LIES ABOUT PIES:

WHY WE SHOULD ALL RECONSIDER GOING ORGANIC

(March 13^th, 2013)

Mandy Keillor, Author of Detox Guide – A simple guide to purify your body at home in 14 days and Director of Studio Australia Barcelona on why the ‘horse meat crisis’ is just the tip of the iceberg and perhaps the biggest reason why people should buy Organic is so they understand what it is they are actually eating.

“When I first started to hear that horse meat had been found in European processed meats and labeled as beef I wasn’t surprised, not because there is anything wrong with eating horse meat per se, it is eaten in many cultures. The real issue is that it has entered the food chain for consumption by human beings without being traced, despite the European Union Trade Control and Expert System introduced in 2004 to avoid such problems like the late 90’s outbreaks of mad-cow disease.  It doesn’t give you much faith in the system, when meat labeled as horse meat be tracked through the processing chain and somewhere be switched for beef, despite being labeled horse meat, does it?  We need to start asking what else is slipping through the net in terms of drugs, disease control and other prohibited substances? We need to know what we are putting into our bodies. It’s a shocking notion that food is labeled as one thing, when it is actually something else and we are unwittingly duped into purchasing it.  The crisis has spread to major name brand businesses, such as Tesco, Waitrose, Findus, and Nestle, as well as to schools, hospitals and the hospitality industry with who knows how many people eating horse meat.  You can probably tick it off your bucket list.

Personally for me, as a long time organic advocate and a person fundamentally concerned about pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, and Genetically Modified Foods, I appreciate the extent of regulation on the organic foods industry. In countries such as the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and across the EU, producers are required to obtain special certification to market their food as organic within their borders. The notion that organic foods do reduce the risks of pesticide exposure is fundamentally enough for me, but that is not the only benefit of going organic. It might seem like an obvious stance for a detox author and holistic health center owner to have concerns about long term chemical exposure, but the one thing that writing my book and caring for our clients and patients has exposed me to was a lot of information about what certain chemicals do to our bodies, and it isn’t pretty. At the very least people have the right to understand what they are eating.

A common concern from our clients is the relative expense of organic food in comparison to conventionally grown food.  For sure organic can be more expensive.  This is because it is labor intensive to produce, expensive to certify as an organic status, most organic farms do not qualify for Government subsidies, the organic feed for organically reared animals is more costly and the farms are generally smaller so they have smaller yields over which to spread their running costs. But you know what you are getting, whether it is organic meat, organic fresh produce or even packaged goods. The hope is that as more people buy organic, costs will decrease.

Celebrities such as Alicia Silverstone through her cosmetics line ‘Juice Beauty’ and Gwyneth Paltrow through her great online portal GOOP are inspirational advocates for the organic movement. Likewise the documentary films Food Inc. and Hungry for Change have helped draw widespread attention to what we really are putting into our bodies and how our foods are grown vs. what we should be eating. Both films offer up a healthy dose of information on what really happens in the food industry. I really believe that the horse meat scandal is simply the tip of the iceberg in the food industry but the crisis itself has sparked widespread interest regarding what really is going into our food. This scandal alone is compelling evidence to suggest that organic is indeed best for your body, for the simple reason that organic businesses are rigorously assessed and as such, are offering nutritional benefits with a healthy side order of peace of mind.