Organic Mama

I ran across this article about organic produce on DotMoms tonight, and though I rarely spend time on actual articles these days, I felt compelled to read it. I buy organic now. Not exclusively (it's hard to do that without a Whole Foods Market handy), but primarily. Ever since we moved to hippy-town C'ville, and organic everything became widely available to me, I have been buying organic. If I had had access to quality, affordable organics when I was pregnant with Ava, I probably would have made the switch back then. But Waco was certainly no place for thinking green, beyond keeping up with your curbside recycling regulations. I spent my Waco life thinking organics were manure-laden foods that had to be scoured and cooked so they wouldn't make you sick. Somewhere along the way, I grew up, used some intellect to realize the apples don't grow in the manure-laden ground but on the tree, far away from the manure. Duh. That realization was the start of a refreshingly open-minded outlook to enhance to my long-established (rather odd teenager) health-consciousness. I assure you I was the only sixteen-year-old at Waco High bringing snack bars sweetened only with fruit juice and carob chip cookies to school by my own choosing. No one in my family ate that stuff. At any given time in my home growing up, there were at least three bags of chips on top of the fridge and probably three or more conventional cookie choices. Ding Dongs, Swiss Cake Rolls, and Twinkies were lunch box staples. I frequently enjoyed a bowl of ice cream at night. It wasn't as though anyone made me become health-conscious.

So what happened to me? Why are chips and cookies relative no-no's in my adult home? I'll never really know, but I have a few guesses. My dad had been told on numerous occasions during my childhood to cut back on his intake of certain foods (everything he liked, basically), especially salt. We went through a period of time when table salt stayed in the cabinet and NuSalt stayed on the table. Dad hated it. I didn't care for it. We all tolerated it...for a while. Evidently I had always made it a habit to add salt to my food before this. But the NuSalt decree from Dad's doctor was, strangely enough, also a big red flag to childhood me. I vowed not to add salt to my food and learn to like food that way so that when I got older, no one could make me take away the only thing that made food tasty to me. I would never feel deprived if I never developed a taste for it in the first place, right? (I was an admittedly odd kid.) The health-consciousness ball was officially rolling.

A few years later, I went with my grandparents to visit family in Tacoma, Washington. I was twelve. One evening before dinner, Aunt Sandy made the most beautiful tossed salad I had ever seen. It had dark lettuce I don't recall ever seeing anyone actually eat before, and it was full of big chunks of vegetables other than tomatoes. Before my very eyes sat proof that a salad could look scrumptious. Until then, a salad was iceberg lettuce with diced tomato...and grated carrot when Mema was feeling fancy for me. That salad changed my life. Well, the whole experience of being under Sandy's NutraSweet house rules for a week probably had more to do with it than the salad itself, but I was a changed girl nonetheless. (Of course, I still routinely heaped sugar on my cereal and ate Chips Ahoy cookies by the sleeve for an afternoon snack, so I had a long way to go. But I was just a kid...give me a break!)

Anyway, by the time we got to Charlottesville, I had a nine-month-old veggie lover to feed. And though DelMonte had already come out with a small variety of organic baby foods, I had not yet become an organic Mama. In Waco, we couldn't afford to buy her organics. It was enough that I had quit my job months early to stay home with her and keep her successfully breastfed. But when we entered the land of organic possibilty, I had to indulge in those possibilities! The Whole Foods Market was literally five minutes from my apartment. The produce there looked so inviting, and the promise of learning a healthier lifestyle engulfed me every time I walked inside. I came home from there feeling whole, feeling enriched in body and in spirit, and feeling like I was in control and doing something good for my family.

Why do I buy organics? Not because I believe there are higher antioxidants (though there may be). Not primarily because I want to help the small farmers (though there is certainly some good will in so doing). I buy organics because I believe they contain less chemical pollutants for our bodies absorb. I know our bodies are designed to detoxify, but I also think our world has gotten far more toxic than our bodies were designed to withstand without ill effects (like cancer). I can't control the air pollution my family is exposed to daily, but I can make a good faith effort to control the pollutants that go into our mouths. We are still American. We drink Coke (also known in my home as "chemical water") and eat french fries just like the next guy. But I try to encourage us to do that less than we used to and to stop thinking of it as normal to rely on its convenience. And when we are at home eating around the table together, I can make up for our Whoppers with clean meat and poultry that was not raised on pesticide-ridden feed, antibiotics, hormones, and steroids. Maybe my daughters won't get boobs as early as their friends, but I'll take that parenting challenge if it means even a tiny sliver of reduced likelihood that they'll call me in forty years with the awful news that the big "C" has attacked some major organ. And if it should happen anyway, I'll be a little more likely to blame the environment than myself. Peace of mind should count for something.