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]]>Farmers’ market season is in full swing here in the Northeast. And for this devotee, the season of fresh local produce can never come soon enough.
This is the season I long for throughout the barren winters when supermarket produce trucked and flown in from fields far from the Hudson Valley leaves my cooking juices as well as my taste buds in the doldrums. Put simply, farmers’ market season reawakens my interest in food. Now that the season is here it’s possible to indulge in exquisite meals in which the starring role can be taken by the simplest of preparation methods – peeling, cutting, and tossing with a bit of fruity olive oil and some freshly picked herbs from the garden.
Lest anyone try to convince you differently, the fact is that taste, freshness, and healthiness are inexorably linked. At my local farmers’ market I almost exclusively buy organically grown produce. Although there are skeptics who have been known to deny the efficacy of my taste buds, I swear by my ability to taste the residue of pesticides even after thoroughly washing and peeling conventionally grown fruits and vegetables.
But taste is just the beginning of why health-conscious consumers should be thinking about whether to purchase conventionally grown produce or make the slightly higher investment during your farmers’ market season to purchase organically grown produce.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting human health and the environment, provides sobering, science-based research that can help families make smart choices about the food we purchase and consume.
This year when EWG conducted their annual analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, they found that nearly 70 percent of the samples USDA tested of the 48 types of conventionally grown produce were contaminated with the residues of one or more pesticides. Researchers at USDA found an astounding total of 178 different pesticides and pesticide breakdown products on the thousands of samples analyzed.
You read that last sentence correctly. Let me repeat: 178 different pesticides and pesticide breakdown products were found.
One of the questions consumers should be asking is what are the health effects of the astounding number of chemicals we’re ingesting via our food supply? The truth is that contrary to popular belief, it’s been proven that pesticide residues remain on fruits and vegetables even after they’re washed and, in some cases, even when they’re peeled.
What does that contamination mean for the consumer?
The pesticide and chemical industry have been telling the public for years that pesticides, growth hormones, and antibiotics in produce, in dairy products, and in meat, fish, and poultry are “nothing to worry about.” If that false reassurance reminds you of another industry that promised their products would do no harm you wouldn’t be far off the mark. We should never forget the years of promises and lies broadcast by the tobacco industry.
The question is: Who should consumers believe when looking for answers about the safety of ingesting pesticides? The independent doctors and scientists or the industry that profits from agribusiness’s addiction to pesticides, growth hormones, and antibiotics?
Here’s Dr. Philip Landrigan, Dean of Global Health and Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, sharing the health industry’s conclusions about pesticide exposure in the most vulnerable – our children.
Even low levels of pesticide exposure can be harmful to infants, babies and young children, so when possible, parents and caregivers should take steps to lower children’s exposures to pesticides while still feeding them diets rich in healthy fruits and vegetables.
If you’re looking for guidance on which conventionally grown fruits and vegetables to avoid in terms of pesticide residues and help with making informed decisions about getting the most healthy “bang for your buck” when making decisions about purchasing organically grown produce, look no further than the Environmental Working Group’s annual scorecards. They’re called the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen.
The Dirty Dozen
Key Findings on the Dirty Dozen from the Environmental Working Group Study
The Clean Fifteen
Key Findings on the Clean Fifteen from the Environmental Working Group Study
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]]>On Octobert 23, Renee Shur wrote an in-depth post on California’s Prop 37 and the fight to label GMOs (genetically modified organisms). You can read it here. GMO producers have spent millions to defeat this proposition because they fear the growing backlash against their products. The outcome of this vote will affect, not only California, but also the entire country. Whether Prop 37 passes or not, the tide is turning against genetically modified food. That’s why Monsanto and other companies are spending so much money to defeat the labeling of GMOs.
Leading the charge against GMOs are food activists Francis Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe. Recognizing that Monsanto and other producers are spending millions to deliberately confuse the public, the Lappes have provided seven easy to remember points about the dangers of GM foods. Feel free to share them with your friends. All of them are supported by authoritative studies.
1. GMOs have never undergone standard testing or regulation for human safety. And now that they’re in 70 percent of processed foods, it’s extremely difficult for scientists to isolate their health risks.
2. GMOs have proven harmful in animal studies. A 2009 review of 19 studies found mammals fed GM corn or soy developed “liver and kidney problems” that could mark the “onset of chronic diseases.” Most were 90-day studies. In a new two-year study, rats fed GM corn developed two to three times more tumors — some bigger than a quarter of their total body weight — and these tumors appeared much earlier than in rats fed non-GM corn. Among scientists, the study has its defenders and critics, but even the critics underscore that we need more long-term studies.
3. The most widely used GMOs are paired with an herbicide linked to serious reproductive problems and disease. GM crops — Roundup Ready soy and corn — are treated with the herbicide glyphosate, which in exposed humans has been associated with DNA damage. In the lab, it’s proven toxic to human liver cells.
4. The consequences of GMO technology are inherently unpredictable. Inserting a single gene can result in multiple, unintended DNA changes and mutations. “Unintended effects are common in all cases where GE [genetic engineering] techniques are used,” warn scientists. One such environmental consequence — genetic contamination of other plants — is already documented. Note that unlike food, once released into the environment, seeds can’t be “recalled“!
5. GMO makers intimidate and silence farmers and scientists. GMO corporations use patents and intellectual property rights to sue farmers, block research, and threaten investigators. “For a decade,” protested Scientific American editors in 2009, GMO companies “have explicitly forbidden the use of the seeds for any independent research,” so “it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised.”
6. GMOs undermine our food security. Within the biotechnology market, Monsanto alone controls 90 percent of GE crops worldwide. And Monsanto is one of three GMO companies including DuPont and Syngenta that control 70 percent of the global seed market, reinforcing monopoly power over our food. GMO seeds are costly and must be purchased every year, so they worsen farmers’ indebtedness, dependency, and vulnerability to hunger.
7. GMOs aren’t needed in the first place, so why would we take on these risks and harms? Studies show that safe, sustainable farming practices applied worldwide could increase our food supply as much as 50 percent. And keep in mind that the world’s already producing 2,800 calories for every person on earth every day — more than enough. And that’s just with what’s left over after using half the world’s grain for feed, fuel and other purposes, and wasting one-third of all food. So the urgent question isn’t about “more” anyway. It is, How can all of the world’s people gain the power to secure healthy food? And a good start is knowing what’s in our food.
Whether or not Prop 37 and other efforts to label GMOs are successful, there are things you can do to avoid them. The Lappes offer the following guidelines for grocery shopping:
Shopping in the Know (Not GMO)
• Avoid processed foods! It’s a simple way to reduce exposure to the four most common GM ingredients: non-organic forms of soy, canola, cottonseed and corn, including high-fructose corn syrup.
• Look for the voluntary “non-GMO” label.
• Buy “certified organic,” which ensures that no GMO ingredients were used.
• Visit www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com for a list of thousands of GMO products and brands.
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