Certified Organic Foods Recipes Food Cooking International Guide
Certified Organic Foods Are Grown Without Chemicals
By Julia Taylor-Fernandez
Certified organic foods are available in many food stores, but
the wider choice and variety of organic food products are in health
food stores. If you are looking for your favourite food product
but want to seek an organic version and cannot locate it at your
favourite food store, then run to the health food store and they
should stock it. If it is not available, then you could place
an order.
Almost every type of food and food product has an organic version.
You can buy organic herbs, fruit, vegetables, meat and other organic
food products. If you want to review your options and avoid the
chemical pesticides and other chemicals used in growing food,
then certified organic food is your better choice.
As more people are turning to healthy food options, to meet public
demand, many food stores are stocking more certified organic foods.
Public Consciousness About The Obesity Epidemic
Over the past decade the obesity epidemic in the United States
has garnered quite a bit of attention. That’s because it is, in
fact, an epidemic, with nearly three out of five american adults
tipping the scales as overweight and twenty six percent of american
adults classified as obese.
As public consciousness about the epidemic has gained traction,
so has a public desire to understand the root causes of obesity
and rectify them. There are, of course, some obvious causes. People
today are less likely to have jobs that involve manual labor,
for one.
A Move To Certified Organic Foods
For another, no matter what your parents or grandparents say
about how hard they worked in their day, the truth is that Americans,
on the whole, put in more hours of work - which means more hours
in a cubicle - than previous generations. And third, we simply
eat more processed foods, more foods that are bad for us, than
any previous generation of Americans.
In response to that, there’s been a vocal and growing minority
that have moved their diets away from stuff produced huge agribusiness
to certified organic foods. The idea being that we’re evolved,
as a species, to digest and absorb nutrients from food that’s
been grown in one specific way.
Storing Calories As Fat
One specific way has changed over the past century with genetic
engineering of everything from cows to corn, and as a result we
end up storing more of the calories from that food as fat rather
than burning it as energy. Our bodies aren’t evolved, the reasoning
goes, to digest anything but certified organic foods.
The problem, of course, is that certified organic foods tend
to be significantly more expensive than mass produced foods. The
reason being, certified organic foods need to meet specific requirements
to achieve "certified organic" status. There can be
no pesticides used, nor contamination with other strains of similar
types of foods, with regard to fruits, vegetables and grains.
Grass Fed Beef Is Lower In Saturated Fats
With meats, certified organic foods mean that the animals are
fed feeds they would naturally eat - such as grass for cows, for
example - instead of a cheaper blend that’s usually based upon
corn (which is the most highly subsidized crop in the United States).
You can taste the difference between a grass fed cow and a grain
fed cow. Not only that, but grass fed beef is significantly lower
in saturated fats, which is one of the reason the movement toward
certified organic foods is gaining more and more traction.
Growing Your Own Organic Food
You do not need to buy all your certified organic foods. You
can grow herbs, fruit and vegetables in your organic garden. As
long as you do not use chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers
and any other chemicals in your garden, then you have an organic
garden.
There are organic fertilizers and organic compost you can buy
from nurseries, that do not rely on chemicals to feed your growing
plants with plenty of nutrients. While you are at the nursery,
you can seek advice on how to keep pests out of your garden without
using chemicals.
If the staff at the nursery cannot help you, you can search online
for information about controlling pests in your garden without
chemicals.
Cooking With Freshly Picked Produce
Once you start growing your produce, you will realise all the
natural flavours you have been missing from the tasteless produce
you have been buying from the food store. Freshly picked tomatoes
from your organic garden, taste much better in your salads, sauces
and meals, than tomatoes that were picked weeks or months ago
and transported with refrigerated transport to the food store.
Many stores these days, have an organic food section where they
sell certified organic foods.
About the Author:
Julia Taylor-Fernandez has written a number of articles on organic food, nutrition, dieting and cooking including
Health Food Store,
Fruit And Vegetable,
General Nutrition,
Teapot Cake,
Low Carb Cheese Cake,
Nutritional Information,
Foods High In Vitamin K,
Low Carb Dinners.
Keep a lookout for more of her articles on this website.
Did You Know?
Why is there such a controversy over organic growing?
The controversies that have arisen involve
food shortages and the toll organic farming takes on the land.
With larger tracts of land being used, and less being produced
due to loss, there is a shortage of available food or any surplus
to be sent to countries in need of aid. Another debate is the
use of pesticides found naturally in nature.
Organic farming forbids the use of man-made pesticides. Unfortunately
the naturally occurring pesticides are not regulated or tested
to determine if they have long term harmful effects.
|