If you’ve considered adopting a healthier lifestyle you’ve likely considered eating more organic food.
Organic
‘All-Natural’
Antibiotic Free
NON GMO
Grass Fed
Pasture Raised
If you’ve entered a grocery store in the last decade, read the news, or turned on Netflix, chances are you’ve seen one of these food labels and maybe even felt a bit confused.
That’s totally normal! I do this stuff for a living, and I feel confused sometimes too! Eating well, getting enough exercise, and treating our bodies with respect on a regular basis is hard enough without the confusion of claims around various dietary theories and food labels telling you what you should or shouldn’t be eating.
The government and manufacturing companies can label the heck out of anything they want, but we as consumers have the power and control over what we put in our bodies. Every bite we take is a choice. Some choices are better than others based on our options, accessibility, cravings, or setting, but for many of us, we have this awesome ability to enable our body with fuel, information, and sustenance not to mention flavor.
The food you eat can either be the safest, most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.
The first step is arming yourself with the tools and information you need in order to be a conscious consumer. Nutrition and wellness are funny concepts because there are arguments on both sides of the coin BOTH informed by science…it’s really unlike any other science out there!
You may have noticed that organic has become more trendy over the past few years, and perhaps, like me, you’re a bit skeptical of fads and trends. However, unlike Crocs, this is one trend that I am willing to stand behind because of the impact it has on our bodies.
Why Organic Food
For the majority of history all food was organic and when you go to many countries in Europe or anywhere outside the US for that matter a lot of the food is organic without the label. This means that the foods are unrefined and prepared and grown without herbicides, pesticides, or chemically, fertilizers. However, as technology improves and chemical farming and food processing continues to be a massive industry, the pollutants are in the foods that we eat. These foods also lack nutrients and affect the natural equilibrium of food.
Plants or animals, all foods are or were living organisms requiring food themselves to grow and flourish. Imagine if you were fed chemicals and pesticides, you probably wouldn’t feel good. When we eat these foods, we ingest those same chemicals they were given.
Pesticides weaken our immune systems and can cause cancer, disease, and affect our organs.
When you eat organically, you’ll not only protect your health, but also protect our water supply, the environment, save energy, and support local and domestic jobs.
There are two things that make organic food hard for me:
- Affordability
- Accessibility
When I’m in the grocery store and I compare the cost of conventional meat or produce with the organic counterpart, the organic is always more expensive. I’ll admit, it can be hard to wrap my head around spending more money on results I don’t see immediately.
In terms of accessibility, when I’m on the go or out to dinner in NYC eating organic isn’t always available, so I have to make sacrifices, which is why eating organic in my home is important to me.
How to Make Organic Food Affordable & Accessible
Know Your Plants
The Environmental Working Group, EWG, is an amazing organization that releases the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15 each year. The Dirty Dozen are the fruits and veggies that you should try to buy organic because their pesticide levels are higher than those on the Clean 15.
When I’m really working on a budget, I prioritize the fruits and veggies on the Clean 15 and either eliminate the ones on the Dirty Dozen from my list or pick just a few. I do this by meal planning ahead of time and picking recipes that incorporate the Clean produce.
Here are a few of my favorite Clean 15 Recipes:
Shop Local
Many local farms are small and don’t have a lot of money so they can’t afford the ‘USDA Organic’ label. Often times, these local farms will be operating organically and their produce is cheaper than the grocery store because you’re buying it direct, no middle man needed. Talk to the farmer and ask them about their practices to learn if they’re pesticide and herbicide free.
Accessibility
When you’re on the go or traveling, fueling your body with great foods is even more important! I usually keep a few snacks in my purse or at my work station, so I don’t end up at a convenience store. Nuts, trail mixes, and fresh fruit are always safe bets for me.
If you are on the go and didn’t bring something with you, opt for whole real food for your snacks and try to avoid processed foods as much as possible. A non-organic banana is better than a bag of gummies, again, it’s just about prioritizing those choices and options.
Animal Protein
Eating organic animal protein is one of the highest prioritization on my organic food grocery shopping list. Unlike plants animals eat food, both plants and animals, so anything that animal eat is absorbed into the bloodstream and flesh, which we then end up eating. Animals are often given additional hormones and antibiotics to make them larger and they live in cages where they’ll be sitting in their own waste. Again, we end up eating this. it’s also important to me to eat animals that were raised humanely. This means they were able to get a lot of fresh air and roam freely. Happy animals equal happy meats!
I know that organic can be really expensive and seem out of reach a lot of the times, but committing to putting good things in our body can change the way we think, feel, and look. If you don’t notice the difference immediately, stick with it, small changes now lead to great change long term.
I’d love to know what you think about organic food in the comments below. As always, feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions or further thoughts. I love hearing from you.
xx
Hailey
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