Jun 21 2008
What is *earth-friendly*? Or *good-for-you*?
I’ve had many conversations lately with many different people on these topics. We’ve offered many questions, but not so many answers. There’s the ever popular “organic vs. cheap” debate in grocery shopping. We all know pesticides on veggies and fruits , hormones in meat and milk, and chemicals on packaged/ prepared foods are bad for you, but we also know that organic foods are more expensive. Is it worth it to pay more?
There’s the pull between buying delicious imported fruits that come in our off-season but are bought from overseas, and the new trend toward being a “locovore” in which you strive to buy as much food as possible from local sources. This is tricky to do, and can require driving to many stores and markets - which then requires lots of gasoline and pollution.
Then there’s the “food of the day” movement in which every day we read another article on which food offers which miracle cure for cancer, depression, obesity, PMS, etc. We’re told what to eat and what to avoid, and some days I think the only way to make it is to only eat lettuce (for the roughage factor) and pomegranates (for the antioxidants). Other days I’m pretty sure that everything I eat is bad for me in some way or another, and really, I’m just choosing from various ways of poisoning my body.
And speaking of poisoning my body, there’s this new question of BPA and plastics - do we throw out all of our old BPA-full plastic cups, Nalgenes and bottles and buy new stuff? Do we buy plastics at all? Do we ignore the fear, wondering if it’s just a trend and not really as dangerous as some people think? I have one friend who is part of a moms’ group that likes to jump on the bandwagon a lot, and their latest thing is the BPA-free cups and bottles. It’s easy to get caught up in what’s new and put forth as bad or good for us, but harder to make wise decisions based on good information, not just on what everyone else is doing. (As for us, we did decide to go BPA free as much as we can - I’m trying to limit as many toxins as I can in our bodies, and I have a feeling we’re only going to find further information on how harmful BPA is for us. But that’s just us.) Then again, even going BPA free isn’t enough, since they’re now saying the cans we get our soup, veggies and other food products leech some chemical or another into our food. Sheesh. It’s hard to keep up with everything, let alone keep it out of our bodies. The vaccine debate is another example of the great toxin debate - both their effect on neurological development, and their part in public health. I won’t even go into that one.
Then there’s the trend toward using reusable bags instead of either plastic or paper. My mom got me on this one and I love it. I love not having a million small bags floating around the house after I grocery shop, and I love the ease of using easy to carry bags. However, a friend of ours who lives in Honduras says they won’t let you bring bags into the grocery store for reuse - even your old plastic ones - because of fear of shoplifting. So much for my snazzy Target bags.
A few things I/we have done for almost 6 years now, partly to limit the amount of artificial products and chemicals going into and onto our children’s bodies, are breastfeed all 3 kids and cloth diaper all 3, though lately we’ve slowed down on the CD due to both the overwhelming amount of laundry we’ve had and the moving we’ve done/ still have to do. However, I have a number of friends who are considering doing CD with yet-to-be-born children, and many others who ask advice on switching to cloth. I’ve written the “how we do it in our household” email many times now and my goal this week, now that we have our camera back from getting fixed, is to take pictures of Jacob and Maggie in various covers and styles of diapers, so I can just have all our thoughts and “how-to” on CD in one convenient post. We’ll see if I get there. For now, Mothering has a few great articles.
Ahhhh. So many things to think about, so little time. Making good decisions for my family is becoming more and more complicated every day.
I think the best we can do is at least be thinking about all of these issues, doing research, and having conversations with informed friends.
A few of my thoughts:
Food - local, organic is best, I think. After that, local is ‘better’ than organic grown in CA, FL, Mexico, or elsewhere and it isn’t just about the petroleum used in transportation–a shorter supply chain is better for freshness, safety, and supporting local economies. As to cost, quite soon, I think the prices between organic and traditionally produced foods will begin to even out a bit–especially when compared with local because of the rising price of oil.
Most of the organic conversation happens around fruit and veggies, but protein sources (meat, milk, eggs, and cheese) end up being the real consumers of oil, water, and energy. Cutting down meat to twice a week and thinking local and organic here can really impact both the amount of chemicals you take in with food and the impact that food has on the world.
All that said, I’m really lucky to live in a place with two growing season so I get fresh food all year round and the two major grocery store chains stock a lot of locally grown and produced food. This makes things easier.