What Do You Think Thursday with Skinny Scoop: Organic vs. Made in the USA

Running a household is not an easy job.  Yes, there’s lots of stuff to do (cleaning, laundry, organizing, pickups, drop offs, making appointments, having play dates, meal planning, cooking, grocery shopping), but it’s a whole lot harder when I attach research and emotion to these tasks.

I know.   I can hear you pondering: how and why is she attaching research and emotion to the most mundane tasks when she could be focusing more time on catching up with Watch What Happens Live on Bravo.   (Oh, wait.  That’s me again).

Although I won’t get into each task (maybe it’s time to go back to therapy), I am going to focus specifically on meal planning and grocery shopping.  These are totally emotionally charged tasks for me.

I feel this pressure to make sure My Babes are getting the best food that we can afford.  Here’s a sample monologue that goes on in my head while I am figuring out what to eat: Are they getting enough greens?  How about yellows and oranges?  Oh, wait; we can’t have pasta three nights in a row so let’s try quinoa.  They don’t like quinoa.  How can I jazz up brown rice?  And maybe let’s give kale another try.  Because I like to torture everyone in my family with health food.  It’s so rewarding to spend all this time meal planning only for everyone to hold out for a bedtime snack.

Seriously, I was a much happier person when I didn’t know about quinoa or kale.  I do believe I would be a much happier person if hot dogs were healthy.

When I get to the actual grocery store, I feel like am walking around trying to avoid traps with hidden high fructose corn syrup while trying to find solace with products made with whole wheat flour (not enriched wheat flour because that’s what the evil processed foods are made of).  I feel like I am doing a good thing by incorporating more beans into our diet only to find out that the cans are lined with BPA.

*sigh*

However this issue that causes the most emotional stress is buying organic or buying produce from the US.  Case in point: I was buying salad greens (the real green color, not my former favorite iceberg lettuce).  I could buy the organic from a neighboring country or the nonorganic from the US.   Or how about the organic frozen broccoli from China that you can get at Costco versus the nonorganic frozen broccoli from Mexico at Kroger?  And on a related note: how is it that I am forced to buy cucumbers and peppers from Mexico?  There is not one greenhouse in all of the United States that does not produce these two totally non-exotic vegetables?

And I’m afraid if I make the wrong choice, I can poison my family with either pesticides or E. coli.  (I still get all twitchy remembering the two different summers when tomatoes and spinach were tainted with E. coli).

So what do you think?

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