The House champions ethical eating (for itself, anyway)

Monday's SF Chronicle featured an article about the House's decision to bring local, sustainable, and organic food into their cafeterias. This more ethical food will be served on compostable plates and eaten with biodegradable silverware (which cries out for a new name... sugarware, anyone?).

This move is a boon for the people who work and eat at the Capitol; they will have access to food that is better for them, better for the environment, and (I suspect) tastier than what they are used to. The switch also benefits local growers and vendors who will help supply Restaurant Associates (the catering contractor) with their sustainable food products.

The article gives Nancy Pelosi most of the credit for the change, since she has spearheaded the "Green the Capitol" initiative. Ironically, Ms. Pelosi is also the person most responsible for the current state of the proposed Farm Bill revision. Many people had high hopes for this year's Farm Bill (which only gets revised every five years). Ever since the 1970's, the Farm Bill has included provisions that provide subsidies and other benefits to corn, soybean and (to a lesser extent) other grain farmers, while excluding most fruit and vegetable growers from those subsidies. These subsidies have been blamed for everything from the current obesity epidemic to the high price of fresh produce relative to, say, a McDonald's hamburger. It seemed that 2007 might finally be the year that the Farm Bill removed those subsidies, or provided increased benefits or support to produce growers (especially organics), or both. After all, the Speaker of the House is a Democrat from California, which grows more than 50% of the nation's fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, even the USDA has acknowledged that fruits and vegetables (taken together) are more important to a healthy diet than whole grains, codifying this belief in their revised food pyramid.

Sadly, Ms. Pelosi and her colleagues did little to change the Farm Bill's status quo. A final bill has not yet been signed (as the House and Senate passed different versions), but the version passed by the House retained the majority of the grain subsidies, while diverting only small amounts of money toward fruits, vegetables, and conservation efforts. Now, I'm sure there were lots of competing interests at stake and that Ms. Pelosi was trying her best to balance those interests. I've read speculation that Pelosi was trying to protect some of the freshman Democrats from the grain-producing states. There are always excuses, always reasons that some important piece of legislation couldn't get passed.

I'm happy for Pelosi, her fellow Representatives, and all the staffers who will get to take advantage of the new cafeteria cuisine. They should keep in mind though, as they bite into their grass fed buffalo medallions with a side of local, organic potatoes and collards, that what they have chosen for themselves, they have denied the common American.

easing into organic foods

I'm a realist. I know that eating organic foods almost always means spending more money, and that as Americans we are very sensitive to the price of our food. (Did you know that, as a nation, we spend a lower percentage of our income on food than nearly any other industrialized nation?) Most of us are not going to wake up tomorrow and start eating all organic foods, all the time- if for no other reason than the sticker shock. So how best to ease into organic foods? Are there certain foods for which it makes more sense to buy organic than others?

There are several different answers to this question, depending on the reason(s) you wish to go organic. Is it to reduce your chemical (pesticide, fungicide) intake? For better nutrition? For taste? For the environment? I've combed the research, and here's what I've come up with.

Pesticides

The USDA and the FDA regularly test produce (as well as soybeans, dairy, animal products, etc) for pesticide residues. According to their most recent findings (from samples taken between 2003 and 2004), the following fruits and vegetables are the most pesticide-laden among conventionally-grown produce. (The Environmental Working Group has labeled these The Dirty Dozen.)

1. Peaches
2. Apples
3. Sweet Bell Peppers
4. Celery
5. Nectarines
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Lettuce
9. Grapes - Imported
10. Pears
11. Spinach
12. Potatoes

In these tests, 73% of all fruits and vegetables tested showed detectable pesticide residues. On peaches, the worst of the bunch, pesticides were found on 97% of the samples. Note that the USDA washed and peeled produce such as apples and potatoes before testing them. Imagine how high the levels are for those of us (me) who regularly eat the peels. Yikes!

Fortunately, the news is not all bad; there are some fruits and vegetables that have low levels of residual pesticides, even when grown conventionally. These "cleaner" foods include: onions, avocados, pineapple, mangoes, kiwi, bananas, asparagus, cabbage, and broccoli. For example, only 0.2% of the onions tested showed residual pesticides. I guess there's some relief in that.

(Note: if you're looking to reduce your pesticide-intake level, another good solution is to eat local foods. These foods are much less likely to have been treated with post-harvest pesticides than the food that has to travel 1,500 miles to reach you.)

Health/Nutrition

Aside from the benefits of not ingesting all the chemicals stated above, there are some other nutritional benefits to choosing organic.

• Organic produce contains up to 50% more antioxidants (read the findings here)
  


• Organic milk has 50-80% more antioxidants than conventional milk, as well as higher levels of Vitamin E (Ibid)
  


• Organic produce has higher levels of a variety of vitamins and minerals (Organic Retailers and Growers Association of Australia, The Soil Association of the United Kingdom)

Taste

Consensus on the web seems to be that, in blind taste tests, most organic foods taste about the same as conventional foods. The exceptions seem to be:

• Eggs. But often these are not merely "organic" eggs, but cage-free, free-range, life-loving eggs. Still, they seem to beat conventional eggs hands-down.


• Peanut butter: here, the main taste difference is between natural (sometimes organic) peanut butter, i.e. roasted peanuts and salt, vs conventional, Skippy-style peanut butter, with the partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats!) and high fructose corn syrup.

In my opinion, if taste is your main reason for going organic, then you'd be better served by choosing local, seasonal foods, whether or not they're organic. Maybe some time soon I'll conduct my own taste test to pit conventional vs. organic foods vs. local foods. If and when that happens, I'll share the results in this blog.

Environmental Impact

If you're concerned about the environment, then you want to give up those foods that do the most harm on a macroeconomic scale (in terms of acres planted, or quantities consumed). In other words, nectarines may be "dirtier" than potatoes, but potatoes cover thousands of times the arable land that nectarines do. Based on this thinking, then your organic choices might include:

1. Organic milk
2. Organic potatoes
3. Organic apples
4. Organic peanut butter
5. Organic beef

(Read one doctor's opinion of why these organic choices are important.)

As a final note, the research seems to agree that if there's one time in your life that it's most important to consume organic foods, it's from birth to age three. This is because carcinogens (including the pesticides applied in conventional agriculture) are up to 10x as potent in babies than in adults. So if you have an infant or toddler, your best way to ease into organic would be to choose organic for your child.

Good luck and let me know how "easing into organic" goes for you!