Organic Food vs "standard" food

[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

[Bathsheba]

What are typical Monsanto products/brands?

[Trillian]

Bath, you wouldn't come across them - Monsanto are one of the biggest agricultural seed/chemical/fertiliser producers in the world and they are right bastards - there is no nice way or putting it. They have sued farmers for royalties simply because the farmers non-GM canola got contaminated with their GM canola varieties and took them to the cleaners for something that wasn't their fault and Monsanto refused to back down. Unfortunately they also make some of the best agricultural chemicals ie Roundup and as things stand ATM we rely on it for weed control. So that's why I would dearly love to see an end to needing stuff like that just so those beggars get their just desserts.

ETA - you would possibly only come across them if you buy packet seeds for your garden as they do own quite a lot of seed producers, but I am not sure if they own any of the brands sold in Australia or not.

ETA 2 - I just did a bit of searching and found out that Yates are owned by Orica, who like to dump toxic waste and are responsible for the toxic plume under botany bay (somewhere in sydney anyway - botany bay is in my mind for some reason).

[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.

[Kitt3n]

i'll do some searching for a list tomorrow bath - not sure if it will be easy

I am pretty sure coca cola is owned by monsanto - and, pfizer owns 75% of the shares of monsanto - it just goes round n round in evil circles......

[Bathsheba]

Thanks for that Monsanto info girls, especially LimeSlice. I'm horrified by the cow abuse too! I don't buy Brownes and will steer awy from them now... and i don't buy coke in any form... Coca Cola are almost as bad as tobacco companies in their contribution to disease IMO.

[Lulu]

to get around Monsanto and their evil takings over of our FOOD supply, I suggest when you do plant seeds in your backyard you only use Diggers, or anything Heritage. And learn how to save seeds.

Monsanto and various other suckos will happily provide sterile seed so we must repeatedly buy from them each year...

[Inanna]

Aaaah so the light bulb goes on for many! It is pretty hideous yes? I agree with Lulu - also buy from a local farmer committed to Earth friendly farming practices... There are LOTS - because I do believe (yes, I hear the sigh from those who think I live in Faery land - and I do) human consciousness is reaching a level where unkindness to the Earth just cannot be supported.

Happy seed searching - and when you have a moment just google coca cola and just see how massive they are...