Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Why it's so important to go organic!

We all have some awareness that buying organic is a healthier choice, but here are some reasons that you may not have thought about..

* Organic produce is not covered in a cocktail of poisonous chemicals. The average conventionally-grown apple has 20-30 artificial poisons on its skin, even after rinsing. Trust your instincts--go organic!

* Fresh organic produce contains about 50% more vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other micro-nutrients than intensively farmed produce.

* Going organic helps to avoid eating genetically modified (GM) food. By buying organic food, you are registering your mistrust of GMO’s.

* If you eat dairy or meat products, going organic has never been more essential for safeguarding health. Intensively-reared dairy cows and farm animals are fed a dangerous cocktail of antibiotics, growth promoting drugs, anti-parasite drugs, and many other medicines daily, whether they have an illness or not. These drugs are passed directly onto the consumers of their dairy produce or meat, which can be a contributing factor to meat-related diseases like coronaries and high blood pressure.

* Organic produce simply tastes so much better. Fruit and vegetables are full of juice and flavor, and there are so many different varieties to try!

* Organic food is not really more expensive than intensively farmed foods, as we pay for conventional foods through our taxes. We spend billions of dollars every year cleaning up the mess that agro-chemicals make to our natural water supply.

* Intensive farming can seriously damage farm workers’ health. There are much higher instances of cancer, respiratory problems and other major diseases in farm workers from non-organic farms. This is particularly true in developing countries, and for agrochemical farms growing cotton. So go organic if you care about other people.

* About 99% of non-organic farm animals in the UK are now fed soya. There has never been a reported case of mad cow disease in organic cattle in the UK. Common sense says that organic is safe food. As a "Mad Cow" safeguard, organic animals aren't forced to be cannibals. The practice of feeding cattle the ground up remains of their same species appears to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a horrific disease that destroys the central nervous system and brain. This can be passed on to humans who eat the cows. The disease in humans has a very long latency period, and is called Creutzfeld-Jakob disease. Organic animals are fed 100 percent organic feed without ground up animal parts.

* And if you simply like the idea of your children and grandchildren being able to visit the countryside and play in the forests and fields just like many of us did when we were young, go organic for the sake of all of our futures.


THE HERB CELLAR HAS A WIDE SELECTION OF ORGANIC PRODUCE!