"Organic"

I find it amusing at times that people still honestly don't know what organic food is. 

I recall as a teenager seeing a handful of produce (a cucumber & a onion & a bunch of carrots maybe) in the produce department of the grocery store.  I remember not knowing what "organic" meant, but I did see that they were more expensive.

In the '90s the legal definition was declared for organic foods.  To this day there is still no legal definition for "organic" in regards to health & beauty products, which most people are not aware of.  A bottle of shampoo or makeup can put "organic" on the label & it honestly doesn't mean a thing.  I am sure that will change at some point, but it hasn't yet.

A couple of years ago I was grocery shopping & overheard a woman going on about organic food.  It was clear that she wasn't a regular shopper of such things & wasn't very educated either.  She was excitedly telling someone that she had a friend who had suffered a heart attack & was desperately missing cheese in his diet.  And she was excitedly going on about the fact that he COULD have cheese, if it was organic that is.  I was honestly considering approaching this woman to clear up the confusion & educate her on these matters.  But I forget what happened, I was distracted somehow & didn't do it.  Organic dairy products are free of hormones & antibiotics & the cows are fed organic food, but that's all the difference there is.  (oh well I guess there's new legislation on organic milk that a cow must be pastured for a certain amount of time, 4 months out of the year or something like that--of course plenty of companies aren't exactly complying, but that's a whole other issue & a whole other blog).  No dairy products due to heart problems is due to the FAT content in the dairy, not hormones, not antibiotics, & not that the cow ate non-organic food.............

About a month ago I was grocery shopping & overheard someone in another aisle telling someone "and it's organic, so you don't even have to wash it!"  My mouth seriously fell open.  Now I know when I have my own organic garden going at home that I don't use any chemical pesticide or fertilizer (a lot of people who have organic home gardens still use chemical fertilizers without even realizing that it's no longer considered organic if you do that, but that's another issue altogether as well).  But outside, in the big ugly evil money-hungry world, they do things differently.  It's all about the "legal definition" of "organic" & believe me, those companies look for ever possible loop-hole on all those legal definitions, organic included.  So while you are probably thinking that organic food has NO chemicals on it, it's just not true.  It won't have any of the REALLY BAD chemicals on it, but it will still have some & some of those are pretty bad too.  So to be eating food without washing it, even if it's organic, is not a smart thing to do.

Just last week I was looking at recipes online.  I can't remember what the recipe was for, but I do remember looking at it & it specifically said for some item in the recipe "if you chose non-organic be sure to wash it, if you chose organic there is no need to wash it".  Apparently this is some sort of common idea out there.....to not need to wash organic foods.......OK, even if organic foods had NO chemicals on them at all, you still have no idea where they've been & what sort of conditions they've been subjected to.  And I can honestly tell you that most organic produce we buy is FILTHY with just plain dirt when we wash it.  And the organic lettuce always has live bugs in it when you wash it. 

That's all I have to say on that.........for now..........