“Buying organic”
Last night was my first night in my new digs and I did a little recon in the kitchen. My hope is that the new roomie and I will have similar tastes and we can share some of the cost of groceries. From what I can tell, our tastes are similar, but the roomie is really into “buying organic,” I think. She has organic jam, organic tea, organic pasta, yadda yadda yadda.
In any case, a lot of the impulse to buy organic goods is a response to marketing. Somehow, we’ve come to assume that “organic” means it’s better. We pay more for “better” goods, even though there may not be a big nutritional difference between a certain good and its organic counterpart. My roomie, I noticed, does not keep a lot of fresh (or even frozen) produce on hand which I thought was ironic. Personally, I’m skeptical about the health and moral benefits of buying organic processed foods.
If one is buying organic for purely concerns about health—that is, not wanting to consume harmful chemicals—I think it’s important to know where it does and does not matter. On the same hand, I feel obliged to say, that if one is shopping from moral standpoint—where I’m concerned about pesticide use affecting water, soil, etc. then any organic produce is superior to non-organic. While I do feel a moral obligation to our planet, I am not currently in a place to act on that obligation by purchasing everything with an organic label on it. My personal preference is to eat a lot of vegetables with my meals and I prefer fresh to frozen almost always.
I did a little googling about the topic today and found a couple cool resources. The first is a list which Lifehacker linked to awhile ago, but I had since forgotten about. What You Should & Shouldn’t Buy Organic says that broccoli, cabbage, bananas, avocados, and some tropical fruits probably don’t need to be purchases organic because they either have thick, unconsumed skins or are not threatened by pests which would warrant pesticide use. This website recommends buying milk, meat, and thin-skinned/high H2O content fruits and veggies organic. I should caveat that the premise of the post is to save money.
This website had some good hints too: Quick Tips for Eating Organic. In particular, I liked the ideas about buying things that are in-season and shopping local markets. The perk of in-season produce is obvious, but the particular benefit of patronizing local farmers markets is that some of the produce is locally grown and therefore priced lower since the middleman—the distributor—is cut out of the picture. For example, I just bought 6 zucchini/squashes (good-sized, not tiny like at the supermarket), 4 cucumbers, 4 large green peppers, and a quart of new potatoes for under 6 dollars at my local farmers markets. Now I have all my veggies AND money in the bank.
