Toxic warriors: By choosing organic produce you reduce exposure to contaminants. Picture: thebittenword.com

It’s startling what comes out of the mouths of some health professionals.

A lecturer recently visiting Iowa City spoke of the importance of a healthy diet in preventing illness.

Preston Maring, a doctor with 38 years of medical wisdom under his belt, prescribes healthy, organic eating for his patients, arguing that treating illness is the past.

“Preventing illness is the future of health care,” he said. So far, so good.

The obstetrician and gynecologist even practises what he preaches, introducing a farmer’s market to his California hospital, a model soon copied by about 28 other medical outlets across the nation. Even better. A medical man with vision.

But Cathy Scanlon, a clinical dietitian, isn’t convinced about the value of organic food.  “I don’t think the American Dietetic Association is that big on organic food because we don’t have enough proof that it’s beneficial,” she told The Daily Iowan.

She points to the number of contaminants in our environment. “”We have so many chemicals in our body from the things we cook our food in, like non-stick coating on pans, that it’s pretty hard to get an actual pure food,” she said.

Sorry? Isn’t that a bit like saying “the boat is sinking, but let’s not bail out before it’s too late… we’ve all got to go sometime”? I don’t know about you, but I’d be bailing like hell.

One of the reasons it is so important to eat as much organic food as possible is precisely because there are so many contaminants in the environment. By choosing organic produce that has been grown without the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers, we help to turn the tide by:

• Reducing the contaminants that run off into the waterways where we drink, bathe and swim;
• Reducing the contaminants in the soils that feed us;
• Protecting eco-systems whose survival affects the future of this planet.

How can any of this not be beneficial? By encouraging more people to eat healthy organic fare, we encourage more farms to switch to organic farming, which can only have a snowball effect on the health of our environment and our bodies.

Cathy is right. There are so many chemicals we absorb that we can’t control. But rather than see this as an argument against the merits of going organic, the reverse should be true. We need to do our best to reduce the level of chemicals that we can control. Otherwise we simply leave a bigger poisoned chalice for the next generation.

Ripe for picking: Organic tomatoes are rich in health-boosting properties. Picture: ellievanhoutte

Stop right there. Yes, you. Before you take another bite. What are you eating?

A BLT.  Mmm, bacon, lettuce and tomato. With a dash of mayonnaise. Seems innocuous enough. But when was the last time you really thought about where food had come from before you put it in your mouth?

What if you knew that the bulk of what you were feeding yourself was not actually providing real nourishment? That, more probably, it was starving your body of necessary nutrients. Let’s take a closer look at that BLT, for example.

The bacon
It’s easy to forget that a few thinly sliced rashers cooked to an aroma-filled crisp were once part of a plump porcine. And why should it matter? Along with an ample supply of sausages and fabulous pork roasts, that’s the reason for the pig’s existence, so let’s just get on with eating up.  Trouble is it pays to know just how that pig lived. Because how it was reared and what it was fed during its life span really does affect the quality of those few strips of bacon you’re about to devour.

You might not have given much thought to the right of the humble pig to wallow in the mud and roll free on pasture, breathing in fresh air and sunshine and sleeping on fresh straw. But these are conditions both free range and organic pigs enjoy and proponents argue contribute to their overall health – happier pigs equal healthier, more nutritious pigs. Makes sense when you think about it.

But perhaps more important, still, is what these pigs are fed. If Porky Pig is living on a diet laced with antibiotics and hormones (to fatten them up), preservatives and synthetic additives, and is constantly exposed to herbicides and pesticides, you should be concerned.  What goes into them eventually makes its way to you – be it through your barbecue sausages, Sunday night roast or those few slices of bacon – and it’s not great for the environment, either.

The lettuce
For a start, if you’ve opted for the ubiquitous Iceberg lettuce, you’ve already behind the healthy eight ball. It’s the least nutritious – and probably least tasty – in the lettuce family. Generally speaking, the darker the leaf the more likely it is helping your body to do things widely attributed to the humble lettuce, such as aid digestion and reduce the risk of cataracts.

And while we’re not suggesting you get down and dirty with your greens, it’s worth knowing what soil they’ve come out of. Organic growers love to tell you that if you feed the soil good stuff it will feed the plant. The better quality the soil (read no pesticides, herbicides etc), the richer and more nutrient dense the plant.

It also pays to know when your greens are in season. If they’re not and you think you’re doing the right thing piling them up on your plate, think again. They have likely been kept in cold storage or shipped thousands of kilometres from somewhere they are in season – neither of which is good for the plant’s nutrient levels.

The motto shouldn’t be so much “eat your greens”, as “eat the greens that are in season”.

The tomato.
Ditto with this dining staple (debate over whether it is a fruit or vegetable is a whole other story and we know you’re pressed for time).

Tomatoes are a great source of vitamins C and A, as well as iron, folic acid and the antioxidant lycopene, which is widely believed to help prevent certain types of cancer. But the amount of each health-bearing property depends on the tomato – there are more than 1000 varieties – and the way it has been treated.

Independent studies have found that organic tomatoes contain more fibre, vitamin C, beta-carotene and flavonoids than their conventional cousins. These poorer, or non-organic, relatives also get some of the highest doses of pesticides in global farming. So if you’re worried about the damage they do not only to your health, but to the overall environment, you might want to know how those tomatoes were grown.

The mayonnaise
Don’t worry about the fat content, the reason for a lot of anti-mayo rhetoric. You need to think more about how it was made. Most commerical brands use vegetable oil and egg yolks as the base ingredients, but organic varieties favour oils such as olive and flax, which are better for you. They are also free of sugar and preservatives. As for the egg part, well that comes down to the creature that laid them… see our story on poultry. (And we’ll save the bread for another time…)

If we’ve put you off your lunch, apologies. It really wasn’t the intention. The main thing is to get us all thinking about what we’re eating. To question the quality of not only pre-packaged “convenience” food, but the stuff that purports to be “fresh”. How was it farmed? How much pesticide was used? What damage did it do to the environment while it was being produced? And what are the consequences for the health of you and your family?

Chances are if it hasn’t been farmed organically, you won’t like the answers to any of the above. To paraphrase that intergalactic medicine man, Dr McCoy, “it’s food Jim, but not as we know it”.

The point is, in fact, we don’t really know a lot about where food has come from any more. Most of us in this industrialised world have lost contact with the source of our produce and couldn’t care less. The only time we really take notice of our fruit and vegetables, for example, is when the price goes up. But we should care and there are so many reasons why.

As Barbara Kingsolver writes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book that celebrates real food in all its shapes and sizes, “Knowing how foods grow is to know how and when to look for them; such expertise is useful for certain kinds of people, namely the ones who eat, no matter where they live or grocery shop.”

And that applies to all of us, even if we’re never likely to stick our hands in the dirt and pull out our own dinner.