A quickie but a goodie today! My friend and amazing Acupuncturist & Herbalist at Health Space Clinics, Maggie Godin, recently gave me this tip about how to score cheap organics and it’s SO worth passing on! I had no idea! I also touch on frozen and canned fruit & vegetables in this post. Hope some of you try Maggie’s tip! 🌱
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey guys, welcome to your next episode of Sneaky Nutrition. Now this is a really quick one. I've literally just popped home in between classes and I wanted to have a quick chat to you about organic veggies and fruit.
Now one question that you guys have been asking me a lot is, does it really matter if your fruit and veggies are organic, your meat's organic, all that jazz. Now this is a difficult one to answer because there are much bigger questions in the health world than whether organic veggies or fruit are best. For example, are you even eating enough fruit and veggies whether they're organic or not? That's the first and most important question. But if we're tackling number two, let's talk about it because yes, there is a definite benefit to eating organic. There's a lot more nutrient density, a lot of the vitamins and nutrients are retained more readily and there's a lot less potential damage to your gut from pesticides which can actually wreak a little bit of damage. So yes, it's really great, but do I eat organic all the time? No. I do what I can, but it's expensive, it's sometimes difficult to get. Yeah, so not all the time.
I eat a lot of, for example, berries are a product that's sprayed a lot of particularly your blueberries and all that jazz. So I always get my berries, well not always, I shouldn't say always. Most of the time when I'm making smoothies and all the rest of it or putting berries on, I don't know, yogurt or whatever it might be I use frozen. I use frozen organic because it's cheaper and it's good quality and it's readily available and it means they're in my fridge whenever I need them. And that's a really great option.
A lot of people always ask me this question about whether frozen is actually okay, well yes it is. Nothing actually happens that stops that from being okay. I mean the fruit or veggies is picked and then it is frozen, done. A lot of the times it will actually retain more nutrients than if it was to travel fresh to you via a truck or so where it might lose some of its nutrient value along the way. These veggies and fruit are literally a snap frozen at the source with all their nutrients retained. So yes, frozen can be a great option. There's so many great organic frozen veggies out there too now like even just your little peas and corn and all that jazz you can get that organic frozen. How good.
I also eat regular frozen veggies too. In fact, when I get to my episode on emergency dinners you will hear about how I include frozen vegetables in dinners when I haven't had the chance to go shopping and I just need to dive into my frozen stocks of things. Frozen is cool, frozen is fine, and some canned produce is also awesome when it comes to legumes like lentils and black beans and all the rest of it. Again, all of these feature in my emergency dinners post which is coming up soon. Those things I will have from a can and just rinse them. Not all the time but often because it's in the cupboard. It doesn't take a lot of time and it still has a lot of nutrient value. So don't be afraid of frozen things, primarily they're great, and canned things every now and then too. They're the good kind of packet foods.
But back to organic, there is something online called the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen and that is a list that's curated each year about what are the safest non organic fruits and veggies to have and the most worrisome. So for example, when you're looking this up, I would say it's really important to type in Australian because most of these are from the US and it's very different in Australia. But in Australia for example, blueberries are a fruit that are heavily sprayed with pesticides. So that's something that can be really, really great to choose organic or get frozen for when you can or to just wash really, really well. But fruit that's organic does taste delicious too.
So here is the cool tip that I picked up from my friend Maggie Godin. I hope that's how you say your last name, I never say your last name. Anyway, amazing acupuncturist, G-O-D-I-N. Mags told me that she gets her organic fruit and veggies delivered from a place called Lettuce Deliver, as in lettuce, the lettuce, Lettuce Deliver. And she said that that delivery company but also a lot of other organic fruit delivery companies and veggies they have something called second quality fruits and veggies. So you can look on there and you can look for second quality and it's literally all the organic produce that's usually expensive, but it might be too small, too big, misshapen or have a little insect bite in it or whatever it might be and therefore it's rated as second quality and they slash the prices.
So I went and had a little look just to check up on how much of a price slash this is and I was looking at things like organic apples. So the organic apples were $12 a kilo, the regular ones, but then the second quality ones were $5 a kilo just because they're a different shape or a bit small or they've got an insect bite in them. That's pretty amazing. I also had a look at some blueberries, regular organic blueberries were like $10 and the second quality ones were about five, amazing, for 250 grams. And then I also looked at avocados so regular organic avocados remember were $7 each and the second quality ones were about $3.50. Bananas were $7 per kilo regular and they were about I think $3.50 maybe $4.50 for the the second quality ones. I never knew this existed. I mean I knew there were misshapen fruits and veggies, but I didn't know that you could get really good organic ones that were just a weird shape or have a little insect bite on them, whatever, for such an amazing cheap price. Nothing else wrong with them.
So there's my little tip for today. We'll come back to frozen and canned and all the rest in a later post, but don't be afraid of those things. Look up the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen for 2019, 2020 so you get an idea of what those latest ones have been. But do look up Australia as well so there's Australian versions. Usually the things that have a thick skin like a banana, an avocado, a watermelon, they're pretty cool to eat non-organic. I still think they taste better organic though so it depends.
So do I eat organic all the time? Definitely no, I just wash really, really well. But do I eat organic when I can? Yes. Am I scared of frozen? Absolutely not. I've got so much frozen fruit and veg. And now I'm just about to put in my first order to this Lettuce Deliver place for second rate organic fruit and veggies for my kid. I mean I'm pretty stoked about that discovery and I can't believe that I didn't actually know about it sooner. So second quality organic fruit and veg, check it out, look it up. Apparently all these organic delivery places have this. And yeah, I'm stoked because I always looked at those boxes and thought, "Too expensive for me." But now I'm going to think, "I'm just going the second quality ones," I mean, why not?
So there's my hot tip for today. Thank you so much Maggie for that one. It's a quickie but a goodie and I'll be back soon. I think I might tackle emergency dinner options or emergency lunch options next. That's like you come home, there's nothing in the fridge or you just haven't picked up something to cook or something to eat and you need to get your food in now. So I'll either do that or I'll do another snack post. Watch this space guys. Thank you for tuning in. You guys have had some really great feedback and some really great conversation going around these posts. So yeah, until next time, bye.