by Mario Carini

Created on: July 06, 2010

In recent years, much has been said about eating healthier through consumption of organic foods. This is certainly a step in the right direction as most foods today come loaded with pesticides and chemicals and too often don't contain the same amount of nutrients that foods had a hundred years ago.

Eating right is on the minds of many, from the senior to the parents who want to insure that their children get a healthy start on life by eating right and staying away from those convenience foods they too often find in the school cafeteria and the vending machines.

Today's food is highly processed and while they are easily digestible, they are not necessarily healthy. If such foods have one advantage, they are convenient. In today's world of high stress, eating right is a major problem. That burger and fries are just what many reach for to quell the stomach pangs but don't provide the nutrition the body needs to carry on an active lifestyle. Eating such foods early in life may not create immediate health problems, but they become habits later in life and become harder to break once the doctor insists on weight loss and reducing cholesterol levels.

If we all could live in the past when farming and agriculture were predominant in society, we wouldn't need to worry about searching for organic products as we do today. Organic products are more natural and free of chemicals, though they do cost more and aren't readily available in the city and the suburbs of the nation.

The disadvantage of organic foods is that they must be grown with more care. Pests and bugs are more common whereas commercial foods are sprayed with insecticides to keep the bugs at bay. Commercial foods look far better and blemish free than most organic produce. Take a farm fresh egg and compare to the egg from a chicken that has been kept in the chicken coop for most of its life. The yolk is richer and a deeper yellow compared to the paleness of the commercial egg. Store bought fruits and vegetables come from vast farming operations where produce is repeatedly sprayed with pesticides, herbicides and, in some cases, genetically modified.

Organic foods aren't limited to produce alone. Free range chicken and grass fed beef are far healthier than the chickens that are kept inside chicken coops and the cows that are fed grain all day and injected with growth hormones. As toxins tend to accumulate in fat tissue, the fat in commercial beef must be trimmed to avoid ingesting those toxins. Traditional

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>