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Becoming A Certified Organic Person
Janelle Sorensen
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
What does it take to be certified organic by the US Department of Agriculture? Well, for a crop, it must be grown on land that has not been treated with any synthetic pesticides or fertilizers for at least three years. For animals, it’s a bit more complicated, but the food they eat must be from those same aforementioned farms that have been pesticide-free for at least three years. It’s a challenging transition for farmers - an obstacle too large for many to overcome. How do you think you’d fare living a completely organic life for three years?
Healthy Child Advisory Board Member Dr. Alan Greene decided to give it a try and Tara Parker-Pope covered his experiment in the December 1st New York Times.
It hasn’t been easy.
“This isn’t a way of eating I could recommend to anybody else because it’s so far off the beaten food grid,” said Dr. Greene, 49, the founder of a popular Web site about children’s health, drgreene.com. “It was much more challenging than I thought it would be, and I thought it would be tough. There were definitely days where there was nothing I could find that was organic.”
Dr. Greene said he was inspired to go all-organic after talking to a dairy farmer who noted that livestock got sick less after a switch to organic practices. He wondered if becoming 100 percent organic might improve his own health.
Three years later, he says he has more energy and wakes up earlier. As a pediatrician regularly exposed to sick children, he was accustomed to several illnesses a year. Now, he says, he is rarely ill. His urine is a brighter yellow, a sign that he is ingesting more vitamins and nutrients.
For most of us, the cost of such an endeavor would be crippling, and even for Dr. Greene it was no easy feat. Here’s one way he made the experiment a bit more budget-friendly:
To cut back on the cost of an organic diet, Dr. Greene said he had to cut back on meat. “Whenever you go up the food chain, the costs pile up,” he said. “If you don’t eat meat at every meal, if meat becomes more of a side dish than a centerpiece, you can fill the plate with healthy organic food for about the same price.”
Read the whole article.
Watch a short video of Dr. Greene discussing the cost of going organic.
Check out Dr. Greene’s Organic Prescription.
Posted by Evie Failla on 01/06 at 10:43 AM
When I got pregnant with my first son almost 7 years ago, intuitively, I knew organic was better for me and my growing baby. When it was time for him to begin solids, I prepared his food and it was all organic. Shortly after that, I began a small organic baby food company, preparing a variety of meals in clients homes. Now, I have a thriving online business offering everything from infant purees to chicken stir-fry, turkey meatloaf (a favorite!) soups & stews. I am thrilled to be helping parents provide their kids with delicious, organic meals.
Posted by Kairol Rosenthal on 12/02 at 09:46 PM
As a young adult cancer patient I strive to maintain a healthy diet without becoming a psycho-vegan-girl-scout. I have limited my meat intake to only organic meat and because of its costs, I eat much less meat in general. I’ve seen no concrete, scientific evidence to prove that a totally organic or vegetarian diet will impact my tumor growth. I’m happy to be a human experiment though, yet with a bit less vigor, compliance, and cash flow than Dr. Greene.