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(Health Secrets) For optimal health, 70% of your diet by volume should be fresh, live produce, particularly high water content vegetables and fruit. Once a person has achieved this, the organic question is certainly going to come up. An examination of the pros and cons of both organically grown and conventionally grown produce is indicated, so that you can make an informed decision, and get what’s right for you and the people you feed.
Recently I had the opportunity to compare the two in a way that altered my perspective of both conventional and organic produce. Our family had decided to go out to eat at a restaurant that served food choices that would allow us to keep our high dietary standards. It was called Sweet Tomatoes, a salad buffet restaurant (not to be confused with Green Tomatoes, a chain in the South that is also a buffet except everything is breaded and deep fat fried.) The Sweet Tomatoes restaurant was a considerable drive, so we decided to stop for an appetizer along the way at the Life Cafe in Marietta. We purchased a little to-go container of fresh organic salad greens, organic sprouts and organic raw hummus. It was delightful and fresh, and the live raw goodness at Sweet Tomatoes became much anticipated.
The Sweet Tomatoes salad, though almost identical to the appetizer, was not nearly as good. It just lacked a dimension of energy, flavor and nourishment that the organic salad provided. And at that moment, for the first time after eating live food for eight years, the difference was clear! This difference was dramatic enough to set a change in our grocery priorities. The profound difference between the organic food and the conventionally grown food stimulated a need in us to make the switch to eating organic.
This restaurant experience brought new meaning to what is usually assumed, that organic is better. But the question remains, what should you buy? For this family, the answer is now ‘organic’. But if you had asked a month ago, a year ago or eight years ago, the answer would have been ‘conventional’, and this is why.
When we first began to change our lifestyle, simply switching from dead food to live food was a reward in and of itself, and we didn’t think we needed organic produce to be healthy. We would take a live, conventionally raised salad over organic white flour pasta any day. Food that is alive has more power to nourish and sustain than dead-processed organic food any day!
So the gold star for conventional produce is that it is live food. And if you are at the point in your transition where the choice is between food that is dead and food that is alive, choose alive conventional produce. Down the road you too may have a magic moment when you discover the real advantages of going organic.
