My husband and I recently started ordering most of our groceries from Spud.ca, an online organic grocer. I love it - we get fresh, organic and often local produce and free range, grass-fed meats delivered weekly, and it forces the healthy habit of cooking at home rather than going out all the time. This represents a marked shift from how we used to be, but we feel it's worth it for both health and budget.
Up until pretty recently too, I never used to worry about whether something was organic. I could care less if my cow was fed with grass or corn, or if my eggs came from free-range chickens. I used to think this was a step too far, a hippie-dippie way of eating that didn't really matter.
I care now. Not just from the environmental and compassionate aspect, but from a health aspect. It was once pointed out to me that how healthy your meal is also depends on what your food ate before it landed on your plate. Did it get covered in pesticides, pumped full of hormones and/or fed on GMO-mutated corn? Did your chicken eat ground up chicken by-product that also ate that mutated corn?
I want to eat real food that also ate real food.
Photo credit: Dominik Schraudolf via pixabay.com
Here's the problem, though. Eating this way is not cheap - sure, it's cheaper than eating at a sushi place, or even a pretty reasonably priced meal at a chain or fast food restaurant. But let's do a price comparison at the grocery store: I ordered our weekly staples on my organic grocery store, then picked out the same regular, non-organic items at Walmart's online grocery. These included a bunch of veggies, bread, steak, ground beef, and salmon filets. On my organic order, this cost 63.77 CAD. On Walmart? $44.38.
So on average, my standard order for two people to eat for a week costs about $20 more - extrapolate that over a year, and I could save almost $1000 by not eating organic. It's not a huge amount, but I think most people would say a thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at.
I also recognize that I live in a dual-income household with no kids and little debt besides a manageable mortgage payment. I can afford to buy organic kale and grass-fed beef for just the two of us.
But what would I say to a person, then, who doesn't want to eat this way? Could I convince them that the health benefits balance out the additional cost? Can I convince them that eating a regular carrot that cost three times less is really that much worse than eating an organic carrot?
Photo credit: Sally Mommatown via pixabay.com
I'm not sure.
Studies can't even agree categorically that organic foods are actually healthier for you, or that they have more nutrients. Environmentally, some scientists argue that using manure-based fertilizers can actually create their own issues, as well as spread pathogens more easily. So what is the point?
In my quest to eat real, whole foods (most of the time), my easiest and reason for eating organic is this: it tastes better.
Seriously, I think that's a pretty good argument. It looks and feels fresher, has deeper flavor (try an organic tomato versus a regular grocery "tomato" sometime), and tastes "real" - er. It makes me want to eat real food all the more. And someday there's going to be a more definitive study about the health effects of organic versus non-organic.
In the meantime, I'm fully aware that I'm totally spoiled, because I have access to organic groceries that show up on my doorstep. Everyone should have such luxury - though maybe there will be a later study about how truly lazy our society has become, now that you don't even have to leave the house for a gallon of (grass-fed) milk!
Articles to consider:
10 Reasons Organic Food Costs More
Critics Question How Much Better Organic Really Is
No Difference in Healthfulness between Grass-fed and Grain-fed Ground Beef