Eating Organic

Britney, I hear you and I hate what the food supply has become.  We cannot afford to eat organic for everything, but we do make sure our milk, eggs and the vegetables that are considered pesticide ridden are organic.  I try and buy grass fed local beef and poultry that has no antibiotics or hormones.  We eat a lot less meat than we did and we make nearly all our meals from scratch.  I bake cakes, cookies, bread and our dinners, pizza etc from scratch – if I cannot pronounce the ingredient or if an item has a list of ingredients that I don’t know or more than 3-4 then I don’t use it.  There is hardly any non gm corn in this country anymore, which is such a shame, so I buy organic corn and those are the things I do.  We leave a lot of the luxury non necessary items out of our diet so we can afford more wholesome choices, and that is it.  I recommend reading labels and buying organic where you can, grow some of your own veg if you are able, and get back into baking.  I am so grateful my mother taught me all those skills when I was young.  The food supply is awful, and we all need to try and protect ourselves from the harmful things.  However, as it is so expensive, and many people cannot afford organic, i say pick and choose what you buy and make it yourself, then you know what is in it.  Linda

Which documentary did you watch – Food, Inc.? We are very concerned and careful about this in our house as well! Since the GMO’s are so concerning to you (as they are to us as well) think whole foods. If it has a label you’ve stepped away from whole foods. Which is fine of course but that’s a step. So then read the label. If the list is long it’s probably way too far from whole so skip it. If it has ingredients you couldn’t identify in nature then it’s far from whole foods. Learn the food labeling lingo (like enriched flour doesn’t mean it’s better like it sounds. It’s way over-processed). Look for “all natural” on things but still read the label. That can be deceptive. Some companies are starting to put “no gmo’s” on their packaging. That’s helpful! There’s so much that can be said on this subject! What we have done is to move as far from processed and as close to whole foods as we can as we’ve become more educated on the subject, as well as more adept at looking out for certain things (like food packaging that makes a health claim). It is a process so just learn and make decisions on the new information. There is a lot more reading and watching you can do. Michael Pollan has a few books out, all great. If you want a quick read, Food Rules is good. Mark Bittman is an expert on all this. Fast Food Nation (is a book and a film) was eye-opening. There are others but I’m drawing a blank. If you have stores like Earth Fare, Trader Joe’s, and/or Whole Foods you can learn a lot going to them and their websites. (I have found Earth Fare to be more strict on what they will sell. They even have a document of a list of ingredients they won’t allow in the store which I found helpful because it helped me to know what to avoid in products no matter where I was shopping. If you buy quality whole foods and really limit processed food you can do it more economically. (We don’t shop at Earth Fare but got educated there. It’s a fun place to go shop for food though if you can do it – or want to splurge a little!)

Okay. I really enjoy this subject. 🙂 I’ll stop now.

HTH!

Dana

We have the same concerns and are blessed to live on over 12 acres of land.  SO we now milk our own Jersey cows, getting over 10 gallons a day of the best milk you’ve ever tasted.  We also have chickens.  I make most of our dairy products…butter, cheeses, kefir, etc.  I’ve milled my grains for years and make everything from bread to cookies.  Both of our cavles born this year were bulls so they’ll go in the freezer.  A friend raises a hog (this year 2) for us that is totally on pasture and milk from our cows.  We’re doing our own pastured broilers this year as well.  I have pastured beef, lamb, chicken and pork in the freezer.  A greenhouse is next on our list.  I RARELY go to the grocery store.  I mean, almost never!  It’s wonderful!!  I make my own laundry detergent, tooth powder, and deodorant.  I do Bread Beckers co-op for our organic grains and Frontier co-op for many other things.  Azure Standard doesn’t come here…I wish they did.  I could go on and on but basically we try to eat as close to what God gave us as possible.  And we are trying to learn skills that our forefathers and mothers did as second nature.  I don’t like the term “self-sufficiency” but prefer “prudence and personal responsibility.”  Whatever you call it, we are trying to have more of it.   

Linda,

We were talking about this last night.  We’re in the middle of reading On the Banks of Plum Creek and we stopped and talked about how, when the Ingalls family moved into their new house, Ma took old sheets and made curtains.  She trimmed them with strips from Carrie’s dress that had been ruined.  On and on it went describing how Ma made the house a home by reusing and redoing.   We’ve lost so much…we have become so disconnected with where our basic needs come from and in that disconnect, we have given away our most basic liberties.  Now it’s against the law for me to sell, or even give away, wonderful, wholesome milk!  I can do something stupid like a “cow-share” conctract, so that’s what we do.  I’m so encouraged when I see more and more people waking up and stepping up to reclaim their God-given responsibility to provide the best for their families.