This is a guest post by Mike Rocha.
Sometimes, progress has a dark underbelly. In the case of mass-produced food, we have seen that quite often we have sacrificed nutrition and environmental conservation for the sake of convenience. While disease has been by and large eliminated when it comes to the food from our local grocery, the real downside has been much more insidious. The long-term effects of exposure to meat treated with antibiotics and hormones, or fruits and vegetables coated in various pesticides have not yet been fully realized, but initial studies have not been good. So now people are waking up and realizing that we need to get back to our roots. Nowadays, more and more folks are looking towards organic food as a way to get healthy and fit.
What Does it Mean?
The term “organic” gets thrown around quite a bit, but most people don’t know what it means. The term goes back to 1940, when Walter James described in his book Look to the Land a farm that was treated as an organism, rather than a commodity. His idea was that this organism needed to be kept healthy and free of synthetic influences, such as manmade chemicals and the like.
“Organic” refers to:
- Vegetables, herbs, and fruits that have been grown, picked, and shipped without the use of non-approved, synthesized herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides.
- Livestock that have not been treated with antibiotics and/or hormones and have had significant time at pasture.
Visiting Your Farmers’ Market
One great way to start organic cooking is make it a part of your plan to lose weight and get in shape. While exercise is just as important as eating right, there is no substitution for good, healthy food. Organic food is by default exactly that; good and healthy.
First things first; you have to find your closest farmers’ market. It may have passed under your radar up until this point, but you best believe that it is there. If you’re lucky, you may even have more than one close by. Farmer’s markets aren’t hard to find by design. You can usually find out when and where they’re held online or in the paper. They are also usually held on the same day every week in the same place, as long as it is in season. For organic foods you can’t get at a farmer’s market, such as meats, try a grocery store that carries organic foods – most do nowadays.
Organic Cooking
Upon return with your organic food, look on the Internet for some easy organic recipes that you can implement. There are thousands of other folks that are cooking organically to lose weight, and chances are you’ll find ideas and information you never thought about. While substituting organic olive oil for butter is a pretty common organic solution, it doesn’t end there by a long shot.
Whatever you do, don’t believe that your organic diet has to be unpleasant. Cuisinart food processors are going to see a lot of action in organic homes, as there is no limit to what you can do with all the food you can get from your organic grocery or farmers’ market.
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