Spirit Quest Healing Blog
Chris & Ginger Pennell’s Adventures in Raw Foods & More!

The answer to this question is often presumed to be “yes”, and I know it’s like sacrilege to say otherwise in the raw world, but I really think it’s dogmatic not to. All things being equal, organic really WOULD always be better. All things are hardly ever equal when it comes to food selection, however. Firstly, for me cost isn’t the deal breaker but for many people organic produce is cost prohibitive. I’ve actually heard aspiring raw fooders saying they are forced to eat cooked food because they can’t afford to buy organic produce. They actually believe that cooked food is healthier than conventionally grown produce, so strong is their loyalty to the organic ideal.

Whether or not to eat conventional produce is a personal decision, like all others that have to do with what we eat, and I’ve never told anyone they need to eat conventional produce. I’ve only talked about what has served me in my own transition, and the rationales that I used to make those decisions. For me, it’s been important to know which of the “rules” can accommodate some wiggle room, and which ones I need to stick to 100% of the time. After devoting considerable thought to this issue, I’ve determined that “organic vs. conventional” is one of the rules I can be flexible on.

At this time of year my list of acceptable foods looks more or less like this: pears, mangoes, grapes, bananas, cherimoyas, melons, lettuce (romaine and iceberg), celery, durian, tomatoes and nuts, in order of their importance in my diet. That’s already a pretty short list but it would be even shorter if I ate only organic foods. There are some foods that I almost always eat organic (lettuce, tomatoes and bananas mostly), because organic versions are always available, affordable, fresh and ripe. There are others that I hardly ever eat organic because not only are they either not available organic or are hard to find, they are almost always inferior in quality, ripeness and freshness to their conventionally grown counterparts. For example, organic melons and grapes are only available at one store that I know of in my area, and they are very expensive compared to what I pay. Organic celery doubled in price this year to $2.99 per pound here in the Seattle area, and I’ve been told by produce workers that it’s because of the big freeze that hit California a few weeks ago. Yet I’m only paying 20 cents more per bunch than last year for the conventional celery I buy at QFC, and it presumably comes from California too. It tastes great, even better than most of the organic celery I’ve had. The celery I recently bought at Wal-Mart for $.78 per bunch (which is exactly the same price I paid there last year, interestingly) was even better. The next time I went back, I bought 4 bunches. (Where celery is concerned, btw, I suspect the primary factor affecting the taste is the practice that almost all stores employ of soaking it in tap water and then chilling it to bring it back to life when it either arrives at the store wilted or sits on the shelf too long. It occurs to me that organic celery and greens might be even more subject to this practice because of their slower turnover rate.)

Many raw fooders live in small rural communities and the foods they can get are very limited. I’ve been in small town grocery stores where the same 10 organic items sit on the shelf for weeks until they’re thrown away. I frankly think the only reason many of these stores stock organic produce is so they can brag in their advertisements about how progressive and health conscious they are. Even at the QFC where I shop a lot (in a very large, upmarket community), organic produce doesn’t turn over fast enough to ensure that it’s always fresh. Even though the prices are not unreasonable and the store is convenient to my home, I almost never buy the wilted, over-refrigerated and generally unappealing organic food they sell there. I can’t imagine trying to stay satisfied eating a raw diet comprised of foods of that caliber. Our bodies are not designed to thrive on unripe foods or foods that have been partially destroyed by over-refrigeration or oxidation. When a food has been sitting on the shelf for 3 weeks because nobody wants to pay the high price, our bodies don’t give us a break because we’re doing the ‘right’ thing in buying organic. Our bodies just want the best, ripest, freshest, highest quality, tastiest food they can get.

Organic food does taste better sometimes, but not reliably. I honestly think that people who say that organic food always tastes better to them are not being guided by their sense of taste at all but rather by a belief system. I’ve thought about throwing an organic vs. conventional party to do some blind taste comparisons just to prove this. I’d be willing to bet the kind of money I don’t have that many of these people would choose conventional over organic in blind taste tests. I’ve been 100% raw for 6½ years and my taste buds are mostly recovered from the abuse I previously subjected them to. When something tastes good to me, I trust that my taste buds know what they’re talking about. When I eat a sour, rubbery, over-refrigerated organic grape, my body recognizes that the food is not nutritious. It’s not just not enjoyable, it not nutritious. The two are indelibly linked. Similarly, when I eat a sweet, crisp and tender but conventionally- grown grape, the pleasure I experience tells me that the food is good for my body. When all but biologically- appropriate foods are excluded, taste and appeal IS nutrition. That has to be the case, otherwise our species would have died out long before we had the misguiding influence of modern nutritional “science” to tell us what to eat.

Social responsibility is often used as the basis for choosing organic all the time, but why is the burden of social responsibility worn so heavily by raw fooders? Don’t we realize the enormous social burden we’re lifting because of the way we choose to eat and live? It’s hard to imagine a world where everyone was as focused on their health as raw fooders are, so vast would be the improvements — social, environmental and otherwise. The medical industry is enormously polluting and indefensibly unethical, to say nothing of the suffering it inflicts by making sick people sicker. Hospitals generate more hazardous waste than almost any other industry. And what about the misery inflicted on animals and the waste that is generated to produce drugs and surgical procedures? Then there’s the pollution and other environmental damage involved in the production of meat and processed foods, the packaging involved, the transportation, contamination of the air and water, etc. Raw fooders don’t contribute to any of this, yet we’re the ones who are most concerned about the social cost of a relatively tiny thing like buying non-organic produce. It doesn’t make any sense to me to compromise my health goals when I’m already preventing so much cost, pollution and suffering by eating the way I do. Let’s spread some of that responsibility around. There are plenty of people out there who don’t eat raw and who are laboring under the idea that all they have to do is “eat organic” to be healthy. How about if we let them create the market demand for organics that we raw fooders think we’re contributing to by buying organic even when it’s not in our best interests.

There are people who are attempting to go raw because they’re dealing with life-threatening illness. For them, this is not just the latest edgy thing or short-term weight loss program, it’s literally a matter of life and death. They need to be able to make decisions that serve their primary goal of getting well, not some noble, socially-motivated ideal. Making health the #1 priority is not selfish, it’s actually very UNselfish because for every sick person who chooses to remove the cause of his/her disease rather than go the medical route, hundreds of thousands of dollars are saved, innocent animals are spared and unquantifiable environmental damage is averted.

Everyday raw fooders reject certain organic foods because they are otherwise unsuitable for consumption. Ever heard of organic white cheddar cheeze curlz? If we’re going to reject a food because it’s cooked and processed even though it wears the organic label, I say we need to apply our criteria universally. Organic and cooked is a fine reason to pass on a food, but what about organic and unripe, or organic and unfresh, or organic and prohibitively expensive? And if we’re going to reject these foods, what are we going to eat in their place if we aren’t open to eating conventionally grown produce?

Raw fooders who live by the “all organic all the time” rule manage to find lots of things to eat. However, I contend that many of these ‘foods’ are much worse than ripe, fresh, biologically- appropriate, conventionally- grown produce. New and transitioning raw fooders typically eat non-foods like cacao, maca and supplements, very complicated combinations of foods and food flavorings (salt, spices, vinegar, etc.) which cause digestion to be hindered to such a degree that a large percentage of the foods are not digested. That which is not digested becomes toxic waste, and the body has only two options in dealing with it: eliminate or store. You’ll never see a study “proving” it, but I’d go out on a limb and estimate that the waste produced by one complicated or miscombined meal is more than a whole year’s worth of pesticide residues. It’s true that some forms of waste are worse than others, but the fact is that pesticide residues, when they exist, are microscopic and easily dealt with by the body, especially that of a raw fooder who is earnestly seeking health by eating correctly and simply. If this weren’t the case, I would never have been able to make major improvements to my health eating conventional produce.

Most raw fooders come to raw food via involvement in alternative medicine, which has spawned many, many false ideas. The idea that the organic label should be the #1 criterion by which food is selected has become so popular among natural health practitioners that you’d think that eating conventionally grown produce is the primary cause of disease. Not only is it NOT a significant contributing factor in disease, the fact is that the alternative medical establishment is nearly as clueless about the real causes of disease as their allopathic counterparts. Eating organic is an easy way that erstwhile health seekers can delude themselves that they’re doing everything they can to be healthy, like going to the gym or drinking 8 glasses of water a day.

Food producers have jumped on the wave too, and as a result the word “organic” is fast becoming the most successful hype label of all time. Organic doesn’t automatically mean “healthy”, even though 98% of all Americans believe it to be so. We raw fooders are on to the tricks of Madison Avenue more than most people but I think we still allow ourselves to be unduly influenced by the marketing emphasis that has been placed on the word “organic.”

There are other factors to consider, too. Personally, my health is my #1 concern and I’m very keen to stay on track with my diet and lifestyle. I’ve done what I needed to do to make it work with my other obligations. When I was cooked and living mostly on shelf-stable foods, I used to shop once a week and stock up. For many reasons, now that I’m raw, that won’t work. I buy one or two days’ worth of food at a time, which means I shop everyday or every other day. I don’t always have time to go to Whole Foods and fight the hideous downtown traffic. I drive a lot, so I’m always passing grocery stores and I stop at the ones that are convenient. I’ve found some really great produce that I would not have found if I hadn’t been open to shopping in “normal” stores and eating conventional produce.

Just at the end of the plum season last year, I located an orchard in Eastern Washington where the sweetest, finest plums I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting are grown. I mean, these plums are deadly good. Before I tasted them, I thought the best plums I’d ever had were grown on an organic farm in another part of the state. I’m going to be picking plums from both orchards this summer, but I’m most looking forward to those conventional ones. And yes, I’ll wash them first.

I’m just as appalled as anyone about the practice of using chemicals to grow food. There are lots of things about our modern world I find appalling, however, and there’s nothing I can do about them. I buy organic when it makes sense - when the food is worth the high price. I’ve heard it said that the high price of organic food is actually the “real” cost, since conventionally grown food carries the ‘hidden’ cost of environmental destruction. However, anyone who makes that kind of statement obviously doesn’t realize that food shouldn’t cost anything at all - it should be FREE like it is for all other animals on earth. Feeding ourselves in this strange world is difficult enough. Going raw is tough, too. It makes no sense to me to make it all harder than it has to be.

Thanks for your indulgence. If anything needs clarifying, please let me know.
Warm regards,
Nora
www.RawSchool. com