Organic Food vs "standard" food

[Trillian]

K some of the non-certified organic stuff from our local farmers market is also delish. I have a rule - I never buy fruit, veges or meat from the supermarket. Not just because it tastes like cardboard but because I don't agree with the way they treat farmers and producers. If I can't get what I need from the markets I buy from the greengrocers or the butchers. Lots of good ones in our area!

That's a whole other thread right there! I loathe how we are constantly screwed over - we boycott all Westons branded foods as they stitched us up a few years ago over a load of wheat - 35ton it was - that we sold to their melb factory and when the truck got there they called and said they would not pay the agreed amount because it was full of weevils (like fricken hell it was - it had been treated and kept in a fully sealed silo and was tested before it was sold and found to be weevil free) and our hands were tied because it would have cost us more money to get the truck to turn around and come home than we lost on the sale. But what could you do? It was their word against ours and the truck was sitting in their yard - they knew we wouldn't say turn the truck around and go home.

[MamaPan]

sherie - what an awful story. i will boycott them too!

[Bathsheba]

I also live in hope that consumers will demand more organic foods so farmers can have greater incentive to adjust their methods. I agree with FlowerChild that the expectation of foods being available all year round has got to change. People need to apply "absence makes the heart grown fonder" to foods. How sweeter a peach tastes after not having one for 9 months of the year? I think A LOT sweeter! We have also put in a vegie patch because there are so many foods like carrots that are soooo simple to grow in your own backyard and taste sooo much better than the tasteless supermarket variety. I think that too many people are putting the responsibility on producing food onto farmers when growing a bit themselves isn't really that hard. I remember as a kid that hardly anyone bought lemons... nearly everyone had a lemon tree in their backyard... or knew somebody who could give them a lemon if needed. Bring back the community spirit and a lot of the worlds' food shortage and quality issues could start to be solved. People are far too detached from the food growing process That's contributing to a wasteful mindset and other food abuses. I don't understand why here in Australia we have become so detached where in many European countries people are still connected to the food production process... rural France especially seems to be a great example of this. They are rejecting the mass production processes which lead to lesser quality so why can't we? They truly seem to value quality over quantity and I think it shows also in the fact that they don't seem to have the obesity problem that we in Australia have.... it's all connected. Just my thoughts.

[Astrid]

How are we going to increase the demand for organic food when there is such a push towards savings. A lot of the cheaper brands are not organic and are also of unknown ethical origin. If you buy a store brand, what do you know about the company that supplied that food and their practices? (this reminds me of a thread I have been meaning to start)

[Bathsheba]

The temptation of savings: from my experience when it comes to food, once I have tasted a superior product I find it very hard to go "back" to the cheaper inferior product... more so than say stationery, clothes, toiletries etc. I can think of at least 10 foods that I now eat regularly despite them being significantly more expensive than what I had before... here's 3:

Bread: before i had tasted Phillipas I thought all bread was pretty much the same. Phillipas loaves cost up to $8 each... but I would rather eat less of hers and taste something truly delicious (appreciating every mouthful than mindlessly consume just another slice of some standard supermarket bread... well, on the weekend anyhow ) I think Phillipas uses organic flours and ingredients too although I could be wrong.

Yogurt: expensive organic yogurt is a totally different product to the stuff they try to call yogurt eg Nestle's which IMO is just sugar, milk and thickeners. We now eat Jalna as a staple... not cheap but i can't bear the thought of my kids eating the other rubbish. There are also other favourites that we buy less regularly but think the extra $ is worth it.

Chicken: a corn fed free range chicken is smaller than your standard battery supermarket chicken and it's often twice the price but once you've had the real thing it's very hard not to taste the bleachy excuse for a chicken that most supermarkets sell. If I'm going to go to all the effort to make a Coq Au Vin it's only going to be a free ranger from now on.

[Astrid]

For some reason down here the price difference between freerange chicken and the standard chooks is not huge, normally around $2/kg. Eggs though are a different story, about double the price. Really need to get our chooks happening.

[Kitt3n]

If you buy a store brand, what do you know about the company that supplied that food and their practices? (this reminds me of a thread I have been meaning to start)

anything which has a parent company of monsanto or nestle we pretty much steer right away from

[LimeSlice]

Ill second that cat!

Monsanto make my skin crawl! You know they are trying to patent a specific strain of pig DNA...dodgy bastards

[Astrid]

anything which has a parent company of monsanto or nestle we pretty much steer right away from

What I was trying to get at is that with store brands you don't know at all if it is one of those or not. Unless you have inside info, how do you know who is supplying them.

[Kitt3n]

astrid, do you mean like "woolworths select" etc? ie, the actual store's brand?

eta - i dont buy many of them either really

[Inertia]

How are we going to increase the demand for organic food when there is such a push towards savings. A lot of the cheaper brands are not organic and are also of unknown ethical origin. If you buy a store brand, what do you know about the company that supplied that food and their practices? (this reminds me of a thread I have been meaning to start)

Half the problem is in this mentality. When DH and I decided to go raw, we expected exactly this to happen. Granted the first shop "stock up" slogged the budget a bit and we spent $500 that fortnight rather than the usual $400. Since then we have been spending $300 a fortnight - and we are even buying better quality meat and 'cuts'.

I do pay more for my eggs - I know this. We get 30 free range for $8.50 rather than 12 battery for $2.50, but despite this, our bill went down.

This is because my cupboard and fridge stocks actually do more than one meal - where as a jar of pasta sauce cost me $3ish and only did half a meal. I make my own pasta sauce now for $1 a jar. I make my own cheese sauce and it works out a bit more expensive, but it tastes better because we can afford a high quality matured tasty.

I would love to move closer to the country for this as we still have to tolerate things like homogenised milk and processed honey because we dont have local suppliers. I was thinking about checking out the morrisset mega market though. If I could eliminate the last of those jars and bottles, it would be perfect - and I still have $100 per fortnight to do it with too!

[LimeSlice]

Bath:
NutraSweet, Equal, BGH (aka rBGH, rBST, Posilac), Simplese (an artificial butter fat),
Simple Pleasures Frozen Dairy Desserts, Salad Dressing and Moyonnaise;
the artificial fibers Astroturf and Wear Dated Carpets;
the home insulation foam sheeting called Fome-Cor;
the garden herbicides Roundup and Dimension;
agricultural chemicals: Lasso, Harness Plus, Far Go, Avauer, Machete, Bronco, Bullet,
Cropstar GB, Freedom, Landmaster BW, Micro-Tech Partner, Ram Rod, Accord, Buckle,
Fallow Master, Lariat, Rodeo;
the feed supplement and preservative Alimet;
the Flavr Savr tomato.

They are I think largely UK brandnames...will be back with some more.

Monsanto also own Brownes Milk here in WA (which is promoted as WA icon) - Monsanto are the people that were using the milk increasing drugs on their cows in the US to produce more milk - you may have seen pics of the cows with the enlarged and engorged udders (to the point they couldn't move) the cows were getting sick and dying and it was disgusting - but they were producing enough milk to be milked 6 times a day woohoo!!

[Laranna]

Monsanto also own Brownes Milk here in WA (which is promoted as WA icon) - Monsanto are the people that were using the milk increasing drugs on their cows in the US to produce more milk - you may have seen pics of the cows with the enlarged and engorged udders (to the point they couldn't move) the cows were getting sick and dying and it was disgusting - but they were producing enough milk to be milked 6 times a day woohoo!!

OMG, that is shocking LimeSlice! I had no idea....I don't buy Brownes milk, I buy the Woolies but who knows that probably comes from Brownes anyway!

This thread has given me lots to think about. I've been contemplating going organic for a while now...off to research some organic shops in Perth now.