What’s Wrong With Store Bought Food?

Gardening organically means you can sink your teeth into a sun-warm tomato without wondering whether you’re also getting a mouthful of unwanted chemicals. You are in control of what you and your family are eating. When you purchase produce at your local supermarket you can not always be sure of the quality of your produce.

Food alone cannot make you healthy, but eating right helps you feel well and maintain good health. When you grow your own fruits and vegetables, you known you are getting fresh, wholesome food.

6 Reasons Why Organic Food And Gardening Is They Way To Go!

1. Safe-Chemical Free Foods: Organic produce has no toxic chemical residues on leaf or fruit. No toxic preservatives, food additives, or artificial synthetic dyes.

2. Organic Gardening is Environmentally Friendly:When produce is trucked or transported from faraway it has a drastic effect on the environment

• Saves energy and pollution from wholesaler to retailer to your kitchen
• Eliminating pesticides encourages beneficial wildlife, is good for all, and the ecology

3. Healthiest Foods: Fruits and vegetables harvested at their peak provide far more vitamins and nutrients than food that is trucked from afar. The less time from the garden to table means healthier, more nutritious, tastier foods.

• The quality of the crop can only be as good as what it is fed. Organically grown produce is fed by biologically active soil full of rich and complex nutrients.
• Store bought conventional produce many times are harvested before they are ripe, vitamins and nutrients haven’t reached their highest levels. Even crops picked at maturity, such as broccoli and cabbage, lose many nutrients during shipment from coast to coast.
• When the vegetable leaves the vine, it doesn’t stop biological activity; the enzymes that ripen it will continue to affect the nutrition levels as well as the flavor. If you have ever eaten fresh from the garden produce you know the reason why fresher is better.
• Many vitamins are destroyed if produce is allowed to wilt or exposed to heat.

4. Trading health for endurance: Many times flavor has bred out in favor of endurance and disease resistance with methods such as using GMO’s – (genetically modified organisms) seeds and plants.

• Genetically modified foods are not labeled so we are playing Russian Roulette with our health and environment.

5. Picture-perfect foods:  Good-looking perfect produce is also a factor in store-bought food. Commercial growers aim for picture-perfect produce and using an arsenal of chemicals to repel insects and disease but Organic gardeners are willing to trade a few holes or blemishes for wholesome eating.

• According to the EPA pesticides can cause birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other serious health concerns that are used in the growing process of conventional foods.

• Imported produce may contain even more pesticides than conventional grown produce because other countries are not limited by the same restrictions on chemicals. For instance as per Natural News China organic foods are filled with pollution – there is no limit to how much mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic and aluminum is allowed in “organic” products.  It’s just a label that seems to have no meaning and is certainly not healthy.

6.  Food All Year Round: Storing and preserving your garden fresh foods for winter.  Home-preserved foods are the highest in nutrition you can get next to fresh, since the crop is taken promptly from garden to kitchen kettle or freezer.

• Try preserving by freezing when fresh from garden.
• Store in root crops such as carrots or potatoes in boxes of soil or shredded newspaper in unheated garage or basement.
• When frost threatens your tomatoes pick them and wrap each one loosely in newspaper – even the green ones will keep ripening for weeks.
• Dry your own fresh herbs, beans and peas for winter use.

As a consumer you do have power. If you don’t have the means to grow your own foods — buy locally, go to a local farmers market, or get to know your produce manager in your local store.

Some questions and tips to be asking your local farmer or produce manager:

• Suggest a supermarket display – one side: chemically grown – the other organically grown. Make sure that they are labeled appropriately.
• Ask where the food was grown and that the food be labeled according?
• Do they have a local source for produce and suggest that they try to find one that practices organic methods?
• When was the crop harvested and how was it transported?
• If pesticides or herbicides were used – what were they?
• What preservatives or fungicides were used and what would the shelf life be without those chemicals?

Take your power back and make sure you are providing the healthiest foods for your family whether it is your own organic garden, locally grown, or foods that you buy and  trust are organic and safe.  Organic gardening puts you in charge of a vital part of your food supply. Fruits and vegetables are rich in fiber, vitamin rich nutrients that are so important to a healthy diet.  You can be sure that you are not eating GMO’s, artificial dyes, preservatives, and toxic pesticides. Most of all you have the peace of mind that you are providing the best for your family,  you know that you are helping the environment, and helping to save our planet. You do have the power to help ensure that our children have a safe and healthy future.

Other Sources:  Rodale’s All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening

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Marla

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Hi! Thanks for visiting my blog! I believe in living green, organically, and natural in every aspect of our lives. My mission is to help educate you on how to live green, help save our environment and to help you and your family live a happier, healthier life!