Organic Food - Hope or Hype?

I went there a few weeks ago and it was bloody torture.

Never mind the organic stuff.

I would like lots and lots of smelly unpastuerised cheese, blue cheese, a plate of raw oysters, some beef that I can cook rare, all to be washed down with a bottle of their finest red.

Ta.

"How de know there isn't inorganic matter with our organic matters?

We don't. The European Community regulators relaxed the rules a few months back precisely to make it easier NOT to break them. If I recall the figs right: it was permissible for 0.3% of food items labelled as organic not be and it's now 0.9% - or for every 100 organic-labelled cauliflwers, say, one isn't.

But I too like to avoid the excess chemicals which is why I insist on organic lettuce or none at all - tho I've recently taking to gardening.

the way the weather is here tony, I'll soon be growing organic rice. My garden is a paddy field.

Home grown's best, though the winter's a little lean. I get a riverford box of veg and use the farmer's market -- we also have a fantastic farm shop 2 miles away where you can get potatoes the day they're harvested. My kids like looking at the piglets there too, though my youngest upset some squeamish toddlers by christening the 4 piglets bacon, sausage, ham and crackling.

which made me think... actually if they want to improve sustainability and quality, and probably obesity too, what they need to do is to educate kids to be connected with their food and its source.

That's a bit profound. I'll get my coat.

#13 That is more logical and sensible than profound! I saw "Supersize Me" lat night for the first time and am convinced that film should be shown at every junior high and high school in the developed nations around the world!

#14, agreed - even when the movie might just not be that precise in terms of presenting findings and stuff.

When I worked in a primary school, we had a healthy food lesson. Most of the 8 and 9 year olds there did not know what an onion was -- didn't recognise it, couldn't name it. The teacher (NQT) wasn't sure which was a courgette (zucchinni) and which a butternut squash. And in a year 9 (13-14yo) set to whom I was teaching a poem recently, few of them knew that potatoes grew underground, and quite a lot had no idea that chips (fries) were made out of potatoes.

My kids school has a gardening club -- they grow vegetables mainly. It's helped my youngest enormously -- he will now eat things he wouldn't from the shop. They're more at home with the meat-is-murder fallacy. Incidentally I had another rather sweet conversation with him, 2 springs ago when he was 6, and looking at the lambs in the field:

Coglet: Mum, are the lambs there the same as the ones we have for dinner?

Me feeling oh my god he's going veggie Well, yes, sweetheart. That's why the farmer breeds them.

Coglet: But we don't eat the fluffy stuff on the outside do we? Just the nice soft stuff in the middle....

That's my boy.

tony at 11, I should have known when the cabbage worms in the organic produce were dead and glowing. Homegrown is the way to go. Many of the organic farms are owned by large corporations now.

Who asked you to "show us the monet"?

He must here taking the Pissarro.