After I moved to US, I was left with tons of options and brands to choose from the groceries isle, starting with milk, eggs,bread and every other grocery.
When I picked a gallon of milk can, I noticed the claim- "Our farmers pledge not to treat their cows with artificial growth harmonies" with the further highlight- "No significant difference found between cows treated with hormones or not".
When I went on to find more about this claim, I found that it is legal to treat cows with artificial growth hormones here. The cows treated that way produce more milk and are prone to udder infections which is why they are further given heavy antibiotics. This milk when consumed can cause problems. There are a lot of articles online on the impact on human health. So I decided to go organic with milk. There are a number of organic brands which again is not easy to choose from. I followed the article https://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey to select the milk brand. I got couple of good ones. But I still wonder why milk should carry fish oil or algae oil to make it pro DHA. Anyway!
Further educating myself, I found it better to switch to cage free humane certified and pasture raised eggs. The caged chicken are overly populated and are fed GMO food that makes their eggs not good. The pasture raised chicken are the best bet. Although chicken here are not allowed to be given artificial growth harmonies, it is better to go organic!
We hardly eat bread at home. I prefer cooking hot and healthy breakfast that keeps the day energetic. But my son loves bread omelette and sandwiches. So whenever I buy I look for whole wheat organic bread preferably non-GMO verified. There are a multiple non profit projects that ensure products are organic. You can look for this label "non-GMO verified" on anything marked organic.
My little ones diet has lot of spinach as he ran into low Hb. My elder one loves strawberries and grapes. I was shocked to see these top the "dirty dozen" list. I felt so guilty of feeding my kids the pesticide laden fruits and veggies. I turned to organic options on these on urgent basis. I am yet to switch to organic on few other veggies.
Our budget has taken backseat with this world of organics, but the relief of feeding kids the good food is immense. But wait, wasn't everything organic when it all began? Why did we do GMOs and roundup? If this was to solve the hunger problem, isn't it creating another problem to deal with?
I always wonder what if we were not able to afford to the organic food? Did we then eat what's available and get sick and die with disease? Is the good food on earth for only the people with some money? Survival of the fittest or survival of the dollar? Think!!!
