Eating Organic Food – But Isn’t That Expensive?

When I first started out on my plant based journey I was just excited to be eating more plants, and wasn’t too concerned about organic vs. conventional. As I researched more into the differences between non-organic and organic produce I definitely felt like I wanted to make the change to eating more organic foods for health and environmental reasons. The traces of herbicides and pesticides that can be found in the blood of a newborn baby is frightening, and on the environmental side of things we are devastating our soil at a staggering rate and therefore creating nutrient deficient foods. I knew that I definitely wanted to be eating food naturally high in nutrients and lower on the chemical burden side of things.

But, as we know, organics can be pricey.

I discovered 2 wonderful lists on EWG’s website (ewg.org/foodnews) talking about ‘The Dirty Dozen’ and ’The Clean Fifteen’. Finding these lists really helped me to feel like I was doing better for my family and the environment, while not having to purchase entirely from the organics department. Now I try to purchase even more of our foods organically grown, seasonal, and local, but these lists definitely helped me in my transition to incorporating more organic foods into our diet.

(Note that these lists are updated yearly – so make sure to check back yearly to keep up to date)

Eating organic can be more expensive than eating conventional, but when you transition to a whole foods lifestyle you purchase different foods, so you will cut costs in other areas – and it’s not as bad as you might think. For our family the transition period (from standard diet to plant based) was hard, while I was changing over our pantry our grocery bill was quite a bit higher per month than it was on our standard diet. Now that we use convenience foods less (fast food, take out etc), and we have all of our ‘new staples’ that we purchase, our bill isn’t too much higher than it once used to be. Most organic foods just taste better too, and so often times I find myself eating less of something that is organic compared to how much of it I would eat when we were eating conventional.

Buying organic whole foods our grocery bill is slightly more, but the health benefits that we have reaped are absolutely PRICELESS! The way I see it is that we are choosing to invest in our health, one delicious and nutritious bite at a time.

Handy tip: Look for a local CSA to buy produce boxes from – this can be a great way to save on local, seasonal organic produce!