Going organic can be intimidating when starting from the typical processed American diet. Rethinking everything you eat takes, well, a lot of thought. And it can get pretty expensive. So I decided to break it down for you.
The main reason a person decides to go organic is to reduce the amount of chemicals they put into their bodies. And you can do this without breaking the bank, because you can do this without actually going “certified organic”.
The first step in going organic is to know what you’re eating. So my first tip is to eat home more. Nutritional labels and ingredient lists are rarely accessible at restaurants; it’s too easy to be completely ignorant of what you’re actually eating there. Buy what looks good to you at the grocery store, take it home, and eat it. But before throwing out the bags and boxes, check out what you’re eating. Add up the sodium, calories, and trans fat. Compare those numbers to the dietary fiber and protein. Check out the first few ingredients on the list. Count them all. Try to pronounce them all.
If you can’t pronounce it, odds are… it’s a chemical.
Now you know what you’re eating (or you know that you don’t know what you’re eating), and you’re used to preparing the food yourself. Time to move on.
The second step is to buy less processed food. You know what you like, now try to find a healthier, more natural alternative. You can really look at this two ways: buy food that is “less processed” and “buy less” processed food. Can’t live without chips at lunch? Skip the Doritos and pick up some plain Lays instead. Go from twenty-something ingredients to just three. You still get your grease and salt fill, but without the artificial flavors, colors, and MSG. Need a snack in the mid-afternoon? Put back the crackers with their hydrogenated oils and pick up some fruit and vegetables instead. Baby carrots and peanut butter, apples and peanut butter, grapes, strawberries dipped in yogurt, raw almonds dipped in honey… all yummy snacks without the artificial ingredients.
But what about dinner?
Have you been buying pre-made meals at the grocery store? Frozen lasagnas? Frozen pizzas? Corn dogs? Fish sticks? I won’t argue; it doesn’t get much easier than that. But eating a natural, almost-organic dinner doesn’t have to be complicated either. In fact, the more simple the meal is, the fewer ingredients, the more healthy it can be for you. In my eyes, all you really need is meat, vegetables, and dairy. We get enough carbs earlier in our day with our fruit and grain intake during breakfast, lunch, and snack. If you don’t, then add bread and fruit to dinner as well.
Meat doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be pan-fried, broiled, oven-baked, or grilled. Although a seasoned rub does make things interesting, a dash of salt goes a long way, too. Brush melted butter and lemon juice on your fish fillet, sprinkle some salt, and bake at 450 for 5 minutes per half an inch of thickness. Put a beef roast in the crock pot, add peeled potatoes, carrots, a sliced onion, and 3-4 cups of water. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8. Sprinkle a chicken with lemon pepper, garlic salt, and seasoned salt (make sure it doesn’t have MSG!), cook in the crock pot – same times as the beef roast. If you have the internet (and I know you do; you’re reading this), you can Google cooking times for steaks and pork chops as well.
Vegetables can be fresh from the produce section, or frozen from the freezer aisle. I suppose you can also buy canned, but then you get the BPA and you don’t want that, do you? 🙂
Dairy is a glass of whole milk. Yes, I said whole milk. Get your healthy fat on.
And, of course, I won’t think poorly of you if you have spaghetti once a week, either. Or scrambled eggs. Or quesadillas. All easy, quick, cheap meals.
If you’re still bothered by the thought of antibiotics, pesticides, and growth hormones, you can take the final step.
Step three is to go certified organic.
It can be expensive, so you may want to start with the foods that have more chemicals than others. In produce, these would be the fruits and vegetables that have the thinnest skins and the juiciest innards, since bugs like these the most. Berries, tomatoes, peaches… things like these. Bananas are pretty well protected and thus don’t need very many chemicals.
Unless you live in a big city with nice stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joes (I dont’!) you won’t be able to find everything organic. If you can’t live with that, start a garden! If you don’t have a yard, you can always hang tomato planters from your ceiling by a window that gets decent sun. Some towns even have community gardens open to people just like you!
Grass-fed beef and free-range chickens are also hard to come by. So you may want to check with a local co-op or just ask around if you live in rural Indiana (cough) and see if you can find a farm from which you can buy your meat directly. Of course, this means you’ll also have to invest in a chest freezer, but it’s a worthy investment!
I hope this post was helpful and not intimidating. If you have any ideas to add, that would be lovely!
Making the switch is REALLY intimidating! I was so shocked at how much our grocery bill jumped. Really depressing.
Now that our CSA has started, we’re getting a good batch of produce each week. It’s not certified organic, but it’s local and it’s close to organic. So that’s good.
I do like some convenience foods and prepacakged stuff. So I buy organic crackers. It sounds sorta silly but I do trust the ingredients more.
Baby steps. I was always intimidated by the prospect of spending more on organic food, so it helped to just focus on one or two things at a time. First a switch to organic potatoes and apples. Then eliminating canned tomatoes and canned beans. Then making organic kale a priority, etc. It’s overwhelming to try to do it all at once, so just focus on something small, then move forward from there!
.-= Hannah´s last blog ..Beach Days, Stormy Night =-.
You make the biggest difference in animal welfare, worker safety, and your local economy by switching to meat processed by a local processor.
When you can ask the farmer what the animal ate, that’s key! Animals were meant to be outdoors eating grass, and this makes a huge difference in the nutritional profile of the meat. In rural Indiana, the animals in your chest freezer might be fed GMO corn, antibiotics, and hormones, or they might spend happy lives on grass with nothing else. The cost difference isn’t as much as you think, especially if you can buy a whole or half hog or cow.
If you buy from an individual family farm, rather than from a co-op, it’s probably the least expensive way to go. You’ll still be buying USDA certified meat at whatever processor they use, someone will be there to walk you through the different cuts of meat and can even give you information on how to cook them.
As a farmer, I can tell you that having an organic certification is an expense that doesn’t give us much return on investment. Many of us farm in a way that is “beyond organic” without having a compelling reason to pay someone to come give us a government label. And for meat, I could be raising my animals in according to organic standards, but if the meat processor doesn’t also have an organic certificiation, the meat can’t be labeled as certified organic.
Anyway, check out localharvest.org to find a local farmer in your area who’s raising animals on grass.
we have a pretty good garden going. i cant understand the need for all the chemicals. we grow food, not enough for a full year. It’s about a 4 month supply of produce and a full year of herbs/spices, which really can lower the budget.
We use NO chemicals. And our harvest is *huge* relative to how much we plant.
Our trick is to grow produce that will grow naturally in our area, and then totally ignore it until it’s time to harvest. I mean TOTALLY ignore. About the only pest control we manage is voles, rabbits, and other mammals and that is handled by our pair of dogs (who, consequently, supply themselves with rabbit, squirrel, etc for dogfood I’ll make for them).
Leaving it alone allows the spiders, mantises, and other natural predators to take hold. They keep our plants healthy and all is well in the world.
.-= Mary´s last blog ..Fresh Air Everywhere… =-.
My opinion is that we should focus more on the big picture of healthful eating and less with labels. If the bulk of your diet consists of minimally processed whole foods -grains, fruits and vegetables -whether organic or not, you’re doing awesome.
Organics today are half politics and big business. Giant farms and giant corporations meet the minimum requirements to be certified so they can charge you twice as much for their product. The studies that have been done have shown minimal if any health benefit from eating organic. In my opinion Organics are an environmental issue and not a health issue. There are a few foods – the “Dirty Dozen” – which have been shown to retain more pesticides but beyond that I don’t like to worry about trace amounts of things that haven’t been shown to cause any harm. Yes, chemicals sound scary, and some of them are harmful, but it’s too easy and simplistic to just say that all chemicals are bad and we need to avoid them at any cost.
Meat and dairy are entirely different issues – I don’t like to pay the prices for humanely raised meat so we just don’t eat very much of it. And hormone-free,antibiotic -free milk is readily available in most places these days.
I keep having those nagging thoughts to be healther, especially since I have two babies around the house. These are good, easy tips to get started. Thank you!
.-= marybeth @ http://www.babygoodbuys.com´s last blog ..Boxes of Huggies Overnites Diapers 45% Off, Free Shipping =-.
I agree that eating organic is better for both our bodies and our families. Eating organic doesn’t have to be more expensive if you prioritize your money. For example, I start in the produce section and add up my purchases as I go, then I move to the diary for milk and yorgurt ( I can save even more money if I make my own!). By the time I finish buying the staples, I know how much is left for the carb-y snacks.
Buying into a CSA and finding a local source of meat is key too. Bulk buying in meat really pays, just be aware that you most likely have to change your cooking procedures. Meat that is not grain-stuffed cooks at a lower temperature and at a slower time. The taste is much better (in my opinion) if you hit that perfect spot.
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