Should you buy organic or non-organic?
Here’s my rule of thumb: buy the best food you can afford. If that’s all local organic, great! If you’re on more of a budget, go organic with the most important foods and conventional with others. If you are used to buying non-organic foods, consider adjusting your budget to allocate a higher percentage of your resources to food, if you can.
The Questa Farmers Market is a great place to buy healthy food and meet old friends and make new ones. Gaea McGee is Program Director for the farmer’s market as well as for CULTIVO, a program of Localogy, the non-profit organization run by Daniel Hutchison. In the spring, check out CULTIVO’s CSA (community supported agriculture) where you buy a share of the farms’ crops for a weekly basket of veggies all summer. Split a share with neighbors if a whole share is too much for you. A CSA is affordable, local and fresh, and our farmers use organic practices so you can expect it to be fresh and healthy. Spring and fall shares are usually available too.
CULTIVO stands for Community, Unity, Land, Tradition, Innovation, Vocation & Opportunity.
So why spend the extra money on organic food? Organic foods not only lower the amounts of toxic pesticides in your body, they also have higher vitamin and mineral content because they are grown in better soil. In addition, a food that is labeled organic cannot be a genetically modified (GM) food, which you want to avoid.
If you continue to buy conventional foods, and can budget for some organic food, there’s a hierarchy of importance. Certain foods are more important to buy organic because they have the heaviest concentration of pesticides. Others are relatively free of insecticides. Here’s a list of each, courtesy of Robin Edmondson’s website, www.robin.hubpages.com.
Ellen Wood of Questa, known artistically as Maruska, is an award-winning author celebrated for her transformative book series, The Secret Method for Growing Younger. Her latest release, Five Tibetan Rites – The Right Way, continues her mission to inspire youthfulness. All titles are available at www.howtogrowyounger.com. To contact Ellen, email her at ellen@howtogrowyounger.com.
Buy These Foods Organic:
Apples
Cherries
Grapes
Nectarines
Peaches
Pears
Raspberries
Strawberries
Bell Peppers
Celery
Potatoes
Spinach
These are safer to buy non-organic:
Bananas
Kiwi
Mangoes
Papaya
Pineapple
Asparagus
Avocado
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Onions
Peas
