Organic in the news

So there's a new study out about organic foods.  Here's an article about it.  Is organic produce better?  This study states that Organic foods are not healthier than conventional food, in that they do not contain more antioxidants than conventionally grown food.  I never thought that they did.  I did think though, that when your body eats a conventionally grown carrot, it is possibly confused or distracted by the chemicals and pesticides that it may not get the full nutritional benefits of the carrot and its antioxidants.  

It makes sense that both the conventional carrot and organic carrot have the same amount of nutritional value and antioxidants.  But doesn't it also make sense that if you deep fry a carrot you are depleting it's nutritional value?  Same logic goes for adding pesticides.  

When I first heard of this new study, it was from some website that gave it about 2 paragraphs - not enough to get the full story.  The story ended by saying "don't buy organic."  Luckily this article mentions that there are still many good reasons to pay for organic.  Including environment protection, no pesticide residue, and just tasting better.  

I hope I have never made the claim that organic automatically means more antioxidants.  But I think the lack of pesticides makes it healthier, at least safer.  

By the way, I am writing this from my school cafeteria. Which has this awesome station called "500."  Every week they feature a different meal that is less than 500 calories and the produce is farmed less than 500 miles away.  I don't think any of it is organic, but at least they are doing their part.  

I have it about once a week, last week: BBQ portobello mushroom quesadilla, with organic greens and a parfait for dessert, pretty delicious. Today was AMAZING - stir fry edamame with artichoke and onion over crispy polenta, feta cheese and olives sprinkled on top.  Oh and applesauce for dessert.  The apples came from a farm 90 miles away.  

Love it!  

FIrst CSA box

So excited!!  Our first CSA box came today!  We were able to choose our produce which was awesome, and when I came home from class, there was the box sitting at my door.  I already ate an amazing plum and can't wait to try the organic pear.
We also got some amazing yellow carrots, fingerling potatoes, tomatoes, and broccoli.  The best part is that it's all organic!  No yucky pesticides and all the nutrients.
So I don't usually eat potatoes, so tonight I will look up a healthy and simple recipe.  Hopefully I can incorporate all my veggies and make an awesome meal.  I love this already - getting myself away from my normal weekday night meal, which is just a stir fry of a bunch of random vegetables and tofu.
Can't wait for our next one in a couple of weeks.

Wrong Week to be clean

So it turns out that I am a bit sick - not a great week to start a new chapter.  But nevertheless I am going to try to be good.  Yesterday my roommate and I made a trek to the farmer's market.  Oh my goodness I spent so much money and got some amazing stuff!!
Such great looking organic strawberries, asian pears, nectarines
and also green beans, mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini, lots of mixed greens, and tomatoes So last night I made a tofu stir fry with some veggies, and tonight I grilled up some and threw it over an amazing blend of mixed greens (random greens I would never buy unless at the farmer's market - which is awesome) and added some tomato and oil/balsamic - so delicious!!
Of course today wasn't all good.  I bought a parfait at school - granola and yogurt and fruit - none of which was organic and I have no idea what the actual ingredients are.
For lunch all I wanted was PB&J - to make it better I used honey and asian pear instead of J.  The bread though - I noticed has a ton of ingredients that I don't understand.  And the peanut butter - although organic contained sugar!  what?!  isn't it supposed to be peanuts and salt??  where does this sugar come from?  But I ate it anyway.
So, not the best start - but Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

stressing...

So yesterday I was walking down the three blocks from school to my new apartment and I realized that I hadn't looked up.  So I did, and it was an experience I can't even explain.  I saw the beautiful hills out in fronts of me and the green park and it all felt familiar yet so new.
It was a beautiful day and yet, I was staring at the ground.  So this past week has been stressful to say the least.  After a minor breakdown and almost getting sick (i think it was all mental) I am back, but now I have to undo the wrong I did.  With the stress came bad food choices and choosing things due to convenience rather than health.  But last night, my roommate and I went to Trader Joe's I was so excited about making organic tofu and organic vegetable stir fry, that I think I got way too much food!!
Although I do like the TJ's, they don't have much in the way of organic produce.  Although I did get some delicious organic broccolini, yum!
This blog is getting re-invented.  I have gotten so far off track that I think I need to just get healthy again. I have neglected my workouts and gotten of track with food, so after finals, I am getting back into all of that. Stay tuned to see how it all turns out.

Loco for Local!

Oh USF, good for you for getting on the bandwagon.  Even if that bandwagon is 10 x more expensive than the farmer's market!!  So, USF has started selling fresh local produce at the cafeteria!  Crazy!  Also stupidly expensive.  Though they know that the students don't care much about cost, mom and dad pay for the money on their id cards, so the kids just swipe away!  They also have certain meals that are made from produce grown within a certain amount of miles.  I have yet to try it, but good for you for trying to minimize your carbon footprint!  So I move into my new place this weekend!  So stoked.  Can't wait for fresh produce from farmer's markets!  And tofu, oh I have missed just eating tofu out of its box with soy sauce.  I know - weird.  I got use to making great delicious mostly organic stir fry and sandwiches before going to school, but now I have gotten used to take out and frozen foods.  Ugh!
Today's bus ride, besides crazy (some old homeless people were fighting and yelling...oh SF...) went through a farmer's market.  Had I not just been to the gym and starving I would've gotten off to peruse  the selection.  I am sure there have to be some better markets in SF than the one I went to, which has NO organic!  craziness...this is SF people!!  Live up to your green, hippie rep!
Off to do some homework.
ugh

So bad, can't wait to be good

Ok, so living in a hotel room is really difficult!  I can't keep good food in my tiny little fridge and I eat out a lot!  Ugh!  Besides gaining weight, I just feel gross!!  I an feel that this stuff is bogging me down and not making me happy.  So I came across a small farmer's market on Sunday, all excited about fresh organic produce - none!!  I did get some fruit, but it wasn't organic, but I didn't even have the option of organic!  So  disappointed.  There was another, much larger one, near my hotel - but I didn't have time to properly check it out.  I thought moving to SF would make this organic mission so much easier!  They don't even have many Whole Foods here, at least not convenient to me - I have only seen one.  OK fine, no WF - but what about an adequate substitute?  It's not like I have to go to WF, but I just know they have a great organic selection.
So I have also fallen back into my old ways of depending on my microwave.  I really don't think nuking an organic lasagna is healthy, but I guess it's better than grabbing tacos from the corner store.  So this just depresses me, I thought I was going to be healthier and happier in SF, but without a proper kitchen and knowing where I am, I am definitely not healthier!  And this makes me unhappy!  :(

Last week I ate a pre packaged salad from the grocery store - I felt so sick afterwards.  I need fresh whole foods, when "chicken" has more ingredients in it than just chicken - there's an issue.  Preservatives preserve food - I get it, but my body doesn't.

I am so excited for 10/2 when I have a great beautiful kitchen in which I will stock all the finest organic produce and get back to my salad eating ways!  I will be able to explore markets and enjoy buying foods again.

So, until then, I will eat from my microwave, but make sure the dinners are organic based, read the labels (found some delicious all natural granola bars and they are 70% organic! not bad from the limited walgreens selection!), plenty of fruit, and try to keep take out to a minimum (my wallet will thank me!)

Shopping adventure

So last night I went to 2 different grocery stores.  One which is smaller and seems to be trying to be a bit like whole foods, but not really.  The other is a big major chain.

Right when I walked up to the market, there's a sign that says "why choose organic?'  Great, I thought, this will be a good shopping experience.  Of course all of the produce that was outside next to said sign were not organic.  hmmm..what?  So then I go around looking at the food.  The frozen food selection is similar but smaller than WF.  Which is fine, it's a smaller store.  The bulk items were a HUGE disappointment, NOTHING organic, even though they had 3 rows of bulk!!  I love bulk, and their selection was huge, but NOTHING said organic on it.  Moving on to fruits and veggies.  They had a fruits and veggies sections.  The veggie section was actually surprisingly good, two types of organic kale, a few organic chards and then the run of the mill veggies in the organic variety.  The fruits were not so great...umm people...it's summer!!  Why are we so limited??
So since I was in the area, I decided to try the major chain store.  They seem like a higher end chain store, but it's all in the marketing.  In every other aisle, there was a vertical sign half way down the row coming out for the shelves that said "natural."   hmmm..so I went to go look at this "natural" section in the chips aisle.  it included all natural tortilla chips, all natural potato chips and even a few small bags of organic!  wow.  does anybody else get bothered by the fact that their eating "unnatural" foods?  It's food, your body is supposed to know what it is!!  They had more variety of organics in salad dressing, but still confined to one little shelving area.  And the organic produce section was dismal.

My cart was empty, although Wedding Crashers was on sale for 10 dollars, so I picked it up.

So now I know what they have and what they don't have.  I don't think the major chain store really cares though, otherwise they would promote organics more.  The smaller one though, they seem to want to be known for carrying organic stuff - but if that's the case they'll have to actually have the product!!

Almost all organic pizza!

So last night I decided to be a good girlfriend and make dinner!  I thought it would be cute to do a "make your own pizza night."  The idea being like a fun, interactive cooking party.  You get all the ingredients and then decide what you want to put on it and you can even have individual pizzas if you so choose.  Didn't work out so well.  Well, it's tough when we both had places to be later in the evening and he used to make pizzas for a living, so..he ended up taking over.  I don't think he minded much.  I didn't!
So I went to Whole Foods and picked up the ingredients. (I don't work there, and they don't pay me to shop,  but where else will you find the most organic selection, really?) I wanted to make a caprese type pizza with fresh mozzarella, basil from his garden and the organic tomatoes we already had at home from the farmer's market.  I also wanted shredded mozzarella for a veggie and sausage pizza.  I spent so much time in the cheese area the guys at the nearby specialty cheese counter were looking at me funny.  So WF has the "everyday 365" line which includes shredded cheese.  Well every cheese EXCEPT mozzarella came in organic and non organic variety!  Of course!  And then there was some organic cheese line on sale, but the mozzarella was all sold out!  Fine, I got the organic farms brand, more expensive, smaller packaging..grrr.  Ok moving onto fresh buffalo mozzarella... yea not organic.  I finally got one, and when I looked on the back it said it was produced by "XYZ organic dairy farm" but the cheese itself didn't say organic on it.  Fine, I guess they are just marketing their company as organic but don't pass the test to actually be it? I don't think it's too small of a company (some small companies don't get certified because they can't afford it or it's too much work, i think, i'll look into that more) So, to make myself feel better I also picked up a small amount of organic locally grown goat cheese.  yuum.
I got organic feta and spinach sausage.  Organic mushrooms.  I wanted bell pepper but there were no organic varieties.  (so much for my theory that WF has an organic variety of most produce) We had organic squash and zucchini at home, as well as garlic and onion.  So now on to dough.  Well they make their own whole wheat dough..delicious, but not organic.  My other option was organic corn meal crust.  I should have gotten that, except I really like whole wheat dough.  Plus!  the bf wouldn't have been able to play with it and stretch it and even toss it a bit (nothing major, i told him he would be very sorry if it dropped)
 So, my first pizza was the caprese: fresh tomatoes, garlic, fresh mozzarella and basil, but neither the crust nor the cheese was organic. (I didn't even want to ask anybody at the specialty cheese section for organic, they already thought I was crazy for staring at pre-package mozzarella for 20 minutes) The second pizza ended up being veggie AND sausage (was thinking of doing 3, but the first two took too long) So everything on that was organic, even the cheese (didn't want to use the other ball of fresh mozzarella..saving that) EXCEPT for the crust.  Oh and BTW, it was delicious!!  Seriously!  I was really proud of us (well mostly me on the first pizza and him on the second..which explains why it was so big and heavy!)
Maybe i'll try the cornmeal next time.  It will be organic and save lots of time!  Or maybe, i'll make my own Organic whole what dough!  crazy!!

Grappling with Grapes

I really like grapes, and I always eat them when they're out.  I really need to remember to buy some organic ones and to stop eating non-organic ones.  After all, they are on the dirty dozen list.  So here's my latest problem with grapes: yesterday I was picking at some grapes that were out for a meeting.  A co-worker walks up and says "mm...grapes" he looks at the top of the box (I didn't) and says "oh, wash these well they're from Chile"  "Right, I said, probably full of pesticides..."  He starts washing his handful... "well, DDT.."    As he walks away munching on his handful of grapes, I thought  didn't we ban that in the 70s or something?   I was right.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT. Well I was really freaked out, because we did ban it Chile hadn't?  I thought why would the US let us eat produce that had been sprayed with DDT? And why would the US do business with a country that was using DDT, how hypocritical don't they know that eventually it affects the entire ecosystem, not just Chile's immediate environment?
Well my freak out lasted until I did some googling.  It turns out Chile banned DDT in 1984 (as many countries have since the 70s).  They probably did it once I was born in Feb. 1984 - "oh that girl will one day grow up to hate pesticides, especially DDT...let's get rid of it now"  Ok maybe not.  but anyway, it's been gone for a while.  
So then why are imported grapes on the dirty dozen?  Why not US grapes?  
http://organic.lovetoknow.com/Dirty_Dozen_Organic_Foods
That article explains it.  Domestic grapes are still bad, but not AS BAD as imported.  Makes you wonder what the other countries are using!  Funny that cherries in the US are worse than the cherries that are imported.  I Wonder why.  Once I figured this out..i'll let you know!

Vote with your dollar!

Oh my goodness. Shopping for organic foods at a "normal" grocery store is so difficult! The only grocery store near my work is a Von's, and their organic section is so pitiful. Yes, it's better than the nearby Albertson's, but still not great. Plus everything is super expensive! Organic produce is NOT this expensive at Whole Foods. I know people complain that organic is expensive, but it's because they're going to a store where Organic is not the norm. At whole foods, usually, 90% of the time, if they sell a certain conventional produce they have it also in organic too! I love it. I see mangoes all the time and think, mm...i want one of those, all I have to do at Whole Foods is go one bin over and there it is "grown organically." But unfortunately, when i moved recently, I also moved out of range of a nearby whole foods! I used to go on my way home, or would get in the car, and would love the short drive and shopping trip, it was worth it. But now, it's a hassle. So, I end up going to Vons, or sometimes trader Joe's. But, as much as love the idea of TJs, they don't have as much organic as I would like. I also love to shop local farmer's markets, but I haven't been around enough to go a lot. Needless to say, my daily lunchtime salads have been looking pretty sad lately: organic carrots, organic avocado, organic lettuce, and organic tomatoes. Where's the organic fresh kale? or the organic fresh corn? or maybe a few organic mushrooms? :( Not there. And it's summer! My salad should be as bright as possible!

Hopefully, sometime this week I'll make it to Whole Foods. I just wish organic produce was more common and less trendy. I visited the new Trader Joe's in my city last night (not close either, but I was already near there) and it had more organic produce,  more produce in general, my other TJ's has been pretty barren lately. I guess that means they're doing good business?

Anyway, after all my complaining about grocery stores, I found that a lot of press has been given to the "dirty dozen." AKA the most pesticide-y produce. More info: http://www.foodnews.org/methodology.php Read the article especially where it says "Celery had been treated with as many as 67 pesticides" eww.. you think water is going to wash all that away? No way! Think about it, if rain could just wash away these pesticides, would it be worth it for the growers? Worth the money, time, even deaths (yes pesticide poisoning is a real problem). So the list of the dirty dozen, as said in the article is:

1. Celery

2. Peaches

3. Strawberries

4. Apples

5. Blueberries

6. Nectarines

7. Bell peppers

8. Spinach

9. Kale

10. Cherries

11. Potatoes

12. Grapes

Now, I like to "vote with my dollar' and buy ONLY organic produce. Yes, i still eat non-organic veggies; it's difficult to ask the chef at a nice restaurant or even a friend's house "umm..excuse me, is this organic?" But I definitely purchase organic and seek out organic options. I know about the "clean 15" in which studies have found little to no pesticide residue on some produce, such as avocados and mangoes, but I still like to be extra sure. Plus, a thick skin doesn't necessarily mean that the pesticides don't permeate. Also, if you want organic to be less expensive (like i do!) then we need to show them that we want more. VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLAR!