The Value of Organic Foods and Organic Goji Berries

by David Wolfe, JD

Shazzie (www.shazzie.com), my co-author on our book Naked Chocolate and who is our www.sunfood.com counterpart in the United Kingdom summarized the impact of a current lack of organic goji berries on the world market beautifully in her recent January 2008 newsletter. Here are her words:

"The 2007 [goji] harvest was [mostly] contaminated with pesticides and therefore cannot be sold as organic. We could import and sell these berries as non-organic but this does not fit with our ethos. This means that there are very few genuinely organic goji berries available in the world now and so please be careful to check your sources if buying from elsewhere."

We agree with her totally.

Getting organic goji berries from China is difficult, expensive, and requires lots of attention to detail.

Fortunately, we are proud to announce that it appears we have secured enough organic goji berries to supply you and your family in 2008!

You may have seen "wildcrafted" goji berries on the market. These berries are not wildcrafted (all goji berries sold on the worldwide market today are grown on farms - they are not wild). These berries are also sprayed with sulfur dioxide. If you are unsure of your goji berry source, ask for a certificate that demonstrates that the sulfur compounds on the berries are below 20 ppm. Typical, "wildcrafted" goji berries contain 1200-2000 ppm of sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide is a chemical preservative that does not meet the standards for a USDA organic certification.

We believe strongly in the ethics of organic farming. By no means is organic food perfect, but it is certainly a better start than chemical agriculture and genetically modified crops. At Sunfood Nutrition, just the organic certification alone is not enough, we demand even higher standards in all our bestselling products and do independent testing on our these products.

Here is a list of three past tests on www.sunfood.com's goji berries:

Organophosphate Pesticides in Soils, Plant Tissue, and Water

Organophosphate Pesticides - None Detected

Naled (Dibrom)

Permethrin
Demeton S
Dichlorvos
Deltamethrin
Mocap

Pirimiphos-methyl

Phorate
Malathion
Phosdrin

Fenvalerate (Sanmarton)

TDE
Diazinon
Pirimicarb
Me-Parathion
Disulfoton
Fenchlorfos

Oxydemeton-methyl

Tokuthion

Dimethoate (Cygon)

Tetrachlorvinfos

Fenithrothion
Fenthion

Dyfonate (Fonofos)

Merphos - B

Imidan (Phosmet)

Dursban (Chlorpyrifos)

Fenamiphos - (Nemacur, Phenamiphos)

Fensulfothion

Phoxim
Sulprofos

Methamidophos (Monitor)

Guthion

Co Ral (Coumaphos)

Carbophenothion

Ethion

Ethyl Parathion

Detection Limit = 0.05 ppm

Water = 0.01 ppm

Detection limit may be higher due to matrix interferences.

Chlorinated Pesticides in Soils, Plant Tissue, and Water

Chlorinated Pesticides = None Detected

BHC-A (Alpha-Hexachlorocyclohexame)

BHC-B (Beta-Hexachlorocyclohexane)

BHC-D (Delta-Hexachlorocyclohexane)

BHC-G (Lindane)

Endrin Aldehyde

Heptachlor

Dylox (Trichlorfon)

Captan
Mirex
Aldrin

Chlorpyrifos-Methyl

Heptachlor Epoxide

Chlorpyrifos (Dursban)

Endosulfan I and II

Methoxychlor

Endosulfan Sulfate

Chlordane
4, 4 DDE
Quintozene
4, 4 DDD
Esfenvalerate
4, 4 DDT
Fenvalerate
Dieldrin

Mavrik (Tau-Fluvalinate)

Endrin
Alachlor
Pyrethrum
Chlorfenvinfos
Cypermethrin

Detection Limit = 0.05 ppm

Water = 0.03 ppm

Detection limit may be higher due to matrix interferences.

Carbamates in Soils, Plant Tissue, and Water = None Detected

Aldicarb (Temik)

Aldicarb Sulfoxide

Aldicarb Sulfone

Carbaryl (Sevin)

Carbofuran

3-Hydroxy Carbofuran

Methiocarb

Methomyl (Lannate)

Oxamyl (Vydate)

Propoxur (Baygon)

Detection Limits = 0.002 ppm in water

= 0.02 ppm in soil and plant tissue

Detection limit may be higher due to matrix interferences.

We believe in protecting our customers by maintaining extraordinary quality standards. Please let us deal with the testing, hassles, paperwork, and certifications, so you don't have to! That's our job.

The value of organic raw foods, superfoods, and herbs is critically important for a safe, healthy, and happy future for all of us, our children, and our children's children. The evidence is increasingly pointing towards an organic future.

Organics foods are known to have the following characteristics:

* Organic food is richer in minerals:

Organic farmers, in general, are more interested than conventional farmers in growing mineral-rich produce. The famous Rutgers study demonstrated that organic food was superior in the following minerals: phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, boron, manganese, iron, copper, and cobalt. It all starts with mineral-rich soil. When more minerals are available to the plant, the plant's vitamin, polysaccharide, and enzyme content, as well as overall immune system are improved. When we eat mineral-rich food we absorb the nutrients that made the plant healthy. We also enjoy more conscious choices and freedom as the cells throughout our body become healthier and more vital. Entire books have been written on how rich soils help build enormous civilizations and how subsequent mismanagement of crops and the soil leads to a loss of soil minerals and the subsequent collapse of these civilizations.

* Organic agriculture is sustainable:

Organic food production has existed for thousands of years. It will continue as long as humans walk the planet. Organic agriculture is non-toxic (it leaves no permanent toxicity). The pesticide and artificial fertilizer industries are toxic and not sustainable. These industries have covered the entire planet with dangerous chemicals. The story of DDT is known to nearly all of us. DDT went into commercial distribution in 1948. Because of its unsustainable toxicity, DDT was banned in the United States in 1972 and soon after was banned worldwide. DDT is a known neurotoxin and carcinogen. Who was brought to justice after the facts about DDT were revealed? How many people, children, and animals were (are) injured by this chemical? How much longer is it possible to continue to spray the Earth with poisons?

* Organic agricultural supports being chemical-free:

With the explosion of cancer and disease in Western culture, who has the authority to say that any artificial chemicals are safe on our food?

Consider the summary from the following 2003 research article in which pesticide exposure was at least six times higher in the diets of children eating conventional food (as compared to organic food):

"We assessed organophosphorus (OP) pesticide exposure from diet by biological monitoring among Seattle, Washington, preschool children. Parents kept food diaries for 3 days before urine collection, and they distinguished organic and conventional foods based on label information. Children were then classified as having consumed either organic or conventional diets based on analysis of the diary data. Residential pesticide use was also recorded for each home. We collected 24-hr urine samples from 18 children with organic diets and 21 children with conventional diets and analyzed them for five OP pesticide metabolites. We found significantly higher median concentrations of total dimethyl alkylphosphate metabolites than total diethyl alkylphosphate metabolites (0.06 and 0.02 µmol/L, respectively ; p = 0.0001) . The median total dimethyl metabolite concentration was approximately six times higher for children with conventional diets than for children with organic diets (0.17 and 0.03 µmol/L ; p = 0.0003) ; mean concentrations differed by a factor of nine (0.34 and 0.04 µmol/L) . We calculated dose estimates from urinary dimethyl metabolites and from agricultural pesticide use data, assuming that all exposure came from a single pesticide. The dose estimates suggest that consumption of organic fruits, vegetables, and juice can reduce children's exposure levels from above to below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's current guidelines, thereby shifting exposures from a range of uncertain risk to a range of negligible risk. Consumption of organic produce appears to provide a relatively simple way for parents to reduce their children's exposure to OP pesticides."

Taken from "Organophosphorus Pesticide Exposure of Urban and Suburban Preschool Children with Organic and Conventional Diets" by Cynthia L. Curl, CL , RA Fenske and K Elgethun. 2003. (www.ehponline.org/docs/2003/5754/abstract.html)

* Organic food is safer on our hormone system:

The endocrine or hormone system may be more susceptible to toxicity than the nervous system. A growing body of research is indicating that an inappropriate exposure to certain pesticides during the developmental cycle of growth in humans and animals can cause serious long-lasting endocrine and hormone disorders.

The Environmental Working Group recently published the following statements (www.foodnews.org/reduce.php): "Many pesticides are now considered 'endocrine disrupters,' in part because the term is something of a catch phrase for chemicals that cause a variety of changes in normal hormone signaling. Some better known examples of highly toxic endocrine disrupting pesticides are DDT (and its metabolite DDE) which are now known to exhibit much of their toxicity through anti-androgenic (de-masculinizing) properties, vinclozolin, a heavily used fungicide that is also anti-androgenic, endosulfan, a DDT relative with estrogenic properties that is found more often in food than any other pesticide, and atrazine, a weed killer with broad hormonal activity, that contaminates the drinking water of about 20 million people in the United States.

* Eating organic foods, superfoods, and herbs is safe, easy, and fun!

You can grow organic foods anywhere with seeds, nice soil, sunshine, sufficient moisture, smiles, and lots of love. Gardening skills are attractive and sexy and make for a safe, healthy hobby. Organic foods have been proven over thousands of years to be safe to eat.

Conventional foods have been proven over 50 years to be unsafe to eat. I saw a conventional lettuce farmer near Santa Barbara, California climb out of his tractor in a space suit on in order to protect himself from the chemicals he was spraying. Does this sound like progress or a bad horror movie?

Remember, you vote with your dollar. Cutting corners cheats everyone. Let's vote for organic farmers.

Have THE BEST DAY EVER!

David Wolfe, JD

Author of The Sunfood Diet Success System, Eating For Beauty, Naked Chocolate, and Amazing Grace

www.sunfood.com