Natural and Organic Food

A slight change of tack for this blog, but still on topic is the subject of additives that are in what you eat and what you drink.

This post will concern itself about what’s in the water that comes out of your tap.

Don’t despair - in most western countries, the water that comes out of your tap is relatively safe to drink and cook with because it is treated at huge water treatment plants before it enters the water main and finds its way to your home.

But not in all countries.

In southern Spain, where I live the water that comes out of the tap is not so safe to drink. The authorities will tell you a different story, of course, but the fact remains that there is no true water main in the area that I live in despite it being one of the most urbanized areas outside of the cities of Madrid and Barcelona.

So what do we have to contend with here?

Tap water is heavily treated with chlorine to combat the high levels of dangerous bacteria that would run riot through the area if it were not so treated. This in itself is a huge problem for the unwary, as chlorine binds with other particulates in the water to form tri-methane based carcinogens.

Oh.

There are also high levels of pollution from farms as the farmers here are lunatics when it comes to spraying their fields. They use just about every kind of chemical available to them to kill their soil stone dead with herbicides and pesticides before dumping huge quantities of chemical fertilizers on it so stuff will actually grow. All these chemicals have leeched through the soil into the subterranean aquifiers and reservoirs that supply the whole of Andalucia.

Oh.

Because of the additional lunacy of successive local authorities the landfill situation here is out of control. Further chemical pollutants from these overused landfill sites has also leeched into the water supply. This includes heavy metals such as aluminium and lead, which are known causes of Alzheimer’s disease in adults and intelligence retardation in children.

Oh.

Because of all this pollution, particulate levels in our water are in excess of 200 ppm and often as high as 300 ppm. The World Health Organisation limit for drinking water is set at 150 ppm.

Oh.

But that’s here in Andalucia, southern Spain. Most of the United States and Canada, Australia and most other European countries are much better at treating their water. And there is always bottled water to drink when things get tough.

I for one am reluctant to believe anything that a local authority or for that matter any government official tells me, simply because most of them tell lies.
Get this:

Here in southern Spain, although no one will officially admit to it, the decision was made to add so much chlorine to the drinking water because it was cheaper for the local health authorities to deal with a few cases of cancer than an epidemic of cholera.

Tell that to the people who won the cancer in that lottery!

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food

Ok, that’s my oxymoron of the day!

I’ve just added Organic Sanity to my Technorati Profile, in order to spread the word a bit further into the world of blogging and readers with an interest in an organic lifestyle. Hopefully it will help to generate some more online traffic to my organic door!

But how far off the truth am I with that title?

In fact, there are ways of getting around that are totally organic and could quite genuinely be described as traffic. I’m talking about pedal power on two wheels - the bicycle!

Ok, that’s not the only one - for the lazier traveler there are electric vehicles around that don’t put out any pollution into our atmosphere. That’s good. What’s not so good about them is they aren’t very recyclable as the batteries they use contain corrosive acid and heavy metals (lead) or worse (nickel-cadmium).

But then you could go crazy by running down all the modern attempts to cut down on pollution in order to keep our transport system going. At least many of them are rather better for the environment than the carcinogenic exhaust fume producing internal combustion engine!

And even that environmental nightmare has a good side - the diesel engine was originally invented to run on heavy oil - vegetable oil in particular. And it really will - with a little modification - and what comes out of the exhaust is a darn sight cleaner than when those engines are used to burn petroleum derived diesel oil.

It is even possible to run a modified internal combustion engine entirely on hydrogen gas - the by product that comes out of the exhaust is water vapour and nothing else!

So if these alternatives are there, tried and tested and are known to work - why do you suppose they aren’t the main methods of transport in the twenty-first century?

Don’t make your head hurt by trying to figure that one out - it’s easy. Just think of that thick black liquid that comes out of the ground and makes some very large companies some very serious profits every year. It’s what lives are risked at crazy depths under the sea to drill out. It’s what countries go to war for. It’s what the world economy is based on.

Without it, where would we be? Hmmm.

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food

Natural and organic food has become more widely available in a growing number of retail outlets.

From a shopper’s point of view, it’s a case of being aware that natural and organic food can be had when you know where to look for it.

In Great Britain, the consumer shift towards natural and organic food is growing at a fantastic rate, prompting the big supermarket chains into re-thinking their marketing strategies. For them, as long as there’s a good profit to be made from any sector of the agricultural industry, you can be absolutely certain the supermarkets know about it and will exploit it.

In a way then, consumer power has forced this change for the better. Supermarkets now display an ever increasing range of natural and organic food from fruit and vegetables to meat and dairy products. These organic products are all carefully labeled as such to allay any possible doubts that consumers may have as to their authenticity.

This is good news for the health of a nation.

Good news as well for the soil that produces the fruit and vegetables. Good news too for the animals that are reared for their meat. This is because their living conditions on organic farms are infinitely better than their counterparts which are merely existing until the day they are slaughtered on intensive farms.

Good news for the planet we live on.

So you, Mr and Mrs Consumer have the power to change things for the better. You must demand good food, free from dangerous pesticides and artificial chemical additives and don’t allow yourself to be palmed off with anything less. When enough of you demand what you deserve, then your voice grows in volume and the big supermarket chains have to listen.

It can be done. It is being done. Right now!

Natural and organic food is here to stay and is available at a store near you.

And if it’s not - make that store get it for you or tell them you’ll go elsewhere for your food!

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food

Another clever bit of companion planting comes in the fruit orchard, or in my case a few years ago a few fruit trees scattered around my back garden! This one involves one of my favourite fruits, apples.

Apples when not sprayed with anything are often troubled by the ever-popular (and oft caricatured in cartoons) coddling moth and it’s destructive grubs, which contrary to popular belief actually bore their way out of the growing apple, not in!

That’s because the moths lay their eggs in the newly formed fruits in the centre of the dying flowers. The emerging grubs are already inside as the apples grow and simply eat their way out! That leaves open bore-holes for other insects like wasps to get into the fruit and cause more damage.

A great way to deter the coddling moths is to plant Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) around the base of each tree. Tansy flowers at the same time as the tree in Spring and the plants are a great insect (and moth) repellent.

Incidentally, Tansy has been used through the ages as a medicinal herb to safely expel worms in children and as an anti-inflammatory for gout. It was used as a strewing herb to keep flies away from the kitchen. By keeping a bunch of the flowers in a vase near your kitchen door, you should deter most unwanted flying pests from your home.

Tansy can also be planted around the base of most fruiting trees and inter-planted with berry bushes and vegetables to deter moths. The yellow flowers, on the other hand will attract bees, ladybirds (ladybugs as they’re known in the US) and hoverflies which are beneficial to all your plants.

Terry Didcott
Natural and Organic Food