Blog.EmealsForYou

Natural / Organic- the Tradeoffs – A Minor Semi-Rant

December 4, 2008 at 10:47 am Leave a comment

I was reading the newspaper the other day when I spotted an article about the benefits (maybe not) of Natural / Organic foods.  The gist of the author’s concern is that while we are constantly urged to change our diets to include mostly organic foods; some of the benefits may be not as good as we think.  While eating organic may provide some break from the usual fertilizers and insecticides found in most foods we may be missing a key detriment; not usually put forth in the advertising.

It seems that what is not in the food may mask what is in the food;  seems that a lot of the the “good-for-you” foods may be much higher in calories and fats and lower in beneficial vitamins and nutrients.  It’s the old “look over here” trick that gets us thinking we are being good for ourselves and those we care about only to find out that we are putting twice the calories into our mouths.  I was really proud of myself for finding an organic cereal that provided all the benefits of flax, pumpkin seeds and all things organic, even if it could only be found in one store.  So what if I burned more gas getting to that store to buy the cereal, I was doing something for my body in the grand scheme of things.  I checked out the side panel for the nutritional information and found out that besides more calories most of the other “daily requirements” of vitamins and minerals were lacking.  In fact a normal bowl of raisin bran had tons more of all these important elements.

I have more work to do finding food that is better under all categories, not just those that I buy off on the advertising about natural/organic.  Bottom line is “carpe diem” but put your glasses on first and read the label.

Entry filed under: Rants, Semi-Rants and Non-Rants. Tags: natural food, organic, organic tradeoffs.