To your health (or, who will jump on the organic bandwagon next?)
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve waited fifteen for us to reach the point we’re at now, all the time wondering whether we’d ever get here. “Here” is the fact we now have Wholefoods (and many others); an entire supermarket filled with organic this, vegan that, biodynamic whatyamacallit. Fifteen years ago, if you wanted to eat organic you were shopping in whole-foods stores that catered strictly to hippies, anarchists and allergy sufferers. Watching the transition has been at times incredibly frustrating, and incredibly moving. I’m not kidding you; I still remember the goosebumps and tidal wave of emotion that swept over me the first time I walked (or wheeled rather) in a Wholefoods supermarket. It had seemed a pipe dream, a nice idea way back then, but here all of a sudden it had become a reality. Let me tell you why.
We, those of us who chose to eat organic, despite the high prices, despite the looks shot to us by pimply faced checkout kids or café till jockeys that screamed “not another organic yuppie”; we created this current reality together with farmers whose principles and products we believed in. with business owners who had the guts to give shelf space to products the mass population had no interest in. With people who actually cared about us and what we ate, and the effect that producing the food had on the planet. The entire organic movement springs from a common understanding that, despite what they tell us, it doesn’t make sense to put food into our bodies that has been produced by utilizing massive amounts of chemicals. By utilizing farming practices we know are doing untold damage to our farmland. We knew in our guts it wasn’t right, and were prepared to pay more to have our food produced by people who knew there had to be a better way.
Fast forward now to September 2007. I made a prediction four years ago that within ten years we’d wee an organic McDonalds burger. Six months ago I switched my prediction to within two years. We are now so close I can almost smell it. Two days ago the “O” word appeared, for the first time in my experience, on the huge highway sign usually reserved to promote the 99c burger out the front of a generic junk food “restaurant” ( I use the term loosely). I say generic, because I wish for the life of me I could remember which one it was; it wasn’t McDonalds, but could have been Dairy Queen or A&W. It really doesn’t matter who it was, but they wanted us to know about their organic iced mocha. I know some of you are thinking “great, it’s about time McDonalds went organic”. Someone else might be thinking “don’t yuppify my McDonalds, please…” that’s fine, but please keep this in mind. McDonalds, or DQ, or A&W don’t give a flying *#@! about you or your health. They don’t give a flying *#@! about the planet. The only reason they pimping their iced mocha is because they want in on the organic gold rush that’s about to happen. I’m confident now we’ll see the organic McDonalds burger within twelve months. Before the end of 2008 we’ll have organic coke, and hell, by the decades end we might even see organic Benson and Hedges. But please remember this. That’s great that these companies have finally gone organic, but their not doing it for you or me or the state of the world. Their not doing it because it’s the right thing to do. The companies that are have been doing so for some time now, and they are the ones who deserve your support. They care; let’s show that we do to by supporting them rather than the veritable avalanche of bandwagon jumpers that are heading our way.
Here are some long time organic producers that deserve our support:
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