If you are looking to lose or maintain your weight, is eating organic going to help? I have eaten organic food for a long time. I am sure that eating organic does affect your weight, although lightly. However, what are some of the factors that may contribute to weight loss when eating organic. However, before that what are some of the things that make organic foods organic?
For organic food to be organic it, first, it must be grown without the use of artificial fertilizers or pesticides of any kind. Natural fertilizer is acceptable, things such as eggshells, fruit skins, and dead plants. If the food comes from livestock, the animal has to be free of antibiotics or growth hormones. Finally, organic food cannot be genetically modified or treated with radiation. Now let us move on to some ways eating organic foods can help you lose/ maintain weight.
1. Organic Food Isn’t Processed
Today almost all the food we find in the grocery store has been processed, packaged, and stripped of its nutritional value. Why? To make the food last longer, stay cheaper, and taste better. When your body is robbed of the nutrition it needs, it starts storing the energy you consume in the form of fat. Organic food, however, is more wholesome and full of nutrition. When you eat wholesome foods you feel satisfied, allowing you to get the nutrition you need, without eating too much. It is a win-win situation!
2. Organic Food Does Not Have Food Additives
Food additives are substances added to food to preserve its flavour and appearance. Things such as starch in chicken to make it crispier, and fats in pastries to make them tastier are just some of the common examples. They also add salt, sugar, and thickeners. All these are definitely not good for your body in large amounts. Organic food does not contain any food additives, making it less sugary, fattening, and unhealthy.
3. Organic Food is Non-Toxic
Non-organic foods can contain toxins, which can affect your body’s state of being, making you sick, sleepy, or mood. All these can have effects on your weight and that means weight gain. Sometimes these toxins may target your weight directly, especially with fried foods and foods full of preservatives and other substances.
4. Organic Food is Associated With an Active Lifestyle
People who eat organic are thought of as active and outgoing people. Other people choosing to switch to organic might step in their shoes as well and follow suit. While this is not a direct link, when people change their diet to organic, they might start exercising just because they are starting to eat healthy.
5. Organic Foods are Often Grown Locally
If foods are grown locally, chances are if you are like me, you will walk to get your fresh produce. When food is grown locally and it is just half a kilometer from your house, you might feel a little bit guilty driving that car. When you walk you burn calories and that is one step to weight loss.
Whether or not organic food is going to be in the next wave of weight loss techniques is still yet to be answered. However, through my experiences, I have to say it definitely helped me lose and then maintain my weight!
There is nothing like new sheets made with certified organic cotton. The fabric is a new innovation for consumers interested in buying into the Global Oganic Textile Standard (GOTS). This cotton is grown without chemicals and pesticides and needs to pass a certification process by the recognized and independent organization known as GOTS. It is supplied by communities that use traditional farming methods based on whole earth practices.
Sleeping on natural sheets that are produced through a clean and environmentally safe process can help consumers buy locally while thinking globally; one of the small steps towards making a transition to a cleaner, safer home environment.
Cost of Organic Cotton and the Environmentally Conscious Home
Plan on spending anywhere from $90 for a set of organic sheets to upwards of $100 per sheet depending on the quality. Putting into practice an eco-friendly lifestyle often requires some interaction between the product design, its components and the human dimension.
Buying into the concept and product line is the first step. Next are influential sources such as books on managing an eco-friendly home that could help the consumer to transform their surroundings and the time, cost management needed.
Creating an Eco-Friendly Home Environment
The challenge of creating a healthy home environment and lifestyle requires some committment, but it can translate into a lifelong practice. Buying items like environmentally friendly packaging and water-friendly washing detergent over a lifetime can be a personal lifestyle choice that can achieve the kind of small impacts that begin as a trickle and eventually grow to a flood.
There are lots of books and consumer products to help consumers make wise choices. Implementing the plan and living the lifestyle requires more than just a good price and good product; it requires commitment. There are so many choices available, and deciding what works for everyone is never easy.
Implementing Greener Lifestyle Choices
Browse the stores and websites to find the right product at the right price and then see what happens. Saving money by shopping for a sale price can have a big impact on the decision to redesign a home with organic products. Living an environmentally conscious lifestyle usually requires simplification and streamlining. Decide which areas of the home environment can be restyled with organic products to implement a lifestyle decision.
Evaluating an Environmentally Conscious Lifestyle
Make the purchases needed to create a lifestyle based on sound eco-friendly practices can have other benefits as well. An individual’s lifestyle change can eventually bring about larger changes and help bring about a truly eco-friendly textile industry.
Recently, pesticides have been in the news more often than usual. That is because there have been new studies coming out proving pesticides cause symptoms of ADHD, increased risk for cancer, autism, and birth defects.
We don’t usually think about this when picking out apples at the grocery store or eating blueberries at a cookout. We tend to trust that no one would put dangerous chemicals into our food. These recent studies, done by the University of Montreal, the National Academy of Sciences, and numerous physicians around the world, have come to many of the same conclusions. Pesticides are harmful to humans and cannot be as easily washed of as we believe. They can cause learning disabilities in our children and cancers in adults. They can cause birth defects when eaten too often during pregnancy.
There are many things you can do to lessen your exposure to chemical pesticides. One it to use an organic, plant based pesticide on any garden or lawn you keep. Peeling your skinned fruit and veggies is another way to avoid harmful chemicals. Because most of the nutrients and anti-oxidants from these foods are found in the skin, buying organic would be optimal. Organic fruits and vegetables can be found in grocery stores and are always labeled “USDA Organic”. You can also often find organic produce at nearby farms. This would also help small businesses in your area thrive.
Some fruits and vegetables cannot simply be washed of the pesticides. The USDA did studies on which produce has the highest amount of pesticides. Here is a list of foods to always buy organic in order to reduce your exposure:
Buying organic produce can be difficult for many reasons. Some being they are not even available or they are too expensive. Keep in mind that consumers have the control. Vote with your pocket book. Organic produce is continuing to decline in price because it’s increasing in popularity. The more we buy organic, the more will be available at a cheaper price.
There are many farms who need people to buy shares of the farm. These farms are called co-op farms or Community Supported Agriculture farms. The way they work is by charging an upfront fee of around $400 dollars. This is a once a year cost. Then you pick up organic produce weekly. You can get anywhere from 2-6 bags of produce a week. Most CSA’s run from May to November.
Get creative and don’t give up. A goal of an organic diet can take a year to achieve. But it will be worth it and you will notice a great difference. Not to mention you will feel great about doing your part on this planet by helping reduce the amount of chemicals sprayed onto the soil.
Consumption of whole organic foods is a growing trend. It should come as no surprise especially with the constant focus both on our nations health and global warming.
There are lots of reasons you should choose to buy organic foods.
It’s predicted that organic foods will eventually cost a lot less then conventionally grown foods. The reason is due to the cost of fertilizers and pesticides that non-organic farmers use.
Eating organic foods means improving your overall health. The first and most obvious reason is because you’re no longer ingesting chemicals. There is no way to accurately measure how many pesticides,herbicides, and hormones we digest on a day to day basis. An average piece of produce can be sprayed over 50 times before it’s harvested and shipped to the supermarket shelf. It also may get additional chemical treatments to increase its shelf life. Then we take it home, rinse it off, and eat it. We then fool ourselves into believing that we took in adequate nutrition. In reality what nutrition was left will be used to detoxify our bodies of what we just ingested.
A new study just revealed that the better percentage of the human population is under-nourished. Woman take the lead in that category at a whopping 93%, that’s a pretty scary number. Especially when so many woman are taking on the role of both a professional and a mother. It takes a large amount of energy to juggle both. It’s dangerous to your health when your body is not nourished enough to fuel you with the energy you need to properly manage stress.
Another study even discovered that woman who eat diets high in processed and chemically treated foods greatly increased their chances of having a miscarriage.
There are a number of other health benefits to eating organic foods. Eating organic foods can help you to better manage your weight. When your body gets the proper amount of nutrients that it needs it no longer goes into defense mode. The less chemicals you ingest the less toxins in your body. When you have less toxins you have a great deal more energy, thus increasing your activities. Also your immune system is no longer under constant attack. This makes it easier to fight of colds, infections, and be less susceptible to other diseases of the immune system.
If you haven’t heard the term “go green!”, you might be living in a cave. When you “go green” it means you’re doing what you can to eliminate global warming. Eating organic is one of the many contributions you can make to help stop global warming. Many non-organic farmers use nitrogen based fertilizers. Nitrogen based fertilizers contribute nitrous oxide, a green house gas. Green hose gases effect climate, thus increasing the effects of global warming.
When you eat organic you will feel better all around. Not just physically, but emotionally too. You’ll feel good because your doing something good for your body and for your planet.
I have struggled with the organic food prices for awhile. On the one hand I would love to only eat organic foods and foods and groceries from local farmers. I want to support my local economy and businesses. However, I have four children and the portions are ridiculously small for a family of five. There is barely enough in one package for two of my children, let alone all four of them. I realize they are smaller for a reason and there is less processing, which is great. They are natural, fewer additives and preservatives, and more natural vitamins and minerals in them. However, none of that does any good if the portion is so small it will never fill my children or myself up. Compound the small sizes with the grossly high prices. Again, I realize the prices are higher because they are not made in bulk, they do come from private farmers, and they are not processed foods. But, again the size is bad enough, but the price is like being slapped in the face. Reason one as to why I rarely eat organic or feed my children organic foods. As much as I would like to at times and I think that maybe somehow they would get something more by me doing so, I simply can not afford it.
Then there is the other problem I do have with organic foods, that besides the extremely high prices and very tiny portions, is that some of the foods are just not very good. Now I know that my taste buds are not use to organic foods and that maybe over time they would adapt to all natural foods, versus highly processed foods. However, explaining why the cereal does not taste the same to a 2 year old is a loosing battle. As for myself, it just does not taste good and as much as I know that I will get over that at some time, the small portions and high prices, make swallowing the food even harder. Reason number two as to why I don’t buy more organic foods.
I guess when it really comes down to it, I would love to buy organic, but I also realize that I can’t afford it, the portions are not reasonable and the quality just is not there. Paying a higher price does not always mean better quality either. Many foods can be listed as organic, because the rules for organic foods are not that strict and the standards are not that high. I just am not willing to pay those prices for organic foods. My family is too large and realistically it just is not good money management to spend three times the going price for food items, because their package says organic.
Most organic foods cost a bit more than their non-organic counterpart. For people on a tight budget deciding to eat organic foods can be a tough choice. When you live on a limited budget you have to choose carefully how you allocate your funds. What is really important to you? Perhaps you would rather have 200 cable tv channels instead of a refrigerator full of organic food. Perhaps you would rather eat dinner at a restaurant once a week than eat organic meals every day.
Eating organic foods on a tight budget begins with a choice. You can choose to eat foods that are sprayed, coated, genetically altered, artificially ripened, and unnaturally preserved. You can choose to eat foods that drain your health, destroy your environment and degrade your children’s future.
If you don’t like these choices then read on. Eating organic foods on a tight budget is easier than many people realize. Once you have made the decision to commit to a healthy organic diet, there are several tips for eating organic on a tight budget that can make this decision affordable.
Tip #1: Comparison shop
Most towns and cities have at least two stores that stock organic meats, produce, and dry goods. Many traditional chain grocery stores have organic foods. Compare their prices to those at the local health food store, food coop and/or farmer’s market and buy items where they are cheaper.
Tip #2: Spend your money where it matters most
Some produce items are more contaminated with pesticides and insecticides than others. The UNC School of Public Health suggests that people buy organic versions of these most contaminated conventional items: peaches, apples, nectarines, celery, pears, potatoes, bell peppers, raspberries, grapes (imported), strawberries, spinach, and cherries.
Other produce items are likely to have only a minimal amount of contamination. The organic version is better if you can afford it. But if your budget is tight, save money by purchasing the conventional version of these items: papaya, kiwi, broccoli, asparagus, onions, bananas, peas, mangos, cauliflower, pineapple, avocado, and corn.
Tip #3: Stock up on sale items
Organic foods go on sale just like every other food you can buy. When one of the organic goods you like goes on sale be sure to stock up. Dry goods are easy enough to store. Meats freeze well. But remember that certain fruits and veggies can also be frozen. Cut up pineapple, strawberries, mango and more and freeze for future smoothies. Lightly cook spinach, beans, corn, etc and freeze away.
Tip #4: Find coupons
Many health food stores, such as Whole Foods and Earthfare, have coupons that are specific for their store. Look for coupon booklets near the entrance or at the checkout counters. Additionally, many organic products have coupons available online. If you have preferred products, it’s worth a quick search on the internet to look for coupons.
Tip #5: Eat less meat
One of the most expensive grocery items that people buy is meat. Eating only antibiotic-free and hormone-free meat is essential for optimal health, particularly in growing children. However, many people eat more meat than is necessary. A serving size of meat should be no bigger than the size of a deck of cards. Limiting your portions to this size will save you money.
Additionally, consider cooking with meat substitutes. Tofu and tempeh are great alternatives to meat. Save money by purchasing these organic items when they are on sale and eating them in place of meat. Enjoy the variety of texture and taste that these non-meat proteins offer.
Eating organic foods is an excellent choice for one’s health and for the environment. By following the tips above, it is entirely possible to eat delicious organic meals on a tight budget. Enjoy!
