Organic foods

[Moongrinner]

Just curious how importnat this is to all other Momma's.

[Sarah O]

Hi!

I didn't use the voting thing because I'd rather explain my answer.  For me, I give my guys organic foods when it suits us, but I'm not crazy over it.  What I AM a bit crazy over is making my own foods, using as little processed stuff as possible, not giving them sugar and salt, etc.  For meats, I'm trying to go the 'less is more' route but when I do give it, the chicken is free-range if possible. When I introduce cow's milk I'll go organic just so that they aren't getting all the nasty hormones.  For veggies though I just can't make myself go organic...I know I probably should but it's just so expensive and the produce never looks as good  .

Sarah

[Kimberly®]

I just use the jared foods, there's no preservative, salt, or suger added. Just the food and water. I like them and I don't have the time to make my own food. She gets table foods that she can hold now, but when I tried giving her homemade food at one point she didn't like it anyway.
Organic is just a way for them to make more money

[prncss]

i do organic cause my LO has a wheat intolerance and spits up like mad when he has wheat. Organic is for the most part wheat free. I tend to make my own because i can offer a better variety of veg as well I stay away from sugars and salts. I am not sure what i will do when i need to start meats... maybe i will raise a vegitarian? Anyhow, he loves what he eats and he eats it all!

[Nay - Mateo's Mom]

We are at about 90% organic re. all of our foods, including baby.
Definitely ALL meat and dairy products in our home are organic.
We still have some conventional fruits and veggies.

DS is on organic brown rice cereal, and when we move to veggies, then we'll go organic on those too.

[redfroggy]

Karita,

That is not true.

A food processor has to go through a lot in order to make foods organic.

Not only do they have to grow everything without herbicides and pesticides, they have to grow it on land that has never used chemicals before. They have to have this all documented.

All the foods have to be processed in a place where no other non-organic foods are processed.

There are foods out there that are organic, but they can't be USDA certified simply because they are produced in a place that produces non-organic items.

That is why organic milk is so expensive. Not only do they not use anti-biotics or hormones on cows that produce milk (which has a lot less milk production compared to regular dairy cattle) but they have to be fed organic grains and corn as well.

Now I will agree that organic prices are a little inflated, but it is also a specialty market. As more organic foods go mainstream, and more organic farms go online, the prices will start dropping.

Safeway came out with its own organic line just called "O" (makes me think of Oprah, LOL) but some of their items are not much more expensive than non-organic foods.

[Kimberly®]

I'm not disputing that there is a lot going into Organic foods. I just never seen or tasted a difference when I didn buy them and found it a BIG waist of money for us. We can't afford to by all the organic foods, its just not within our budget. It may also depend on location as well for things like prices and quality. I mean we grow our own veggies in the summer to save money, thats about as organic as we get.
For us we don't see the need.
Thats not to put down those who use it, or even those who feel its better. Different people = diffrent opinions.

[redfroggy]

I don't have the money for completely organic either. For myself, I buy organic products that I use the most like bread, milk, and eggs.

I want DS to have the best chance at a healthy life there is. I personally feel that chemically processed food is awful. So his diet will be strictly organic.

[Kimberly®]

LOL I think I'm in the manority, but there is sooooo much else that rates so much higher for me then whether food is organic or not. I eat the food all the time and I'm perfitly healthy, and so are thousands of other people who eat the same thing. Its a wonder any of us survived childhood    I'd much rather worry about things that are importent.. to me anyway. I have enough problems to deal with..

[Sylvia.]

i try any buy all of vegi's organic, i do go to the market for this, i find that the organic in the supermarkets is awful, i also find that some things organic are cheaper if not that same price as normal food, organic market food is cheaper than lots of thing at the supermarket, i find the supermarket fruit, vegi's and meat are over price and awful, never buy these at the supermarket, we have an organic supermarket down the road and that is expensive, i do go there from time to time to top up and may even have to use it more often when the baby comes along, i can taste the difference, especially in carrots and tomatoes, i love the look of organic food, it looks home grown, we started using organic fruit and vegi's some years ago when we became juice junkies after we quite smoking and started to try and live a healthier life style, oh we still eat out heaps so that is not organic but we are not over the top about anything, if we can we will and if we can't we don't, i have been told a number of times that if food is not available organically that you should not eat it as it not excepted by the body as well, i am sure i have not explained myself clearly but i am no health expert i just found it interesting i have received this information from a number of people, here in australia all fruit and vegi's is really good and the growers are under strict guidelines anyway, i just want to support organic, this is the way of the future and eventally the prices will come down with demand

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

Hi ya,

I choose to give my kids (well just about to start with number 2) organic. I am especially funny about milk and meats (especially chicken - I worry what they are being fed to get so big so quick and not maturing at their natural rate, speed of growth = money etc). Chicken is definately not the low fat meat it used to be because they are often fat chickens if they are fattened up too quick. I've heard you can give medication to a cow and it's milk ends up on our shelves but as a breast fed mum we can't have anything!!! I don't get that and I was told that the guidelines for organic milk are tighter.

One consideration though should be taken. Some organic baby jars contain less nutrients that just normal jars. The reason behind this is for them to be "labeled" organic certain things can not be added. A recent "Which" report found that there was less iron is some of the organic products. I am not sure how accurate my memory and how big a deal it is.

J

[squeaky's mum]

I think incorporating organic food into our lifestyle is important for many reasons. I agree that it is far too expensive to eat entirely organic. We try and eat about 50:50 organic:normal veg. For me the main reason is that I don't want to consume huge amount of chemicals. Although you can say

I eat the food all the time and I'm perfitly healthy, and so are thousands of other people who eat the same thing.

this is something that is very difficult to prove and so is the converse but I am suspicious of the effect that eating a large number of toxic chemical, albeit in safe quantities on each individual veg/fruit, has on the body. It is known that our body fat is a store house for toxins that we consume. I wonder what the long term effects of this will be on my and my families body, especially in the light of increasing rates of cancer in the western world population. I also have a history of cancer and heart disease on one side of my family who have consistently eaten a low fibre, high fat and highly processed diet. For me, I am convinced that their diet has not helped the state of their health.

I would also rather eat organic produce because organic farming is far less destructive on the environment and in the UK, the main organic promoting organisation, The Soil Association, which also certifies a large amount of our organic food to the strictest level ensures our organic foods stay GM free. The main problem is that a lot of organic comes from overseas which is not good for the environment because of all the food miles that are involved in getting the food to us. I would always buy local over organic.

I think organic food does generally taste better than conventional food. However, I find supermarket organic food the most tasteless of organic food. I get an organic fruit and veg box delivered every week and it is really high quality. The fruit especially is fantastic, it is food that tastes like you remember food tasting when you were a child. The food (non-organic) I get from the grocers in my local town is also fantastic. I think it is supermarket food where taste is a secondary priority to looks, and economy of scale.

It is all down to the individual though. I have done far too much reading and learning about the conventional agricultural and supermarket industries to buy from them unless I have no choice.

Here are a couple of websites for those that are interested.

http://www.soilassociation.org.uk/
http://www.whyorganic.org/

Claire

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

Hi  squeaky's mum,

You just reminded me of something very important. TASTE.

We were ordering a veggie box and our meats through a delivery company (Abel and Cole) and the taste was unbelievable. I didn't realise broccoli tasted so good I am now addicted. Meats are unbelievable and great for kids as they don't have to chew too much. I now only do a shop at that place once per month because of the cost but if I won the lottery there is no question I would have it every week.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed with their kids but my DD isn't that great when it comes to eating out. I am not a very good cook but DD certainly knows what things should taste like and if it's slightly naff in a restaurant she won't eat it. Going out to eat in the UK can sometimes be such a disappointment when it comes to quality. When we were in NZ a few years ago we had a great tasty meal everytime we went out. I wish the standards would improve.

The easiest way to pass judgement is to order some proper organic meat and veg and see what you think. I am buying Supermarket organic now and it definitely isn't the same but it's what we can afford.

J

[lisi's mum]

I get an organic fruit and veg box every week. Done this way I'm getting local produce (I won't buy organic that's been shipped half way across the world when I can get non organic from the next village. Organic from down the road though has to be first choice for me), the money goes direct to the farmer's collective, not getting a huge supermarket cut and I love the variety I get. Bought like this my organic stuff hardly costs any more than I would normally spend in the supermarket anyway.

I'm not so consistent with organic food for myself but with dd, well she's got many a year to fill herself up with chemicals, doesn't need to start now!

[GabrielleD]

I personally don't usually buy organic foods. If the price for organic stuff was lower, then I would probably buy it more. I think that for me the price is the prime determiner of why I haven't gotten into the organic stuff. That and selection. I don't have time to drive to natural food markets (where the prices are much higher) in addition to getting my regular groceries in the supermarket. So if the supermarket doesn't have a good selection of cheap, organic products I probably won't use organics much.

[Moongrinner]

Wow! I got much more response than i had thought I would! It's ben interesting to read everyones opinions and thoughts. My LO is only 5 months old and so far everything she eats is organic (brown rice cereal, bananas and applesauce to date) and I certainly plan on keeping it that way as long as possible.

we used to get organic produce delivered to our house and MAN WAS IT SOOOOOOOO GOOD! Unfortunalty I can't afford it now. Not so much because of the price as with my and my man's irratic work schedules we ended up throwing the food out half the time and it just works better to buy little bits as we need it.

Berries, meat and dairy is most important to eat organic I think. berries really suck up pesticides and actually have been known to make the workers ill from picking them! The things they feed livestock that is conventionally raised here in the US is just plain NASTY. It is now illegal (since mad cow and all) to feed dead ground up livestock to the samr species like they used to (dead cow to live cows) but now they just feed the dead (usually diseased) chicken and pigs to the cows and the dead cows and pigs to the chickens and the dead pigs and cows to the chicken along with sawdust and manure and all kinds of "fillers" that these critters just shouldn't be eating. Plus the HUGE amounts of growth hormones pumped into cows especially just can't be good. And all the antibiotics make me nervous too because that's all stored in the meat and milk and then when we ingest it it enters our bodies and antibiotics are becoming increasingly less effective on all the illnesses out there and I believe that overuse of antibiotics is a contributing factor to faster mutation of the "bugs".

I agree that less processed foods and making it from scratch is a super cool and wonderful thing to do!

Anyway...I'll get off my soapbox now

[Nay - Mateo's Mom]

Hey Moongrinner!

I'm with you on the Meat and Dairy bit. At our house ALL of our meats and dairy products are organic. We're slowly transitioning to becoming 100% organic foods. Like you, we buy bits at a time. My mom saw a news thing the other day where they were talking about autism in children, and it used to be something like 1 in 60,000 kids was autistic, and in like 10 years the number is now 1 in 60!! 
The doctors/scientists were relating some of the cause(s) as being the foods we eat here in North America. Our bodies just weren't made to be able to handle all of the chemicals, hormones, steroids, etc. It's scary stuff.
We have a "Whole Foods Market" nearby so that's where I do my meat, dairy and some produce groceries.

Okay, that's my 2 cents.

[Mum-of-Two]

In my area, I am having a very hard time finding organic stage 1 foods!  I've been to countless different stores.  Grant it, I have not made the trip to the specialty store yet, but Gerber used to make an organic line and I understand they are discontinuing it??  Does anyone know if that is true?

I would do more organic if I could find it in stage 1 -- and so far I don't find so much more expensive.  Grant it, we're only on cereals and stage 1 foods, but it doesn't hit my budget any harder than regular foods for now.

[evelyn]

we buy organic as much as we can, and always try to buy in season veg.  The taste is far better and I'm a greenie anyway!!
I read somewhere, that the reason young girls are starting to menstruate earlier is because of the hormones pumped into chickens and cows....now that is scary

[Moongrinner]

Yeah, autism rates have REALLY increased. Another interesting theory about why it is increasing involves vaccines. Look into it-REALLY scary stuff. Most vaccines are made with formaldehyde, mercury, aborted fetus cells. geletain and all sorts of other strange things. Also, children today get waaaaaaayyyyy more vaccines than they used to and the blood-brain barrier isn't established until two years old so all that stuff goes straight to their littlr developing nervous systems.

I'm not saying all vaccines are inherently bad things, I'm just saying some may not be necessary (like flu and chicken pox) and some perhaps ought to postponed (why does a 4 week old need a tetnus vaccine?) Just a thought.

the early development of children nowadasy is scary too! I think it comes mostly from milk and cheese and milk products (especially cheese since it is concentrated milk) I mean, they REALLY pump those cows full of growth hormones to get them to produce as much milk as possible, (I saw pictures of cows with udders swollen to the size of german shepards!) and milk already contains growth hormones naturally to give our babies a head start. The interesting thing is that cow milk has one of the same growth hormones in it as human breastmilk. so just think about that in relation to early development in children and also think about cancer-if one already has some cells with a tendency toward abnormality and we're consuming growth hormones, I mean cancer is just unregulated growth of cells.

 I read a quote from a fellow who worked at a slaughterhouse and he said that some dairy cows bones were so weak from them being forced to give so much milk unaturally (with the "help" of injected or fed hormones) for so long that by the time they got to the slaughterhouse he could take their femur (The largest bone in the body) and break it with his BARE hands!

[Mum of girl, boy, boy]

Hi ya,

This is all very interesting stuff.

People might think I am mad but who cares. My DD can't drink milk due to intolerance and doesn't like cheese. To start with I got all worried about it but then decided to think well it's not the most natural thing for humans to have. She tolerates it on her cereal but that's as far as it goes (as a drink she gets tummy ache). I am really concerned that there is so much emphasis on how much milk our lo's get. Ok so I can't tell how much my DD was getting as far as breast milk was concerned at 10/11 months but it was no where near the amount recommended. I did get worried about it but she was taking as much as she wanted (not because she was too full on solids or anything).

Sometime guidelines are just that but we have instincts to use as well.

Good luck everyone.

J