label, while 11 percent looked for “or- ganic.” “There is a giant misperception among consumers that somehow natural is the word that is regulated and organic is not. In fact, it is actually the other way around,” says CEO Suzanne Shelton. Law mandates that U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture (USDA) products labeled organic be free of pesticides, hormones and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and that animals be given access to the outdoors. By contrast, the Food and Drug
Administration vaguely describes natu- ral as, “Nothing artificial or synthetic has been included in, or has been add- ed to a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food.” With the exception of meat, it is up to the manu- facturer to define what natural means. (In 2009, the USDA defined “naturally raised” meat as, “… raised entirely without growth promoters, antibiotics, and never been fed animal byproducts.” It says nothing about GMOs or humane animal treatment.) Organic advocates point out that a genetically modified animal could be fed genetically modified feed and con- fined to a narrow pen and still be billed as natural. A loaf of natural bread could be made with grains repeatedly sprayed with pesticides and man-made fertilizer. “Natural refers to the end product,” explains the Organic Trade Association. “It does not provide any information about how the product was produced.” What about buying local? Rodale
argues that, while focusing on local is great for reducing farm-to-plate miles, if it isn’t organic, it isn’t necessarily addressing the larger issue of pesticide and antibiotic use.
Noting that more than 4 billion pounds of pesticides are used annu- ally in the United States, she points to studies from the National Institutes of Health and the Mount Sinai Medical Center Children’s Environmental Health Center that suggest links between agricultural antibiotic use and the rise in drug-resistant staph infections in humans, and between oganophosphate pesticides and cancer and diabetes. “It is fine to buy local, but if there are chemicals in it, then the farmer is contaminating your own community,” Rodale says. “That’s even worse.”
The Locavore Way In early 2005, Jennifer Maiser and a handful of friends in San Francisco de- cided to limit what they ate for a month to what was produced within 100 miles of home base. By August, 1,000 people had signed on at Maiser’s EatLocal
Challenge.com. By 2007, “locavore” was the Word of the Year of the New Oxford American Dictionary. “It just snowballed,” recalls Maiser. “I think it had a lot to do with changes in the organic movement. In the 1990s, if you were eating organic, you pretty much were eating food from a local farmer. But when the big companies came in and you could get organic produce grown in Mexico, it wasn’t the same anymore. We still wanted to know where our food was coming from.” Professional dancer-turned-ethno- botanist Leda Meredith started a 250- mile challenge in 2007, in part to see if a time-crunched professional in wintery Brooklyn could achieve what Loca- vores in warmer climes had. At first, adjusting to the realities was rough. Local cooking oil was hard to find (she saved the rendered fat from her locally raised duck and used it to pop locally grown popcorn) and her one-bedroom apartment was not ideal for stockpil- ing canned produce (she keeps canned local tomatoes and dried wild mush- rooms under her bed). “But, by year’s end, it had become
my new normal,” says Meredith, author of The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget.
She chooses organic and local
whenever possible, and if the food is on the Environmental Working Group’s dirty-dozen list of most pesticide- drenched food, she might even buy organic from afar. Yet, she is a Locavore at heart.
“It has an impact, on local econo- mies and small farmers, and from a cook’s point of view the food is just fresher,” she says. McWilliams, a vegan and author of
Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, agrees. But he takes issue with the notion that, because it necessitates fewer trans- portation miles, eating local is a better choice for the environment.
10
Healthy and Smart
n Buy certified organic and local when possible.
n Always choose certified organic when shopping for the publicized dirty dozen: peach- es, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes, spin- ach, lettuce and potatoes.
n When buying local, but not organic, ask the farmer: “Why not organic?” He or she may be doing something close.
n When joining a CSA, ask the farmer if he or she ever adds non-local food to the basket. If so, ask where it comes from and how it is produced.
n At a farmers’ market, ask the management how they choose their vendors. Must they be lo- cal, or certified organic? How are they screened?
n If buying “natural,” learn how the producer defines it (the government definition is vague).
n Eat less meat. It uses fewer resources to produce.
n Plant something. Try a con- tainer garden on a balcony or in a window box.
n Learn about good sources of healthy foods in various seasons.
n Take a cooking class.
Tips to Eat Sustainably,
natural awakenings
March 2011
27
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