Lately I’ve been contemplating how I feed my family. I work hard to stock my kitchen with healthy snacks. Soda is a rare treat, baked goods are typically homemade, and I (almost) always home-cook meals. I try to avoid high fructose corn syrup, and I even choose recipes chock full of fresh produce and lean meats.
But favoring whole foods and limiting sugary sweets isn’t feeling like enough. Because I don’t know where my food comes from or how it’s grown.
So here’s my conclusion: a change is overdue. But it’s also overwhelming. Food has been all over the news lately. Pink slime, e-coli, GMOs, antibiotics, food conglomerates, and so on. It’s confusing. It’s complicated.
But here’s what seems logical: shorter transportation from farm to table + fewer chemicals = lower impact on this fragile planet + healthier humans.
Is it really that simple, though? I decided to do a little experiment to find out what the reality of cleaner eating looks like for my family.
I had two main concerns with incorporating more local and/or organic into my shopping. First, my assumption was that these foods are much more expensive. Groceries are a big part of our monthly budget, and it’s difficult to fathom increasing it even more. Second, convenience. Supermarkets are one-stop-shops by design, and while they’ve come a long way since I was a kid, they’re not quite all the way there yet in terms of local and organic products. Would I have to make multiple stops to find the products I wanted… and is that model sustainable in my lifestyle?
I started by substituting local and/or organic foods whenever I could during my weekly shopping trip to calculate the true cost difference, and to evaluate convenience (or lack of). Here’s what I found.
I spent $7.72 more.
I bought the following organic products: apples, bananas, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, romaine, cilantro, feta, whole wheat spaghetti, and chicken. I also bought some local products, even if they weren’t certified organic: eggs, yogurt, cheddar cheese, and bread. This and/or bit was confusing. When there’s a choice between local or organic, what do you do? I ended up leaning local when I could. In Vermont, many times eating locally and eating organic are the same thing.
I ran into some roadblocks on a few items where the cost differential seemed significant, and I’ll admit it — I got scared. I managed to fight past my frugal instincts with the chicken, but when it came to beef and milk, my hand just would not pick up the packages. Which leads me to my second finding.
It’s worth trying to cut back on meat.
Meat is expensive. Raising cattle and other animals is also tough on the environment. I realized it’s worth cutting meat out of one or two meals per week. With the cost savings, I can then buy higher quality meat for other nights. To do this successfully, I have to plan menus ahead and arrive at the store with a solid list.
Organic produce is hit or miss at the supermarkets.
I bought other produce — plums, carrots, peppers, onions, squash — that I could not find organic alternatives for. The local natural foods store carried more organic produce options, but the sticker shock left me empty-handed. This is when the idea of a CSA crept into my head. When prorated over the season, the cost is actually quite good. We joined Paul Mazza’s CSA, which is on my way home from work and offers a very flexible program, both of which greatly reduce my convenience concerns.
There will always be some nights in my house when take-out is the only sane option, and there’s no way I’m giving up chocolate-dipped maple creemees or the occasional bag of Doritos. My first experiment, though, has shown me that it may not be as difficult or as expensive as I feared to clean up my family’s food.
