Choosing organic

In the 1970's I became interested in whole foods and avoiding chemicals in the foods that I ate and served. For a while I wanted to write a cookbook which I would have called The Oncologist's Wife's Chemical Free Cookbook. That didn't happen, but you can see that I have a long standing interest in the chemicals in the foods that we eat. Since becoming a vegan I have thought that it would make sense to go one step further and purchase organic foods. But... you know how much more those foods can cost and there are so many questions about whether the additional cost is actually purchasing foods with fewer chemicals.

Grub: Ideas For an Urban Organic Kitchen by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry has been helping me make the decision. For one thing it lead to a shopper's guide to pesticides in produce. While I have seen the list before, I never paid attention to the explanation for it. The Environmental Working Group performed research that showed that people can lower their pesticide exposure by almost 90 percent by avoiding the twelve most contaminated fruits and vegetables. Of course I am not going to stop eating peaches, apples, bell peppers, and the other nine items on the list. I am going to purchase organic versions of the so-called dirty dozen as a beginning to getting those dangerous chemicals out of my body.And it is even more important now than it was when I was first concerned about the issue.

Another book I recommend is Barbara Kingsolver's new book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life". In that book, according to co-author Seven L. Hopp, environmental studies teacher at Emory and Henry College, in 1965, US farmers used 335 million pounds of pesticides. As the pests became resistant (through natural selection, of course), the agriculture establishment increased the dosages of pesticides. In 1989, they used 806 million pounds; 1999, 985 million pounds. Twenty percent of those approved for use pesticides are listed by the EPA as carcinogenic in humans.

He also says that the bugs are holding out just fine. When pesticides were first introduced farmers used roughly 50 million pounds and lost about 7 percent of their crops and in 2000 they used nearly a billion pounds of pesticides and lost about 13 percent of their crops.

Not my idea of the way to grow foods that I want to consume.

The raspberries above are though. I purchased organic berries, brought them home, rinsed them with cool water and ate the entire package! Those berries tasted just as good as the berries that Susie Smith and I snatched from her neighbors bushes in the 1950's. We crawled on our bellies through the woods, lay on the ground out of sight under the bushes, and ate raspberries until we couldn't eat another one.