Deciding on the Best Foods for a Toxin-free Dinner Table: Figuring out the basic supplies you need for a detox diet, Understanding your organic food options, Including the right protein sources, Getting the right kinds of carbohydrates, Making the right decisions about fats and Considering a few food options beyond the grocery store.

Deciding on the Best Foods for a Toxin-free Dinner Table

In This Chapter

▶ Figuring out the basic supplies you need for a detox diet

▶ Understanding your organic food options

▶ Including the right protein sources

▶ Getting the right kinds of carbohydrates

▶ Making the right decisions about fats

▶ Considering a few food options beyond the grocery store

One of the greatest things about detoxifying your body and getting started on a detox diet — beside the fact that it can have a fantastic impact on your overall health — is that you don’t need to buy all sorts of expensive equipment, take a class, or read 15 books before getting started. (I do recommend reading this book, of course, but I hope that’s not too difficult of a task!)

Detox diets can be simple and relatively easy if you understand the basics, and that’s what I give you in this chapter. If you’re in the right frame of mind and you’re willing to make the best choices about your food — both where you buy it and how you prepare it — you’ll soon be on your way to cutting toxins out of your diet and building a stronger, healthier body.

Gathering What You Need for a Detox Diet

Toxin-free, healthy food is the most important part of a detox diet, but it’s not the only part. In order to stay on a detoxified path, you need to have some specific equipment and a few cooking staples that are chosen with detoxification in mind. I’m not talking about loads of expensive gear and a pantry full of bizarre ingredients that you have to get flown in from some far- away country. Most of what you need will be available locally, and you may already have several of the necessary items at home.

Make sure you don’t skip the critical preparation steps I explain in this section. Neglecting them and moving straight on to focusing on the food you’ll incorporate in your detox diet can start you off on the wrong foot.

Buying the correct equipment

You can buy the most organic, toxin-free food in the world, but if you’re cooking it with the wrong equipment you’re shooting yourself in the foot. You need pots, pans, and other essential cooking gear that don’t add toxins to your meals.

To be certain you aren’t adding toxins to your food while you’re cooking it, invest in some good stainless steel pots, pans, and other cookware. Non-stick cookware, which is coated in a chemical that’s supposed to prevent food from sticking to the pot’s or pan’s surfaces, can leach toxins into your food over time.

You also need to consider the potential toxicity of the materials that you use to store and serve your food. If most of your dishes, plates, cups, and food storage containers are made of plastics, you could be inadvertently adding harmful toxins to your food over time. (My discussion of toxins like BPA and phthalates in food packaging from Chapter 3 is relevant here, so flip back and take a look if you want to know more.)

So what can you use to serve and store food if plastic is potentially harmful? Look for options made of glass, ceramic, or stainless steel. (Keep in mind that if you choose ceramic containers you need to confirm that they’re lead-free before buying and using.)

A juicy detoxification option

If you’re looking for a practical addition to your kitchen that will give you some flexibility in the way you prepare your detox diet foods, look no further than a juicer. The idea of drinking your fruits and vegetables has become more and more popular in recent years, which is really no surprise. Juice recipes that incorporate fruits from apples to apricots and vegetables from carrots to kale can be quick, easy ways to give your diet a healthy boost, and many of them are downright delicious.

Several effective, affordable juicers on the market are perfect for use at home. They range from under $100 for a basic model to well over $1,000 for a juicer with every last bell and whistle, so do your research and let your budget be your guide.

Keeping the right supplies on hand

Every kitchen needs a few staple ingredients that serve as the basis of a wide range of recipes and meals. If you want to work toward making your kitchen an effective home base for a detoxification diet, you need to sort through the staples you have now, get rid of the potentially toxic ones, and bring in new ingredients that don’t pose a toxic threat. Here are a few of the basics:

✓ Flour: You need an all-purpose whole wheat or white flour. Shoot for 100 percent organic. (Check out my discussion of the various levels of organic food in the next section of this chapter.)

✓ Corn meal: Make sure you get a 100 percent organic option.

For dry ingredients like flour and corn meal, be sure to use glass containers for storage. You’ll likely have these ingredients on hand for a while, and you don’t want them to pick up toxins from plastic containers over time in your pantry.

✓ Butter: I can’t say that I recommend eating lots of butter on a daily basis, but it is better than a lot of the options. I definitely suggest using real butter rather than butter substitutes like margarine. Just make sure the butter is 100 percent organic.

✓ Cooking oil: I discuss your cooking oil options in detail a little later in this chapter, but generally speaking I recommend using coconut oil or olive oil for cooking whenever possible. Again, buy 100 percent organic if possible.

✓ Spices and herbs: If you’re at all concerned that a detox diet has to be a bland diet, banish that thought immediately. Some of the most flavorful ingredients in the world — spices and herbs — are an integral part of any healthy diet, especially one that shuns toxins and emphasizes good things like antioxidants. Stock up on spices and herbs, and flip back to Chapter 5 for a lengthy discussion about which ones you can choose for specific effects.

Going Organic

Organic foods are plants or animals that are grown or raised without toxins. That means they’re not sprayed with toxic pesticides, injected with antibiotics or hormones, processed with toxic additives or processes, or packaged in toxic containers. Organic foods have become increasingly popular in recent years; sales of organic foods have increased by 20 percent in each of the last seven years. Overall, that trend is a very good thing because it means the public has begun to recognize the importance of cutting out toxic materials like pesticides and harsh chemical fertilizers from our food, as well as the need to limit our intake of genetically modified food.

I encourage you to eat organic foods whenever possible, although I need to explain several caveats before you start loading up your shopping cart.

First, several different categories of organic foods are available, so you need to be a real label hawk when examining organic options. Here’s the breakdown:

✓ Specific Ingredients are Organically Produced: This designation is nothing special because it can be used on a label for any product that has only one organic ingredient.

✓ Made with Organic Ingredients: Foods in this category have to contain only 70 percent organic ingredients. Needless to say, a lot of nasty stuff can exist in the remaining 30 percent. Don’t make the mistake of thinking foods with the Made with Organic Ingredients label are toxin-free.

✓ USDA Organic: This categorization can be confusing. In order to qualify for a USDA Organic label, a food must be made of 95 percent organically produced ingredients. The obvious question: What’s up with the other 5 percent? Therein lies the problem. The non-organic 5 percent can contain all sorts of materials that don’t fit very well at all in a detox diet, including food colorings and animal intestines. Buying USDA Organic foods is generally a little better than buying foods that aren’t organic in any way, but it’s nothing to shout about.

✓ 100% Organic: This is the best of the best. The 100% Organic label is reserved for products that are wholly and completely organic. This means that you don’t have to worry about artificial fertilizers, pesticides, genetic modification, antibiotics, or sewer sludge fertilizer.

If you want to buy truly organic food, make sure you look for “100% Organic” on the label.

Making an effort to buy organic foods also usually means that you’ll be spending more money. Growing and raising organic food is typically more expensive than growing and raising mass-produced, conventional food. But if your budget allows you to go organic, rest assured that it’s money well spent. Eating 100 percent organic foods will benefit your body in ways that no medication ever could. If you can’t afford to eat organic all the time, try to do so when you can.

When it comes to produce, the scale of healthiness goes like this (from healthi- est to least healthy): fresh organic (100 percent), fresh, frozen organic, frozen, and at the very bottom processed or canned.

Planning Out Your Protein Source

In order to thrive your body needs amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. Your body can make 12 amino acids on its own, but 8 other amino acids can’t be made by humans so you need to get them through the food you eat. These eight are called essential amino acids, and to get them you need to be certain that you’re including sources of protein in your diet, including your diet that focuses on detoxification. Many forms of protein are available to you, but not all of them are appealing to everyone.

Animal sources of protein such as meat, poultry, eggs, fish, milk, and cheese can provide all the amino acids that you require. If you’re vegetarian, you have to try just a little bit harder to make sure you’re giving your body what it needs to succeed, but with planning and attention to detail you should be fine. Allow me to tell you about the protein sources that fit in detoxification diets for meat eaters, vegans, and everyone in between.

Fleshing it out

If you eat meat, you should have no problem at all getting the essential amino acids your body needs. A diet that includes meat, poultry, milk, cheese, fish, and eggs is flush with amino acids. The problem is that these protein sources can also contain all kinds of toxins. So if you’re a meat eater, be sure to keep in mind the following toxic threats as you decide what meats to include in your meals.

As with produce, try to choose meats and dairy products that are labeled “100% Organic” if you want the highest quality foods with the lowest amount of toxins.

On the hoof

Beef is a powerhouse source for amino acids. You can get all the essential amino acids you need by eating beef. But much of the beef you find at the deli and in the cooler at your local grocery store contains a range of toxins — particularly antibiotics and hormones — and you need to be sure you’re shop- ping smart in order to dodge those threats.

Most of the commercially available beef at the grocery store was raised in a feed lot environment, which is basically a mega farm for cows that keeps them cramped in very tight quarters and feeds them endlessly on grains, which aren’t part of a cow’s natural diet. These harsh conditions can result in larger cows that provide more beef, but because that environment is so unnatural and hard on the cows, they have to be given antibiotics and hormones to keep them alive and growing. The antibiotics and hormones given to cows have a toxic effect on the human body. Two of the most commonly used hormones are estradiol and zeranol. Estradiol is also a human female hormone, and it can have feminizing effects on both men and women. Zeranol is similar to the female hormone progesterone and can produce similar effects in humans, in addition to being suspected of increasing your risk for cancer. Many other substances are also given to feed lot cattle, and most of them wreak havoc on the human body.

If you eat beef, the best way to avoid these toxins is to eat only grass-fed beef. Cattle raised on grass — their natural diet — don’t have to be given hormones and antibiotics because they’re naturally healthy, and the conditions in which these cows are raised allows them to grow up healthy and full of nutrients that you can obtain when you eat them. Grass-fed beef contains higher levels of essential fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals, and lower levels of saturated (harmful) fat.

The rules are slightly different for pork. No hormones have been approved for use in pork production, so if you’re picking out pork you don’t need to worry about the presence of hormones in the meat. You do need to consider the use of antibiotics on your pork, though, so look for labels on pork products that say “no antibiotics added” when you’re shopping.

But here are the larger worries about pork: Fried pork puts off toxic chemicals. Bacon, for example, puts off 15 times as much toxin as beef. Also, worm cysts can be found in pork so you must cook the meat thoroughly. Bottom line: It’s best to leave pork on the grocery shelf.

Birds of a feather

You can get plenty of the amino acids you need from bird sources of pro- tein like chicken, turkey, and duck. Turkey, for example, is a good source of protein that includes seven of the essential amino acids. One of those amino acids is tryptophan, a building block for serotonin, which is important for the onset of sleep. Many researchers indicate that the high levels of tryptophan in turkey are the reason so many people get drowsy after eating Thanksgiving dinner each year!

Chicken and duck are even stronger when it comes to essential amino acids; they have all eight and can be good sources of protein for your body. Other types of fowl like pheasant, quail, and dove are suspected to have similar levels of amino acids, but there’s not yet enough data for complete confirmation.

When you’re picking out bird sources of protein like chicken or turkey, make sure you select 100 percent organic products and preferably those labeled “free range” or “cage free.”

Out of the sea

Shellfish are a good source of protein but don’t provide all the essential amino acids. Different types of shellfish provide different amino acids, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to cobble them together to get the essential amino acids you need. (It’s much more efficient to get your amino acids from other meat or vegetable sources.) Fish also don’t have all the essential amino acids, but they do contain some and they can be a very healthy addition to your diet for other reasons.

Both fish and shellfish contain omega-3 fatty acids, which are wonderful for your health. However, as I mention several times in this book, mercury toxic- ity is a problem when it comes to eating fish, especially swordfish, shark, king mackerel, tile fish, and tuna. Be sure to read up and choose wisely.

Sticking with vegetarian varieties

Eating a vegetarian diet can be completely healthy, but it takes more effort and planning to eat no animal products and still bring key nutritional requirements into your body, particularly when it comes to essential amino acids. I do not recommend a vegetarian diet for most people because it’s so difficult to do right. I have seen many patients who have tried to be vegetarians and ended up in very poor health. Most food plants simply don’t contain all the essential amino acids. However, if you’re willing to mix and match, you can definitely get the job done (and you can cut down on your toxin intake while you’re at it).

Vegetarians fall into one of four broad categories:

✓ Vegans eat only plant-based foods. They don’t eat dairy foods, poultry, eggs, or meat from any animal or fish.

✓ Lacto-vegetarians consume some dairy products as well as plant-based foods.

✓ Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat plant-based foods, dairy products, and eggs.

✓ Flexitarians eat mostly plants, dairy products, and eggs but occasionally have small amounts of fish or poultry.

If you’re a vegetarian or if you’re considering making the jump to a vegetarian diet, you need to make sure you’re getting plenty of essential amino acids. Here, I tell you how to go about doing just that while still keeping an eye out for potential toxic influences.

Accumulating amino acids

To get all your essential amino acids from plant-based foods, you need to broaden your diet horizons and be open to the idea of mixing and matching.

If you’re trying to cobble together the right plant-based foods in a vegetarian diet to make sure you’re bringing in all your essential amino acids, start by including plenty of legumes in your meals. Legumes provide a range of amino acids, and they’re readily available. What’s more, you can very likely find legumes with that gold standard “100% Organic” label, so you can get your amino acids and stiff-arm the toxins that could otherwise be left over from the use of pesticides and fertilizers on your legumes. Here are a few examples of amino acid–heavy legumes and how you may incorporate them in your diet:

✓ Adzuki beans: Also known as red oriental beans. Try them in rice dishes.

✓ Anasazi beans: Make good refried beans, or you can use them in soups.

✓ Black beans: Go great with rice, soups, stews, and any Mexican dishes you prepare.

✓ Black-eyed peas: Good in salads, casseroles, and fritters, or served with ham and rice.

✓ Chickpeas: Also known as garbanzo beans. They’re the key ingredient in hummus.

✓ Edamame: Green soybeans that work wonderfully as side dishes (particularly with Oriental cuisine).

✓ Fava beans: A nice side dish (and of course they go great with a nice Chianti).

✓ Lentils: Another extremely versatile legume. Use them in soups, salads, and stews.

✓ Lima beans: Also known as butter beans. They’re a great addition to healthy casseroles, soups, and salads.

✓ Red kidney beans: One of the most dynamic legumes out there. What would chili or mixed bean salad be without red kidney beans?

✓ Soy nuts: Also called soybean seeds. They work well as a stand-alone snack or as a topper for salads.

In addition to providing essential amino acids, legumes also give you important nutritional musts like folic acid, potassium, iron, and magnesium. You can also count on them for a healthy dose of natural fiber!

Luckily, the vegetarian options for including protein in your diet don’t end at legumes. There are also some notable and wonderful exceptions to the pro- tein limitations of most grains. These make a terrific option for vegetarians and also represent a healthy protein source for non-vegetarians:

✓ Buckwheat: Despite its name, this grain-like crop isn’t related to wheat and doesn’t have anything to do with the Little Rascals. It also doesn’t contain any gluten, which can be very helpful for people with gluten allergies. Buckwheat is great because it contains all the essential amino acids — even the ones that contain sulfur, which most plant sources of protein don’t have.

✓ Quinoa: Pronounced KEEN-wah, this unique plant isn’t a cereal, and it isn’t a grass. However, it is gluten-free and contains all the essential amino acids and omega-3 fatty acids required for humans. A true nutritional powerhouse, quinoa is also loaded with other vitamins and nutrients.

✓ Hemp seed: Two basic types of hemp plants exist. One is the kind that produces the plant materials used to smoke marijuana. The other is an excellent food source, and it provides the healthful hemp seed. Hemp seed contains all the essential amino acids, as well as all the essential fatty acids and omega-3s. You can do all sorts of tasty things with the seeds, including grinding them into a meal (for use in baking), eating them whole, steeping them in a tea, and pressing them to create hemp seed oil. Just like buckwheat and quinoa, hemp seed is gluten-free and packed full of minerals and nutrients.

Hemp seed is as close to a perfect food as I have found. It contains a huge range of healthful components, and I think everyone should include it in their diet. (Look for a 100 percent organic variety, of course.)

Nailing down other nutrients

If you’re a vegetarian, you have to make sure you’re getting the right levels of amino acids in your diet, but you have to also keep an eye on several other types of nutrients. Here’s a quick rundown of what you need and where you can get it:

✓ Calcium: You can get loads of calcium from dark green vegetables like broccoli, kale, collard and turnip greens, and spinach.

✓ Vitamin B-12: This vitamin is tough to find outside animal-based food, but you can definitely get some from eating yeast and seaweed. (You can always get additional B-12 from supplements, of course.)

✓ Iron: Introduce more iron in your diet by eating more dried beans and peas, lentils, and dark leafy vegetables. If you eat these foods in combination with foods that are high in vitamin C, you can increase your absorption rates.

✓ Zinc: Compared to some other important nutrients, zinc is relatively easy to find. You can get zinc in whole grains, soy products, nuts, and wheat germ.

✓ Omega-3 fatty acids: If you’re a vegan, your only real dietary options for omega-3 fatty acids are micro algae and brown kelp (ask at your health food store for details), as well as walnuts. Non-vegans can find omega-3s in fish and fortified eggs.

Corraling Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are substances that your body converts into glucose, which is the sugar that your cells use as fuel. Excess glucose that can’t be used as fuel right away is stored as fat. Any successful detox diet will allow you to get just the right amount of carbohydrates and make sure that the carbohydrates you eat are the good kind.

Two different kinds of carbs exist — one unhealthy and one healthy:

✓ Simple carbohydrates include things like fructose (fruit sugar), sucrose (table sugar), and lactose (milk sugar). Simple carbohydrates are easily and rapidly absorbed into your bloodstream, and they don’t offer much in the way of vitamins, minerals, or fiber. You can consume a lot of simple carbohydrates before your brain tells you to stop eating, and simple carbohydrates usually make food taste good. (Who doesn’t like sugar?) Therefore, it’s probably very easy for you to consume more than your body needs for energy in the short term. When that happens, the extra is stored as fat.

✓ Complex carbohydrates are the good kind. They’re broken down slowly, and your body absorbs them at a slower rate than simple carbohydrates. That may not seem like a big deal, but it means that when you’re eating a meal heavy on complex carbohydrates, your brain has time to respond and send you the message that you’re full and it’s time to quit eating before you’ve consumed excessive amounts. Even better, complex carbohydrates have vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber that your body really needs. You can find complex carbohydrates in foods like vegetables, whole grains, peas, and beans.

As a general rule, try to maintain complex carbohydrates as the primary carbohydrate source in your diet. Too many simple carbohydrates can cause a lot of health problems.

Not only are complex carbohydrates better for you from a strictly dietary perspective, but they’re also healthier when it comes to detoxification. The fiber in complex carbohydrates can absorb toxins that are present in broken down food in your intestine and remove those toxins with your stool. (Two kinds of fiber exist: soluble and insoluble. Insoluble fiber increases the bulk of your stool and helps it to move through your intestines. You find it in foods like bran, nuts, and many vegetables. Soluble fiber retains water and helps to control your levels of bad cholesterol and sugar. Good sources include apples, beans, peas, and oats.)

And here’s yet another reason to focus on complex rather than simple carbo- hydrates: The carbohydrates that you find in almost all unhealthy processed foods are simple. Remember that processed foods offer very little in the way of nutritional value and very often contain toxins.

The battle between simple and complex carbs has become a popular way to evaluate carbohydrates in your diet, but there’s another and often better way to slice it: the glycemic index and the glucose load. Check out Chapter 9 for more about this method for evaluating your diet.

Getting Some Good Fats

People are generally concerned about fats for two reasons:

✓ Fat has twice the amount of calories as carbohydrates and protein.

✓ Animal fat contains cholesterol.

For years the topic of dietary fat has consumed the minds of healthcare providers and the general public. The big issue about fat is cholesterol and its role in causing cardiovascular disease. If you ask most people (even physicians) what causes heart disease, most of them would say cholesterol. But more and more evidence suggests that’s not the case at all, and I want you to be aware of that trend.

First, let’s look at a few facts about cholesterol:

✓ Cholesterol is essential for many of your body’s normal functions. For example, your body uses it to make many different kinds of hormones.

✓ Most of the cholesterol in your body is made by your body. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that your body would manufacture something that will kill you.

✓ Fifty percent of heart attack victims have healthy cholesterol levels at the time of their heart attacks.

✓ In 1900, heart disease wasn’t a top-ten cause of death, and back then people cooked with lard — lots of it.

Do these facts begin to make you think that cholesterol may not play such a big role in heart disease? They should. And there’s more.

In his book Hidden Truth About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs (Health Myths Exposed Publishing), Shane Ellison offers further insight into the cholesterol issue. He reports studies that refute the idea that lower cholesterol is better. Here’s a little taste of what he discovered:

✓ Low cholesterol is associated with heart arrhythmias.

✓ The American Geriatric Society reported that people over 65 years old with elevated cholesterol levels had decreased mortality. People with cholesterol levels as high as 417 had a better survival rate than people under 189.

✓ The Journal of Cardiac Failure published an analysis of 1,134 patients with heart disease that showed lower survival rates among those with low cholesterol than among those with high cholesterol.

These stats should raise your eyebrows. You can read much more about the relationship between fat, cholesterol, and heart disease in Chapter 13, but I wanted to give you some context before jumping into my explanation on fats and how you should treat them in your diet.

You can put all fats in one of two broad categories: animal fats and vegetable fats. I cover each here.

Animal fats

Animal fats are usually saturated (unhealthy) fats and considered by some people to contribute to the clogging of the arteries. Animal fats can be found in meat and dairy products, including butter.

Unless you’re eating 100 percent organic animal fat, you should try to limit the amounts of animal fat that you include in your diet — not because of the cholesterol, but because the fat is a storehouse of toxins that the animal received. Simply put, non-organic animal fats have a lot of toxicity and do very little to contribute to your overall health, and you should dodge them whenever possible.

In addition, strike these items off your shopping list immediately: anything that contains trans fat, hydrogenated fat, or partially hydrogenated fat. These substances are awful for you and have no place in a healthy diet!

Although fish oil is technically an animal fat, it’s really in a class of its own and is a healthy oil to consume if it is free of toxins.

Vegetable fats

Vegetable fats are easier to think of as vegetable oils. They include oils like almond, canola, corn, flaxseed, grapeseed, hempseed, olive, peanut, safflower, soybean, sunflower, walnut, and motor oil. (Okay, that last one isn’t true. Just wanted to make sure you’re paying attention.)

Vegetable oils are usually considered to be healthier than animal fats, but that isn’t always the case. Cottonseed oil, for instance, is usually very saturated and quite unhealthy. On the flip side, some vegetable oils have been unfairly given a bum rap. Take coconut oil, for example. Some studies have shown coconut oil to be harmful, but those studies were conducted with hydrogenated coconut oil, which is different from more natural versions of the oil. Natural coconut oil isn’t nearly as bad for you as you may have heard, especially when you get 100 percent organic virgin coconut oil. In fact, I think coconut is one of the best oils you can use when cooking. It’s also worth noting that coconut oil contains a substance called lauric acid, which has been shown to have antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. (Some indications exist that it works as an immune system booster, too!)

You can also feel good about using flaxseed oil, olive oil, and hempseed oil for cooking or for putting directly on your food.

Venturing beyond Your Grocery Store

Earlier in this chapter I clue you in on how to sort through the various organic food options you find at your local grocery store, and in Chapter 6 I give you advice on how to avoid nasty processed foods when you’re in the grocery store. But what if you want to set your sights beyond the grocery in your quest to find healthy, non-toxic food options?

If that’s the case, let me first commend you on making the decision to step beyond the easy and obvious sources for food that so many people limit themselves to. You don’t have to buy all your food from one store, and in many cases it can pay off to shop around both in terms of the variety of healthy food on offer and also in terms of price. In this section, I cover three options to consider for food shopping: health food stores, farmers’ markets, and Web or catalog suppliers.

Going to a health food store

More and more health food stores have been popping up lately, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. Not every health food store offers a huge variety of healthy, organic, and toxin-free foods, but you’re still likely to find options that don’t often pop up on conventional grocery store shelves.

Picking low-toxin food at a health food store is easier than at the grocery store because you won’t be bombarded with unhealthy and processed alter- natives. However, you still need to pay attention to the labels and make sure you’re getting the right level of organic. (Remember that 100 percent organic is the best.)

If you plan to do a lot of shopping in a health food store, take the time to get to know some members of the store staff. It’s always useful to make friends with the person who’s most informed about where the food is sourced. He or she can help you figure out which food options are the most healthful and which ones fit in best with your particular diet. As a rule, you should also be able to find someone who is borderline militant about the purity of the organic foods in the store, and that’s a good person to know, too.

Some health food stores have co-op arrangements that allow you to pay a set amount of money and get a certain amount of organic food each week. These arrangements can be very cost efficient and much easier than handpicking the food at a conventional grocery store. The co-op practice is also a good one because it limits the amount of food that the stores have to throw away due to spoilage. However, you lose some flexibility because you essentially get whatever the store gives you during a given week. If you’re interested in a co-op arrangement, be sure to ask someone at your local health food store.

Capitalizing on farmers’ markets

Farmers’ markets and roadside stands are great places to buy food, but you really must get to know the growers to make sure they’re dedicated to

organic farming practices. Otherwise, you run the risk of buying food that has been grown using conventional methods involving pesticides, chemical fertil- izers, and more. If you develop a relationship with a grower at a local stand or farmers’ market, you should be able to find out pretty quickly whether or not he is indeed committed to growing his crops in a non-toxic way. You can always ask about the farm’s organic certification status, too.

Turning to the Web and catalogs

It’s becoming more common for people to turn to the Internet and to catalogs for their food needs, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because those options — particularly the Internet — can put a huge amount of possibilities at your fingertips. You can find a tremendous range of foods available online, and because many of the companies have very low overhead you can sometimes find great prices.

The problem with ordering food over the Internet or through a catalog is that you can be faced with a more difficult challenge when it comes time to con- firm the quality of the food. If you’re considering ordering food products from one of these sources, be sure to study up on the organic labeling standards I describe earlier in this chapter and do your homework before ordering. (Ask for referrals, read reviews, and get all the details on how long the site or catalog has been in business before you lay down that credit card information.)