Many people want to know if there are health benefits from eating organic food and whether organic farming is all a big lie. The anti-organic food crowd would have people believe that organic food is worthless and wasting time, space, and money. Those who live an organic lifestyle would rather burn at the stake than eat anything that wasn’t at least 95% organic.

So what do you do you live the organic lifestyle or continue on non organic food? Well here are some common concerns about organic food:

What does organic mean anyway?

The term ”Organic” means different things in different countries because it is up to the country to decide what the guidelines and regulations will be. The guidelines that you will see in most countries consist of food that does not contain GMOs, synthetic ingredients, and little to no processing. Read the rest of this entry »

In the U.K., consumers are gobbling up organic food by the bushel. In fact, according to the Organic Centre Wales, “Direct sales of organic food through box schemes, farmers’ markets and farm shops grew by more than a third to L144 million during 2004.” And those numbers have continued to rise as consumers become increasingly concerned about the long-term effects of the chemical fertilizers and pesticides used on crops grown by non-organic farms. While most people agree that organic food is preferable over non-organic, a debate has begun about the source of organic foods. For example, is imported organic food as desirable as UK organic food?

Making the Case for Local Organic Food

Those on one side of the debate insist it doesn’t matter where organic food is grown; rather, the crucial factor is that the food meets stringent standards to ensure that it is truly organic. Those on the other side of the debate are equally vehement that locally grown organic food is preferable to imported organic food, both because the fossil fuels used to transport imported organic food add to global warming and because UK organic food supports local farmers. Read the rest of this entry »

When your college-age son reminds you that your supermarket foods are “dead” and that you’re simply supporting government-subsidized monoculture farming practices, what do you do? Is the answer “natural and organic food”…but what does this mean, and what would you get if you convert to it?

When does a difference matter? Who hasn’t been intrigued during a shopping visit when you read one packet where “free range chickens” have been “sustainably farmed”, while the other packet simply shows the price and pound details for what must be the “alternative chicken” produced by industrial farming and mass distribution means? How do you choose? Is one more “chicken” than the other?

Does the carton showing happy cows grazing on verdant pasture settings along with the words ” organic food” make you stop, think and buy? And what about the buyer’s dilemma when one brand of organic milk differentiates itself from competitor organic milks because the milk is ultrapasteurized…and in the same food case another organic “raw” milk claims that it’s better for you, fresher because it hasn’t undergone any pasteurization? Read the rest of this entry »