A group of Oregonians living in Willamette Valley want to turn the ‘grass seed capital of the world’ into a large organic farm capable of feeding nearby communities. It’s called the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project. The name’s not creative, but the idea represents a sturdy step back from global food.

Global food is the idea that where our meals come from doesn’t matter. Why pay $2.00 for a green pepper at the farmers market when a specimen from Mexico will only run you $1.50 at the grocery store? I know, that’s a ridiculous example—Americans don’t eat fresh produce. But, bear with me.

Cheap energy makes it possible to import green peppers from Mexico for less than down the street. Land and labor is more expensive in the United States, so we’ve spent decades connecting our food industry to a global economy.

Though global food has been cheaper, it has also put us at risk. We’re relying on fewer farmers to produce more food than ever. If something goes wrong on a few corn fields in Iowa,  a cascade of repercussions could destabilize food supplies around the planet.

That’s the bigger picture for Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project. They want to establish local food security.

The Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project is a step by step strategy to rebuild the local food system by increasing the quantity and diversity of the food crops that are grown in the Willamette Valley. At the same time, the Bean and Grain Project seeks to evaluate deficiencies in the food system infrastructure, build buyer/seller relationships for locally grown food, and compile resources on organic and sustainable agricultural practices specific to this region. As the name of the project implies, central to the task is stimulating the cultivation and local marketing of organically grown staple crops like beans and grains to provide a foundation for year-round food resources in the Willamette Valley.

Willamette Valley communities are lucky. They have the right mindset and a cooperating climate to carry out a project like this. It’s a bit tougher in a state like Michigan, where fewer citizens care about where their green peppers come from.

Given the generally sorry state of disposable income, you would expect natural and organic foods to be struggling somewhat. You would, however, be wrong. These very foods have seen strong growth.

Last year, overall grocery industry sales were up a modest 1.8 percent, according to the institute. Sales of organic items were up 4.4 percent in the 52 weeks ending Feb. 20, according to Symphony IRI in Chicago.

There are a few explanations being offered:

• (A) – People who tend to buy natural and organic foods have not been significantly impacted by the recession.
• (B) – There are more organic and natural food products available in stores, hence more purchases.
• (C) – Customers are willing to spend more money on foods they perceive to be healthier.

The answer is probably some combination of the above. Kurt Jetta, president of a Connecticut consumer research firm, says that the proportion of shoppers buying natural and organic has held steady.

His recent research shows that the percentage of shoppers who bought natural or organic items has remained steady, in the 38 to 39 percent range for the past three years. It’s the number of retailers carrying natural and organic items and the number of products each is stocking that adds to the impression that organic sales are exploding. “All these retailers are getting on board and expanding their sections and having these big offerings,” he said. “That’s a big explosion in inventory. … The retailers have gotten on the hype a bit too much.”

Jetta seems a bit down on the long-term growth of natural and organic products on retail shelves. His view is logical, since natural and organic labels have already begun losing their luster in the mainstream. Fads, generally speaking, don’t see sustained growth.

But are we really looking at a fad? There are plenty of signs, at least in American food culture, that people really do want to know what is in their food and where it comes from, particularly when that information has a powerful impact on the health of our communities and ourselves. The end game is transparency, and though we may never get there, it is certainly the direction we are headed.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulates the use of organic of product labels. Only milk that is 100% organic can be labeled as such.

Here are the requirements for organic milk (courtesy of Tim Zweber on Quora):

1. No use of GMO crops for feed or bedding.
2. No Antibiotics may be used in the production of organic milk. Organic farmers are not allowed to withhold medical treatment from an animal but it must be sold as a conventional animal after administering prohibited substances such as antibiotics.
3. No synthetic fertilizers or minerals that have been treated in a environmentally unsustainable way.
4. No hormones may be given to cattle. Oxytocin was allowed in the past for treatment of calving issues but I believe it may be prohibited now.
5. No feeding of animal byproducts such as bloodmeal or tallow.

The stipulation that dairy cows not be given GMO crops for feed or bedding is curious considering the USDA’s recent move to deregulate genetically modified alfalfa—dairy cows are usually fed a mixture of grains with alfalfa hay. If the USDA decision holds (it is currently being contested), it will be interesting to see how the organic milk market responds.

The rigorous requirements that go into organic milk may help make it more nutritious than conventional milk. Back in January, a UK study suggested that organic milk contains higher levels of polyunsaturated fats.

The study behind this coverage has analysed the fat content in 22 brands of milk available in UK supermarkets, including 10 organic brands. It found that, overall, organic milk contained significantly higher levels of polyunsaturated fats, which are thought to be beneficial for health. However, there was no difference in overall levels of saturated fat, so suggestions that the study found organic milk to be “less fatty” were inaccurate. There were also seasonal variations in the differences, which were more pronounced in the summer, and other differences likely to be linked to the quality of the cows’ food.

There you have it. Organic milk is somewhat complex, but it seems to have some nutritional benefits over conventional milk.

Though both organic milk and conventional milk have the same fat content, the study found that organic milk has higher concentrations of polyunsaturated fats.

The study behind this coverage has analysed the fat content in 22 brands of milk available in UK supermarkets, including 10 organic brands. It found that, overall, organic milk contained significantly higher levels of polyunsaturated fats, which are thought to be beneficial for health. However, there was no difference in overall levels of saturated fat, so suggestions that the study found organic milk to be “less fatty” were inaccurate. There were also seasonal variations in the differences, which were more pronounced in the summer, and other differences likely to be linked to the quality of the cows’ food.

Polyunsaturated fats, including Omega-3 fatty acids and Omega-6 fatty acids, are generally considered to be beneficial. They are the fats you will find in nuts, fish, and leafy greens.

You may recall some of my previous discussion on Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, when talking about the disadvantages of eating industrial meat products.

Is industrially-produced meat less healthy than meat from humanely-treated animals? Maybe. Research suggests that meat from pasture-raised cows contains proper Omega-3/Omega-6 balance and less fat. The literature isn’t overflowing on the topic, however.

The ratio of Omega-3 fatty acids to Omega-6 fatty acids is important to note, because the UK milk study concluded that organic milk has a more desirable ratio than conventional milk.

Why is organic milk healthier than conventional milk?

There are a few possible explanations as to why this may be the case:

• Organic feed for dairy cows directly influences polyunsaturated fat content.
• Less stressful environment of an organic dairy farm leads to changes in polyunsaturated fat content.
• Exposure to pasture and wild grass leads to changes in polyunsaturated fat content.

The authors of the study think the answer primarily  lies in the pasture.

One year of the researchers’ study was cooler and wetter than the other, resulting in cows receiving less pasture feeding and a making poorer quality milk, the authors suggest.

Indeed, all of the differences probably come down to what proportion of the cows’ diet comes from grazing fresh grass, which, compared to other types of food, has higher levels of unsaturated fats, a portion of which are transmitted to the milk.

Warmer weather, summertime and organic farming practices all contribute to more pasturing of cattle.

“It’s not organic farming that may be causing those very small differences,” agreed Adam Lock of Michigan State University, who was not part of the study. “It’s that those animals may be receiving more pasture.”

Though additional studies are called for to examine the impact of the pasture, there’s fairly strong evidence available through secondary data analysis and the opinions of agricultural experts that confirm what we already know: We are what we eat, ergo, we are what we eat, eats. When we treat our food well, whether it be a strawberry plant dining on nutritious spring soil or a dairy cow grazing on fresh summer grass, those benefits will transfer to us.

Augie often talks about the war of the words: An idea that the words we use to describe our food are being warped by big industry’s political agenda. Today, Augie expounded on this war, delivering a well-written Christmas Eve gift for his readers.

The first casualty of the war of words is organic. Organic food is a $60 billion USD worldwide industry and its definition is constantly being tugged.

The word has caused so much confusion and frustration– I don’t like to use it. USDA stole the term from the grassroots and twisted it to where can mean a battery of concentration camps of 250,000 chickens or even a million–voila, most of your organic chickens and eggs at the supermarket. Funny, pesticides and herbicides are organic too.

Rather than using organic, I chose to use organic-like for a while until graduating to use natural and naturally grown. But I also like BTO crops: better-than-organic (sounds like a GMO). It works much better to communicate– that is what words are for. But then I heard from the naturally grown certified people, that USDA is after them to make sure they meet the USDA/FDA definition of natural. To food manufacturers, natural can mean nerve toxins derived from naturally occurring species as in natural flavorings, 100% natural etc. Let us pause to remember the Splenda Made from Sugar campaign.

Over the last 18 months, people have invariably asked me to describe my food philosophy. I hate using the word organic, and I hate using the word healthy, because those labels have been twisted by food marketers and legislation. So I tell people I eat natural food, and if they are interested in the topic I will elaborate further. Even now, as Augie points out, natural is under attack. I don’t know where to go from here. Sustainable food?

Advocating for small farm freedom, Augie thoroughly discusses the definition of sustainable.

When we come to the word sustainable it cuts both ways. Sustainable is a term coined by the United Nations and its leaders of nation-states. Sustainability is an Agenda 21 buzz word (like diversity, tolerance,  ad infinum) Your product or activity is not sustainable unless it meets their definition. What has happened is the farmers growing it naturally have unwarily adopted this term without knowing it is a code word. Well, this is another age-old trick too. When grassroots farm folk say sustainable they usually mean natural. When politicians and multinational corporations say sustainable, they are really saying controlled. When they say green, it usually means red. So sustainable can be unsustainable, but it depends on whose definition the speaker is using.

As eaters, there’s not a whole lot we can do to fight the War on Words. A first step is awareness; we need to pay attention to how terms like organic, natural, sustainable, and local are framed in advertising, legislation, and on the products we consume. Understanding what the words mean will, at least, allow us to make better food decisions.

Winter in Michigan marks the hard end of fresh, locally-grown vegetables. Locavores turn to Winter staples, like potatoes, onion, garlic—and their pantry, where they have canned vegetables, fruits, and various sauces. Still, nothing beats the taste of ingredients picked minutes ago from the garden.

One of my favorite dishes in general is pizza, and I love homemade pizza. Here are some photos of a pizza made in my kitchen a few months ago.

• Sauce (all local/organic): Roma tomatoes, fresh basil, spices.
• Toppings (all local/organic): Red onion, sweet peppers, mushrooms.

I cheated a bit on this one: The crust was a ready-to-bake flat with all-natural ingredients. Think Naan bread but more pizza crust-y. The pizza was topped with fresh mozzarella which gives off some water after baking (the finished product looks greasy, but that is mostly water).

12. Grapes (imported)

11. Potatoes

10. Cherries

9. Kale

8. Spinach

7. Bell peppers

6. Nectarines

5. Blueberries

4. Apples

3. Strawberries

2. Peaches

1. Celery

Today, we will look at the nutrition of organic foods.

Critics of the organic food movement find great pleasure in claiming that organic foods are no more nutritious than conventional foods. When they cite cherry-picked studies, we intuitively raise a warning flag in the back of our mind that what they say may be total crap.

Answering a question like this one is impossible in one study; rather, we need to look at an entire collection of related studies. In research, we call this meta-analysis.

The most notable published meta-analysis to date, commissioned by the United Kingdom Food Standards Agency, found no significant differences in nutrient content between organic food products and conventional food products. This review, published in 2009, has been met with stark criticism by both foodies as well as agricultural researchers.

Without trying to get deep into the analysis, the FSA study looked through peer-reviewed journals to find original articles publishing nutrient data on organic and conventional plants. Out of nearly 200 total studies, only 50 or so passed muster. And in those 50+, the only nutrients considered were those that appeared 10 or more times.

Critics of the FSA study argue that many studies were wrongly discarded and that the authors do not really understand the inner workings of agricultural experiments. When you include some of those reports, you start to see significant effects in the direction of organic plant products.  And within the included studies, you see significant effects in nutrient levels beyond the 11 reported.

Another meta-analysis (slightly more recent than the FSA work), commissioned by France’s food safety agency, AFSSA, confirmed the beliefs of those critical of the FSA report. In addition to having fewer pesticides (94 to 100% of all organic foods have no detectable levels of pesticide), organic foods offer health benefits across the board in terms of nutrient density and diversity. Notably, organic fruits and vegetables contain more phytomicronutrients (perhaps twice as many as conventional) such as polyphenols and antioxidants. Research into physiology and biochemistry increasingly shows these nutrients playing important roles in cellular processes.

Though the nutrition of organic foods is a major point of contention right now, the scientific tide does seem to be supportive of their nutrient density advantage over conventional plant foods.

Today’s subject is the the efficiency of organic farms.

Conventional farms use chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically-modified (GM) seed to boost yield. In theory, this sounds great; but conventional farming requires a constant input of energy to sustain fields beyond natural limits.

The heart of this question comes down to your definition of efficiency. Critics of organic production point to crop yield; advocates frame it as energy input versus output. Conventional farms are clearly winners in crop yield efficiency, while organic farms are more energy efficient.

There is also a concern regarding nutrition density of conventional plants versus organic plants, but that will be saved for a more thorough examination.

While I would love to side with the organic advocate view, it is hard to do so when many organic products are transported thousands of miles before reaching your dinner plate. So, even if an organic farm uses no energy input beyond the sun and natural fertilizer (animal manure), that number is meaningless when you consider the energy used in cross-country or international transportation.

So, I do not like to make the energy-efficient argument for organics, UNLESS they are purchased from local farms. Before transportable refrigeration existed, almost all produce came from local farms, and energy use was negligible.

Energy, however, becomes more important as its price rises. During the recent oil crunch, many doomer folks speculated that the American food production system would crash and that there would be massive food shortages. As the world’s economy recovers, oil prices will begin a steady rise and could once again have significant impact on food costs.

Ultimately, conventional farming in a global food production system is reliant on an abundant supply of cheap energy. When this assumption fails, so will the utility of conventional farming (though it will still exist in local/regional settings).

A series of posts on Eating Real Food, starting with this one, will consider these common talking points.

Too expensive!

Organic foods are expensive and impractical for the average American family to purchase, especially in a weak economy when budgets are already stretched thin.

Organic foods are more expensive than conventional products, but they also have the advantage of being natural. As Michael Pollan argues, the industrial food production system shifts costs from the grocery store to the hospital. Conventional production gives us cheaper calories, but the consequences on our bodies (poor health) are negative in the long-term.

If we eat better food, as a society, we may pay more at the checkout counter. But our insurance premiums drop. Critics like Martosko always seem to miss this.

Unfortunately, health benefits tomorrow do not address organic being too expensive today. If you have limited money to spend on groceries for the week, you will probably skip the $4 organic milk in favor of the conventional gallon on sale for $2.

A legislative approach could subsidize organic farming operations. These farming operations could then reduce the direct cost passed onto consumers. T0 be fair, though, consumers would still be paying for the subsidy in their tax bill.

Alternatively, individuals could be better informed as to which organic products are more cost-effective than others, and then left to make decisions on their own. An all-organic diet is incredibly expensive; a selective-organic diet is much more practical. For example, there are some products I do not worry about simply because the organic nature of them means little. (In a later blog post, I will go into this with more depth).

So are organics too expensive? Yes. But only if you consider just the grocery store price tag.

The many articles on this blog revolve around a single theme: eating real food.

People will ask me, “Just what the heck does that mean? Am I not eating real food right now?” as they down a fast food burger or suck back a Diet Coke. In a general sense, sure, you’re eating food. But it’s not necessarily natural. Natural is a big part of what makes real food real.

How about the rest of the blanks? What is real food? Real food has SOLE.

S: Sustainable

Sustainability is the general idea that what you do today doesn’t make tomorrow (and beyond) worse off. When industrial farmers use petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, they’re taking a shortcut to higher yields. This is problematic primarily because it has lead to globalization of food production and the idea that we need to KEEP using pesticides & fertilizers to feed an exploding world population. So, we’re using a scarce supply of oil to grow food, and then even more oil to ship it around the planet.

Small, organic farms (in the traditional sense) tend to be sustainable because they use little more than solar power to grow food. Sound pasture management techniques can also advance soil fertility (whereas industrial farming erodes fertility which is why fertilizer is required in the first place).

O: Organic

No (or very little) pesticide or chemical fertilizer used in the production of the food. It doesn’t impact the taste (as far as I can tell), but pesticides can build up and stick around in your body, turning those trace amounts into something significant and potentially harmful.

L: Local

Locally-grown food will be fresher and in season. It’s traveling considerably less distance between the farm and your plate than the average American meal.

Beyond that, buying locally-produced food keeps your food dollar in the local economy. For example, if every Michigan family were to eat one meal per week from foods bought at a farmer’s market, an extra $37 million dollars would stay within the state’s borders each week.

E: Ethical

The ethics of food lie on a continuum: there is no binary state with one food being ethical and another not; you can only claim that one food is more ethical (relatively) than another. These food ethics derive from factors related to their production and transportation.

For example, consider a two carrots.

Carrot A was grown 3000 miles away on an organic farm in another country. Earlier this week it was picked, transported via jetplane, and delivered to your local grocery story.

Carrot B was grown 50 miles away, but with some fertilizer and pesticide. It was picked this morning and brought to the nearby farmer’s market.

Which would you buy? Each approach has ethical pros and cons, though in this case I would lean toward Carrot B.

Hey foodie,

What’s up with organic spices?

If you have been near the spice racks at your local grocery store, you’ve probably seen a section for organic spices. They look just the same, but tend to be in nicer glass bottles and are marked with a higher price tag.

What goes into that higher price? Let’s find out by examining the various stages of spice production.

Importation

Spices are imported from all corners of the globe. This usually goes against traditional locavore philosophy, but the spice trade has been around for ages and you don’t need much of it to get by. Well-kept spices will last a long time, unlike those Fijian apples that magically arrive in your grocery market all throughout winter.

Just like the coffee trade, spice farmers tend to be from under-developed nations and are easy to exploit. Fair trade certification for spices has recently become popular, and organic companies have been organizing around a common sense of moral obligation to justly compensate the farmers.

Processing

Before being bottled and shipped to grocery stores, the spice needs to be sterilized. Major manufacturers use traditional methods like irradiation (literally, shooting radioactive particles at the crop) and fumigation (exposing the product to harmful, carcinogenic gas). Irradiation and fumigation are common because they are inexpensive to employ, and the cheap spices on the shelf probably went one of these routes.

There is a third, more expensive way to sterilize spices: steam. Steam technology, though complicated, offers none of the carcinogenic drawbacks of irradiation and fumigation. Unfortunately, manufacturers don’t usually disclose how they sterilized their spices.

Luckily, the organic label is here to save the day. I asked Frontier Natural Products Co-op, the makers of “Simply Organic” (you’ve probably seen some of their products at your grocery store) about spice sterilization and here is their response:

The key methods of sterilization of spices in the non-organic industry are irradiation and ethylene oxide treatment. Irradiation has enough of a negative connotation in consumers minds that it is almost never labeled when used in food products, and generally does not require disclosure. Ethylene oxide treatment also does not have to be disclosed on treated products. However, one by-product of it’s application is the formation of ethyl chlorohydrin, a carcinogen, which is formed in high levels in some spices as they are treated. For example, as of February of this year, the FDA has banned it’s use on basil, since the reside of the carcinogenic compound approaches 1000 parts per million or 1 part per thousand.

At Frontier, for sterilization we only use steam – which is essentially super heated water used to kill microbes. Of the 3 methods discussed, it is the only allowable method in organic production. The application technology of steam treatment is quite sophisticated, since the need to maximize the flavor attributes while destroying microbes is essential. While the process is currently outsourced by Frontier, we are in the process of implementing our own steam sterilization unit at a cost of approximately $1 Million, and will be fully operational early next year. We believe it is an important piece of our food safety commitment and the control gained by having this in-house is important as the technology is becoming more widespread. It also allows us to service our customers with the highest quality products possible.

Basically, organic spices are the only option that are guaranteed to have been through steam sterilization.

Additives

Standard spices may throw in additive fillers, artificial colors, and artificial flavors. This is pretty easy to check on as the ingredient list will reveal the presence of these non-food elements, but if you buy organic spices then you have a label guarantee to that effect.

Packaging

One other thing you may notice: inexpensive spices come in dinky plastic bottles. This makes them feel literally cheaper, and they have an additional downside of using BPA-laden plastic (unless they’ve recently adopted BPA-free plastic). Glass bottles are free from the presence of BPA. Just another aspect to consider.

Conclusion

Organic spices are different than your run-of-the-mill spices for three major reasons:

1. Use organically (free of chemical pesticides and fertilizers) grown crops as raw material.
2. Tend to use fair-trade certified crop importation, making sure the farmer is paid a just wage for his effort.
3. Sterilized by way of steam, which is more expensive but without the downside of irradiation or fumigation.

To the writer of the e-mail which prompted this exploration I can safely say, “Yes!  There are many things “up” with organic spices.”

To anyone considering the difference between organic spices and regular spices, hopefully this article has provided some valuable information to digest. As consumers, we don’t typically get to see how products like these are made. When we peel away those layers of wool, the difference between one mode of production and another becomes obvious.

Buying organic spice is a small part of day-to-day life, but one that might help you sleep better at night.

Acknowledgments: My many thanks to Frontier Natural Products Co-op’s Steve Krusie (Director of Public Relations) and Ravin Donald, PhD (VP of Quality Assurance and Research & Development) for helping me on this topic.

In the United States, food producers must receive certification before they can go about adding ‘organic’ to their label. This is disadvantageous to small (independent) farms, as the process costs more than the label will bring back in revenue. The odds are that several stalls at your local farmer’s market are occupied by farmers who more or less produce organic food without being able to call it that.

You will also see different terms associated with “organic”, and they mean different things.

• 100% organic: A product that really does have all-organic ingredients.
• Organic: Products have 95% or more organic ingredients.
• Contains organic ingredients: 70% of more organic.

If you’ve ever seen that USDA Organic sticker before, it’s on products that qualify in the 95% or greater category.

So what about products that are less than 70% organic? They can say what exactly is organic in their packaging description, but that’s it. The fine for mis-representing organic origin currently sits at $11,000.

While regulation helps ensure that labeling is honest and consistent, it does carry some disadvantages. Notably, there is a growing concern that policy-makers will re-write the  “organic” guidelines in a way that cowtows to lobbying interests. Even more odd products could slip through the cracks. Additionally, any change that makes certification more difficult will be one that favors large, industrial producers. That’s not necessarily a more sustainable future than we face now.