organic food/snacks

[tinkermom23]

I am currently taking a college Environimental Biology class that the main topics are about sustainability. We talk A LOT about organic.
Here is a website. You put in your zipcode and it will list the organic/sustainable farmers & growers in your area. We used it and found local family farms that we now buy our chickens from.

www.eatwellguide.org

It will also tell you what resturants serve organic foods and other info.
Just google and you'll be surprised what you can find!!

Also, your own garden, even if it is small, is a great idea!!

HTH !

 

[westcliffemom]

Thanks everybody!

Thanks for the link, tinkermom23!

 

[DSNY4ever]

We try to buy everything that we can organic. Even the processed food. I know that things like that may not have the same "health" benefit as getting your vegetables organic, but we do it for the environment and if those cracker/cookie companies are going to get their flour, sugar, etc. from an organic farmer, then I want to support them.

Trader Joes has a lot of good organic snack items, and Target seems to be stepping up and getting more. We go to our farmers market here and we have some local farms where we can get great stuff. We shop mainly at Bel Air (a chain related to Raley's) here. They have been good with having a large selection of organic items and they have come out with their own "generic" organic brand called Full Circle- very good and reasonably priced. They sell whole organic chickens for a very good price too. I wish we could find meat locally like some others have listed! We just don't have anything like that around here.

If you have time, making stuff yourself with organic ingredients is a great way to go. Allrecipes.com is one of my favorite sites and if you want to try to cut out some meat to save a little money each week, we love the Moosewood cookbooks for when we need a non-meat recipe.

Good Luck. The most important for us is getting organic dairy products and fruits/vegetables, and to try and buy locally if we can. I hope you find some great stuff!

 

[bookgirl]

Not to hijack, but I'm wondering about where to find relatively cheap organic chicken. I'm thinking of switching over, because we eat alot of chicken. It's like $6.99 a lb at Whole Foods, is that about what I should expect to pay?

As far as chicken goes even Tyson has natural/no antibiotic chicken and that's whats really important. Just buy that. Also don't be fooled by free range, all that means is no cage, but some "free range" companies keep there chickens on the floor of a small shed where they are "free" to roam around but still never see the light of day. Also Seafood is not standardized so organic seafood or fish is not a given either. Pick up the book Eat This not That at the Supermarket. It has some great info.

I second the straight from the farmer or farmers market route. That's the easiest way to know what your're getting and who you're getting it from.

OP

Go to Super Target. A lot of their Market pantry lable foods are "natural" organic or otherwise healthier than usual. I get some stuff at Walmart, some at Target and some at Atkins (our local natural foods market). I just try to buy healthy and spread my purchases out so that I'm not spending a small fortune at Atkins. I do not buy much organic produce, it's just too expensive, but there is a list of what to buy organic (apples and peaches top the list) some produce holds on to pesticides worse than others.

 

[zumbergc]

if you are really wanting what organic foods stand for, and don't put into their animals. Then buying all natural is just not the same.

I have issues with regular meat, what ever is in the stuff that causes me to have muscle aches and problems the next day. The all natural stuff still causes the issues. All natural label is not regulated, so companies can easily claim this on the label. only the organic label and seal is regulated.. so keep that in mind. The all natural might be slightly better, but when reading at the local grocery store, all natural to them means the meat didn't have hormones during the finishing period of the animals life. They don't expand on what finishing period is.. but it got the hormones and anti-biotics at some point, plus for me its a deal breaker cause i still get sick from it. in particular my experience is with the meijer all natural meat...