Harden's Organic Revolution

What do you want to put in your body?  I guess that all depends on what you want to come out, right?  Do you want to struggle or go full steam ahead?  Do you want to educate yourself about the world or just live in it as it is handed to you without question?  If someone walks up to you with a magic bean, do you take it or investigate first?

Until mid 2009, I would have been a person to take the magic bean.  I saw something and if the label said it was good for me, or it looked pretty in its overdressed packaging than I said OK!  I was fortunate enough to hear a series of great speakers from different facets of my life and it seemed like there was an underlying commonality between them all.  “Think”…  Think about what you are doing.  This is your life, you are the mother now, go out there and make decisions with your family for your family.  One of the recurring themes was food.  “What are you eating?” type questions would pop up.  I was pregnant at the time and eating, what I thought, was a somewhat healthy diet.  Lots of pizza (yes, I am still holding onto the pizza thing), lots of other starches and corn products, chips and milk, ice cream and cheese from the regular old store.  I had a pantry full of pre-made “just add water” type meals and cans of crayola colored soups. 

I started our first “Food Revolution” that summer and it has changed our home.  I just started researching things, realizing things and educating myself before I went to the grocery store.  I found that so much, most in fact, of what we were eating was produced in a way that added chemicals and dyes and required acid washes and preservatives.  I didn’t want that in my food.  I didn’t want that in my little girl’s food.  The cows are being fed corn instead of grass, because it is cheaper, and then need drugs to fight off infections because their diets are not adequate.  Then they are given growth hormones to produce mass amounts of milk and that being possibly passed to people and the researched effects of that on young preadolescent girls made my head spin.  The beef cows being given hormones to “beef up” as much as possible and then my family is eating that muscle tissue?  The chickens and the weird drugs and selective breeding going on so that they can not even walk due to their chickzilla size and the feces ridden facilities they are kept and processed in.  The vegetables that make gorgeous presentations in the stores, because of their bright and glowing reds and greens, are stacked just so because every single one is almost exactly the same.  The fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides can make things look pretty, but rob the fruit and vegetables of almost all nutritional value AND leave residues for you to consume.  Those toxins contain harmful chemicals that can place individuals at higher risk for serious health problems like cancer, leukemia, liver damage and birth defects to unborn children.   I felt like I should just go out in the garage and suck on a bottle of miracle grow for dinner and have the same result. 

So it seemed all the crops I was eating from were contaminated with things I didn’t want and any animals we consumed animal products from were not natural.  I wanted to clean up our act and Brian jumped on board as well.  Out with store bought milk and we started having good milk delivered to the house (a plus since my family goes through a lot of milk and carrying that much from the store was always a pain).  Out with Kraft cheese and in with organic cheeses.  Out with common ground meat and in with organic grass fed meat.  Organic ice cream, yogurt, vegetables, chocolate (try to go fair trade chocolate!), meats, eggs, fruit, beans, and juice are all things we have switched to in our food journey.

I did not do this all overnight.  No way!  It took me probably about two years to get to the point that I could say we are a 90% organic household.  Why only 90%?  Well, some things we have because I had to run out and could not find the organic version for now and I have to get what I get.  But, there are also some things you do not have to get organic.  There are two lists that change every so often, but have stayed relatively the same.  There is the “Clean 15” and the Dirty Dozen”.  I have both of these listed on the right margin of my grocery shopping list, so I don’t have to memorize anything.  I , again, will state that my memory is horrible!!!  So, lists are handy for me.  Anyway, the “Clean 15” is a list of products that you can get away with, if you want to, buying non-organic versions of because they have been tested to find that there isn’t a significant difference between organic and non-organic as far as chemical amounts in the edible parts.  The “Dirty Dozen” is a list of the twelve things that you should always get organic if you are going to get it.  This is because there is a large uptake of pesticide, herbicide and/or fertilizer in the food even after water washing!  The two lists are as follows.

DIRTY DOZEN

·             celery

·             peaches

·             strawberries

·             apples

·             domestic blueberries

·             nectarines

·             sweet bell peppers

·             spinach, kale and collard greens

·             cherries

·             potatoes

·             imported grapes

·             lettuce

CLEAN 15

·             onions

·             avocados

·             sweet corn

·             pineapples

·             mango

·             sweet peas

·             asparagus

·             kiwi fruit

·             cabbage

·             eggplant

·             cantaloupe

·             watermelon

·             grapefruit

·             sweet potatoes

·             sweet onions

I have to say that while I do follow this sometimes there are just some things I still try to get organic that are on the Clean 15. This is only because I don’t want to take the chance and I don’t want to promote the possible use of chemicals with my purchase.  I would rather my money go toward the organic movement.

Yes, it is a bit more expensive to go organic with some things, but others I find cheaper or the same.  I ended up spending less going to Trader Joe’s now for my weekly shopping than I did at Meijer with less children back then.  I can get away with about $100-$150 a week for a family of six depending on what is on the menu and what things we have run out of. 

This isn’t only you, or your family, you are changing my making these decisions.  Agriculture has changed to an almost unrecognizable giant in the last 100-150 years.  Do you think all of the chemicals we are putting on our fertile lands is contributing to a brighter future for the grounds and water systems or debilitating them?  Instead of thousands of farmers out there, there are only a few huge companies that run everything and they have the farmers under their thumbs succumbing to things they don’t even think is right, but they have to follow the rules or loose everything.  These companies can use publicity and advertising ploys to trick the uneducated consumer.  Money is talking instead of safety and health for consumers.  Do you really think that ½ pound double cheeseburger, or the Doritos, or French fries being held by a size two woman with perfect makeup and hair that is on every other billboard is the best choice for you? Or them?

We have transformed our kitchen in the last couple of years, but recently I started getting a bug in my ear about how going organic doesn’t mean you are eating the best way you can and there is still some things in the food that are unnecessary and not the most nutritious.  This start’s the Harden’s next Food Revolution.  In my next blog I will talk about our newest venture into a more whole foods idea.  We are leaning away from processed foods and more toward the truly organic food.

I hope this has helped some of you out there maybe begin your own food journey and exploration into what your family eats and what changes you might be able to make in order to live optimally. 

(These are two cows we saw being born when we went to visit Fair Oaks Farms this summer)

(This is the milking arena where the cows go on and off on their own and this whole operation is done without human interuption.  It was a VERY clean facility and the cows were well taken care of)