Eating Organic…. How do you start?

I often get questions when people find out that we eat organic and whole foods I get tons of questions. So I thought I would just answer some questions I often get.

• Where I buy the food at?
• Isn’t it expensive?
• How do I go organic on a budget?
• Is it really better for you to eat?
• Where do I start?

Where I buys the food at?

First off I need to share that we do not live in an area where there is a whole foods store near us. We have health food stores small ones about 45 miles away and they are SOOOOO expensive. I only buy from there if I ran out of something and I need it. Most of the time I will just get something from Wal-Mart or our local grocery store. Wal-Mart has started to carry a few organic products.  Which ahs been nice but I am not a fan of supporting Wal-Mart. I do what I have to. The majority of my food comes from Azure Standard.

Here you can order using UPS to deliver or you get on a route and once a month you order and it is delivered to a location that there is a drop off point. You can call the company and find out where the closest drop off point is. My drop off point is now in my town. It used to be about 15 miles from me but now the lady that is the “Manager” of the drop off moved closer to me and which makes it real nice for me.

If you decide to order using UPS they are limited to certain items that you can order. But it is a good way to start.

Isn’t it expensive?

I will tell you the truth here it is a little bit more expensive. Bit the benefits out way the cost. We do not go to the doctor very often at all. I think it has been years since one of my children have been to the doctor of illness. Truly me ordering from here has not raised our grocery bill all that much.

How do you do organic on a budget?

As most of you know I have 4 children and one on the way with 3 of them being boys. Their ages range from 14-6 so they are at large appetites as of right now. It took me a while to get to be able to by a whole months worth of food at once. But once I made the switch it has gotten easier.

I went from ordering things like wheat, sugar, and oats to finally ordering a 220 pound food order. I did buy from other stores and the select items from Wal-Mart and local. This way I was still able to buy quite a bit of organic but I was still not happy with that. After learning more and more about the healthful benefits and the nasty chemicals they add to everything I just did not feel comfortable feeding my growing family this way.

I have a pretty small budget to work with. But I was determined to make it work. So in the beginning I learned how to make real food from “staples”. I would look up recipes from many different sites. My favorite site is Heavenly Homemaker. If you look thru her site she has so much info and her recipes are wonderful and use very little ingredients. She was such a big help to me. I also would go to the library and barrow old cook books like ones from early 1900’s.

After I taught myself how to cook this way I also grind my own wheat which helps in the long run with cost and in health benefits. Buy whole grain flour is better then white white flour but so many of the nutrients are gone after sitting on the shelves at the store. So after I learned these new things I still would buy mostly from our grocery store and I saw the savings when I checked out. Then I started placing an order with a friend of mine who ordered fro Azure it was a small order of what I saved my cooking differently. Then I saved a bit here and there them bit the bullet and just made a big order. You could wait to make you first big order when you get a bonus or tax return then save your food budget fro the weeks and then you can make a full order the next month also. THis is how I did it. My husband received a bonus at work and we were able to jump in full bore.

Is it really better for you to eat organic?

This is a big YES!!! I know some of you have probably read and heard things that organic and not organic are the same. Well the one thing that can be the same is the nutrients. Yes an apple you buy that is organic and the other one have the same value of nutrients but the big thing is how they grow the apples. On a normal apple orchard they dust the trees with pesticides and herbicides. These things soak into the the skin of the apple of other food items and even if you wash them this stuff does not come off! It is scary thinking about what these things will do to our bodies. Well we the effects because of cancers and things like that. I know that some people will argue this fact by saying that people have been using these things for a long time and I am fine. Well if you research the different things they use to kill bugs and weeds they are different then what used to be used. plus less and less of our food comes from our back yard or the neighbors yard. So we get all of these commercial poisons.

I am also going to tell you that when I order produce from Azure they taste better. You can ask my kids this too. Now another thing is lets look at all of these fruits that they have started selling in the past few years that are made for kids hands. Those cuties oranges that are mortified to be easy to peel and smaller for a smaller tummy. What nutrients do you think was lost doing that. I am pretty sure a lot. God made the orange the way he did to feed our bodies what it needs. 

Next look at the GMO’s. If you don’t know much about GMO’s look it up it is scary. I have read study after study and not just studies from some person who is all about organic I have read they articles written by companies that do it. Did you know that there is a ban on GMO food in many countries. They know how bad it is for you that their government has banned it.  I wish they would at least label the foods that it is in. I do know that most soy products use it. So I stay away form them.

Next antibiotics!!! We are pumping our kids with antibiotics with the milk we give our kids and the meat they eat. Now I can not order organic meat yet but I do try to get organic milk from the grocery store. I do buy meat that was not given antibiotics but sometimes it can be hard to find. We are trying more and more to eat deer and things like that from the wild. I do have 3 boys so hunting will be a big thing here. There are also people that will give you deer meat if they know you would like some because they never seem to use it all. I have some awesome friends that do this. I believe next year Vince is going to start hunting with Vinny.

I hope that clears up a few things on how much healthier it is for you to go organic. There are so many great website dedicated to this you will have endless knowledge. My biggest thing is that we should eat the way God intended us to eat. So why mess with his creation and then wonder why we are so unhealthy??

Where do I start?

As I said before start little. Learn how to cook differently if you need to. Stop buy things that come in boxes!! Start with taking white out of your diet. White flour, enriched white flour, white rice and white sugar and NO HIGH FROCTOSE CORN SYRUP!!!!. Now this doesn’t mean brown sugar that is still very processed. You can start with the raw sugars at the grocery store then do some of your own research on what kind of sugar you want to use. I use Honey and coconut sugar. Honey I try to by from a local farmer and the coconut sugar I buy from azure. It is also lower in the glycemic index. Now this sugar does not taste like coconut so don’t worry about that. It is not going to taste like white sugar but when you cook and bake with it there is no difference. I don’t use it in my coffee and drinks but everything else I use it on. I buy raw sugar for those things.

Next take out all of the vegetable oil in your house!! Switch to butter and coconut oil and olive oil. These are great for you. I know you may think that it is bad for you but you body can actually digest it. Trust me you will feel so much better. Also coconut oil is great for so much more. Your hair, skin it works great on dry skin. I use it on my face with as a moisturizer which has gotten ride of my acne. Yep I am over 30 and have acne. But it is gone!!

After you switch these things take baby steps to work in other things. I have a great book for you to read also. It is called Nourishing traditions. I don’t follow everything in there but I do follow most of it. But the information is so great in this book it is a must have.

Well I hope something in this post will help you out in your adventure to eating better and becoming healthier. I thought I would share a few pictures of my last food order It is not all of it but I love getting it, it is like opening a Christmas present.

Here is our month supply of Almond milk for us. Will has a milk issue.

One of our favorite items that comes in. Kefir is so good for you!! Cultured food is so good for you. Cultured foods will help so much in you way to being healthy.

This is so yummy!! Everyone looks at me weird when I pull this jar out and eat it. But more for me!!

20 pounds of apples. These are so juicy!!

Here is my pantry. If you look close you can see some items I don’t get from Azure. like the natural Jiff peanut butter and the crackers. I love the feeling of a full pantry and frig. It makes me feel so at ease.

I hope you learned something from this post that you can take back with you and implement into your own lives. I want to make sure you understand something that just because you don’t feed your family organic does not make you a bad person. Anything you can do even if it is small will make a big difference in your lives.

God Bless,

Jen