Realfoodology - 15: The Organic Watchdog Mark Kastel

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

I speak with Mark Kastel of Organic Eye, an organic industry watchdog. They monitor the increasingly corrupt relationship between corporate agribusiness and government regulators that has eroded the working definition of organics. We cover many different topics in the organic food realm: organic farming & regulations, how we spend the most on healthcare and least on food compared to any other country, how to budget so you can afford healthy, organic food and more! Show Links: https://organiceye.org/ https://www.beyondpesticides.org/

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. We have the cheapest food in the world, bar none. As a percentage of our income, we spend less on food. We have the most expensive healthcare, bar none. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan. This week's episode is with Mark Castell of Organic Eye, which is an organic industry watchdog. They monitor the increasingly corrupt relationship between corporate agribusiness and government regulators that has eroded the working definition of organics. I'm so happy to

have someone on our side making sure that they're, I mean, they're really just holding companies accountable and trying to uphold the organic standard, which is incredibly important, especially with everything going on in the food industry right now. So we have an amazing conversation. We cover a lot of different things, including organic farming and the regulations, how here in America we spend the most on healthcare and the least amount of money on our food compared to any other country in the world. And we talk about how to budget so you can afford healthy organic food and so much more.

This is such a great conversation. He is full of so much information and I really, really enjoy this conversation and I'm excited for you guys to hear it. And with that, let's get to a question before we get to the interview. Did you know that most cookware and appliances are made with forever chemicals? Yes, that means your nonstick pans, your air fryers, your waffle makers, your blender could possibly have PFAS and yes, even our beloved crockpots and pressure cookers. I have actually

been talking about this for so long. Back in 2006, my mom came to my dorm room and made me get rid of all my nonstick pans because she was concerned about me being exposed to something called Teflon. Teflon is a coating that is used on nonstick pans and a lot of these appliances that I just named. So I've avoided Teflon, nonstick, PFA coated appliances, pots and pans, you name it for a very long time. And the only option for the, for a very long time was just stainless steel pots and pans. So I was really excited when a company like our place came out because they started creating really beautiful cookware and appliances that are like pieces of art. Every appliance that I have from our place, I legit want to store it on the counter. And I'm

the type of person that does not want anything on my counter because I like it to look really just clean and minimal. But I'm so obsessed with all the our place products that I have so many of them displayed on my counter because they are legit pieces of art. Our place is a mission driven and female founded brand that makes beautiful kitchen products that are healthy and sustainable all their products are made without p5s which are the forever chemicals and also made without ptfe which is teflon if a company is not outwardly stating that they don't use these chemicals then if they are using non-stick coating on their appliances they are absolutely using forever chemicals and there's been increasing

global scrutiny for their impact on the environment and our health and recognizing this impact. The EU plans to prohibit PFAS by 2025. Our place has always been PFAS free and they offer durable toxin-free ceramic coatings, ensuring a healthy, safe cooking experience. And let me tell you, you guys, they are changing the game with non-toxic appliances. They have a blender, they have an air fryer, they have a crock pot, not to mention they're amazing. Always pan. They have a perfect pot, which is just the perfect size for soups. And they also just came out with a cast iron that I'm loving as well. And I more recently replaced all of the bowls and plates in my kitchen because I really needed an upgrade. My other ones were so old. So I got some from our

place and they are so beautiful. The ceramics are beautiful. The colors are amazing. Like I said, everything is like a piece of art. If you want to try any of the products from our place, go to fromourplace.com and enter my code realfoodology at checkout to receive 10% off sitewide. That's fromourplace.com, code realfoodology. Our place offers a 100-day trial with free shipping and returns. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored

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of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Now this is a really cool feature too. It can actually track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts. So if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me and use Real Foodology to get $100 off your Lumen. That is L-U-M-E-N dot M-E and use Real Foodology at checkout for $100 off. Thank you so much to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. As always, these answers and this podcast are just for educational and informational purposes only.

I am an integrative nutritionist, but I'm not a doctor. And I don't know you personally. I don't know what's going on in your body. So just know that this information on this podcast is not a sub for individual medical or mental health advice, and it doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor first. Today's question comes from Maria in Stockholm, Sweden. I was very excited to see that. I love Sweden. She said, hi, Courtney, thank you for everything that you do. I've been

following you for a couple of years and I'm excited that you now have a podcast. Thank you so much, Maria. I would love it if you could share your experience with animal protein. Health is my biggest interest, both for myself, but also trying to help others. I'm vegan at heart, but it doesn't seem to suit my body. I feel cold and satiated and a bit shaky if I go strictly vegan. But then if I have a portion of salmon, for example, it feels like my body can relax again. I listened to episodes six and seven with Balcampo and was even more inspired to find quality products. I was wondering if you eat all kinds of animal protein, including pork and dairy, is there one that you prefer? And what do your servings look like in

size and combination with any other food? Do you limit to one meal a day or do you include animal protein in most meals? I feel like I say this every week, but God, I really love this question because this is something that I personally experienced in my own life. And I went through, um, if you guys listen to my first episode, I go into it a little bit with my journey of going vegan. And I think the biggest takeaway here in Maria's question is that we have to stop getting so stuck in this mindset of like, okay, this is the diet that I need to make work, that I need to fit into my lifestyle because I've either read that it's good for me or, you know, and this is not a, I want to tread very lightly with this because I, I want to respect the fact that a lot of people are vegetarian vegan for moral reasons. And I will never argue with that. I fully respect that. Um, but the problem that I do have with veganism and vegetarianism is that, like I was saying,

we get so stuck in our ways and thinking that we have to fit our diet into this one box. And unfortunately, it's not going to work for everyone. And this is a perfect example of someone who is trying so hard to be vegan or vegetarian because she feels like it's going to be the best for her health, but her body is literally telling her opposite. Maria, you say that you feel cold, satiated, a bit shaky when you go vegan, but then when you have salmon, it feels like your body can relax again. So my personal advice would be to listen to your body. Your body is clearly telling you that it needs meat and that veganism does not work for your body and for your biology.

And that's okay. We're all different. I'm sure many people listening here thrive and feel great on a vegan and vegetarian diet. And I will never argue with that. My biggest thing is we need to make sure we're tuning into our body and really, really listening to what it's telling us. And clearly your body is telling you that you need to eat meat. Um, let's see, I want to address some of these other things. So it's okay. So you're wondering if I eat all kinds of animal protein, including pork and dairy. So I don't do particularly well

with dairy, so I don't eat a lot of it, but I've found over the years, like, um, that I can eat a little bit of cheese here and there. I can have a little bit of sour cream or, you know, a little bit of dairy ice cream or whatever it is, and I'm okay. But if I start building it up and I have cheese like five days a week or something, I will start feeling the effects and not feeling super good. So I mostly do, um, non-dairy stuff, but I'll have it occasionally if it's around and, and I'm fine with that. And again, this is all about truly tuning into your body and figuring out what works best for you. And this took me a long time. I mean, it took me 10 years to really get to a place where I'm able to tune in, listen to what my body needs.

And that's kind of the way that I approach animal protein as well, as far as like servings and what kind of animal protein I eat. I'm a little bit funny in particular about it because I've never really liked meat. Like as a kid, I would never eat red meat. Well, I shouldn't say never. My parents would try to force me to do it. And we had, I grew up in Texas and we had steak Sunday, every Sunday as Texans do. And I hated the taste of steak so much that I would chipmunk it in my cheeks because my parents would make me sit at the table until I finished my plate.

And no hate. They were just doing what they knew best. But I hated it so much that I would just chipmunk it. I would store it in my cheeks, and then I would ask to go to the bathroom, and I would flush it down the toilet. That's how much I hated red meat. I've finally gotten to a place recently, thanks to Belcampo, where I'm eating a little bit more, but I mostly just stick to turkey and chicken because that's the meat that I gravitate towards to. That's the meat that I personally crave and that tastes good to me. And then I'll occasionally

do like a burger, which I've been doing more lately. Um, as far as pork goes, I've always really avoided pork. I'm more recently have been eating more bacon than I would like to admit. But when I do buy bacon, I make sure that it's nitrate free, organic and pasture raised because especially with pigs, pigs are some of the dirtiest animals ever. No matter how you think about it. I love pigs. I think they're so cute. But as far as like the way that they operate and live in the, in the world, they're considered the garbage and waste eliminators of the farm, often eating literally anything they can find. And so that includes not only bugs and insects, but like whatever leftover scraps they

find laying around their own feces, as well as dead carcasses of sick animals, including their own. So there's just kind of garbage disposals. And the way I approach eating meat is I want to eat whatever is going to be the healthiest for me. And you know, you have to think about it. You eat whatever that animal ate that you're eating. And a big thing with pigs is that their digestive system operates like rather basically meaning that a lot of their toxins, um, don't get flushed out. They're actually stored in their adequate fatty tissues. So then when you eat it, you're actually going to eat on, you know, take on some of those toxins. They also harbor a lot of viruses,

parasites. They're particularly prone to trichinosis, which is a specific parasite that they carry. So there's just a lot of risk with eating pork. So I don't really eat that much. And then as far as serving sizes go, and I have to go back to my question. And you asked, do I limit to one meal a day? So I really have gotten to a place where I just listen to my question. Um, and you asked, do I limit to one meal a day? So I really have gotten to a place where I just listened to my body. So I don't even think about it as far as like, okay, I'm only going to have meat with this one meal this day. Um, there are some days where I will

eat vegetarian the whole day. And then there are some days where I, and I'll have meat maybe in two meals, you know, and, and, you know, sometimes it's just eggs in the morning or I'll have a little bit of bacon in the morning or whatever. But I really just, I listen to my body. And a really important thing about serving sizes. So Mark Hyman, Dr. Mark Hyman has a saying that I love, and this is kind of what I've subscribed to, is he always says we should be treating our meat like a condiment and he calls it condiment, meaning you don't want the meat to be the star of the show. You want it to be more like a condiment, a side dish. So use your, you know, your vegetables and your good, healthy fats as more of the like star of the show, like get as many veggies on your

plate as you possibly can add a little bit of good, healthy fat, whether that's avocado butter, um, some sort of nut or seed butter. And then as far as your meat, you want it to be more of like a side dish instead of like a big fatty steak being the whole meal. Cause look, we eat too much meat in this country. Um, and I know you're in Sweden actually, and you guys eat a lot of meat in Sweden as well. So we could all do better by cutting back on it a little bit. And I think that's it. I think I covered everything. Thank you so much for writing in, Maria. I want to remind everyone listening that if you have a question, I would love to answer it on air. Please email me at realfoodologypodcast at gmail.com. And with that, let's get to the show. Thank you so much for coming on today, Mark. I'm really excited about this conversation. So why don't you start out telling my audience what you do? Geez, I'm still trying to figure that out after all these years. So I call myself a farm policy analyst. That's been my title basically for the last 15 to 20 years. But I'm also referred to as a organic industry watchdog.

If I had a business card today, I'd probably say professional troublemaker because I'm a polarizing figure in the organic community. If you get your hands dirty for a living and crack a sweat farming, I work for you. I'm a hired man. And if you buy organic food because you understand that it's not just because it doesn't have agrochemical and drug residues, but because we're seeking traditionally superior, denser, nutritionally dense food, and that how you grow organically makes a difference. I'm your big friend. If you look at organics as a marketing vehicle and you only want that USDA seal because you're out to make money, I'm a real troublemaker.

And so I don't mind that dynamic. I know who I work for. We have mutual respect for each other. And I always like to say, you know, who owns the organic label? We all do. We all do. We all do. You do out in LA and eating and the farmers I work for here in Wisconsin and Minnesota and around the country, we all share that. So if people are undermining the working definition for greed, we have to band together to fight that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's going to take all of us, you know, all of us to fix this, what's happening in our country right now. So you, cause I know right now you work for a company called Organic Eye and Beyond Pesticides, which I actually see, oh, you were wearing your Organic Eye hat and I see the Beyond Pesticides behind you. Can you explain to people a little bit about what, what you guys do with that? Sure. I'll explain that really briefly. First of all, we're not a company, although we're incorporated. We're incorporated as a public interest group, a public charity. We're a 501c3 tax exempt charity.

And we work for organic consumers, organic farmers, ethical business people. So Organic Eye is about a year old. We just had our first anniversary. I've been doing this work for, again, for a decade and a half after founding what was a preeminent organization in organics. Is that the Cornucopia Institute? Sorry to interrupt you. Founded the Cornucopia Institute. I no longer have anything to do with that. Oh, really? But I'm continuing this work because a number of organizations came to me and said, we don't want you to retire. Organic Eye remains to be a real asset to people who care about organics. Well, this is really important work and I will definitely get into this in the conversation, but I'm so grateful to have people like you who are watching out for organic and the

standard because it really does need to be protected. And we'll definitely get into that. But before we get into that, I want to talk a little bit about, so there's obviously no dispute that food is the most important element and foundation of our health, but a lot of us take that for granted. And there's a huge misconception around organic food. I hear people saying this all the time, organic food is elitist, it's only for the rich. And while they're not wrong, because it's- I don't hear that very often. I read it in farming publications and- It's propaganda.

Forbes magazine, business lobby. It was really interesting. When I first got involved in organics in the 80s, when it was first commercialized, and I was a certified organic farmer before it was required by law to be certified. I helped launch what's now Organic Valley, which is one of the largest organic businesses. That's amazing. We were attacked constantly because the conventional food industry was threatened. If organic food was better or safer, there must be something wrong with ours. Well, maybe. But now that almost every brand, major brand is owned by corporations and you can go to the Organic Eye website, which is www.organiceye.org. And on there is a chart that shows you corporate control of all the brands.

So you name the brand, I almost guarantee you that one of the agribusinesses that we thought we were creating an alternative to owns it. So we've been kind of co-opted. Now, some of those companies are acting responsibly. Others are just a marketing vehicle. So we started out being attacked. And now there's not so much of an attack because they got profit dollars in organics. They just want to change the working definition of what organic food is really all about. So when you say that, that they want to just change the working definition of organic,

what do you mean exactly? So they're just trying to, are you saying that they're trying to hold on to their agribusiness, but then also appease to the organic movement because they know there's money to be made there? Yeah, sure. They want to do both. To change organic agriculture and food processing, I'll talk about this separately. They want to practice what I refer to as organic by substitution. We will raise dairy cattle on quote farms, I don't call them farms, but on feedlots with 2,000 to 25,000 cows. I mean, I work for people whose cows have names, not numbers. You know, most people go to the store and if they buy meat, poultry, it comes in a foam tray with plastic, you know, was there an animal in there? And eggs, milk. And so I visualize that. And I say thanks, not only to the Lord for my meal that is part of, and I don't see God as this great bearded dude up

in the sky. I see the miracle of God around me on this farm every day. And there's something beautiful and magical every day. And so this wasn't just plopped down by a manufacturing system, although that's how they're treating animals today. And so I want to recognize that the spirit and life of this animal was taken to sustain me, my health, to give me joy if I'm enjoying this wonderful meal. And then I want to make sure that my patronage, my involvement in the food system as an eater or a consumer is ethical so that the animals that I consume, and I actually know where my milk and meat and eggs come from, are living a really happy cow life or chicken life or dairy cow life. As I say, I'm in dairy barns. I know where my milk

comes from. It comes from one farm. I have been lucky enough to get fresh unpasteurized milk from a herd of Normandies. They're not black and white Holstein. And there's a relationship between the animals and the people on that farm. They love that, you know, they're not pets, they're working animals, but they love their people. They were raised from little baby calves on a bottle by their people. Their people love these animals. As I said, they have names. Yeah. And they're loved their whole life. And at a minimum, they're respected and valued. And they come in, the farmer comes in the barn stew who I milk my cows and they nuzzle them and bump them and they're just happy and joyful. And

they spend their time outside on pasture, not like conventional cows or pseudo organic cows that are in a big building or in a feedlot confined with thousands of other almost 24 seven. And so I want to make sure that, you know, I don't want to be a vegetarian. Some people do. And i personally respect that option whether it's for ethical reasons or for perceived health advantages but i eat these livestock products and i want to make sure that the animals that are involved in producing my food are respectfully treated so that's the little tangent on saying grace and being conscious. And even if you're a vegetarian, that these are living plants. First of all, truly sustainable,

regenerative agriculture is almost impossible without animals in the mix somewhere. So if you buy organic vegetables, and you should, and you say, well, I'm a vegan or vegetarian. Well, most of those vegetables are grown with animal manures and composts, composted animal as being the primary soil nutritional source. So, um, so you, you still have skin in the game, even if you're not eating meat to make sure that animals are properly treated, uh, and that your friends and family who do eat meat, eat the healthiest meat and aren't part of the problem, but part of the solution. I agree. And this is a really important component of this because I always say if you're vegetarian just simply for the animal welfare, I see it as you're not really you don't have any skin in the game. You're not making any you're not voting at all. taking care of the animals and they're making sure that these animals are fed well, taken care of, like you said, living out happy, healthy lives, then that's going to only encourage these farmers

and more farmers to do it this way as well. Absolutely. We're in charge. We have the money. I would never try to talk anybody out of being a vegetarian if they are for spiritual reasons. No, of course not. Yeah. Fully respect that. There are vegans who, even if the animals are treated wonderfully their entire life, wouldn't want to consume an animal. And, and so I respect that, but it's actually, you know, what's funny and we can talk about different diets and all these plant-based diets. The majority of people are choosing these plant-based milks, some of which have more sugar in them than candy bars, and almost some of them no protein. So their nutritional

profile is very questionable. So 70% of the people who are buying these plant-based beverages or milk, almond milk, soy milk, they're not lactose intolerant and they're not vegans. 70% of them consume dairy items, products, but they've been like fooled into thinking these are better for your health. And so, you know, we need to drill down on those and people who are vegetarians or ethical vegans need to eat vegetarian or vegan food, not food. They need to eat food, not highly processed, genetically engineered, cell cultured meats or meats. I'm going to have to cut it. Yeah. Air quotes.

Ow. Yeah. The Impossible Burgers, Beyond Burgers, sorry to interrupt you, but yeah, they're all disgusting. Yeah, they're not organic. Some are using genetically engineered yeast. They're produced in a stainless steel laboratory. They're produced with items. They may or may not be grown here in China. They're synthesized. The protein is from isolates, so they don't take a whole plant. They're isolating parts of it, so very highly processed. I also read with Impossible Burger specifically

that they were having a lot of allergic reactions. A lot of people were going into anaphylactic shock because it's a new type of protein that the human body has never seen before. And so a lot of people that were eating it, their body was, yeah, they were having allergic reactions because it was a foreign invader per se. I've not heard that, but yeah. I'm sure you know who Michael Pollan is. Love him. Yeah. Seminal book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. And I know Michael and collaborate

with him periodically, though not for a little while. This is really exciting. Organifi now has kid stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens, and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called Protect. It's a delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders

to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The easy greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids growing bodies without fillers, additives, or junk. It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch

similar to Kool-Aid, is called Protect, and it is to support your child's daily immune health with food-derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids. So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste and it's low sugar and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful

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But it's not food. So a lot of this stuff looks like what grandma used to maybe make, not just the meat analogs, but mostly what's in the middle of grocery stores is fake food. And there are occupations called food technologists. They use colors. Some are natural, some are artificial. They use flavors. Some are natural to make up for the fact that by highly heating and processing these foods, we denature them. They have to put vitamins and minerals back in. And so these are artificial constructs. And and so, you know, we're getting to the root of of good health. We want to eat the safest food in terms of any kind of deleterious contaminants,

be they biological pathogens, chemicals, drugs. And we also want to eat food that is nutritionally superior because that's the basis of health and well-being and the the functioning of our immune system and never before in the history of mankind maybe but certainly during my lifetime have has this been truer than during this pandemic and you know why are some people dying and some people are hardly sick. We don't know yet, but, but vitamin D is thought to be a partial component, overall health. I mean, yeah, your metabolic makeup, like what's happening in your body is really what's going to affect. Yeah. So I like to rant and rave about this in speeches. Sometimes we have the cheapest food in the world, bar none, as a percentage of our income, we spend less on food. We have the most expensive healthcare,

bar none. What's the result of that dynamic? We have levels of chronic disease off the Richter scale. Our longevity compared to other developing countries is falling. Our infant mortality, low birth rate, way up. And so we are not being well served by having this cheap industrialized food, much of it imported now, and an incredibly expensive healthcare. So we're treating people who are sick. We're not preventing them from getting sick. And where the rubber is really meeting the road now is COVID because some people get sick, some don't. Some people get kind of sick. Some people are going to be invalids for life or die. And so we have some of that control. And if you haven't educated yourself, probably if you're watching this, you probably already are a believer. Share this series of podcasts, not just with me, God help you, but

share these with your friends and family, because now is the time. If you haven't started, there's an old saying, you know, when's the best time to plant a tree? You know, 25 years ago. When's the second best time? Today. So when's the next best time to start eating? Well, I started on Wonder Bread and Velveeta processed imitation food. And my mother was very proud in the mid fifties to have breastfed me

for a whole week, a week. She breastfed me because most kids, you know, infant formula, now you're going to make me really rant, rant, rant. Infant formula, highly processed, filled with even organic infant formula, filled with synthetic chemicals and artificial vitamins. And they're, and they advertise closest thing to mother's milk, hey, it ain't close. It will never be the same. It will never be the same. It will never be the same. Mother's milk, magical. The scientists don't know why the interactions of all the lipids and other nutrients in that milk. And so not only are you, you know, preventing your children from being obese and putting them on a lifetime track of superior health, but mothers gain this weight

for pregnancy and breastfeeding, and then they don't breastfeed. And so that's part of the obesity epidemic for women and ups your breast cancer risk, your risk of diabetes, other metabolic problems. So breastfeed and naturally people breastfed for a couple of years, not a week. If my mother's listening still. Well, I do want to say for anyone listening, cause I don't want anyone to get bummed out there. There are certain circumstances where women have tried and they're unable to do it. Cause I've, I've had some friends that have really struggled with it, but if you're able to, it really is the perfect, I mean, that's, we call it nature's perfect food for a reason. Yeah. So let's, let's talk about, let's go on a tangent a little bit. There are

women who physically either can't breastfeed or don't have enough milk and they need to supplement at certain times, then seek out organic infant formula because number one, it's made, the base product is made out of dairy, organic dairy powder. Number two, because it's organic, there are certain added ingredients that are scrutinized and that's what we work hard on. And Dr. Schuster on Organic Eyes staff works hard on. And we have a real fight because they're trying to put all kinds of gimmicks in there that may or may not be healthy, that may or may not be beneficial. I've seen some that have oils in them, like industrialized oils, like canola oil. Yes, they have oils. They have sugars and sweeteners. You don't want to use them unless you have... There are also societal reasons. Some women have no choice. They're working. They have

to work. They have no support. We claim to be a family-friendly country. It's a lie. Europe, women have coaching for breastfeeding. They have time off. In some countries, the fathers have time off. They don't have to give their infants away to somebody else to care for them. So if you are going to seek out infant formula, please make it organic. Let me rant about one last thing. Yeah. Soy-based formulas.

Oh. Let me rant about one last thing. Yeah. Soy-based formulas. Children who are vomiting or having other problems, the doctors traditionally have automatically said, well, they must be allergic to dairy. In Europe, I'm not sure if it's all Europe or just some countries, you have to actually have a prescription from a physician to get a soy-based formula because there are real deficiencies and risks involved. And soy acts as a phytonutrient or a- Phytoestrogen.

Phytoestrogen, I'm sorry, or an estrogen mimicker. And it's really, there hasn't been enough research in terms of what impacts that can have either in utero. So think about what you're eating. Very important to have an all-organic diet while you're pregnant, before you're pregnant, while you're pregnant, and while you're lactating. Folks, very important. So I form you up to think very, very carefully about whether that's the problem. And I formally commissioned research that looked at this artificial DHA oil from alga oil from plant-based algae as a part of the human diet. Never.

And there was really questions about its efficacy. But when it first went on the market, the FDA received a flurry of adverse reaction reports. And now that it's in all infant formula and people can't compare, that might be the problem. So anyways, let's go off infant formula. Well, okay. So I started to say earlier that I, cause I really want to make this point. I think it's really important for people to hear this because we do hear a lot that it's elitist and only for the rich. And while people are, they're not wrong when they say that only because I, I, I don't want to discount the fact that it is really expensive. And unfortunately it's a privilege to be able to afford organic or have access to it. But part of the thing that I really want to, well, I mean, this

is why I'm having these conversations. I want to change this. Organic food should not be a privilege. This should not be this way, but we have certain policies like the farm policy or the subsidies that we pay to farmers to grow certain foods. And then there's corporate lobbyists. And like you were saying earlier, the big agriculture companies have so much money. Let's talk about that a little bit. How do we fix this? How do we make it to where organic is not considered an elitist thing? And how do we make it more affordable and accessible for people? Well, first, let me suggest that there's two things in play that we all together individually for our families have power to address. One is how you prioritize your life. So I have people who work for me, who make a modest income. We work for nonprofits, so

we're not on the corporate gravy train. And so junior employees that are starting out, they're not rich. I've had employees, staff members have two or three kids that eat all organic food, but they drive a used car. Every member of the family doesn't have an iPhone. They don't have a $1,200 cable package. They've decided that food is a really important component to our life. I can remember years ago going into one of the food co-ops I'm a member of. And that's where I did a lot of my, what I call guerrilla market research for my corporate clients back when I was helping farmer cooperatives form. And I'd say to somebody, you know, I look at what's in their cart. Why aren't you buying organic food? And it's too

expensive was the answer. And then she went out and got into what today is a $65,000 Chevy subdivision, getting 14 miles per gallon. Where are your priorities? So number one, we can control that. If you think food is too expensive, look at what else you're spending your money on. And there are people who truly, and so let me have a little plug. I run a nonprofit. We'd be honored if you went to Organic Eye and supported this work. But before right now, any of us do that, we have to recognize that there's some people right now with no jobs, no money, and no food, whether it's organic food or not.

So we need to be supporting the pantries in every community and the suppliers, Second Harvest, that feed those pantries. So there are some people who can't afford any food. But for most of us in America, we make the choice of what we spend our money on. Do we buy a $1,200 barbecue or a $50 barbecue? Do we buy very best food? So that's the first. But let me tell you that if we get away, and the other thing, pre-pandemic, over 50% of our food dollars were spent away from home, either at restaurants, at Domino's Pizza, at the food bar at Whole Foods. And that is really, really expensive food. So cook, you know, people forget how to cook, you know, number one, eat food, number two, cook food. So let me give you an example. I buy organic chicken, not just any organic chicken,

because if you go to Whole Foods, most grocery chains, you're getting organic chicken, not just any organic chicken, because if you go to Whole Foods, most grocery chains, you're getting organic chicken that's raised by Tyson in houses with 20,000 or 30,000 birds each that never go outside. Forget about the law. I'm the gumshoe. I'm the guy who investigates this as an organic industry watchdog. I visit these places. They all have an excuse why their birds aren't out that day. They're basically not out. And so the nutrition isn't there. The quality of life for the bird isn't there.

It's conventional chicken with organic grain fed. But I buy chickens from St. Bridget's Meadow Farm, my friend owns, that are rotated. They have electric mesh fencing. So they stay and then they move the fencing every day or a few days. So they're always got, they're not ruminants. They have to have grain. They can't live on all grass. But they do eat weeds and grass.

You can see them eat it down. They eat bugs. They scratch the dirt. Scratch, scratch, scratch, peck, peck, peck, scratch, scratch. That's called a foraging behavior for birds. They're looking for seeds, insects. They love that. That's what gives them a rich life. And the law says, as an organic farmer, you have to provide for their natural instinctive

behaviors, not in a building. So my chicken tastes great. They had a great life while they were here on this planet. And I spend, depending on the size of the chicken, it might be $12 to $20 right now for Thanksgiving. I have enormous chicken. And people go, oh, my God, $15 a chicken. That's so expensive. So first of all, I'm one of your competitors.

If you go to the Organic Eye Facebook page, please like it, please like us. And we have a new video series called Castell's Kitchen. So what do I eat? Which brands do I buy? So we're going to do one on chicken. So you go to the local hardware store. I got mine at Kmart. They're out of business. But patronize your local hardware store. They'll bring it out to the curb for you, get an enamel pot. They're really cheap, a roasting pot.

You can get a bigger one for a turkey. Or I think this chicken I'm defrosting now is going to be in the turkey pot. It's big. And you wash it. You to be in the turkey pot. It's big. And you wash it, you put it in the pot. And at a half an hour, 40 minutes ago, I chop up organic carrots, onions, celery, if I got it. I usually don't. It's not local. Potatoes. I throw them in there. One pot. I make this whenever I have company. One pot. There's nothing to wash.

Leftovers, I put the pot in the refrigerator. Then I, as I did today, sandwiches from my last chicken adventure. I, sometimes the day I make it, I take some of the vegetables, some of the chicken, put it in a Pyrex bowl, put that in a Ziploc bag,

put it in my freezer. Man, there's a quick meal I've got. I don't own a microwave, but I guess people who do can play with that. So when I'm all done and I collect the bones, I boil the carcass, all the bones, scrape the pan, make soup. It's like $2 a meal. Go to Whole Foods Hot Bar, and I don't mean to pick on them because lots of other places. The two member-owned food co-ops I belong to in Viroqua and La Crosse, Wisconsin, they both have a hot bar. But go try to buy a meal for two bucks. That good, that nutritious, that flavorful. And organic. That organic. That pays dividends to the earth, that pays the farmers a fair price. I mean, you know, how, what a win, win, win deal. So was that expensive? No,

that wasn't expensive. So if you buy fresh vegetables and you buy brown rice, I'm not going to say organic before everything. It's all organic in my kitchen. Fresh vegetables, brown rice, millet, quinoa. Make the grain. You stir fry it. Throw some of that chicken that was left over. One canned item that I buy, I guess two as I buy, favorite brand of canned Alaskan salmon. Alaskan salmon is always wild.

Don't buy Atlantic salmon. It's always farm. So I don't like to eat out of cans because of the can liner, but it's just the brand I buy, great salmon, sardines. Sardines, very low on the food chain, low in contaminants,

very high in oil, omega-3s, same with salmon. I throw that into the stir fry. That's my protein. That can is a meal for two to four people, depending on how hungry they are. The sardines I buy, which are really great quality from Portugal, $1 a can, two meals, two to three meals at least. And so I'm taking these really high quality vegetables

and we should talk a little bit about how to shop. And I'm making meals and these are not expensive meals. Now, could I buy hamburger helper and conventional hamburger? And is it cheaper? Yes. And you get what you pay for. And I talked about. But here's the thing. If you're spending less money at the cash register, be prepared to spend more money in your healthcare. You're going to be buying more medication. You're going to spend more money on doctor's visits, hospital visits. And that's really where I think is the disconnect. We're not making that connection widely right now in the U S even though we have the cheapest food, like you brought up, we are paying for it in other ways. And I would argue a lot.

We're paying a lot more for it than we're paying for, you know, this organic food. Yes. Yeah. Well, we are absolutely this, this healthcare industrial complex is bankering us. Let me give you a note. And you're talking about one of my mantras, pay now or pay later. Deal is our cars are about the most expensive thing we have. The most expensive element in that car is depreciation. But we never write a check every day or every month for depreciation. But when you go to sell the car three years later, you lost $10,000. Forget about the $30 oil change. And so pay now or pay later is the mantra. And we don't write that healthcare.

It might be decades from now until we get cancer or diabetes or some really bad malady that- Autoimmune disease or get a really bad case of COVID. Yes, right. And die. So really great food, great food is a value, a high value. It might not be as cheap. We call that acquisition cost. The acquisition cost might not be as cheap.

Over a lifetime, if you look at the food you buy, the health care, and what is the, you know, talk is cheap, but people say, you know, the gift of health. There's nothing more important. People, as soon as you lose your health, you will say, I would have done, I'd do anything to regain it, and I should have done anything to maintain it. And so we as a society are taught, this is kind of this, we don't need a bad mouth capitalism exclusively, but this is- We can a little bit. Well, I will call it unregulated, rapacious capitalism, greedy capitalism. It dominates the media and our thought process. So what do we decide is important it's more important to have a three-year-old vehicle than a six-year-old vehicle and then eat shit

oops can i say that in your you can okay but not on broadcast media here folks um and and so um you know it it makes logical sense, right, to us. And we need to, we're all evangelists for organics and good food. The people listening who believe us, who aren't going to dispute this, you need to talk to your friends and family because they love and trust you. They might not know us. And so you have great influence on others. They're getting this bombardment through media. And what's so insidious, and it really kicks in during the last 48 years in election cycles, is that our media now is coming just to us. They know who we are based on the algorithms.

They know if we're liberal or conservative. They know if we eat good food or junk food. And then they feed us what we are already exposed to. We're not exposed to a broad range of information. And so it's really important. You can be an influencer with people who are important in your life or in your community, because this matters. We're bankrupting ourselves. 30 years ago, 30, 40 years ago, we were spending about 16% of our incomes on food and about 8% on healthcare. In between that time, these chronic diseases have gone wild. We now spend about 8% of our incomes on food and about 16 plus going towards 20%. We can't spend 20% of every dollar, 20 cents of every dollar on healthcare for our families, our school systems, our towns, our villages, our state, and not bankrupt ourselves. Plus what we're spending on the military industrial complex. Oh, I know. Don't even get me started.

And so somehow we have to equalize, spend more money on food, great food, cook, eat out less, but eat out and have fun. But eat less meat, but eat better meat. Americans should eat half the amount of meat and pay twice as much for it. So I had chicken sandwich today. Last night I had chana masala. It's an Indian dish. Chana is chickpea or garbanzo bean. And I'm not sure which language they speak in India.

But it's wonderful. I cook it in my own kitchen. I buy an Indian spice mix. I'm not that creative with organic olive oil, organic ghee, and it's really tasty. I get my protein from those legumes, and I don't need meat at every meal. I try to have one meat meal a day at least and or eggs and one, some dish with beans in it and some other plant-based protein. And I don't mean like some protein that I buy ready-made where they've extracted the protein out of some plant and then mixed it with other highly processed. I mean, food. Real food. Yep. That's everything that Real Foodology, my brand, is founded on, is I just want us to get back to eating real food.

And that means foods in their whole natural state, as close to nature as you can possibly get them. You know, if you can pull them out of your garden and backyard, that is ideal. But if you don't have a garden, then go for whole real foods in the produce section. Right. Let's talk about garden. But one of the things, when you don't extract the protein from the legume, so pea protein isolate is very popular. Soy protein isolate is very popular. It comes with everything. It comes with the fiber. And fiber is one of the things that protects us from colon cancer so we get better nutrition we you know everything so so gardening let's talk about gardening you know we could save money if we garden it takes a little time but what a relaxing

beautiful thing to do like mowing lawns oh man you know i just like to blow my brains out going luckily most of the land here which you can can't see, I can turn my camera around, is pasture. And either the cows mow it or it's mowed with a large haybine, a machine that then makes hay bales. And then they eat it during the winter. And so I live on acres and acres of beautiful green lush that I don't have to mow. But gardening is just, and if you're married or partnered, just a wonderful, calm thing to do to share the end of the day weeding or planting together. If you have kids involved, what a wonderful learning experience. We have a couple sayings here in Wisconsin.

Don't go out to the garden to pick your sweet corn until you already have the water boiling on the stove. So if you want flavor and freshness and nutrition, because the flavor and nutrition profiles are parallel, the garden is the place to buy. So that's to get it from. That's number one. And then you can freeze. You can can it. And having a root cellar with a bunch of, or basement with a bunch of canned goods and a freezer, that is true food security. And again, this pandemic is making us understand that. So the next place to buy is local. So in all my work, watchdogging, the organic movement, I have never found any fraud at a CSA, a community-sponsored agriculture farm, or the farmers who great ones, but maybe the best gardener in Wisconsin. And he has maybe 500 now members in Minneapolis, Madison, Twin Cities, Madison,

and right here in my county where they're at. And so he goes all the way through December. I got so much great food, winter squash, greens, even though it's been cold, radishes, just wonderful food. When I get that CSA box, or if I go to the farmer's market during the summer, it ended a couple weeks ago, that food was picked maybe 10 hours ago instead of 10 days ago in California or Mexico. If I go to my food co-ops, and there are over a couple hundred around the country, most of them have relationships with local farmers. It's like a farmer's market seven days a week. That is really fresh food. It's not as fresh as your garden, but so much fresher than commercial organic food is going to be, and higher integrity. I'm going to suggest higher nutrient value. And you're eating in your food shed, so you're supporting farmers that you might recognize

in your community. Most of them will welcome you for field days when this pandemic's over. But those dollars circulate. There's something we call the multiplier effect. And it's debated about how many times. If you buy some food from Harmony Valley in Viroqua, Wisconsin, that the workers there and the farm owners will spend that in the local community. And it bounces around about seven times before it leaves and goes somewhere else. Somebody buys a pair of boots to work in the barn with.

Somebody else buys a winter coat for the kid. Somebody gets a haircut like I haven't had in eight months. And then we all spend it on each other. You go to buy certified organic food at Walmart or Costco or Target or whatever. And besides for the peanuts, they're paying their workers, they're paying a little better now, but it's still not enough to live on. That money, bang, it's gone. It's gone to Arkansas, you know, heartbeat or to, you know, Mexico or China or wherever they're growing some of that organic food. So I really, really encourage you to garden.

Start out small next year. Buy some seeds this winter while they're still available. Buy certified organic seeds if you can get them. You're supporting organic farmers. You're not handling the chemicals they treat the seeds with sometimes. And get some great books from the Rodale Institute or other publishers. Chelsea Green Publishing on organic farming. The New Organic Grower by Elliot Coleman is a blend between amateur growing and professional growing that was my Bible when I was a farmer, and Elliot is still a friend and mentor. So you'll have a great time. You'll have better food than you get anywhere else. Supplement that. You want to find those local CSA farms.

You want to find a farmer to buy directly chicken from like I do or go to either eatwild.org, I think it's org, or localharvest.org. Google those. I'm going to add these to the show notes. Okay. And thank you. And so they will help you geographically. A lot of states do this. The State Department of Agriculture in Wisconsin has a site that helps farmers connect with consumers. Another nonprofit called the Weston A. Price Foundation helps people. They have local chapters. They're great. Yeah, they're great.

Anyone listening, check out their Instagram, Weston A. Price. They are great. I will also add that in the show notes. Okay, excellent. It's a great resource. Those are all really good resources to eat real organic food, the best organic food, the local organic food. Now, we all have to supplement when, for instance, I have my own milk. I make my own yogurt. The last version,

the last episode of Castile's Kitchen, organiceye.org, or on our Facebook page, is about choosing the brand of yogurt, if you buy it in the store, and which are my favorites, and making your own. It's so easy. But if you don't have that, there's just some wonderful brands that you can choose from. And so every morning I have Organic Valley cream cheese on my toast with walnuts and raisins. And, but there's some other really great local brands of organic cream cheese. And, and when I can get those, I do. And, and so, you know, we need to be educated so we can reward the true heroes in the marketplace and protect our families with the very best food. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's such an

important component of all this. I mean, you mentioned this a little bit, but taking care of the farm workers. I mean, you think about, I think about these poor farmers that are working on conventional farms and they're in terrible working conditions. They work long hours, little pay. This is intensive labor. And then they're being exposed to pesticides with probably no protection whatsoever. And I think I read somewhere recently, you might be able to correct me on this, but I think their lifespan is around like 40 years old because they get cancer at such young ages because of all these pesticides. Protection by law, the farm workers and farmers who are using some of these toxic chemicals have

to wear protective clothing and respirators and things do they always do that there are plenty except the problem is that they send farmers into the fields to pick some of this stuff at their every every farm owner isn't responsible the way they're treating their employees so if there's one thing we do when we buy organic food, forget about better nutrition and safety for our family, helping farmers, helping our community. There's one thing we do. We're protecting those workers that don't have to go out in the field. And many times their children, farm workers, all too often in this country. We started out using indigenous people

as slaves in America, God bless America. Then we brought in African prisoners that we captured and stolen. And we used those people to produce food and fiber. And now we have mostly an exploited immigrant workforce. These are hardworking, honest people that are just trying to feed their families. And the working conditions are horrendous. Many times their children live on the farms, contiguous in these fields. They have really high levels of chronic diseases like asthma. So we are protecting them when we choose organic food, no matter whether it's from big corporate organic or the greatest little organic, we're getting those poisons out of our

environment and the occupational. I came to organic food because of pesticide poisoning myself. 35 years ago, I was involved in conventional agriculture. Oh, I would love to hear that story. And I bet my audience would too. I'm lucky. I am lucky that that happened to me because who knows, I would have gone the same direction everybody else did. I helped, but it forced me to be healthy. So you are so astute in bringing up this one dimension of these are our brothers and sisters,

the farm workers, the people who drive the tractors, the people who are picking out in the fields every day. Who literally put our food on our tables. That's a really important thing to remember. The people that are giving us nutrients, we also need to protect them. Yes. Just like we have the responsibility and we determine how those animals are cared for that are involved in in um production agriculture we decide how the people are treated and and and so if i'm buying conventional food and somebody gets um cancer there's blood on my hands i can can sleep really well. So how many things can we do? As I've called out some of the improprieties in organics.

Can I mention one thing really fast before we get too far away? I just want to mention this because I always like to remind people of this. When you think about how these farm workers have to go in full protection, if you're listening and you've never seen these photos before, I would encourage people to Google it. But these farm workers that are working with these conventional, they're conventional farming and they're working with all these pesticides and herbicides, they have to wear full hazmat suits when they're spraying down the food. And you think about they're spraying down this food and then they're just sending it off to the grocery store. So that's a little food for thought when you think about they're having to wear this protection to spray it on the crops and then we're eating it. So that to me is alone the reason that

I want to eat organic food. You know how I fill in the gaps of my organic diet is with supplementation. I once was walking through Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, just by chance, I was in town and I had some time to kill. And there was a group of school children, you know, 100, 200 gathered around this old lady talking. And she made a lot of sense. And she said, you know, where would the logic be of pouring poison on our food and poison on the ground on this one precious earth? And after listening to her for about 20 minutes, I figured out it was Jane Goodall. Wow. What brilliant. That's cool. So Google pesticide applicator and then click on images. And you'll see this.

And even with all those suits on, it's really hard to not contaminate yourself. And so we're contaminating ourselves every day eating conventional. Yes. Well, as I say, the acute poisoning, I just wrote my end of the year fundraising letter for all charities. We don't do a lot of fundraising or organic. I think this is the second letter this year we've sent out, but I wrote a cover letter. So I'll, I'll give you this little short story. I really enjoy talking to our members around the country that are farmers,

consumers. They, we all come together on food here. And, um, so I'm usually at my keyboard in front of my screen and, but every few times a week I get to talk to people around the country and it's a really joy. And normal times I visit farms, I make speeches, I, I'm out there. So we got a donation and he gave me permission to tell the story. So I wrote it in a letter from a guy named Carl Allen. He goes by CD. And he sent in a donor card with a credit card for $6 donation. And most of our donations are bigger, but we all give what we

can. And really, it's very touching. All donations, you know, we all give what we can. And, and, and really it's very touching all donations. You're giving us the authority to do this work, the moral authority. So, so I call up CD and I say, you know, I, I always like to hear people's story. Why did you come to organics? And he said that I used to be, he's a veteran. I used to be a landscaper. And the guy who owned the company, I ran the crew, decided we were going to quit mowing.

We were only going to spray all those chemicals to make nice green logs. And he did that for a while. And one day he was spraying and he went back to the same place the next day. And there were robins dead underneath this. He said, holly tree. He's in Kentucky. His name is C. Day Allen. And he said, I knew I had to quit. But before he quit, he was having a problem with the hose. He went back to the truck. And the hose decoupled from the tank and burst. And he took a shower and 200 gallons of herbicide. He became critically ill. He could hardly get home that night. Today he's on permanent disability and, and he credits organic food and herbs as being, you know, what helped save him.

And, and as we were talking, he said, Mark, you know, I really appreciate you talking to me. And, and I really enjoyed our conversation. And he said, I'll tell you what, you increase that donation 10 bucks. And I'll tell you, it meant the world to me. I'm almost crying right now. It meant the world to me. And I just called him up again to say hi. And I needed to ask him permission to use his story. He's got COVID now. And he's doing okay. About a week. And so I'll be calling him again. And I sent him a pulse oximeter and a thermometer. He's on a fixed income. And so we need to take care of each other. But these are the stories of people.

This is a guy, if you pay for a lawn service, forget about the food we eat. If you're paying for a lawn service or you're putting chemical fertilizer and pesticides on your lawn, I guarantee you that your kids have pesticides in their bloodstream. That your dog and cat has pesticides in their bloodstream. Even if your dog and cat don't go outside you're tracking into your home it's one of the constituents of your house dust if your neighbors are spraying go to you know organic i we're only focused our core mission on organics go to beyond pesticides they'll give you the options and of not only how to maintain your own property without toxic chemicals but how to maintain your own property without toxic chemicals, but how to

approach your park district, your school board that maintains the playground and convince them that there's a sounder way to manage. So, you know, when you talk about pouring chemicals on our food, it's everywhere and it's in our bloodstream and let's take responsibility for ourselves and our community as a whole.stream. And let's take responsibility for ourselves and our community as a whole. Absolutely. And let's start encouraging these larger corporations to provide us with healthier food that doesn't have all these pesticides and herbicides. Well, we vote when we spend money in the grocery store every day and they're going to respond. So if we buy organic versus conventional, they're going to respond. So if we buy organic versus conventional, they're going to respond.

If we say your organic isn't good enough because the organic milk at Costco, Target, Walmart, a lot of the big grocery stores comes from Aurora Dairy, the largest factory farm operator that's producing, quote, organic milk. You know, that's not good enough for me. When the Washington Post, I worked with the Washington Post on an investigative article, they tested the organic milk from Aurora in terms of nutritional components. It had less than some of the conventional brands out there. So, you know, we send a message every time we seek out the very best food and astute entrepreneurs and investors, they're going to respond. Yeah. And I think an important component of this is what we already talked about, but I just want to reiterate this

is finding CSA boxes, finding local farmers that you can buy local produce from, because that will also, not only will the food be healthier for you, but it will be cheaper, you know, cost efficient, and it's going to be more economically friendly because it traveled less distance. So, overall, win-win. And when I was farming, I mean, the nice thing about a CSA is you give them their box back. That costs like a dollar and a quarter for a farmer. Hundreds of boxes. Those are adding up. And those boxes at conventional grocery stores go in a landfill.

They're garbage. And there's a lot of retained energy in those because they're waxed so they don't fall apart. But let me correct you mildly. That food at the farmer's market at CSA, it might not be any cheaper. It might be a little more expensive than the industrial organic at the grocery store. But in terms of flavor and nutrition, you're getting a bargain. And I'll tell you a waste. Here's a little sidebar story. Go and buy one of those plastic tubs in the grocery store of organic, you know, spinach from California. Open that up.

In a day or two, it's black slime. And because it's old spinach, the only reason it looks good in the store before you open it is they fill a lot of those containers with nitrogen to displace the oxygen. So it breaks down slower. I mean, they've genetically engineered apples so they don't get brown. So we can eat old food. But I buy all year round. There's some growers, including some Amish farmers here in my neighborhood. They grow under a unheated hoop house, plastic dome.

They grow spinach. It's bigger leaves, darker green, thicker leaves. The flavor is incredible. It will last two weeks in my refrigerator without going bad. So value, I paid $9.99 a pound for it. People say, oh, organic food, too expensive. Or that organic, I can buy it cheaper at Target. This is way different than what you'd buy at

Target. And so I use every bit of it. A lot of this food I give away when, you know, I'm trying to encourage you to influence your friends and neighbors. Buy some of this great CSA food. It might be more than you need. I share this food. When I grew food food professionally I shared a lot of food it's you know just joyful and and I have friends that don't have access to the food co-ops that I go to in the CSAs I buy extra food or I buy food they order and I pick it up and give it a you know let's go back to this COVID thing yeah I haven't been in a building in eight months. Both my food co-ops put food in the trunk of my car. The warehouse grocery where I buy my toilet paper, paper towel, that's the only food items I generally buy there are by the brand of canned salmon and sardines are less expensive, but the particular brand I like there, they put the food in the trunk of my car. My CSA, they're putting the food this year in the trunk of my car. My farmer that I buy from, they have a farm store. They put it out on a little table. You take it. I haven't been in a building. You can buy this food very safely. If you do that,

talk to your family, talk to your friends. If there's an elderly person next door, ask them if you can help them. I'm a delivery company because I go to the warehouse grocer. I go to the food court. I pick up for two or three people at a time. I drop it off to them. They don't have to expose yourself by being outdoors or outside at all. I buy the gas.

Food is love. My mother taught me that. Food is love. Food is love. Oh, I love that so much. So, I mean, we've covered a lot today and, you know, there was one other thing I think that we had wanted to cover and that was fraud and organics. And I don't know if that's going to be too long of a conversation to get into now, but when we had talked before we got on camera or on, you know, recording, we're talking about fraud

and organics and that there needs to be caution exercise because there's a lot of processed and junk food that's labeled organic, but I would argue is still not super healthy for us. Can we go into that a little bit? Yeah, let's just do a little bit. And if we ever get back together, we'll do a whole one on fraud, watchdogging, how we're all organic watchdogs, how you can be one of our intelligence agents at Organic Eye. We all own this label together. So first of all, before fraud, junk food versus good food. There's organic junk food out there, folks.

High sugar content, really crummy oils that that i don't eat i want to eat um coconut oil and and olive oil and people will cook with lard and you know real that that that give us energy feed us butter is i'm a butter addict you know toast is the butter delivery vehicle for me um but But we used to joke about, before there was an Organic Valley, I did their first market research and their corporate identity work that came up with Organic Valley Family of Farms. I kind of led that collaborative process. It used to be the Cooley Region Organic Produce Pool. Started out as a vegetable co-op, farmer co-op, and then went into dairy. We used to joke that someday, this is back in the 80s, there would be a

certified organic Twinkie. Well, there isn't one yet. I'm surprised. Well, there's the equivalent of certified organic Oreo cookies and lots of sweets and gummy bears. And I just, you know, the bottom line is that we eat, you know, white flour. We eat things that are way too high on the glycemic index. We eat things that are processed. Well, the original ingredients were agriculturally produced, were produced organically. But then they are synthesized and heated, superheated and ultra pasteurized.

And by the time they get to us, they don't have that same value as going out to the garden or cooking our own food or getting those fresh eggs. And so, you know, you're going to choose and it's harder, more time consuming to cook. But I always tell people, you know, they say, well, what's your favorite dish? Leftovers. So I cook many times more than I need in one meal. And then I have leftovers, either in the freezer or the refrigerator. And so I amortize that cooking time. And if you're partnered in a relationship, one person cooks one day, one person cooks another day. And you can help each other clean up.

And that, again, could be, I refer to this personally as the joy of simple tasks. So can you make cooking and laundry and washing up joyful by either spending that time with your partners, quality time, or with your kids, or on the phone with a headset, wired so you're not firing your brain, and visiting with your family and friends while you're getting something done. So that's junk food versus real food. Don't think that it's organic and healthy. It's going to be your judgment call. The other is fraud. And when money gets involved, things go haywire. And Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act in 1990, OFPA, as part of the Farm Bill that year. And it gave the USDA the authority to protect ethical farmers from unfair competition and to protect consumers from fraud. You don't have to take Mark Castell's word for it, Organic Eye. They've done an abysmal job, according to the USDA Office of Inspector General, who's audited them twice, or ANSI, the American National Standards Institute, that's aud, the USDA does not certify any farms.

They, in essence, certify the certifiers. So there's about 50, a little under 50 certifiers in the United States that go out and inspect farms and processing plants. The farmers and the processing plants pay these certifiers. There's an inherent conflict of interest. The only antidote to that is the oversight of the USDA on the certifiers auditing the certifiers, and they're not doing a good job of it. So that's where it's a shame. We pay our tax dollars to the USDA. People contribute money to Organic Eye so that we can watch this process. We can monitor the USDA. We're, we're governmental and corporate watchdogs. So we all have a stake in this.

And so see something, say something. If something doesn't look right, that it doesn't seem to be organic. We just did an expose on CBD products that were labeled organic, but they weren't legally certified. And we are now looking at going after some of those companies. We filed formal legal complaints against them. And we're using that as a model because we're using that as an example of how the USDA is not doing their job. So I'm happy to say that the local organic food, exemplary in an ethical approach. The larger companies, see Cavi at mThor. And tune into these future Castile Kitchen shows, because we're going to review a lot of brands. I'm going to plug

one brand. We've never gotten any money from them, but we welcome your money. Eden Foods, a diversified grocer based in Michigan. They have everything from, you know, spices to canned beans. And their beans come from Michigan and Canada from people they know, the farmers, not some broker. And most of the dry beans that are organic in this country, quite a high percentage come from China. You know, I don't trust my pet food from China after some of the organic, let alone what you might feed yourself or your children. So eating foods, you know, if it has their name on it,

I have high confidence. So, you know, we can reward the heroes in this business with our patronage and send messages to the bad actors. Yeah, I love that. Well, that's so important. Well, we covered everything I delighted to be interviewed by somebody who really has their heart in the game here. And so this has been a pleasure. I'm going to personally view some of your other podcasts or listen. I know some of my friends have been on. And so I'd encourage your listenership to do the same thing. Be conscious of your food. Just because it comes from a certain brand store or it's a certain brand, the food, or it's, quote, organic, that's just the beginning of your food research.

So take your health, control of your health. You can do it. You'll have fun. This will add, it certainly takes some brain power and time. But for me, it adds satisfaction and meaning to my life. It connects you with God's creation, the earth, consciousness, how you steward it, how you take care of the people who produce our food, how you take care of the animals involved, how you take care of the other wild critters out there that are exposed to all these agrochemicals and, um,

And how you take care of yourself. And yourself, number one, you know, you can't be good for the earth to other people unless you're healthy and you take care of yourself. So, um, there Hillel, an old Jewish philosopher once said, if I am not for me, who will be? But if I am only for me, what am I? And so, you know, choosing our food is the great, I started, I'll just say this last thing. And I, because I started to say before, when people find out the difference of organic food and the factory farms that they were buying this milk they thought were caring for the animal, they're pissed off.

They feel betrayed. Now, we need you to dig your heels in. And most people with organic will, they're not going to go back to eating conventional food. We know how those animals are all treated. But in consumer items, when Mercedes-Benz went downhill on dependability from years ago, and the consumer union doesn't, consumer reports rate them as high, consumers, they didn't pick it. They didn't join organizations. They just bought a Lexus instead. But organic consumers, they really step up. So I would encourage you to go to organic, I-O-R-G, organic, E-Y-E dot O-R-G. Sign up as a member if you're motivated to do so.

But if you're not ready to do that, we have a free news list. Listen to these podcasts, be educated, and then vote with your dollars. So we're all in this together. And thanks for having me. It's been a stimulating conversation, to say the least. That's so important. Well, thank you so much. I'm so honored to have you on my podcast. I'm really excited for everyone to hear this episode. It's really important. Thank you. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Chris McCone.

The song is by Georgie. As always, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really helps me in this show a lot. See you next week. And never, ever even try Can someone think of tomorrow And make me tell them, tell them That I tried So if he doesn't like me At least I know I am for him

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