Look for the 9 - How to Determine Organic Produce

Look at the Sticker!

Have you every noticed the little stickers on your fruit? Those numbers indicate the PLU. The International Federation for Produce Coding standardizes PLU codes for every grocery store in the country. Conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have 4-digit numbers and generally begin with a 3 or 4. Organically grown fruits and vegetables have 5 digits and begin with a 9. I was just in a Gristedes grocery store the other day and saw a bag of "organic pears." I couldn't believe it - organic pears in Gristedes? I was so excited to see the organic produce section expanding at a mega-supermarket like this, BUT... when I looked closer, I saw that even though the bag had the USDA Organic logo on it, the stickers on the individual pears inside the bag started with a 3, which means the pears are conventional, not organic fruit.

BEWARE: Genetically modified fruits are vegetables also have 5 digits and begin with an 8. For example, the PLU for a conventionally grown banana is 4011; for an organic banana it's 94011; and for genetically modified bananas it's 84011.

Five Reasons to Go Organic:

1. Pesticides and Residues. The average conventionally grown apple has 20 to 30 artificial chemicals on the skin, even after rinsing.

2. Organic fruits and veggies have 50% to 60% higher levels of cancer-fighting antioxidants than non-organic fruits and veggies, says the Feb 26, 2003 issue Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. They also have more alive minerals in them that have not been denatured in any way. They often taste better; sweeter and more flavorful. Think how much better a little, bumpy apple off a neighborhood tree or orchard tastes compared to an eerily, monstrous apple at an airport.

3. Organic farming works with the land. Crops are rotated from year to year to allow the soil to retain its nutrients between growing cycles. Animals graze in different areas to let grasses recover and replenish between seasons. Farmers use composting rather than artificial methods. Buying organic supports a way of life - a sustainable food system, a sustainable planet.

4. Pesticides build up in our tissues causing our immune system to weaken over time, allowing other carcinogens and pathogens to affect our health. Pesticides in the immune system have been shown to cause cancer as well as liver, kidney and blood diseases.

5. If you're not eating organic, you could be eating genetically modified foods. GMOs are any organism in which the genetic material has been altered or shuffled around in a way that does not occur naturally. These crops have DNA traits from bacteria, fungi, or other plants that create resistance to pests and diseases. Farmers who use GM crops can spray their fields to kill everything growing in the are except the food crop. (Imagine what is being killed in our bodies when we eat these foods.) The most common genetically engineered crops are canola, corn, soy, and cotton, Often, the government does not require labeling of these foods and considers them safe. Experts estimate that 70% of the foods in grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada contain genetically engineered ingredients. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, problems of the introduction of GMOs into the food system increase toxins to dangerous levels in conventional crops, diminish the natural, nutritional value of many harmless crops, allow for GMO crops to dominate over wild plants, disrupt ecosystems, and contribute to the destruction of our already fragile planet.

-the information from this post was taken from Integrative Nutrition, Chapter 3: What to Eat, When, and How We Eat.


Collect Stickers!
- A Fun Way to Encourage Kids to Eat Fruit and Veggies (and hopefully organic):

When I was little, my brother and sister and I used to collect fruit and vegetable stickers and attach them to our fridge as a collection. Much to my mom's dismay, (she hates clutter) this collage of fruit stickers was a great way to encourage little kids to eat fruit and veggies. I started a similar sticker collection when I was teaching first grade and before I knew it, almost all the class was bringing in fruit at lunch, eating it and then saving the sticker on our fun, healthy me, sticker collection. (We used a big green piece of paper with all the kids names on it instead of the fridge)

We tried to collect a wide variety of stickers (and therefore of produce as well) which was colorful and a lot of fun. The kids learned about new fruits they might never have eaten and their classmates got excited when they had the opportunity to teach them about a kind of melon or an avocado and read the stickers aloud.

By the way, my favorite stickers are for pluots, which are a striated, purple-y, summer fruit - a hybrid of a plum and an apricot - because they have a pink or orange dinosaur as their logo.