Not All Organic Products Have The Same Impact On You!
“What you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying.”
~ Henry Adams
I recently signed on as an expert for a new online health and wellness product warehouse. As their expert for healthy eating and healthy cooking, one of my roles was to help them with the product selection in their food department. I loved this project!
In choosing items, of course I wanted things that would taste great and be nourishing. I wanted things that were real food…as unrefined as possible, non-GMO and organic whenever possible. My other consideration was the social responsibility of the companies who make these products.
While I’ve always felt the last criteria to be important, its importance has been highlighted recently as California has a proposition on the ballot to require labeling of GMO food which does not currently have to be labeled in the United States. The reason why it’s been highlighted is because of who is putting their money towards the support of Proposition 37 and who is putting their money towards defeating it.
You see, many of the organic companies whose products we buy thinking that we are doing the best thing for ourselves, our families and the earth are owned by big corporations who are doing things behind the scenes that are not in line with these values. Their organic brand appears to stand for one thing and then they are doing something that we as consumers probably do not expect with our money that we spend on their products.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_26023.cfm
That’s right, they are actually spending lots of money to make sure that we as consumers don’t have the right to know what’s in our food.
So if I have the chance to choose where I spend my money (and I do), I am going with the company that supports organic values rather than the company who is just exploiting them. I wanted to make sure that you could make an educated choice too!
If you’d like to talk more about this or anything related to your ability to eat real food on a regular basis, send me an email.
Rochelle76
5:52 pm on Friday, October 5, 2012
I've always shopped at Whole Foods under the impression they didn't sell anything with HFCS or GMO ingredients. Turns out I have wasted a lot of money, because they do sell unlabeled GMO corn products.
The organic community has been putting a lot of pressure on them to support Proposition 37 and they have resisted. Not sure where it stands now, but I was very disappointed that Whole Foods has been selling GMO foods all along, especially with the latest French GMO study that shows huge tumors growing in rats that eat GMO corn.
Here's the WHole Foods story.
http://www.naturalnews.com/037413_Whole_Foods_Monsanto_GMO.html
Randy Rabney
9:47 pm on Friday, October 5, 2012
Yes, that's right, they also sell products with conventional soybean and canola oil which is likely GMO and other items that contain GMOs. Unfortunately, today, consumers need to be extremely educated about what we buy even when shopping in places where we have an expectation that the food is healthy. That's why it's great to shop at Farmer's Markets when possible so we can ask questions about how the food was produced. Whole Foods has, however, come out in support of Prop 37 you can read their postition here http://media.wholefoodsmarket.com/news/whole-foods-market-supports-californias-proposition-37. At least if foods are labeled it will be easier for us to make choices.
montclair feed
11:18 am on Saturday, October 6, 2012
Organic? As a local business owner, I've also found that many people when shopping for an Organic product, do NOT really know what they're looking for.
Wheter it's for people or pets, 100% of what's in there has to be organic!!! NOT 25 or 50%. We educate people almost everyday.
Montclair Feed & Pet
Randy Rabney
11:46 am on Saturday, October 6, 2012
That's great! I love that you are in a position to educate people and you're committed to doing that.
Townie
4:23 pm on Sunday, October 7, 2012
I'm big believer in organic, not so much interested in GMO.
For me organic has three advantages. 85% of the advantage is at the farm (better work conditions, better local public health outcomes, and less poison). Another 10% of the advantage is in the distribution chain; ignoring Peruvian potatoes, a healthy, relatively local organic farm movement is a positive step on several fronts (employment, environment, land use). 5% of the reason for choosing organic is the food itself (quality, freshness, taste).
That said, certain foods are more heavily sprayed, and then retain and transmit these corporate poisons to whoever eats them, and these are best avoided unless organic. This is especially true for young people, who may concentrate on certain foods. For them my 85-10-5 rule might be something more like 60-10-30.
I find many people are reductionists, only focus on the last number. Their reasoning for organic is 0-0-100, they don't understand and overstate potential direct health benefits. This belief is simple and the corporate organic industry is only too happy to reinforce it. Those who care will do their homework, considering the likely bias of any source.
C Saxl
12:43 pm on Wednesday, October 10, 2012
I'd certainly appreciate more to read about GMOs and especially how to avoid them -- keep it coming! Thanks
Randy Rabney
1:24 pm on Wednesday, October 10, 2012
You're welcome. You can take a look at Non-GMO Project
www.nongmoproject.org/.
Doing a good amount of home cooking is helpful using single ingredient items. That way you can avoid things that may have GMO ingredients like non-organic soybean or canola oil which are used very often.
I hope that this is helpful.