Three health reasons to eat organic this Organic September

1) Organic fruit and vegetables may protect us from cancer as they contain less pesticide residues, and develop higher levels of antioxidants than non-organic.

2) Organic meat and dairy may keep our gut and waistlines healthy as they come from animals not routinely-fed obesogenic antibiotics. Meat and milk containing antibiotic residues may disrupt our gut bacteria, the “microbiome” the control centre of our health and metabolism. Antibiotics make animals gain weight, which while good for commercial meat production, isn’t so good for you and me!

3) Organic meat and dairy contain more anti-inflammatory omega-3 healthy fats then factory farmed because they are are allowed to graze outside and roam. Having a varied diet including grass, makes their meat, and milk rich in healthy anti-inflammatory omega-3 essential fatty acids. Factory farmed grain-fed, confined animals usually contain more pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats. ​​

What kind of issues can anti-inflammatory foods potentially help?

Any disorder with “itis” on the end is an inflammatory issue eg arthritis, dermatitis, gastritis, colitis. There are many other inflammatory issues such as eczema, asthma, and psoriasis (with no “itis”!).

Think of anti-inflammatory foods as those which pour water to put out fire in the body, and pro-inflammatory foods like petrol to inflame the fire. So organic meat and dairy could be the water, while factory farmed may be the petrol.

Organic pitfalls
Investing a fortune in organic fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy at home may not support our health as much as we’d like if we are drinking half a bottle of wine (full of grapes containing pesticides) every night and drinking café lattes out and about made from factory farmed milk. Booze and the milk we drink in coffees out can often be blind spots.

My top top tips for decreasing your pesticide, antibiotic burden:

• Wash non-organic fruit and veg well before eating.

• Have a tablespoon of organic ground flax seeds daily in your porridge, muesli, green shake… flax seeds can keep everything moving along so to speak and can lessen chances of constipation! We need a daily stool to clear toxins such as pesticides out of the body.

• Exercise regularly, or take saunas to sweat out toxins.

• Sign up to a weekly organic fruit, vegetable, and dairy box delivery service. It’ll encourage you to widen your repertoire (which is good for your gut health).