12 Steps to Whole Foods

Reaping a Gardener’s Rewards
You can also grow kale, collards, lettuces, and many other greens rather easily. Make sure to grow plenty of
cabbage, as it is a good smoothie ingredient, with its impressive cruciferous anti-cancer properties, and we will
also learn in Chapter 8 (page 223) how it is the perfect fermented vegetable as well.
To summarize, grow these ingredients for six months of fresh greens and six months of frozen greens:
Arugula Chard Spinach
Beets Lettuces Squash (eat the leaves too)
Cabbage Kale Turnips
What about Organic Produce?
Besides cost savings and dramatically improved taste, home-grown vegetables have another huge advantage:
you can easily grow them organically. Some studies show that organic produce has higher concentrations of
vitamins and minerals, and other studies have found that “conventional” (sprayed) produce is nutritionally
equal to organic. The jury is out on whether nutrient levels are higher, but results clearly prove that unsprayed
produce is lower in toxic pesticide and herbicide residue. If you cannot afford to buy organic produce, growing
garden produce is an excellent option. Also, using a quality vegetable wash on sprayed produce will
significantly help with pesticide residues—as does cutting out the top and bottom parts of apples and peppers
where pesticides tend to accumulate.
The government’s research on pesticide residues revealed that 12 foods tend to be high in pesticides—they
have become known as the “dirty dozen”: apples, bell peppers, celery, cherries, imported grapes, nectarines,
peaches, pears, potatoes, red raspberries, spinach, and strawberries. Note that several of these 12 are in the list
above of recommended foods to grow in your garden, and others can be grown by planting fruit trees.
Although research reveals mixed results on nutrient content in organic and conventional produce, I like to
support local growers rather than international conglomerates wherever possible. Shipping food all over the
planet is unique to the generations currently living on the Earth. This practice consumes a lot of nonrenewable
energy in its transportation. I like to feed my family organic produce that hasn’t been preserved with long
refrigeration and gassed when green to become ripe unnaturally.
However, if your question is whether you should eat conventional produce or just skip it and eat something
else, the answer is clearly to eat produce almost however you can get it! Choose U.S.-grown produce over
foreign-grown, whenever you can, since higher regulation means that many of the most dangerous chemicals
are not used in the U.S. (like DDT, still used in some foreign countries and linked to birth defects). Also
remember that the farther produce has to travel to get to your local market, the more nonrenewable energy is
used to get it there.
My rule of thumb is to buy organic when it’s not more than 50% more expensive than conventional—for
example, I am not going to pay $1.29/lb. for organic watermelon when conventional watermelon is $0.19/lb. I
suggest creating a rule like this based on your own budget, to help guide your buying decisions. Remember that
most of the massive volume of nutrition research showing that vegetable and fruit consumption prevents
disease studied people eating conventional grocery-store produce.
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw 12 Steps to Whole Foods 129