"organic foods" news and stories

Earthbound Farm, the company that started out on a small farm selling organic raspberries, has become one of the nation's largest producers of organic fruits and vegetables. They created the bagged salads that have become staples for so many of us (although sadly, their spinach was thought to have been the source of the E. coli outbreak in 2006) and made organic foods widely available.

In 2006, Myra Goldman, one of the founders of Earthbound Farm wrote (along with Linda Holland and Pamela McKinstry) a cookbook called Food to Live By, The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook. It is a volume that embraces the organic ethos and offers up nearly 400 pages of recipes, many of which are from the Organic Kitchen at the Earthbound Farmstand or Goldman's own kitchen.

As is typically true for me when it comes to cookbooks, one of my favorite parts of this book was the introduction. Goldman takes ten pages to share the store of how she and her husband got started farming, where they came from (they were both originally New Yorkers) and how she fell in love with fresh, organic foods. Beyond the introduction, the section of the book that felt the most personal and had the most appealing recipes was the breakfast and brunch section, in which Goldman shares stories of cooking for her kids and includes recipes for savory treats like Spinach, Feta and Mushroom Quiche (the picture looks amazing) and sweet ones like Persimmon and Date Breakfast Bread.

How and when did you fall in love with food?

Gourmet's Barry Estabrook makes sense of the battle over the benefits of organic food. The following is an excerpt of his findings published on Gourmet.com.

It's never a good start to your day when the first email you open is an authoritative-sounding press release forwarded by your boss that directly contradicts something you published on the company's website.

"You know anything about this?" she asked ominously.

The release came from the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Made public on Tuesday, it was headlined: "Scientist Debunks Myth of Organic Nutritional Superiority," and, not surprisingly, it received considerable media attention.

The myth that was supposedly debunked was featured in this space a few months ago. It was a study co-authored by Dr. Charles Benbrook of the Organic Center, an affiliate of the Organic Trade Association, an industry group, which reported on the results of a review of nearly 100 scientific papers examining levels of nutrients in organic versus conventional crops. Benbrook and his associates concluded that organic food was on average 25 percent more nutrient-dense. Their work was regarded as one of the first scientifically valid research projects that clearly showed such an advantage. Earlier studies had been inconclusive. I felt some vindication for my own preference for organic foods and applauded the findings.

The release from the ACSH sharply criticized Benbrook's paper. Its condemnation of his work was based on a critical review written by Joseph D. Rosen, emeritus professor of food science at Rutgers University. To be kind, it is scathing. Some choice arguments...

The story continues at Gourmet.com: Politics of the Plate: Fighting Words

These days, everyone is familiar with the term organic. It is plastered over everything in the grocery store, from instant oatmeal to cartons of milk. However just 25 years ago, organic foods weren't really on the popular radar. One of the first companies to come along and start making people aware of benefits of eating foods grow without the use of chemicals was Earthbound Farm. Started in 1984 with a 2 1/2 acre raspberry crop, they've expanded into one of the largest producers of organic produce in the country. You know those pre-washed bagged salads that your family tears through each week? They were the ones who started that trend.

This year, they are celebrating their 24th birthday and they're doing it in style. Each day for during the month of July, the folks at Earthbound are giving away three copies of their cookbook, Food to Live By. Everyone who enters to win will also get a $1 off coupon for any Earthbound Farm product. Additionally, they've put up 24 tasty recipes and 24 reasons to choose organic foods. So head on over and say happy birthday to a company who helped lead the organic movement.

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The question of whether to go green and shift your diet to a more organic is a challenging one these days. These days all we hear are reports of climate change, the need to buy carbon offsets when you go on long airplane ride and the importance of eating organic. I admit to being on the organic and local shopping and eating bandwagon, although I do it more because the food tastes so much better (and is often less expensive) than the stuff I can get at my local chain grocery store.

Over at Green Daily today, Bruce Watson ruminates on the issue of organic food and whether it's as green and planet-friendly as we'd like to think. Go on over and see what he has to say and let us know what you think.

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Awhile back I acquired a cookbook from my mom. It's one leftover from her hippie days and was appropriately titled, "Country Commune Cooking." It was written by a woman named Lucy Horton, who spent five months in 1971 hitchhiking around the country, visiting communes and collecting recipes. It's interesting as much for the stories she tells about the places she visited and the people she met as it is for the recipes she prints.

One of the things I find interesting about this book is it's emphasis on organic foods. I tend to think of the organic movement as something fairly recent, but according to Lucy, there were quite a few people back in the early seventies who were committed to eating whole, organic foods.

The majority of the recipes in this book are a bit dated, but a few still jump out at me as worth trying. After the jump you'll find a recipe for Curried Squash and Chickpeas that seems, at least to me, to be the perfect dish for this time of year. I imagine that it would be particularly good over a scoop of warm brown rice.