module #9 - lesson 3 - amazon s3 · module 9 - lesson 3 booming business first, understand that...

When Is Organic Really Better?

MODULE #9 - Lesson 3

2Super Nutrition Academy – MODULE 9 - Lesson 3

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When Is Organic Really BetterModule 9 - Lesson 3

Booming BusinessFirst, understand that organic food is a booming business. The demand for organic foods is for personal health and environmental reasons. People have become more conscious of the fact that organic foods are generally better, so they’re willing to spend a little bit more money on them. Organic products typically cost 10% to 40% more than similar conventional products. We’ll see whether that’s better for you or not within this lesson. It’s sad to say that we’re paying a little bit more for natural-based foods.

According to the USDA, in 2004 Americans spent on average $1347 on groceries. Switching to organics would raise their cost of groceries by about $135 to $539 per year or $11 to $45 per month. Assuming that prices remain stable with increased demand. This was back in 2004; those numbers obviously will have changed over the last couple years, but for me, personally, to spend an extra $45 a month for organics is a no-brainer. Everyone’s in a different situation but $45 a month isn’t really that much more to be eating healthier foods.

World organic food sales more than doubled in 2008 from 23 billion US to 52 billion and that number just continues to rise. It’s a booming industry. The world organic market has grown by 20% a year since the early 1990s, and future growth estimates are ranging from 10% to 50% annually, depending on the country.

A lot of big food manufacturers see the demand for organics. That’s why you see so many different packaged foods labeled as organic like pizza, stuff we don’t need to be eating, but they’ll throw organic on it because they know that people are looking for that.


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What is Considered Organic?

Organic refers to the way agricultural products are grown and processed. In general, they’re minimally processed, without artificial ingredients, preservatives, or irradiation. The standards for organic production lay out the specifics of how food is produced, including how livestock must be housed, fed, transported, and slaughtered. With crops, they give specifics on how crops must be grown, extracted, processed and stored, and how pests and disease are to be treated, which substances, methods, and ingredients may not be used, and what environmental factors must be taken into consideration.

Those are the three overlying standards that they look at with organic production. As you’re going to see, it’s a rigorous process for organic farmers to go through, and that’s a good thing to ensure the quality of our food.

Why Eat Organic?Why is it beneficial to eat organic at all? Well, remember this: All food on Earth was originally organic. When the Earth first appeared, everything on the planet was organic. There were no artificial pesticides so this is the natural state of being of our planet.

The absence of chemicals is a big one. Personally, regardless of the nutritional content, the absence of pesticides coming into your body is one of the biggest things you can do for your health, and I’m going to show you why. It’s also better for the soil. With organic farming, one of the methods to boost crop yields, reduce pests and insects is to rotate the soil and crops.

Specific foods give off certain minerals into the soil that future crops can benefit from. That’s reason crop rotation is so important. That is a common tactic used in organic farming.


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There’s a lot of people, myself included, who believe organic tastes better. We have a vegetable in our backyard and the quality in flavor is just 1,000 times better than tomatoes we get at the grocery store, even organic ones. We also notice a difference if we buy from a local farmer who is growing organically as well.

Where it really does taste better or not depends on the individual. I believe if you have the ability to grow your own food the beautiful thing is the flavor is so much more fresh and you’re connect with the it. You appreciate those natural foods a lot better.

You’re more disconnected from foods when we’re buying them in packages from the grocery store. We don’t know where they came from; we don’t even know what they look like in the soil. That’s one of the reasons that I would really encourage everyone to start learning how to grow their own food.

It’s a life skill that we’ve cultivated for most of our existence, until the last maybe 100 years. Nowadays, most people have no idea how to grow their own, yet if there was some kind of disaster and we all didn’t have the Internet or computers we’d probably need to know that vital life skill.

Nutritional Value of OrganicsLet’s look at the nutritional value of organic foods. A literature review published by the University of Bologna in Italy and the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland in 2009 concluded and I quote: “There is no proof that organic food is more nutritious or safer, and most studies that have compared the taste and organoleptic quality of organic and conventional foods report no consistent or significant differences between organic and conventional produce.”

This is a big review of the literature this is what they came up with: No difference between organic and conventional foods.

A meta-analysis done in 2009 by Stanford looked at around 200 hundred studies and came to the conclusion that there was no nutritional benefit to eating organic food over conventional. However, it should be noted that the


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researchers admit that they didn’t look at any long-term studies, stating that the duration of the studies involving human subjects ranged from two days to two years.

It’s tough to see the impact on human health in that short period of time; however, the nature of the organic food itself you don’t necessarily need to see over two years. You can pluck a tomato out of the ground and test its nutritional value versus organic versus conventional. So far, a lot of the research is saying there’s no difference in terms of nutrient content.

However, there was a larger study in 2011 out of Washington State University found that organic strawberries had more nutrients such as vitamin C and antioxidants versus conventional strawberries.

The ConsensusI’ve shown you a literature review and a meta-analysis of 200+ studies that have said there’s no difference between conventional and organic foods. There’re a lot of studies on both sides. The thing to understand is that there’s a lot of money behind artificial ingredients or conventionally grown foods and many studies are funded by them.

We didn’t touch on but the literature also says that protein content is usually higher in conventional foods, and this is due to higher nitrogen input from nonorganic fertilizers, but the protein quality is greater in organically grown foods. Again, if you’re having fruits and vegetables, protein content is minimal to begin with so it really doesn’t matter too much but that’s just something that’s pretty consistent.

What we did see back in Module 2 or 3 is the quality of the fat was higher in naturally raised animals. The protein quality is greater not the amount in organic foods.

Number two: Roughly 59% of studies have shown that vitamin C is higher in organically grown fruits and vegetables. This makes sense because one of the speculated reasons is that under natural stressors, plants will produce more vitamin C as a defense mechanism, because vitamin C is an antioxidant, and it protects the plant from external stress.


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If plants are not given Roundup where they’re genetically modified and already resilient to pests, the plants have to develop their own defenses to defend against that, and that’s a good thing. That’s why we see organically grown foods are generally higher in vitamin C and most antioxidants, for that matter.

Less than 20% of studies have shown that minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc, and iron are greater in conventionally grown foods. Instead, about 80% percent of studies have concluded that organically grown foods have equal or higher amounts of these essential minerals. If you’re growing from healthier soils because of good farming practices you’re going to get better mineralization.

This goes back to the number two point that I just made. Studies consistently show the levels of defense-related secondary metabolites, in this case, phytonutrients or antioxidants, are higher in organic foods. As with vitamin C, these compounds develop out of the plants in need to defend itself from natural stressors.

Phytonutrients found in fruits and vegetables. What is it about this grape that helps us prevent cancer? Well, it’s called, and resveratrol is a phytonutrients, just like all these other little phytonutrients that are so important for preventing the disease of the plant or the fruit. They do the exact same thing in the human body: they fight disease and that’s why they’re so beneficial for us to consume.

An overwhelming majority of animal studies show that animals actually prefer and thrive on organic foods. Findings such as better health, less disease, healthier body weight, increased fertility, healthier offspring, and lower deaths at birth are just some of the benefits of raising animals on organic foods. We’re looking at the consensus across most of the literature here over the last couple of years, based on reviews of the literature, meta-analyses and generally, these are the top five findings in the literature with respect to the nutritional quality of organic foods.


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My BIG Reason for Eating Organic

This is an image of somebody in a hazmat suit, spraying crops. If he has to wear this kind of Ebola-preventing, disease-preventing, crazy suit, do you think that might mean that he knows exposing himself to this amount of pesticides is a dangerous thing?

If it were a safe thing to do, he could do this in shorts and a T-shirt. Look at what he’s wearing. Is that not alarming? Doesn’t make you wonder what he is spraying on the food you are about to eat?

I want you to think of this image the next time you look at conventionally grown foods, because that’s what’s happening to them. In the U.S., more than 18,000 products are licensed for use, and each year, more than two billion pounds of pesticides are applied to crops, homes, schools, parks, and forests.


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Why They’re UsedSimple. They are used to kill off pests and insects; to increase the yield of a given crop. They want to kill off the bad guys in order to yield more of a specific crop.

This picture of the character Weed Man who is the mascot for a weed-fighting company in Canada that we used to have taking care of our lawn. I remember asking them, “Are these pesticides safe for our dogs to run on afterwards?” they’re like, “Yeah, just give it a day, and it should be fine.”

Okay, sure, the residue of the pesticide might disappear after a day, but now the grass is infested with pesticides at a deep level. If our dogs are eating that grass, if our kids are rolling in it, if we’re sitting in it, it will accumulate in our bodies, the ecosystem, and the planet. We no longer use Weed Man. Yes, this past year we have had more weeds and stuff come up, but, over all, we’ll find more natural alternatives.

How Organic Farms Do It

I want to show you the difference between how conventional farms fight pests and how organic farms keep things real. Conventional farms apply chemical fertilizers to promote plant growth. Organic farms apply natural fertilizers such as manure or compost to feed soil and plants.


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This past year we started a garden and didn’t use manure or compost but we should’ve because that would’ve made a huge difference in the quality of the soil. We didn’t use natural fertilizers, we didn’t use chemical fertilizers, but that’s something that we will definitely use in the coming seasons with respect to growing more healthy foods.

Conventional, spray synthetic insecticides to reduce pests and disease. Organic farms use beneficial insects and birds, mating disruption or traps to reduce pests and disease. They’ll use scarecrows or sometimes they’ll spray natural pesticides.

Conventional farming uses synthetic herbicides to manage weeds. Organically, they’ll use environmentally generated plant-killing compounds, rotate crops, till the land, hand weed, or mulch managed weeds.

Finally, conventional farms will give animal’s antibiotics, hormones and medications to prevent disease and spur growth. Organic farms will give animals organic feed and allow them to access the outdoors, use preventive measures such as rotational grazing, a balanced diet, and clean housing to help minimize disease. That makes more sense to me.


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Neurological Impact of Pesticides

Here’s the most important part: the neurological impact of pesticides. Pesticides, part of a commonly used group called organophosphates, have the greatest impact on our brain and nervous system. When you ingest pesticides they have an affinity to settle in in your nervous system, and that is a very problematic issue.

The most sensitive manifestation of pesticide neurotoxicity is a general malaise and related to mild cognitive dysfunction similar to that describe for Gulf War syndrome: fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems, rashes, and diarrhea.

There are hundreds of thousands of troops that were suffering from Gulf War syndrome after the first Gulf War because there was a very high amount of pesticide use in that area to prevent disease or pests from spreading during the war. A lot of these compounds are also derived from nerve gases, like Agent Orange and other chemical compounds that were used by Nazis in the Second World War.

These are deadly to human health and we’re using them at very small levels to kill off pests and insects. What a lot of scientists are saying that, at very low doses, it’s not a concern. Obviously, if you’re a farmer and you’re spraying high doses of pesticides, you’ll probably wear a hazmat suits but who’s to say that there’s a safe level of toxicity in your body?

Everything is dose dependent. If you have too much aspirin, it’s going to kill you, but that’s not to say you can have a small amount of chemical, toxin,


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poison coming into your body every single day for 10 to 40 years and expect nothing to happen. The problem is that these things bioaccumulate. They have an affinity for the nervous system, and we’re going to look at what this is doing to us.

Occupational exposure results in an annual incidence of 18 pesticide-related illness cases for every 100,000 workers in the U.S. It doesn’t seem like much, but we’re going to look at some interesting things here.

If you somehow get exposed to pesticides like organic phosphates at a high dosage, two to five weeks after exposure to these organic phosphates, symptoms like organic phosphate-induced delayed polyneuropathy will appear. This is defined as sensory abnormalities, muscle cramps, weakness, and even paralysis, primarily in the legs, bronchospasms, convulsions, and coma. This is a consequence of axonal death following these organophosphates, which inhibits a neural enzyme called neuropathy target esterase, and this stuff is irreversible.

In the nervous system we have axons. The axons are the communication pathway between neurons. They’re like the highway between neurons and organic phosphates kill these axons. As human beings, we don’t function if we don’t have proper communication in our nervous system.

This stuff is deadly in high levels, but what about low levels? Low-level toxicity of organic phosphates displays symptoms like headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, pupillary constriction, excessive sweating, tearing, and salivation. You go to the doctor with this stuff; they’re probably not going to tell you that you’ve had low-level exposure to pesticides. It’s tough to diagnose because it overlaps with many other conditions.

Another mechanism of organophosphate and neurotoxicity. This is the main reason why these pesticides are dangerous involves an overstimulation of postsynaptic cholinergic receptors because it inhibits AChE, which is acetylcholinesterase.

When your neurons communicate with one another, they pass a signal down the highway called the axon. At the end of the axon, there dendrites and these dendrites communicate with the next neuron.


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Between these axons, we have synaptic clefts, so it’s like a little gap between one neuron to the next. In order for the neurotransmitters, the chemicals from one neuron to go to the next neuron, which initialize communication, it has to pass through the synaptic cleft. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter necessary for that communication.

When acetylcholine leaves, for instance, the presynaptic cleft it needs to be removed out of that gap in the middle and that’s where acetylcholinesterase comes in. It will kind of mop up the excess acetylcholine, remove it out, and allow for natural stimulation and natural communication to occur between those two neurons.

However, what organophosphates do is inhibit that enzyme from doing its job, so you have this buildup of acetylcholine that is an overstimulation of the postsynaptic receptor. Cholinergic represents receptors that receive acetylcholine, so there’s too much stimulation of that receptor due to the inhibition of this enzyme, leading to neurotoxic buildup, we have impaired communication in our nervous system, and this is all happening at a fundamental level because of these poisons coming into our bodies.

I didn’t just want to show you the symptoms and tell you what happens. I wanted to show you why this is happening. Here’s the mechanism by which pesticides are slowly but surely killing your nervous system.

Pesticides and ADHDPesticides and ADHD. This was done in 2009 by University of Montréal, in collaboration with Harvard. They found that high levels of pesticide metabolites, specifically dialkyl phosphates, in the urine of 1,100 children between the ages 8 and 15 years old, was related to an increased prevalence of ADHD.

Overall there was a 35% increase in developing ADHD with every 10 fold increase in urinary concentration of the pesticide residues. Essentially, the more pesticides these kids were exposed to, the higher their risk of developing ADHD. There’s something happening neurologically in the nervous system in the brain that is causing these kids to have ADHD.


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Even at very low exposure, meaning children who had any detectable above-average level of pesticide metabolite in their urine were twice as likely to have ADHD than those with undetectable levels. So, trace amounts, high amounts, it doesn’t matter.

A 2007 study linked organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos, used on many fruits and vegetables, with delayed learning rates, reduced physical coordination, and behavioral problems in children, especially ADHD. You can see what’s happening there, right?

Here’s what’s going on with pesticides and kids. Young children are especially susceptible to pesticides and chemicals because they eat more food relative to their body weight than adults. Oscar maybe 25 pounds. If he’s eating a bowl of oatmeal, that bowl of oatmeal might represent 10% of his body weight, it doesn’t but let’s just use that number, the same bowl for me, I weigh 170 pounds, would represent 1%.

Relative to their body weight kids eat more food which means they’re also consuming more pesticides. This stuff bioaccumulates, it doesn’t leave the body unless you properly detox.

Pesticides and Parkinson’s DiseasePesticides and Parkinson’s disease. Recent studies have found an association of pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s disease, with 1.5 to 7 fold increases in risk. That’s pretty significant.

Many studies have found an association between Parkinson’s disease risk and living in rural areas, drinking well water, and farming as an occupation. If you live in rural areas, you’re most likely exposed to residual pesticides, if you’re drinking well water, pesticides seep into the ground and then into your well, and as a farmer, if you’re exposed to those pesticides directly on a frequent basis it will increase your risk as well. Parkinson’s is a neurological disorder. Pesticides are one of the culprits.


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Pesticides and Alzheimer’sPesticides and Alzheimer’s, another neurological disorder. Occupational exposure to unspecified pesticides and fertilizers has been associated with the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Job exposure as a farmer was associated with a 2 fold increase of Alzheimer’s disease in older individuals living in a vineyard-growing region of France, exposed primarily to dithiocarbamate fungicides. These individuals had a 200% increase in their risk for Alzheimer’s disease from being exposed these fungicides. So, living in areas that use fungicides, pesticides, a lot of chemicals can expose you to that kind of toxicity.

Labeling Requirements (Canada)Hopefully you understand that pesticides are deadly. They build up in your body and they will slowly eat away at your nervous system. That’s why, in the developed world, Alzheimer’s, dementia, neurological problems, are one of the top 10 leading causes of death. In the third-world countries where there’s less conventional farming dementia’s not an issue. There are other factors, but it’s something to consider.

Let’s look at the labeling requirements. I’m going to show you both Canada and the U.S., and if you live in Australia or the U.K. or somewhere else, I apologize. The Canadian organic standards identifies whether a food is organic or not by giving it the Canada Organic label. If you see this label on a food, it means that it’s Canada Organic.

If a product says organic in Canada, it means that the product has at least 95% organic content. It can have this Canada Organic logo on it.

These products must be certified, and the name of the certification body must appear on the label. A lot of times, if foods are being imported into Canada, those foods need to be certified, and the name of the certification body must appear on that label. If it’s not produced in Canada and it says organic, it needs to be certified with a label from that country.


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If it says contains 10 % or 50% organic ingredients, in multi-ingredient products, you’d see this in the case where 70% to 95% of the ingredients are organic. These products may not use the organic label and cannot claim to be organic. Again, these products must be certified, and the name of the certification body must appear on the label. This occurs mainly in multi-ingredient products with 70% to 95% organic content.

And then you have multi-ingredient products with less than 70% organic content, and these mainly contain organic claims in the product’s ingredient list. So, they can only say, for instance, “organic rolled oats” in the ingredient list itself, but nowhere on the package can they say that they’re organic. These products do not require certification. If there are ingredients in that product which are organic, those specific products must be certified; so, the product itself must be certified. It’s a very stringent process that these labeling requirements look out for.

Labeling Requirements (USA)In the U.S., it’s very similar the one big difference is that they have an additional level called 100% Organic, which means that all ingredients and processing aids must be certified organic. This is the gold standard of organic. If you’re thinking organic, it’s not 95% 100% pure organic.

Product labels must state the name of the certifying agent on the information panel, may include the USDA Organic seal and/or 100% Organic claim. It must identify identified ingredients, such as organic dill, organic whatever via an asterisk or other mark within the package.

Then we have organic, which is the exact same we just talked about within the Canada side, so it’s up to 95% organic stuff. Made with, this is slightly different from Canada, where Canada was “contains X amount” of whatever. This one says “made with,” and, again, this a very similar description, so 70% to 95% organic content. These too can use the logo. Both 100% organic and organic in the U.S. can us the logo. The “made with” cannot use the logo.


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Anything below 95% organic content doesn’t have a logo or organic claims. Multi-ingredient products with less than 70% organic content will have the same thing as in the Canada system, where they can only say “organic whatever” in the ingredient list, and they cannot use the logo.

If you’re in Canada, you want to be looking for the Canada Organic logo or the use of the term organic on those foods. If you’re in the States, ideally, you want to be looking for 100% Organic and/or the USDA Organic logo or, at the very minimum, the claim organic, again, with the use of the logo.

This is just another way of representing that visually, so, again, we’ve got these four tiers in the USDA Organic system. Up here we have 100% Organic; it means all ingredients are organic and you can use the logo on those. Number two is Organic; it means 95% or more are organic. The package may include the USDA Organic logo. Number three, at the bottom, made with organic ingredients, 70% to 94%. The logo cannot be used. And then number four is on the ingredient panel only if there’re less than 70% organic ingredients.


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Eroding Standards

Unfortunately, because our world so heavily revolves around the almighty dollar, we’ve seen eroding standards in what qualifies something as organic. This is no thanks to politicians and lobbyists and food companies. Lobbyists have been known to push for amendments and exemptions favorable to large-scale production, resulting in legal organic products produced similarly to conventional food. Large US food companies have assumed a powerful role in setting the standards for organic foods. Sad but true.

For instance, many members of standard-setting boards come from large food corporations, leading to many non-organic substances being added to the national list of acceptable ingredients. The USDA Organic certification program requires that foods are on a national list of acceptable ingredients. If their foods contain ingredients that are not on that list it cannot be classified as organic.

There’s huge money in artificial ingredients: aspartame, MSG, all that other nonsense, the dyes, the colors, and a lot of these large food corporations are really pushing to get some of those substances on the national list of acceptable ingredients.

In fact, in 2005 U.S. Congress passed the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill, allowing 38 synthetic ingredients to be used in organic foods including, food colorings, starches, sausage and hot dog casings, hops, fish oil, chipotle chili pepper, gelatin, and many others, which are now formally used in organic products.

This bill was passed for no other reason than to satisfy some large food manufacturers. For instance, Anheuser-Busch was allowed to have their Wild Hop Lager certified organic even though it uses hops grown that are grown conventionally.


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Financial BarriersIt is expensive to get certified and grow organically. Typically, there’s an application fee, annual renewal fee, assessment on annual production or sales, and inspection fees. These fees vary country to county. It also varies depending on the crop and size of the farm. As you can see, there are many factors.

There’s a study looking at the certification costs across 11 certification agencies in the U.S. Initial cost averaged from $579 all the way up to $33,000 for farms with $30,000 all the way up the $10,000,000 in sales. Obviously, the more money the farm makes, the more money they’re going to pay, but we’re talking about, based on these numbers, we’re looking at .3% to 1.3% of gross sales. That’s what they’re paying as a fee.

Just to give you an example, as an online merchant, if we use PayPal to process a transaction, they charge us about 3.5%. So, the fees that I would pay PayPal are much greater than what organic farmers pay to be certified organic.

The difference is that it depends on if they’re paying this up front versus at the end of the year or when they’re reporting taxes. Generally, for small farms, costs range from $90 to $1290. For medium farms, certification costs anywhere from $155 to $3300. Large farms pay about $200 to $12,300.

I don’t know the margins that these farms are working with, but those don’t seem to be huge numbers to overcome. If you’re a small farm and you can’t pay $90 to become certified organic, you probably have some other things to worry about. And then there’re super farms paying $575 to $150,000 for organic certification. There’s a massive disparate between $575 and $150,300. This study could’ve zoned in a bit more. At $150,000, you would assume that they’re doing hundreds of millions in sales.

In the U.S. the organic certification cost-share program offers financial assistance in about 15 states. It allows reimbursement up to 75% of the cost of certification, with a maximum reimbursement of $500. If you’re a farmer, you might get up to $500 back based on this cost-share program.


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Why Does Organic Cost More?

Since there is a lot of demand for organic but a low supply the price is a little bit higher. Production costs are higher because organic-food production is often more labor-intensive and organic farms are generally smaller in scale. Processing and transportation costs can be higher, as it’s mandatory to segregate organic and conventional produce. You can’t have conventional and organic produce in the same truck, on the same crate. They have to separate that stuff.

Organic Farming and the EnvironmentBesides being healthier, organic farming is very beneficial for the environment. When you think about the Amazon Rainforest and how much of it has been decimated for the growing of soybean alone. They’re not rotating crops, they use pesticides, the beans are genetically modified and it’s not good for the environment, so organic farming has a lot of benefits.

First of all, there are fewer chemicals that enter the groundwater. That’s obviously a good thing, because the groundwater is kind of the base of the hydrologic cycle. It gets into the soil, goes into well water, seeps out into the rivers and streams, into lakes and oceans, and then it’s all recycled back into rainwater and so forth. Soil becomes richer and more yielding with proper crop rotation, which we’ve talked about. And, generally, it uses much less energy than conventional farming.

Those are the three big reasons why organic farming generally is better for the environment, it leaves a smaller carbon footprint, and yields better foods.


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The Dirty Dozen

I want to give you 12 of the most heavily pesticided foods that you want to buy organic whenever possible. We have peaches, celery, apples, spinach, nectarines, blueberries, grapes, strawberries, white potatoes, lettuce, sweet peppers, and cucumbers.

These are the worst because we eat them whole including the peel. You might peel an apple for a child but for the most part we eat the whole thing.

When they’re being sprayed it will stay on the apple’s surface so when you eat it you’re eating the pesticide residue. Spinach, lettuce, blueberries, strawberries, it’s the same thing. They’re all on the surface, they seep inside the food as well. If you’re eating the skin of a food, you want to go organic.


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The Clean Fifteen

These are the 15 foods with the fewest pesticides. Pineapple, eggplant, cabbage, onions, avocado, mangoes, mushrooms, watermelon, kiwi, corn, peas, grapefruit, sweet potato, melon, and asparagus.

Let me just make a distinction here. How many of these 15 foods have a skin that you would eat? Out of 15 foods, we have two foods, asparagus and mushrooms, which we directly eat the skin. This is interesting because they don’t require the same amount of pesticides to survive or to grow.

When you’re at the store deciding what buy organic use these two lists. The other week I bought an organic pineapple for $4.99, the conventional version was $2.99. I could have chosen to save money on the conventional version not that many pesticides are sprayed on pineapple and what is won’t seep into the fruit.

If you’re choosing an avocado you don’t necessarily need to go organic. I would generally suggest everything be organic when you can but if you can’t these are the 15 that you can go conventional with if you have to.


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The Choice is YoursIt’s hard to argue that eating foods in the way nature intended for us is less healthy than modern, conventional methods. I don’t understand why we are debating this issue. I remember seeing comments on a blog from this conventional farmer, saying there’s no way we can feed the Earth with organic farming. There’s no way we can get crop yields up by doing stuff organically. There are ways and human innovation is brilliant. We need to be able to innovate without killing ourselves and killing our planet in the process.

The thought that eating chemicals is better for us than eating foods in their natural state, I don’t know how it’s debatable. That’s like saying there’s no difference between drinking chlorinated pool water and filtered, pure spring water from the mountains.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. It’s going to come down to budget constraints, your beliefs about organic foods, and the availability you have to them. Ideally, if you can get them at a local farmers’ market, that is the best-case scenario, because you want to be choosing local as much as possible. You know the information. Now it’s up to you.


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Your Assignment

Here’s your assignment. On your next trip to the grocery store, I want you to buy the same food in both organic and conventional forms. Do this for five to ten foods and calculate your results. Try to get the same weight of each so a pound of apples organic, a pound of apples nonorganic.

I want you to see what the price difference is. Break this stuff down and look at, “These items were organic and this is how much I paid for them. These items were not organic, and this is how much I paid for them.”

I want you to share the price difference you found in the comments section on this lesson page. Share where you live in the world. Do you live in California, which is, they call it the Salad Bowl because there’s so much produce that comes out of there.

So where you live and what is the price difference between these organic and conventional foods? I think it’d be helpful for everyone in the Academy to really learn this stuff and see whether there’s a huge price difference based on where you live. If you can contribute by doing this assignment it would be greatly appreciated.


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Coming in Lesson 4In Lesson 4 I’ll be giving you a grocery-store tour and a tour of my kitchen. We’ll look at some of the good stuff, some of the bad stuff, and we’ll look at some product labels.

Until then, I hope you’ve enjoyed this lesson, and we’ll see you in Lesson 4.

module #9 - lesson 3 - amazon s3 · module 9 - lesson 3 booming business first, understand that...

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