The Most Important Organic Purchases
May 12th, 2008 | Published in Green Living
It can be challenging when you begin to look at putting your conscious eating ideals into action. Organic almost always costs more; local can be hard, if not impossible, to find and humanely raised meat may only be available to you via the Internet. At the very least, eating mindfully will introduce constraints to the kind of omnivorous diet we’re used to. No more strawberries in January. If you’re a strict locavore in North America, no more mangos, kiwis and papayas, ever…
Since I’m pretty much like everyone else, I began my quest to do the right thing with baby steps. I switched from the chain grocery store, which was the one most convenient to my house, to the Ballard Market, a natural grocery a mile down the road. Not a big stretch. But, just by shopping in that more aware setting, even my impulse purchases are likely to be better choices.
I also make a real effort to buy all my produce, eggs, cheese and flowers at my once a week farmer’s market. Again, this has been fairly painless for me. Even though the eggs and cheese cost a little more, the flowers and produce are a little less and the experience is wonderful; I look forward to my Sunday market socializing. In most parts of the country, fruit stands are also a good place to look for more local and organic produce.
Unless they’re shopping with money from a research grant, everyone I know makes compromises between “perfectly environmental” and affordable and convenient. I think it’s important to begin this process of compromise with some key information.
Determining what’s local is easy. But if you can’t afford to go 100% organic, figuring out which foods are the essential organic investments takes a little research. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has made this fairly simple-stupid. They’ve done exhaustive testing to establish a shopper’s guide to pesticides in produce, which you can download at www.foodnews.org.
The short list of the top twelve offenders unfortunately includes: strawberries, bell peppers, peaches, nectarines, green beans, apples, pears, grapes (imported), lettuce, spinach and potatoes. Another EWG study shows that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90% by avoiding these top twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables.
Slowly I have weaned myself from old habits and added new ones. I no longer load my cart with anything that looks ripe. I think, I read the little stickers, and I put a lot of things back. Yup. It takes awhile for this to become automatic. I keep the EWG produce list and a seasonal produce chart found at this page in my shopping bag and it’s getting easier.
