Nell On Earth: An interview with Nell Newman, creator of Newman’s Own Organics

An enlightening interview on Grist.com about the business of organics, but what’s up with her answer to “are you vegetarian?”:

I was a vegetarian for three years as a kid. Now I am a “flexitarian.” My friends say it’s a PC name for hypocrite. I eat a little bit of everything. Ninety percent of what I eat is organic, and any meat I buy is organic, but when I go out to dinner, I don’t always investigate the ingredients. I don’t say no when I go to a friend’s for dinner and they’ve prepared a non-organic meal.

Isn’t she answering two totally separate questions there?

That aside, Nell’s got some interesting things to say about big business/mainstream organics:

Oh, it’s good that someone’s mainstreaming this industry. Adopting big-business practices is one thing, and adopting agribusiness practices that would dilute the meaning of organic is another. On the whole, I think we’re doing a pretty good job of preserving the integrity of organic foods.

As for business practices, you have to be realistic. Even running a small organics company, I’ve got constraints. I would love to not have to ship anything and use nasty packaging, but you know what, that’s not a reality. You want to do everything regionally, and just support local small farmers regionally, and then you find out there are no good pretzel manufacturers anywhere on the West Coast, so you have to make your pretzels on the East Coast and ship them. So you do as best you can, but most of the time, it’s difficult to have those high ideals and stick to them, in terms of how you produce stuff. People would love us to put our pretzels in wax paper, but would they really like it when they bought a stale pretzel? It’s a very difficult balance.

I got a note the other night from Prabu Ram from New Delhi, India. Prabu runs Infoserve, a blog that’s followed news related to genetically modified foods since March. The coverage is balanced and lets you draw your own conclusions and is worth keeping an eye on.

A new article in The Environmental Magazine titled “Choose wisely for heart-healthy fats” encourages consumers to buy organic oils, arguing that if any part of your diet must be organic, it’s the oils you use to cook with:

[I]f you can afford to buy only one organic food item, it should be culinary oils. They base their assertions on several things, but at the top of the list is the fact that heavy metals (which can show up in sewage sludge used to treat some nonorganic farms) and industrial chemicals such as pesticides tend to stick to fats.

The article also has a good section on which oils to choose for different types of cooking to avoid “damaging” the oils, which can increase the amount of cancer-causing agents in your food.

Even though Seeds of Change is now owned by M&M/Mars, I couldn’t resist a recent sale that made one of their frozen meals a mere 99 cents. Their “Spicy Peanut Noodles” dish was really flavorful and tasty and, as is their policy, 100% of the ingredients are organic.

One thing to note: with 4 1/2 grams of saturated fat and 650mg of sodium, this ain’t health food. It’s also far from vegan, containing heavy cream (gee, where could that sat fat have come from?) and honey. But for lacto vegetarians who don’t mind the occasional “heavy” meal, this Seeds of Change frozen meal fits the bill.

In the current issue of the NetFuture e-mail newsletter, there is an interesting article titled Cheap Food at Any Cost, which discusses the organic industry and how bigger in organics is likely not better:

The extra heating of [Horizon’s organic] milk is necessary in order to prevent deterioration of the product as it’s being shipped all over the country. Of course, the heating also reduces the nutritional value of the milk. This milk, in other words, is more processed than some conventional, local, non-organic milk.

Also outlined are the three original goals of organic farming proponents in the 1960s and how those goals are reached by large corporations jumping on the organic bandwagon in 2003:

Recalling the “organic dream” of the 1960s and 1970s, Pollan reminded us
that the vision had three key elements: 1) green, diverse, pesticide-free
farms, 2) an overhauled distribution system with an emphasis on the local
and small, 3) and food kept closer to its natural state, with less
processing. Big Organic accommodates itself only to the first of these
three principles. As a result, the entire system threatens to be
dominated by the high-calorie strawberry, factory-farmed meat, and (sooner
or later, if organic advocate Joan Gussow’s surmise is correct) the
organic Twinkie.

Well worth reading.

The Washington Post has a couple of articles with regards to new federal organic guidelines:

• The New Standards: What Does ‘Organic’ Really Mean? On Oct. 21, Food Shoppers Will Find Out.
  This is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of labeling and standards, but now let’s see some reform that rewards organic farmers financially and helps protect them from drifting pesticides or fallout from nearby farms that use genetically modified foods.
• A Guide to the New Organic Terminology
  A quick rundown on the varying degrees of “organic,” explaining the difference between “organic” and “100 percent organic.”

The Berkeley High School that decided to give organic lunches a shot are dropping the program, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The lunches weren’t very successful, with many students opting to go off-campus or for cheaper fast food for lunch. From the sounds of it, it wasn’t due to the quality of the food, but more because of poor marketing (many students didn’t even know about the organic food court) and certain logistic issues for the food providers.

The district’s superintendent is pushing for another shot at organic lunches, this time done properly. “I think this is a setback,” she said, “but we aren’t dissuaded from the goal of getting our students in the habit of eating healthier food.”

There have been a number of articles worth noting about organic farming recently:

In Toxic to the Tongue, the Village Voice’s Lenora Todaro takes a look at Fatal Harvest, a tome quite omptimistic about organic farming’s future and quite pessimistic about modern industrial farming’s effects on our current food supply.

Frankenfoods Get Funkier takes another look GM foods. “Opposition to GM crops is first and foremost a political stance against the industrialization of our food supply and the takeover of agriculture by big business.”

Perhaps the most surprising is the positive look at organic farming in this week’s issue of Newsweek. The author’s consensus is pretty much in line with my own on the matter: organic food tastes better, is better for the environment, but may or may not be more nutritious/safe for you. One fact that blew my mind: pesticides kill 67 million American birds each year. Fred Kirschenmann of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Ames, Iowa says, “Conventional agriculture still delivers cheap, abundant food, but when you factor in the government subsidies and the environmental costs, it gets very expensive. We’re drawing down our ecological capital. At some point, the systems will start to break down.”

Rebecca Blood, a prominent blogger and author/editor of several recent books about blogs, frequently covers vegetarian/environmental issues on her site. One story from the last few days is especially worth passing on:

The not-so-sweet success of organic farming takes a look at some issues that make organic much less sustainable than the idealism behind it. What I got from this article: 1.) Organic farming on a global scale is something that needs some examination. Enacting such programs often makes heavy use of nonrenewable resources, which goes against the ideal of organic farming and sustainable agriculture. 2.) Organic may be good, but locally grown organic is best. Community Supported Agrictulture programs are looking better and better to me. 3.) When the federal government gets too involved with anything, the original ideals and motivations often get lost in the shuffle of beaurocracy.

I took a little time to check out more about CSA and I really like the idea. My college friend Pat paricipates in a program like this further south in Virginia and he’s spoken well of it. But I didn’t think such programs existed near where I live. Surely I would have heard about them, right?

Wrong. With a quick search online, I found a number of different programs nearby that even include an option to have the food delivered to your hometown for a small fee. The price for membership isn’t too extravagent, either, with around $300 getting you basic membership for a season. Read more about the CSA Movement and think about how a program like this could work into your life.

Palo Alto chews on organic school lunches: Pupils give a thumbs-up to meatless meal options

While I think that the switch in Palo Alto school lunches to organic foods is a good thing, I’m even happier that they’re making such strong efforts to provide vegetarian options to the kids.

The elementary school students gave the proposed fare a taste-test. Much of the food got very high praise from the kids: “Compared to our regular lunches, this is kings’ food,” said one fifth grader. “Our chicken nuggets are like grease balls. The thousand island dressing tastes like vinegar. And the pizza’s like cardboard—you could play Frisbee with it.”

Another specifically praised the school’s proposed meatless selections, “I’m a vegetarian and sometimes when I ask for cheese pizza, they’ll give me some with pepperoni on it.”

Only in Palo Alto would they be able to afford an all-organic program, and I don’t think this is necessarily where other schools need to focus, but I’d love to see other schools in the country making a move towards healthier selections and more varied vegetarian options. Bring on the Boca Burgers!

(via VegSource)

From my letter to the editors of Organic Style magazine:

Thus far I’ve enjoyed the first two issues of Organic Style. Though it’s a little “slick” for my tastes, I’ve enjoyed most of the articles and applaud you for covering white tea in your Nov/Dec 2001 issue. White tea is my favorite kind for its subtle flavor alone, and its health benefits, even beyond green teas, are good to see in a publication of your scope.

One issue I feel I must bring up, though, is with your article “The Problem with Poultry.” While free-range chickens, or “organic” chickens may be slightly healthier, from an ethical standpoint they are really not much of an improvement over factory farmed poultry. The end result is the same: the chickens are killed for food and whether they’re allowed to walk around before they’re slaughtered is a way to make people feel less guilty about eating animals. If someone is truly concerned about ethics with regards to their eating habits (and, indeed, their health), then a vegetarian or vegan diet is the way to go.

Free-range farming isn’t for the welfare of the chickens: it’s just a poor way for humans to justify eating animals.

Report proves organic food is healthier, farm group insists

Here’s another take on the article I mentioned earlier. It also presents the opposition’s side. The Food Standards Agency and the British Nutrition Foundation “instantly rejected” the claims of organic foods’ benefits, saying, “The science isn’t there.”

Organic Food is Better for You, UK Farm Group Says

I always had trouble believing the organic naysayers that insisted that fruit and veggies treated with pesticides were as healthy as any organic offering. Here’s a report in favor of organic farming that goes so far as to say, “Eating organic is neither a fad nor a luxury, this comprehensive scientific assessment shows that it is a necessity.”

Regina’s Vegetarian Table, as many of you will remember, is one of the few shows I anxiously await each week (though it seems to be off of its normal schedule right now). Right now, Regina has a good article on her web site supporting organic dairy products.

It makes me really happy when I’m in Giant and see what I consider to be an “average American” reach for the organic milk even though it costs a little more rather than the store brand. It’s not just about health (connections have been made between the use of bovine growth hormones and early puberty in children), but about the choice to support sustainable agriculture and farmers that treat their dairy cows humanely.

And it’s easy to find. In Giant, they carry two different brands of organic milk. For a half-gallon, one costs about $3.50 and the other about $2.95. Hopefully more varieties of organic cheeses will become available soon.

Dole to Sell Organic Bananas

I don’t like bananas, but this is good news, nonetheless.

National Organic Standards Released

This is good to see: national organic standards. Funny quote of the article: “The food industry has been concerned that national standards could lead consumers to think that organic products are safer or healthier than conventional foods.” Um—how is having food that’s genetically engineered or has pesticides sprayed all over it as healthy as organically grown produce? It’s not.

Now if we can just get the government to reward organic farmers, there will be more incentive for them to grow their crops that way (it’s very expensive for them to do so now).

Thanks to Robert for passing this along.

Even if you’re not vegetarian or don’t usually worry about buying organic products, Horizon Organic Dairy is worth checking out. Their milk is about twice as much as non-organic, store brand milk, but consider this:

• Organic milk actually stays good considerably longer than non-organic milk. I buy a half-gallon and use it mainly just for cereal in the morning, and it hasn’t gone bad on me yet. I used to buy a quarter-gallon of store brand milk for cereal and it would often go bad before I even could finish it.
• Horizon’s cows are not mistreated. This doesn’t just matter from an animal-rights POV, but from a health standpoint as well. Overworked cows that are cramped in little areas and given BGH to increase their milk production end up excreting pus and blood from lesions in their udders. To be used for Horizon milk, the cows are allowed to roam and exercise and only give milk on their natural cycle. They’re even given massages!
• It’s been shown that organic farming is better for the environment, so Horizon farms are all certified organic (without pesticides for three years or more), meaning the cows don’t ingest any unnatural chemcials.

Food for thought the next time you’re picking out milk at the supermarket.