This is a brief sharing of my thoughts and experiences on using organic food for Hannah.
As a newbie, I have done my bit in including organic food in our baby’s diet. Just surf the Internet on introducing solid foods to babies and one can’t avoid reading the rationale and advantages of using organic produce. For me, the main persuasion for using organic produce is to avoid feeding our baby pesticides, additives and hormones. The concern about consuming such chemicals is that if they are insoluble in water, they could not be flushed out in the urine and would accumulate in our body tissues over time. You know, the effects of such chemicals may only show up many years later and some are carcinogenic. Then again, how can one be so sure after so many years right? And what is true today might be erroneous tomorrow.
I’ll just use logic and common sense. Personally, I think it is better to feed Hannah pesticide-free foods as her little body is still undergoing the critical phase of development (e.g. her nervous system). When her body becomes stronger and mature, I would ease up along the way.
But organic food is not always readily available and almost always expensive! We live in Seng Kang but even with 6 NTUC and 1 Cold Storage supermarkets in the vicinity, it is still a challenge to find a particular vegetable and that it does not cost an arm or leg. So I need to rethink the issue of getting organic food and work around the problem. I discovered that an investigation has been carried out to ascertain the levels of pesticides on commercially grown fruits and vegetables and a list has been drawn up. From this list, I know which foods have lower levels of pesticides and hence it is quite alright not to get the organic versions. Yay, now I know that peach, apple and capsicum (even after washing and peeling) have very high pesticide load while corn, peas, mango, banana, broccoli and avocado scored low on pesticide loading. Sheesh, do you know that organic broccoli can cost up to 3-4 times more than those non-organic ones?
Now, I have only touched on the plants. Meats and diary products can be laced with the same types of chemicals used on plants too. Think food chain.
Sometimes I get frustrated with my organic purchases as they truly ‘inform’ you that they are organic. How is that so? On one occasion, I bought an organic broccoli infested with thousands of tiny aphids!!! Pesticide-free……………… right.
Okie dokie, I’m going to cook a combi of sweet potato, egg yolk and sweet peas puree for Hannah’s dinner tonight. All non-organic :) Thanks to the list!
hokkien got one saying “la sup eat, la sup grow” hahaha but i do agree that as teknologi advances, what they add is really scary
Initially, I agreed with that hokkien phrase too. However, I realised later that the phrase does not take into consideration of other factors affecting one’s good or poor health. There are likely many unknown truths waiting to be discovered for ‘we are what we eat’. :)