My organic food delivery company often gets the question, “Why doesn’t this organic apple or banana look ‘as good’ as a regular apple or banana?”
Here you will find out why, as with conventional products, appearances can be deceiving…
Extreme product makeover
Today’s consumers are educated on television, airbrushed photos and carefully manipulated images designed to give illusions of perfection. But when it comes to products, looks aren’t everything. There is a possibility of shiny apples or yellow bananas being gassed, bathed in pesticides and fungicides or injected with food coloring This makes them a poisonous pleasure for the senses.
Let’s slip into bananas. We recently discovered quality issues with this family favorite. February and March are traditionally tough months for banana farmers. The high humidity makes their crops very susceptible to rot. Organic farmers usually treat this disease naturally using remedies such as grapefruit seed oil extract. It’s not a perfect system. But the contaminated bananas contain far fewer chemical contaminants than their photogenic golden “conventional” counterparts.
“Conventional” bananas are picked before they ripen naturally. Calcium carbide, ammonia or sulfur dioxide then allow them to ripen at top speed. In high concentrations, these toxins can damage the nervous system, kidneys and liver. The bananas could also be soaked in the carcinogen benonomyl and repeatedly sprayed with pesticides.
Tomatoes are also picked before they are ripe and shipped long distances. They are fumigated with the plant hormone ethylene to help them ripen, and can be injected with red dye for visual appeal. Because the “traditional” tomato was never truly ripe, it now suffers from vitamin deficiencies…unless you take into account the nutritional value of its chemical fertilizers, pesticides, ripening agents and dyes.
I’ll never forget when my cousin came to visit and stay in our studio apartment that we used as an office. Two months after he left, I opened the fridge and saw a bag of tomatoes he had left behind. I was horrified to see that they still looked perfect – no mold, no softening, nothing! I’ve only eaten organic produce for the past 15 years, so I was used to our regular tomatoes, which last about a week before being taken over by hungry microbes. Here’s the thing: Bacteria and fungi are extremely intelligent organisms – they have adapted and thrive where thousands of species have become extinct. So if they don’t touch the food – that should tell you something!
The taste of a conventional tomato also pales in comparison to a ripe, fresh organic tomato full of aroma.
Tip: For the best flavor, store tomatoes at room temperature and not in the refrigerator. I tested both options and mine don’t last longer in the fridge – but they lose a lot of flavor.
What about “juicy” “conventional” apples from the supermarket? They’re full of preservatives to change the slogan to “An apple a day keeps decay away.” Apples are picked while green and sprayed in storage with thiabendazole, a chemical known to cause birth defects. After sorting, they’re treated with preservatives to keep them juicy and crispy, then coated with shellac or carnuba wax (just to really seal in all those chemicals and make sure they don’t wash off!).
Generally, exported cherries are fumigated with methyl bromide for two hours at a temperature of 43 degrees Fahrenheit. The fumigation treatment is carried out with the aim of killing potential codling moth (a type of post-harvest pest). 17% is absorbed by the large wooden box in which the cherries are stored. Ingestion into the wooden box then leads to metabolic changes and decomposition. Cherries treated in this way do not rot even after 7 weeks at room temperature. The cherries may have been treated several times during storage and transport. Exposing people to high concentrations of methyl bromide (which also depletes ozone) can cause harmful effects on the skin, lungs and eyes, as well as respiratory and nervous system disorders. Does it sound like these cherries are safe to eat?
So the next time you say, “I’d like to eat organic, but I can’t afford it.” Think of how much it will cost you in healthcare expenses if you consume all of these chemical agents day after day AND don’t get the nutrients and enzymes from normal (i.e. “organic”) food. But if you really can’t afford to eat organic, here are my tips and tricks for cheaper alternatives for a healthy diet.
Jini Patel Thompson is an internationally recognized expert in natural healing for digestive diseases. She healed herself from widespread Crohn’s disease and has been medication and surgery free for over 25 years. Jini has appeared on numerous podcasts, TV and radio shows in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, giving people hope and vision on how to heal their colitis, Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) using all-natural methods. Her books on natural healing of digestive diseases have been sold in over 80 countries worldwide. Jini is married and has three children, nine sheep, 11 horses, a cat and three dogs.
