Is Your Food REALLY Organic??

I recently purchased a bag of Organic Brown Sugar. Then, I happened to look closely at the label. Sure, it is certified organic by all the "right" organizations here in the US. However, below that, it says Product of Paraguay. This lead me to do some further research around the organization on the sugar's label--Woodstock Farms in CT and what labels on packages really mean for us, as consumers.

Unfortunately, healthfood chains like Whole Foods and many others appear to just sell "names" with warm fuzzy images to make us believe our purchases are so humane and good for the planet, but the real scoop is that these products get around most real certification and labeling laws because there are so many loopholes. For example, pick out some products in your pantry that are organic (like Horizon Milk) and google to see just what you will find out. The advertising and packaging can be very misleading...

Truth in Packaging.........Here is yet another example!

Many people have been reading Michal Pollan's latest, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is about the increasing alienation we Americans have from our food sources. Even ostensibly organic food is more and more a product of the industrial complex so much so that what we think of as organic is reduced to a mere shadow of its former ideal.

Woodstock Farms Baby French Beans. Organic even. Cool, huh?
What's even cooler is this:

A little food philosophy for you: it reads "Picked at the height of ripeness, bringing them straight to market and shortening the distance from the farm to you". I love this idea of shortening the distance between where the food is grown and my house. It makes me feel like there are still farmers out there who might be working the land their parents did. Like this Woodstock Farms. That we could also buy a bag of this from the market is very appealing come February, eh? But wait! Look at the back of the bag:

See all that warm and fuzzy organic certification? Everyone who hands out these little honour badges seems to have jumped at the chance to slap their seal of approval on these baby green beans. Makes you feel kind of superior, doesn't it?
But then you see this . . .

Product of China? Huh? Whatever happened to all that talk about "shortening the distance"? You mean, it's just marketing? You mean it's a lie? Right there on the package? I guess that concept of "distance" is some kind of metaphor. One that stands for something other than mega-gallons of petroleum and half and earth's worth of highway and ocean miles.


Where does your food really come from, and who is watching out for you?? It certainly isn't the government, so it is simply up to you. Read the fine print--and even then it may not be the truth.