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Eat Organic on a Budget: 7 Tips
There?s been a lot of hype about organic food recently. So much so, in fact, that your head may be swimming with information, yet you have no idea where to turn or what to do about it. It?s easy enough to pinpoint the organic tomatoes at the grocery store, but is springing for the organic dog food worth the price? How about the organic mattress? And even if the No. 1 expert in the food world was on your local news station tonight saying, ?You absolutely must buy organic produce, or else,? could you afford it? Organic foods can cost up to twice as much as their nonorganic counterparts.
Let?s get realistic about organic food. Eating organic on a budget is possible with a little know-how. Here are seven things you should know about eating organic foods and saving money.
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1. All Organic Foods Are Not Created Equal
There?s organic in the sense that something is labeled ?USDA Organic,? and then there?s organic in the sense that Uncle Allen down the road sold it to you off his tractor. Whenever possible, fall on the side of the latter. Local organic produce doesn?t have to travel far, so it?s better for the planet. It also doesn?t hurt that you get to support Uncle Allen and your own community. Organic foods can still be mass-produced, but I?m betting neighbor Al does things the old-fashioned way.
2. Attempt to Buy Local First
There are a couple of great ways to find local organic produce. First, visit your local farmers market. Lots of times they have great deals on organic produce, and everything is in season so it should be especially delicious.
Get involved in a community supported agriculture (CSA) program as well. You can pre-purchase a share of a farmer?s crops for a season by paying per week, month or season depending on the CSA. Then you?ll receive crops as they?re ready with pick-ups or drop-offs. Organic, affordable, local and handy.
Local Harvest has great information on CSAs, and a page for finding CSAs near you.
3. Buy in Season and Learn to Cook in Season
Crops are often cheapest during the times in which they are most abundant. If tomatoes are in season between April and October in your area, stock up during those months. Not only will the quality of your organic fruits and vegetables be better, the cost is likely to be lower. If you run out of tomatoes and they won?t be in season again for four months, try your hand at cooking with other produce. Cauliflower, for instance, is often in season during winter months.
Take a look at Epicurious' Seasonal Ingredient Map to find out what?s in season right now in your area.
4. Buy in Bulk, Then Can, Dry and Pickle
Not willing to give up tomatoes or apricots when the weather gets cold? No problem. Buy your favorite organic produce when it?s cheapest (typically when it?s in season). Then can, dry or pickle your fruits and veggies so you have them at hand during the bleaker months.
To learn more about canning, check out this article on Home Canning Basics, and for information on food drying, read Reap the Garden & Market Bounty.
5. Join or Create an Organic Food Buying Club
Buying in large amounts almost always saves on costs. Gather some of your friends, pool your resources and buy directly from wholesalers. Then split up the goods when they arrive. Your group (which can be as small or as large as you?d like) can create a membership at a cooperative warehouse or work with a retail distributor. This group buying is a great way to afford more pricey items such as organic produce, and it?s also a fun way to make like-minded friends.
VegFamily.com has a great article about how to start or join a food buying club.
6. Pick and Choose Your Organics
If you can?t afford to buy organic across the board, make your organic decisions wisely. The Environmental Working Group recently released an updated 2010 Shopper?s Guide to Pesticides, including the ?dirty dozen? fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide contact and the ?clean 15? fruits and vegetables with the least pesticide contact. Try buying only the ?dirty dozen? (celery, peaches and strawberries, to name a few) organic, and give yourself more leeway with the others.
7. Grow Your Own
There?s one easy way to save money and eat organically forever: Grow your own food. You have complete control over what you create, so you won?t have to play the blame game anymore. Plant a garden or even just a windowsill herb garden. Every step you take toward sustainability with food is one step farther away from nasty chemicals and flavorless imported produce
Re: Eat Organic on a Budget: 7 Tips
Those are great tips. Thanks for posting. I've been thinking a lot lately about what a broad spectrum "healthy" is. For example, there are families who are trying to be healthy so they go to the grocery store and stock up on fruits and veggies like bananas, grapes, etc. I am a teacher, and this is where many parents are who want to send in "healthy" snack choices for their kids for snack time.
Then there are those who do the same, but only organic at Whole Foods or whatever. Then there are people (probably many of us here) who focus on eating local, in season, which is probably grown with organic methods. It's hard to knock someone who is stocking up on fruit at the grocery store, but there is just so much more.
I think most people who are buying exotic fruit from the grocery store, or come up with a recipe and then go buy the ingredients instead of the other way around just don't know any better. I don't think that they're knowledgeable and saying "oh well" I really think they're not educated yet on the topic. It's considered perfectly normal. I mean, I used to do the same thing... Oh, I want fajitas tonight.. I'll go get some onions and peppers and, oh those bananas look nice, all in the middle of January.
Cycles 1-18 = a bust
DX= unexplained infertility
Cycle 19-20 On BCP, shutting down the ovaries
Cycle 21- monitored Gonal-f injections + HCG trigger = BFN
Cycle 22- 3 weeks of BCP + Gonal-f + HCG trigger = BFN
Cycle 23- 3 weeks of BCP + Gonal-f + HCG trigger - BFP!
VOTE ON MY PHANTOM BABY NAMES
Indeed. What blows my mind is a generation ago this wasn't possible. My mom remembers when she was young that there was no fruit during the winter, or lamb at Easter (lambs are usually born in the summer). It's only in our current "gotta have it now" generation that we get everything we want, all the time. One of the grocery stores in my area (I think it's Safeway) has the slogan "food you want, when you want it, at the lowest price."
[Sarcasm] Yum, that sounds great. Cheap, crap food whenever I want it.
When you eat in season, everything taste so much better! DH and I had our first peach since last July last week, and O.M.G was it fantastic. I remember getting peaches from the grocery store growing up that never ripened, they were just hard rocks. I remember green beans that tasted like cardboard. The green beans I grow taste fantastic, I have to pick them myself or DH eats them all right off the plants! No wonder kids don't like their vegetables, they are tasteless and mushy.
I agree. I think the way people shop now, though, they don't even realize it never used to be like that. I mean, maybe if they thought about it really hard they'd think about what it means to be eating a peach in the middle of January; but no one thinks about it. It's just normal.
And I TOTALLY agree about the kids not liking veggies thing. If you saw what vegetables they got with their school lunches, you'd cry-- the most disgusting things you've ever seen. I was listening to a show in npr the other day about childhood obesity and many parents called in about what an uphill battle it is getting their kids not to eat sugary, processed sweets. I was thinking about how I might handle that when I become a parent some day. I was thinking 1) I would try to minimize advertising (media, and just walking down the grocery store aisles) so that they don't get brainwashed. and 2) I would try to cook up delicious in-season food so that they'll want to eat it. I know it's easy to have all the answers when you're not a parent, so who knows.
Cycles 1-18 = a bust
DX= unexplained infertility
Cycle 19-20 On BCP, shutting down the ovaries
Cycle 21- monitored Gonal-f injections + HCG trigger = BFN
Cycle 22- 3 weeks of BCP + Gonal-f + HCG trigger = BFN
Cycle 23- 3 weeks of BCP + Gonal-f + HCG trigger - BFP!
VOTE ON MY PHANTOM BABY NAMES
We try to do both of those things. We also try to just teach by example - buying and eating things that we want our toddler to eat and not buying a bunch of junk. I understand it'll get more difficult for us once he's in school, but it works pretty well for us right now. It's funny...if I don't go down the cookie row at the store, my toddler doesn't ask for cookies. I also think that making his baby food for him when he started solids from fresh foods made a huge difference in his pallet. I think about the difference in the taste of a canned peach and a fresh peach and that's what I imagine is the difference in taste between store-bought baby food and fresh homemade baby food.
I did NOT know how to cook (and still don't much) when ds was born but I'm trying to learn. I've learned to use lots of herbs and how to flavor our food well. It makes a difference.
Oh...and we're also growing a garden this year so he will learn where our food comes from and how it grows. And we have blackberry bushes on our property and ds picks and eats them right off the bush (his fav new thing to do).