"Testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are three times as likely to violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide residues as the same foods grown in the United States. Some but not all pesticide residues can be removed by washing or peeling produce, but tests by the Centers for Disease Control show that most Americans carry traces of pesticides in their blood. American consumers can discourage this poisoning by avoiding foods that are bad for the environment, bad for farmers in Latin America and, in the worst cases, bad for their own families.
What should you put on your bird-friendly grocery list? Organic coffee, for one thing. Most mass-produced coffee is grown in open fields heavily treated with fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. In contrast, traditional small coffee farmers grow their beans under a canopy of tropical trees, which provide shade and essential nitrogen, and fertilize their soil naturally with leaf litter. Their organic, fair-trade coffee is now available in many coffee shops and supermarkets, and it is recommended by the Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.
Organic bananas should also be on your list. Bananas are typically grown with one of the highest pesticide loads of any tropical crop."
Although bananas present little risk of pesticide ingestion to the consumer, the environment where they are grown is heavily contaminated.
6 comments:
betmo
I wish I saved it but last week I watched a show about the best coffees. That is the way they are grown and the one I wanted to try grows and is produced a mile high in South America. You made me check out and you can taste The worlds most expensive coffees
You know I agree with you. You should eat organically grown whenever possible not opnly because of the food but the effect on the environment as a whole but the soil in particular to me. Here we now have laws though not stringent enough but in South America there are no such laws.
Anyway I was going to say it is very expensive to eat organically and because of the laws there are no guarantees that organic or natural is that unless you grow it yourself. ???
I'm gonna go morbid bet, but ... say ... if we don't die of the artificial consequences of our greed (e.g wanting mass-produced Bananas in the arctic) then the world is gonna swell and burst with over-fed population!
I say, we give all the crappy cheap chemically contaminated food to poor nations, and start massive organic farming (that will perhaps require more energy resources to compensate for the facility brought about by genetic and mechanical and chemical alterations)
After all, we cannot help wanting to super-size ourselves, can we?
it isn't morbid naj- millions of people are going to die- millions of people more than die each day as it is. widespread hunger causes diseases that will wipe out millions more. add that to the shrinking fresh water supply on the planet- and anything else really pales in comparison. there is trouble ahead- and if you can- be where you have access to non municipal water and utilities- and grow your own food. and fortify you homes because many of your neighbors will not have prepared and will want what you have.
hah! i think i may have outmorbided you naj :)
we must laugh or cry- may as well have some humour.
Betmo
I just want to say you know you are right!
I read an article about this that said I'm taking Birth Control unknowingly! Sheeeeit! What's next? Revirgination?
One of your commentors said, correctly, "because of the laws there are no guarantees that organic or natural is that"
The crap growers are allowed to use on foodstuff and label it "organic" is crazy!
A long time ago, in the early 1980's when I first started to learn about what we are putting into our mouths, there wasa guy named Rodale. Rodale published a number of books and started a small movement that called attention to the fact that we were spending millions of dollars on fuel, and the subsequent pollution of burning said fuel, to get a stalk of celery to New York City from California when the celery wasn't in season in New York City.
With this concept in mind, we all know that the growers in other countries are not bound by pesticide use and there is a huge market for grapes in the middle of winter.
It is for each of us to decide in the matter of how much fuel and pollution we want to see to have un natural produce on our tables in the off season and how much pesticide we want to consume. It talks a lot of changes in our usual everyday life, but it is possible to wait until the produce is "in season" and eat other things to help save the planet and our bodies.
The coop grocery here at home does offer organic produce in the off season. It is organic and speaks to the pesticide issue, but not the shipping expenditures and pollution caused by it.
I am sad to say, I do not practice entirely what I preach and buy off season stuff on occasion.
Peace to All.
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