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Video: CNN –Dr. San­jay Gupta on pes­ti­cides in produce.

Do you really need to wait for a study to be done or for the gov­ern­ment to tell you that con­sum­ing pes­ti­cides is a bad thing? If you wouldn’t spray a can of Raid into your mouth, don’t eat some­thing that has been soaked in it please.

In the video Dr. Gupta failed to note any­thing about GMO and in par­tic­u­lar the GMO corn he noted as being one of his favorites. That said, this was  main­stream news media and I don’t expect them to tackle some­thing so big or scary as Mon­santo. If noth­ing else  Dr. Gupta’s clout will sim­ply help to fur­ther aware­ness about organ­ics and that is a good thing.

I am often asked to pro­vide a list of (click here->) the foods we eat and do not eat. Here is that list.

I am sure I have omit­ted some things but the major foods are there. It may seem extreme but it really isn’t. It is a lit­tle chal­leng­ing at times only because the bulk of mass pro­duced foods are not tai­lored to this lifestyle.Even so, it is quite easy to stick to once you under­stand the effects that cer­tain foods have on your health.

If you are inter­ested, do a lit­tle research. I did. It is no coin­ci­dence that this lifestyle is a com­mon choice amongst can­cer patients. It is easy to see why when you start tak­ing a close look at what is in the foods you are eating.

I have been doing some research into this in an effort not to sound like a paranoid-hypochondriac when I finally do post, but I hon­estly don’t think the infor­ma­tion can wait.

Besides this recent news arti­cle I have found that this phe­nom­e­non isn’t iso­lated to apple juice and peo­ple need to know about it.

Below are links to the news arti­cle, pod­cast, and a research study on arsenic in bev­er­ages that I am still review­ing. You can decide for yourself.

Arsenic Lev­els High in Apple Juice, St. Peters­burg Times Finds — Audio Version

St. Pete Times Article

Arsenic in Com­mer­cial Bev­er­ages Study

con­tinue reading…

Do your home­work.  If you are crazy for bananas do some price com­par­isons from your avail­able sup­pli­ers includ­ing com­pet­ing gro­cery stores or prefer­ably the local farm­ers mar­ket. When con­sid­er­ing costs try to esti­mate what your weekly usage will be, how much dis­tance will be trav­eled to get them (fuel & time), and how long they will keep before going bad. Some­times when you weigh all three of those points together, cheaper doesn’t always mean its a sav­ings. Buy­ing them for .39 cents per lb doesn’t do any good if they are already turn­ing black before you pay for them. It also doesn’t pay off if you have to drive 25 miles each way to buy them.

We can wipe out some bananas with a fam­ily of four in no time. We learned to buy a large por­tion of them while they are still green. This helps sig­nif­i­cantly reduce re-stocking trips and fuel to the mar­ket or store. They ripen in no time (usu­ally) so that we have a new batch ready to eat just about every day. This is a skill to be learned through prac­tice. “peel on, peel off Danielsan”

BTW: This is another one you could get away with buy­ing con­ven­tional if you had to. You are going to peel it any­way so dont go broke if organic is too high for your bud­get right now. All in good time.  Organic is always best, but you have to make choices some­times and this is one where you can cut corners.

Lastly look into Fair Trade prod­ucts when­ever you can. You should be will­ing to spend a fair price for a fair prod­uct. The low­est price guar­an­tee always comes at the expense of some­thing, or more often then not,  some­one else..

If you have ever won­dered what those four or five digit num­bers on fruits and veg­eta­bles are for you are not alone. They actu­ally do serve a higher pur­pose beyond dri­ving busy cashiers every­where mad. Those num­bers can tell you a great num­ber of things about your favorite golden deli­cious or zuc­chini squash. Things you really should know.

Most impor­tantly these num­bers can tell us one of three things. They can tell us if our pro­duce is:

Con­ven­tion­ally Grown – This means that one or more of the fol­low­ing may have been used:

• Syn­thetic pesticides
• Fer­til­iz­ers made with syn­thetic ingre­di­ents or sewage sludge
• Syn­thetic herbicides
• Antibi­otics
• Bio­engi­neer­ing
• Added hor­mones
• Ion­iz­ing radiation

Organ­i­cally Grown — This means that the pro­duce is one that was grown with­out the above listed items for con­ven­tion­ally grown produce.

Accord­ing to United States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) “organic food is pro­duced by farm­ers who empha­size the use of renew­able resources and the con­ser­va­tion of soil and water to enhance envi­ron­men­tal qual­ity for future generations.”

(GMO) — Genet­i­cally Mod­i­fied Organ­ism – This means that the pro­duce has had spe­cific changes intro­duced into its DNA by genetic engi­neer­ing. con­tinue reading…

If you are read­ing this you likely already know that “con­ven­tion­ally grown” pro­duce is not good a thing because pes­ti­cides and chem­i­cals in and on the food you eat is bad. (click here if you are not sure if you have been eat­ing con­ven­tional, GMO, or organic) I am amazed that so many peo­ple still choose to ignore this, espe­cially when they go to the gro­cery store. To be fair, I too once let the pretty arrange­ments of pro­duce  intox­i­cate my senses when shop­ping.  All that  unnat­u­rally pretty, oddly col­or­ful,  and uni­formly shaped pro­duce looks appeal­ing. This com­bined with a naive sense of faith in “the pow­ers that be”  also helped me to ignore the obvi­ous. If I ever did let my mind wan­der to images of rat poi­son and the like, I quickly dis­missed those unpleas­ant thoughts. It was eas­ier to believe that that the gov­ern­ment (and even their gro­cer) had my back on this issue. They wouldn’t allow  any­thing on the food that wasn’t well tested and safe for my fam­ily and I to eat right? This is eas­ier to  believe because if you choose not to, you will be forced to ques­tion other things. That is unset­tling for many peo­ple and a lot of work too. con­tinue reading…

This was a very rel­e­vant ques­tion wor­thy of a post all by itself. It is also very rel­e­vant as I will be post­ing some­thing related about sub­si­dized crops later this week­end.  In short, gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for corn, soy, and wheat make it pos­si­ble for com­pa­nies to pro­duce foods, with lots of chem­i­cally com­plex ingre­di­ents, that are cheaper to buy than foods that actu­ally are ingre­di­ents. How sad is that? Check back soon for that post.

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“Hey Jeff I think this is great. I don’t know how you put it all together. I’d really like our fam­ily to get a start on this. I know it will be hard. Please keep it up. I do have a ques­tion. What is your gro­cery bill like for a week. I know for us the bet­ter you try to eat the more it costs.“
–Thanks Heather

Heather – I am excited to hear you are ready for some fam­ily wide changes. What a great way to raise the next gen­er­a­tion so they don’t think twice about the choice between a pop tart or a banana when they are adults.

The gro­cery bill ques­tion is one that we get a lot from par­ents and a valid one to ask. con­tinue reading…