Dear Friends, Go look in the potato bin. See all those slightly wizzened, sprouty potatoes you won’t use? Cut ‘em up in small bits, with an “eye” on each piece. Leave them out on the counter for two or three days for a callus (hard skin) to form on the cut areas. Go outside in the yard, scuff up a bit of soil in a sunny place. Lay the potatoes on the earth (do not plant) and put spoiled hay, dried leaves and grass clippings, or straw (what we use) on top, about 6″ to 8″ deep. Leave them. The potato plants will sprout from the eyes. Roots will go into the scuffed up soil, the plants will grow through the thick mulch. Come mid June, you pull aside the mulch gently and harvest small potatoes. Put mulch back. You can continue to harvest potatoes all season. When the frost kills the vines, remove the mulch, gently dig the area, and you will find some nice potatoes underground. So far have not had any problem with bugs, the potato patch is moved to a different spot in the vegetable garden every year. There’s nothing like eating your own, pest free, cost free potatoes. This year I must confess that I went to the Korean market and bought 10 extra pounds of the most sprouty potatoes I could find, $1.69/5 pound sack, and put in an extra row of potatoes. With food costs skyrocketing, I’m going to leave this row of potatoes untouched until the frost, then harvest them all and store in a cool place for winter use. Usually we eat our own potatoes through October. Planning to have our own through New Year’s Dinner this coming year. Five pounds of sprouted potqatoes will supply 25/35 pounds of fresh potatoes.
PS. It’s dandelion season. If you don’t have a dog and don’t use pesticides on your grass, you can harvest the fresh dandelion greens while the buds are small tight balls. Wash in numerous changes of water in a dishpan (so you can toss the wash water onto the garden!) and cook Pa. Dutch style with sweet/sour hot bacon dressing, over boiled potatoes and hard cooked sliced eggs, This is delicous, LOADED with minerals and fiber, cheap. If you don’t get around to this, when the dandelions bloom, you can make dandelion wine with the flower heads. By blooming time the greens are too bitter to eat.
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