APRIL 19, 2006
It
is a few days before Earth Day and my thoughts are of our children around the world. My thoughts are: How can we insure that their Earth Day's are filled with hope and promise? One thing we as adults can do is guarantee their access to healthy food.
A group called Mothers and Others encourage parents to focus their buying habits more directly on foods produced without chemicals. Like many organizations they created a top 10 list.
The number 10 always intrigues me when it comes to lists. I suppose the first top 10 was the 10 Commandments from the Torah, but why 10 and not eleven or nine? One day someone wiser than I said it was simply because we had 10 fingers and therefore counting was always in multiples of five or ten. Makes sense, and here is a list of 5 of the top ten things to buy organic.
- Baby Food - if not on your grocery's shelf ask because even the big folks like Gerber's are producing organic baby food today.
- Rice - I know the folks who grow Lundberg organic rice and they are nice folks. Katy's family is partners in a rice farm in Marysville California. Long grain organic brown rice is a healthy option for all ages.
- Strawberries - I have been to the biggest and the smallest of strawberry growers, but the secret is in the type and how they are grown. Conventional growers use methyl bromide to kill everything in the soil before the strawberries are planted. In essence they are grown in dead soil. Organic strawberries are grown in rich humus soil with lots of microbial activity. Buy locally grown berries from your favorite farmer's market and you get better taste and safer berries.
- Cereal - This is tough. A large percentage of our cereals are grown with genetically modified seeds and often contain unhealthful amounts of residue chemicals. What to do? Try the organic quinoa, amaranth, spelt cereals; or choose carefully - the products are there on the shelf but sometimes on the bottom shelf because stocking fees are very high for the premium shelf space.
- Milk - I was the biggest milk drinker as a boy, and now as an adult it supplements my decaf shade grown café latte with stevia. Look for rBGH free milk. Dairies inject their cows with recombinant bovine growth hormone to boost milk production. Check out the dairy that offers alternatives. Your young children will never know the difference, but you will as a parent.
That is enough for today. I will finish up the 10 top organic choices on April 23rd, the day after Earth Day.
--Peter