Is Organic Always GOOD?

This particular word ‘organic’ is buzzing me lately. After a massive dose of naughty food during Christmas, I felt sick. It was a kind of feelings that I get after eating too much futty food or too much junk food. It was worse than the feeling of food poisoning. I felt that I contaminated my body with something that’s hard to get rid of.

Thinking back what I ate now, I can think of many items that must be causing this awful feeling. When I was eating them though, I didn’t really think about what I was eating.

For an example, ham. It’s been family tradition to eat off-the-bone ham on Christmas morning. I ate that as usual. I noticed it was too salty for my liking, but I thought that was the taste of the ham we always had so just ate them. Later on, I mentioned the saltiness to my husband, out of blue, then he told me that he used to like ham but he now didn’t because it tasted too fatty and not like it used to be. His words clicked something in my head. It made me to research on how pigs were farmed. As I guessed most of the pig farming situations are less than ideal in the area I live. I’m not surprised if the ham I ate came from one of those horribly-situated farms. Pigs are fed on chemicals and sometimes injected chemicals. There is not much space to live so they naturally get fat. I think the taste of the ham I ate was indication of chemical-fed, stressed, overweight pigs. We still buy them not knowing the situation because that is what’s easily available from shops.

I was disgusted about myself eating that kind of ham. Then, I looked for better options. I checked if there are free range or organic pork available near me. To my surprise, I didn’t have many options. If I want happier and healthier pork, I either need to get it straight from certified farms or specialized health food stores. Health food stores don’t seem to have them in stock all the time so it’s not what I can get when I want it. Basically, it means the fatty, chemical fed pork is only available option for me. What an inconvenient truth!! Even though ‘organic’ foods are getting so popular, this pork industry hasn’t been developed much yet. I thought about organic pork. I know the organic standards are very strict in Australia, but it wouldn’t be too hard to feed natural food wouldn’t it? Or do the pigs grow so slow with natural food that farmers cannot make their business out of? I have no idea. If it’s free range pork, I understand the farm needs more space which probably means that farmers can only have less pigs to grow, so they are harder to make money for their living. (oh, incidentally, free range pigs are not necessarily organic. Be aware!!) Given how hard to find organic free range pork or ham in my area, I came to my conclusion: “it must be hard to make a business out of it”. If that’s right, organic free range ham would be too expensive for me to buy. I’d like to taste ‘the real taste’ of pork, but it seems like a dream for now.

Then I thought about what ‘organic’ things I can make at home other than what I already have. Fish is one of the options. But not chicken. Since I bought backyard hens for their eggs, I’ve been feeling guilty about eating chickens. I even refused to eat turkey on Christmas. I guess I now feel so attached to my hens. This trend might continue as I raise more animals… Anyway, how about organic honey? I’m interested in keeping honey bees, so I looked up a couple of books about that. Then I found out that I cannot do it. It takes too much land to make that happen. Honey bees can travel up to 3km. Owning that much organic land seems not realistic to me. Organic honey farmers I found are usually located in or next to national forests or officially protected areas by the government. I can still keep honey bees as my hobby but it’s probably not going to be purely organic. (’purely organic’ is funny English to use here. Should I say I could make ‘mostly organic’ honey?)

How much difference the organic food make? I don’t know. My body might feel healthier, they might taste better. The truth is, my body and taste have been contaminated by supermarket food, so I don’t know what it’s like to be organic. All I can do for now is replacing what I have with organic items next time I go shopping and experience the difference with my own body. That sounds like fun experiment. What do you think with your food? Would you like to join this experiment with me? I hope you do. It will be fun!! (and healthier of course)