🌳🍋My Opinion on Organic Produce🍋🌳

Last night I went to a Master Veg Class hosted by our local Riverford distributors. We have been using Riverford for over a year now and love having Organic fruit and veg delivered to our door. The class took us through some cooking techniques and we whipped up 3 delicious vegetarian dishes to show just how much flavour and goodness you can achieve with simple nutrient dense veggies. Although they also sell organic meat they actively encourage customers to eat more veg meals as it's good for both you and the environment.

Obviously the conversation turned to Riverford, how it started and the benefits of eating organic. A few interesting things I learned about organic farming and Riverford:

• It takes 6-7 years for a farm to go from non-organic to organic - that's how long pesticides can stay in the soil! 😱😲#MindBlown

• Pesticides cannot be washed off - systemic pesticides are translocated to every part of the plant so no amount of washing or peeling will get rid of them

• There are 320 pesticides allowed in non-organic farming and while single pesticides have been tested and shown to cause minimal risk to health, the impact of the cocktail we are exposed to is less clear. Research suggests these could become more potent and harmful when combined

They care about the environment:

• Riverford have employed a packaging technologist full time to research and implement the use of the most environmentally friendly types of packaging - they have recently switched from using plastic nets to biodegradable nets made from beech trees 🌳🙌

• They try to use UK suppliers whenever possible so you mostly eat in-season produce (like the good old days!)

• Recently they had to decide whether to grow some tomatoes inside (using electricity) or ship them in from Spain and rather than going for the simplest option they researched which would be most environmentally friendly and went for that (Spain!). I love that this is the general protocol for these types of decisions

I of course appreciate it's not always possible and affordable to buy organic so the most important thing is just to get as much fruit and veg in your diet as possible, organic or not. Avoiding fruit and veg because you can't buy organic would likely be far more detrimental to health than pesticides!

Organic is purely my preference - I can taste the difference and I feel more comfortable knowing I am ingesting fewer toxins, whether we have the conclusive evidence of their detrimental effects or not.

You can read more below and even sign the petition to ban glyphosate in the EU - a pesticide commonly found in breads that is likely to be carcinogenic. Plenty of organic farmers have proven it to be an unnecessary aid in farming.

https://www.riverford.co.uk/mai/pesticides-you-decide