As a student and someone with a penchant for working in non-profits, I have had to curtail the number of organic items I buy throughout my food-shoping life. I always found it tricky to remember which foods were deemed ‘dirty’, consistently ending up with the highest level of pesticide residue and which were clean…well cleaner that I could rationalize buying non-organic come the end of the month.
A site called foodnews has come out with a very nifty little wallet size shopper’s guide to pesticides in foods, listing the top 10 clean & dirty fruits and vegetables to help you prioritize if necessary when you shop. You can download the card here as well as view an extended list & learn about lots of other interesting food facts.

I love the concept of this card. It’s keeping it real for many of us who can’t just pop into Wholefoods and spend our rent money on organic food. My only complaint is that they don’t consider the ‘carbon’ impact of the foods they list. For example Kiwis are listed as a clean food, one you could risk bying non-organic but they don’t tell you that for every pound of kiwis you eat, 5 lbs of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere getting it to your table so keep that in mind. (have you ever seen kiwi trees growing in your local park?)

A great addition to this would be to join a local food coop -check out our side bar listing- or CSA (community supported agriculture) program and get better, fresher, local food for cheaper.

This is my indoor compost that I have been enjoying for a few months. I attended a compost workshop organized by the Lower East Side Ecology Center with the option to buy a full set (box+worms) for 10 dollars (subsidized by the Department of Sanitation).

So far so wonderful – it’s quite exciting so see the worms turn my fine organic food scraps into compost that I can use on my plants or dump it on any nutrient-deprived New York City tree. The worms need very little care, they can feed off the New York Times snippets that are used as “bedding” and to burry the organic waste. No smells come out of the closed box, the worms procreate and you do not need to buy more over time.

Contact the good people at the Lower East Side Ecology Center if you are interested in ANY kind of composting. And for even more resources check out New York City’s Compost Project with many more resources. You can even get a composter certificate and teach others how to compost or get a master composter to come into your class and teach about composting.

If you do not see yourself feeding worms, there are drop off locations for your food scraps (contact first to ensure!), which you could collect in a bag/bin in your freezer until the day of disposal to counter and nasty smells.

When I first started to hear about resistence to antibiotics, I felt a tremendous amount of guilt about all the times I pleaded with my doctor to give me a prescription ‘just in case’ when really, the infection may well have been viral. (and even if it hadn’t been, a bit of bed rest & TLC would have done the trick - as the NHS - National Health Service in the UK would prescribe).

The real problem is the misuse of antibiotics in agriculture, specifically in farm animals produced for their meat such as pigs, cows and chickens. The Environmental Defense Organization produced a report back in 2001. These animals are medicated for several reasons including accelerated growth as well as fighting off disease due to the cramped and unsanitary conditions in which they are kept. And it gets worse.

Science News published a short article in its September 9th issue (Vol. 170, No. 11) on the appearance of drug-resistant DNA in the environment. In short, the misuse of antibiotics has led to these resistant genes which are now showing up not only in our rivers but also in treated drinking water. A group of environmental engineers at Colorado State University in Fort Collins have tracked the spread of these genes and found that the highest concentrations were in waste collection lagoons on dairy farms near the river. They then made their way thourgh the irrigation ditches to the rivers.

These days, we are faced with more than just one inconvenient truth. The sentience of the animals we consume for food and clothing should definitely hold the same title, but as the Abrahamic view of man’s inherent right to dominate the land and everything both on and in it holds strong in even the most adament atheist, I ask you to embrace this alternative reason and think twice before opting for the cheaper pack of chicken cutlets: consume less meat and when you do buy it, spend a little more and go for the organically produced, free range option.