WHAT’S ON YOUR PRODUCE – PART II ~ ISSUE 211 ~ JUNE 7, 2016

By Diane Gold

GENERAL INFO

Whether we are parents, teachers, concerned friends; we have to be knowledgeable about what’s on your produce, that is, our produce. In order to be knowledgeable, we have to have knowledge.

It is clear that we don’t get the full picture from a very young age on which we can build as we understand more. This is absurd, and only we can change this by mentioning it.

So I am mentioning it. I have previously talked about this subject in
What’s On Your Produce – Part I in Issue 147, September 23, 2014. Here’s Part II.

Let’s consider ethics in the food business, not just that raising animals means killing animals; but that being the nurturer of the soil to produce plant food means not using toxins that will inevitably poison the people who eat the food, the land on which it’s grown and the water that we drink or our waterways that sustain life.

THE FACTS

It is imperative that we talk about these important things and that we discuss these facts with our preschoolers. Here, we focus on what’s on your produce.

1) In order to grow food, we must properly prepare the soil so that predatory bugs and microbes will not come to eat our crop.

2) To end up with great plants that do not have questionably toxic pesticides on them, we have to plan several years ahead to get soil in workable condition so that the wrong bugs don’t come, or we can plan ahead and begin our vertical farms which may require NO SOIL which means NO BUGS.

3) Since we have limited funds, we want to save money up front, not thinking that the cost of pesticides later will equal the cost of preparing the soil up front. It seems more expensive up front, so we don’t prepare the soil. Then, when insects and micro-organisms do appear, we go into debt by spending huge amounts of money on pesticides that may be toxic to our health, rather than fixing our soil at that time.

4) New farmers, whether they be single farmers or agricultural giants, do not learn from the mistakes of their foreparents because no one is teaching it. This keeps the pesticide cycle going and going.

MYTH

Myth: organic produce is pesticide free.
Organic produce is not pesticide free. Its pesticides are made without synthetics. That means, unless we grow it ourselves, it has pesticides on it, except in rare cases. Sadly, I just read a blog article that would seem to have been researched, even though there are only a few references to actual studies. In it, it states that organic produce is pesticide free. With people putting info out there incorrectly, we have to work twice as hard to output what’s correct.

5) Giant pesticide companies can double as seed producers. These companies genetically alter seeds to be used with their pesticides. These GMO seed companies teach us that we need pesticide products to control our crop. Apparently, there are some ground breaking, ethical farmers who have proven this to be untrue.

EDUCATION

Why is it that we are not taught the cycle of soil and seeds and successful growth without pesticides? We need to know about this as children so that we can question the use of pesticides and make changes to the way we produce produce.

There is a favorite website of mine called http://whatsonmyfood.org. It is quite shocking to see that some of the seemingly healthiest crops in the world have tragically high amounts of pesticide on them. Even if this pesticide imbalance continues, shouldn’t we know about this from an early age? Is it ethical that there is a term called,

“pesticide tolerance?”

Are we lab rats for which assessment must be made that if pesticides on a food rise beyond our tolerance level, we will die? Or should we protect ourselves should we protect our waterways which means, ultimately, our drinking water?

Wouldn’t a better solution be not to use pesticides but to work together with nature?

ACTION STEPS

1) STUDY how some farmers do not need pesticides.

2) GROW one edible plant in a pot with no fertilizer or GROW one edible plant in the nature of a vertical farm, with no soil.

3) TELL one young person about the fact that pesticides are not clearly discussed early enough in school and have a discussion. Hopefully, the youngster will have had a progressive teacher and be able to teach you some things.

4) MENTION the idea that we don’t learn about pesticides when we are young to your friends.

5) KNOW more about what’s on your produce.

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DIANE GOLD, PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, has been a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, has been a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying peaceful conflict resolution, habit replacement and has been certified in plant-based nutrition.

She believes we deserve to know what’s in and on our food. Thus, Part II of What’s On Your Produce arrives. She says,

“My modus operandi is always to save animals from death by human, my first and foremost reason to be vegan. But that doesn’t include the what’s in it for me scenario. So here it is: eat plants because they are better for the body and mind and eliminate many, if not most, chronic diseases.

“That being said, when we eat our plant food, we must be educated as to what is normal and what is not. It is not enough to think that buying organic plants saves us from pesticides. It does not. Organics use substances that are the same or similar to the chemical products. They are not from person-made substances, but they are similar. And, on produce, in particular, as the Part I, Issue 147 article emphasizes, so much of our produce is coated with a wax-like substance to keep moisture in for travel, including organics (which might be more likely to abuse bees to acquire this substance because they use beeswax coating on most citrus fruits).

“Whatever we think, it is crucial that we teach our children about what’s on your produce, that is, our produce. This is so they can know it’s not normal to choose to eat chemicals, harvested from nature or synthetic, if we can opt to have food that has none, and so they can change it.

“Check out the Vertical Farms article for the perfect way to grow produce with no sprays, chemicals or wax.

“And, in doing so, we get to take overall good care of each other and ourselves – including loving ourselves and our fellow beings at all costs – because we are all always worth it.”

EXERCISE OF THE WEEK:
GO TO WHATSONMYFOOD.ORG AND LOOK AROUND. CHANGE ONE BUYING HABIT, IF NEEDED, BASED ON WHAT YOU FIND.

WHAT’S ON YOUR PRODUCE? (ISSUE 147) SEPTEMBER 23, 2014

By Diane Gold

What’s on your produce is a huge question for many of us, especially if we are brought up believing what we see on our fruits and vegetables. For those of us who know full well that we are eating pesticides and wax, there are still surprises. For many, we are not aware of any of the standard ways the fruit and vegetable supply chain works. We are also confused about why organic food matters and what all this talk has to do with our health.

WHAT’S ON OR IN OUR PRODUCE

We have probably considered the fact that some of our produce has pesticides, even organic product. That’s confusing enough. Now, we have to think about wax which is the generic name for a variety of coatings that are placed on our fruits and vegetables that are put on at the finishing processor.

And if we care about eating a plant-based diet or the ethics of saving the planet, what about the animal products that are used in the soils of the nicest organic fruits and vegetables? Do we even want to consider this?

RESPIRATION AND ETHYLENE

In order to understand why we use wax, it’s important to know about plant behavior. Plants are living organisms, so they breathe or respirate. I am humbled by this fact and am working on accepting how sacred this makes plants. This happens after they are harvested at different rates for different plants.

Fruits and vegetables produce a ripening hormone called ethylene. Plants are categorized into two categories: those that ripen after harvest (climacteric species), such as avocados or peaches, and those that do not like oranges or spinach (non-climacteric plants). The ripening process produces a hormone called ethylene, commonly known, not surprisingly, as the ripening hormone. All plants off-gas this substance, but some (the climacteric plants) produce more.

There are a variety of different waxes that we put on fruits and vegetables. The most important function is to keep the plant’s moisture in so it looks good, doesn’t ripen too quickly.

JUST A NOTE ON BANANAS

Most of us have heard about artificially ripening bananas (citrus and kiwis, too, by the way). For those who have not, synthetic ethylene is used so that when bananas get to market, they are the right amount of ripe. Bananas are harvested green. Because they are not ripe yet, the process of off-gassing ethylene, which is natural, has not started yet. What companies do is once the bananas arrive at the processing plant or toward the end of their journey inside the truck that is transporting them, they are gassed. This process causes the bananas to be almost ripe upon delivery and perfectly yellow for the consumer. This process emulates the natural process with synthetics but speeds it up at will.

Go to:

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5084611&acct=nosb

for the list of synthetics allowed by the National Organics Program, including ethylene. Depressing.

WAX ON PRODUCE

So, when a fruit or vegetable is harvested, it goes through a cycle of maturation, or ripening, and then begins senescence, which is its final stage of life. We might wonder about this wax and its safety, but we should be aware that it exists.

Happily, I just went in to a national retailer that typically buys from the very same producer on a regular basis. This would mean any info about the waxes on produce would be consistent since the producers stayed the same.

The store had a list of what produce had what wax. I was shocked, and I was doing a happy dance that they even bothered. I’ve been contacting producers, retailers, manufacturers since the 1970s, and this is the first time a list existed without my having had to have them create it. Wax information is now visible to consumers.

Score 1 for transparency.

IS IT PLANT-BASED WAX?

Lots of my food gathering revolves around discerning whether the food I am going to eat has harmed an animal in the process of cultivating it or manufacturing it if I get a packaged good like rice pasta, whether it be in a package (like rice pasta) or grown (like carrots). What the great list (above) that the retailer had compiled did not specifically say whether some of the waxes were vegan. When the list said lac or beeswax, I knew one was from the lac beetle, and the other was from bees. Very helpful in making an informed decision to use or not to use animals in this way. When the list said the word “yes” delineating that wax was used, it was not helpful.

Fortunately, a very ambitious associate at the store is going to do research further. I have never had an employee or company be this cooperative on an issue that should be commonly displayed, as I see it.

IS THE WAX ORGANIC?

Again, referring to the list referenced above, many synthetic products or combinations, unfortunately, are permitted to be used as listed. This means they are man-made and NOT ORGANIC, although they may be Certified USDA Organic products.

WHAT ABOUT THE SEEDS?

Where did the seeds come from?

Are the seeds genetically modified? If the produce is organic, the seeds are supposed not to have been modified. The soil is supposed to have a history of three years after the last synthetic pesticides were used.

But what if the farm next door uses GM seeds? Well, this is debatable and is problematic.

WHAT’S IN THE SOIL?

As those of us who are gardeners may have realized, farmers use various things to make the soil richer. Nitrogen (protein) is one of the biggest things.

What I didn’t realize was that 25% of the nitrogen used in the soil of US farms comes from Trinidad & Tobago, and the toxicity from the island facilities as well as those in the United States is huge.

Organic farmers don’t use nitrogen which is synthesized in ammonia plants using natural gas or gasified coal. They do use fish from restaurant left over pieces or prepared foods markets throw aways. This means that all my vegan fruits and vegetables, save a few, are not vegan.

There is no label for the soil additives, including for urea which is used a lot. And lots of farms use manure which supports the animal industry.

There are a few vegan farms to whom I raise my glass.

WHAT ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT?

So, there are toxic chemicals being off-gassed from the fertilizer industry which is used on fruits and vegetables that don’t call themselves organic. There’s lots of methane from using cow waste in the soil and from cow waste that sits stagnantly.

Some of the waxes (palm and carnauba) used on fruit and vegetables use oil palm trees, which are cultivated by biomass burning to clear the land which emits CO2. According to a report by Mark Jacobson in Journal Of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, oil palm deforestation accounts for premature deaths as well as 18% of greenhouse gas emissions of CO2.

OUR HEALTH

Is what’s on your produce and what’s on my produce healthy? Although something may be deemed not to cause a disease, it may do harm. We all need to do our own research. How good could wax be for us anyway? And how great can the soil used for farming be if areas that house petrochemical plants are named Cancer Belts due to higher rates of cancer?

The wax on the fruit or vegetable has not been found to cause a body malfunction, but that may be because it would be hard to isolate which factor is causing which problem of the many.

CONCLUSION

To find out what’s on my produce and your produce is very much a maze. If we are not professional growers, we don’t actually know about many of the items mentioned above. To find out the information is usually no one’s job but our own.

Here’s hoping the ideas in this article make us think so that we can better eat what’s healthy and know that believing what we see is not always prudent.

ACTION STEPS

If you buy at a local large store, go to the produce department and ask what kind of wax is on your favorite fruits and vegetables. Be persistent since the grocer, most likely, will not know and will say she has no way to find out that information. To cut the process down for you, get the phone number to the store’s regional warehouse. There, ask for the produce buyer. This will start the process of someone’s doing some research for you.

Once you get your answer about the wax, ask the local store produce manager whether she can post the information publicly so that everyone knows what kind of wax there is.

If you get your food from a local market, ask the same way. The process will probably be shorter, since the owner may have a more personal relationship with a grower.

Good luck. May we, together, make a more transparent supply chain, which will lead to purer, safer and more delicious food.

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DIANE GOLD, PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition, peaceful conflict resolution and habit replacement.

She has been researching what we don’t always consider with fruits and vegetables: wax, seed origin, soil contents, fertilizer, global warming from the soil. She says,

“What if we really measured the negative impact we had on others and on the land? What if we didn’t settle for mysterious wax, unknown seed origin, undisclosed soil composition on our produce? What if we all asked our grocers to start putting up wax signs?

“We each impact each other and the earth in so many ways, constantly. We think we can “cheat” being responsible, but we can’t. It’s important to see the big picture.

I am the first to say,

‘Go relax, and take a break. And I will say this to every person every day,’

“But there’s no way to relax ethics. There’s no way to be half ethical. You know what comes next. That’s like being half pregnant. It’s not possible.

“So, let’s be diligent about increasing wax awareness, reading about what chemicals we might be eating. And let’s improve our health and have fun doing it.

“Finally, let us all take good care of ourselves because we are worth it, even if we don’t feel it!”