[Including brief updates on GMO vaccines, phony-baloney coatings on produce, and payola in organics]
If you missed the live broadcast, watch the recording here!
The Hierarchy of Your Food Options
If you prioritize eating fresh, whole, organic food, it isn’t enough to just look for the USDA Organic label — just like the gumshoes at OrganicEye, you must be a detective! And this broadcast will give you a big head start. Now that corporate agribusinesses owns most of the popular organic name brands, many of the industrial-scale farms and corporations are practicing “organic by substitution.” They would like to change as little as possible between their conventional products and what they advertise as organic (and what we all expect to be the benchmark for safety and purity). And with an army of lobbyists in Washington, they are all too often winning the day in deliberations in front of the National Organic Standards Board and USDA officials.
What are the shortcuts to providing your family with the safest and most nutrient-dense food? How can you identify industrial-organic, all too often coming from livestock factories and giant hydroponic greenhouses where produce is grown in fertilizer solutions based on conventional soybeans and other inputs and lacks the nutritional value imparted by carefully stewarded organic soil?
OrganicEye’s Director, Mark Kastel, illustrates why it’s so important to be a good label reader, as well as how to connect with farmers and marketers from your local foodshed. Not only might the healthy microbiota in the soil result in superior food — but nutrition and flavor are unparalleled when your produce was harvested 10 hours ago instead of 10 days ago in California or Mexico.
After Mark shares some tips on shopping, he covers some of OrganicEye’s current issue-areas, including ending the free-for-all of genetically engineered vaccines in organic livestock and coating fruits and vegetables with “organically approved” fungicides.
About Kastel’s Kitchen
Because of lax oversight by USDA, choosing certified organic food is just the first step in ensuring that you’re buying the best products for yourself and your family. In this series, OrganicEye’s Director, Mark Kastel, will tap his many years of experience in the organic movement to decode the best options from the grocery aisles, farmers markets, and online buying sites.
His perspective is based on over three decades of personal experience as a shopper, gardener, certified organic farmer, and organic business/cooperative consultant, as well as his work as the country’s preeminent organic industry watchdog for the past 20 years.
Mark first came to organics after nearly being disabled from pesticide poisoning. Even though he was already eating a healthy, whole food diet, he credits his move to all-organic—on the recommendation of one of the country’s preeminent environmental allergists—with his recovery. He now enjoys robust health, not only due to avoiding the agrochemical and drug residues often found in conventional food, but because of the exceptional nutrition inherent in true organic production. He has skin in the game and a passion for protecting the authenticity of everyone’s organic food, including his own.