Supplements

[Dahlia308]

Wow! Quite a discussion. Thanks for all the good advice!

 

[cookiebaker]

Wow! Quite a discussion. Thanks for all the good advice!

knowing where your food comes from is the first step to healthier eating habits.

Buy local if at all possible - not always an option if you live in a big city, or in the middle of winter, lol, but do the best you can with the options available to you. The further away something is grown, the more chemicals are involved in getting it to the stores. Bananas and avacados are two of the worst in that regard for most of us..

If you have good southern exposure windows, and the space to do it, you can grow some things indoors in pots - things like leaf lettuces, spinach or chards, and many herbs can be grown in pots all year round, and are pretty easy to grow, too... but you dont want to use regular potting soil.. you want a good garden composted soil for things like that.
Things that need to flower first wont do so well - like beans, peas, tomatoes, squashes, etc. - they need pollination to fruit, and i doubt you want bees in the house. however.. they can be started indoors, then moved outdoors when the weather permits (no chance of frost anymore).

Smaller, family owned butcher shops will most likely have better quality, locally sourced meats available than the big grocery chains. (fewer chemicals & hormones in them)

 

[JayCS]

commercially grown fruit & veg is not as nutritious as it once was

OK, that I can follow. Not sure if me eating only organic helps too much either, as even there things like old apple types are hard to get (I can't tolerate the high amount of vitamin C anyway, but that's another matter...). I know my stores and the producers try to get/make it better stuff and there's a richer variety....

 

[cookiebaker]

OK, that I can follow. Not sure if me eating only organic helps too much either, as even there things like old apple types are hard to get (I can't tolerate the high amount of vitamin C anyway, but that's another matter...). I know my stores and the producers try to get/make it better stuff and there's a richer variety....

organic is more about the chemical usage than anything - no chemical fertilizers or pesticides, etc.
Still does pretty much nothing for the nutrient side of things.

 

[sunkacola]

organic is more about the chemical usage than anything - no chemical fertilizers or pesticides, etc.
Still does pretty much nothing for the nutrient side of things.

This is true.
And, depending on where in the world you live, "organic" may have pretty limited meaning.

In most places, the majority of crops of all kinds are sprayed with chemicals of several different kinds, not to mention they are grown from genetically modified seeds, which have travelled so much that they are now everywhere. These chemicals and seeds don't just stay within the boundaries of those farms or commercial growing sites where they are used. They travel on the wind, get into the soil and the ground water, rain down everywhere, and come in contact with anything that is being grown within a radius of a great many miles. This has been proven. You'd have to be growing within a greenhouse, or else in an area with no non-organic farms within many miles in every direction in order to avoid those things.

So, organically grown produce or animals are not directly sprayed with or fed chemical compounds, which of course is a very good thing. And it does make a difference, no doubt about that. But in the vast majority of locations, unfortunately, "organically grown" does not mean truly chemical-free.