8 Easy Ways To Choose Organic & Alkaline

 

While I often talk about how important it is to eat alkaline, it’s just as vital to your health that you DEMAND organic.

So today, I want to share with you why it’s so important to eat organic and how easy it can be to do so.

Here are just a few of the reasons organic is the right choice for you and your family according to the latest research by the Environmental Working Group (EWG):

• 68% of conventional food samples had detectible pesticide residues, even after they were washed and peeled!
• Nearly all samples of strawberries, peaches, spinach, apples, nectarines and cherries tested positive for at least one pesticide.
• One strawberry can have up to 20 different pesticides!
• Spinach has on average twice as much pesticide residue as any other crop, including a neurotoxic pesticide banned in Europe due to a link between it and children’s behavioral disorders.
• Pesticides used on our food supply have been linked to cancer, hormone disruption, brain and nervous system toxicity, and irritation of the skin, eyes, and lungs.
• More than 60% of Americans’ blood and urine samples tested positive for at least 7 pesticides!

So is the answer to stop buying fruits and vegetables that might expose you to pesticides?

NO, of course not!

Fresh produce is the key to keeping your body’s pH in balance.

What is left when you take away fresh produce from our food supply is meat, dairy, and grains, which are all acidic. And by the way, all of those grains are grown with pesticides anyway!

When your body is acidic, it becomes prone to disease, illness, weight gain, chronic inflammation, fatigue, digestive problems, reflux, skin issues, sleeping problems, and the list goes on.

So it’s vital you continue to eat a majority of fresh vegetables and fruits as your daily diet, but do so with organic produce so you aren’t being exposed to all those nasty pesticides.

Here are 8 easy ways to buy organic and alkaline.

1. Shop at farmer’s markets.

Fresh from the farm produce is an easy and affordable way to ensure you’re getting organically grown food. Often times, you can talk to the farmers yourself and find out about their growing methods.

If you don’t have time to hit the farmer’s markets over the weekend, sign up for a local CSA, or community-supported agriculture group that will deliver local, organic ingredients to your door weekly. More and more urban areas have these, so search for options in your area.

Plus, the organic produce that you find at your farmer’s market may be 50X more nutritious than the produce you buy in those plastic bags and cartons at your grocery store…and minus the chemicals.

2. Eat more ‘Rainbow Salads’.

Salads are a quick and easy way to add a ton of alkalizing, organic foods into your diet that go with just about any type of cuisine.

Not only do salads have a lot of vitamins and minerals, but the organic greens also have lots of water, which is great for helping to alkalize your body. Salads can be super healthy and so versatile, and help you get the most nutritional bang for your buck.

Try using as many different colors of vegetables as possible. Make what my wife and I call a “rainbow salad” by adding a colorful assortment of organic vegetables like cucumbers, radishes, red bell peppers, cilantro, beets, celery, sprouts, jalapeno, avocado, and some unbleached fresh mineral sea salt (my favorites are Celtic Grey Sea Salt, Himalayan, and Redmond Real Salt).

3. The Dirty Dozen

The Environmental Working Group has several resources that can make your food and your life in general more organic. I highly recommend you download their app, which is available for Apple and Android phones. It makes grocery shopping for food, home, and personal care products easy to make sure you’re getting the healthiest available.

The most well-known resources they have is the Dirty Dozen, which is an annual list of the 12 fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide load. If you’re going to start eating organic, these Dirty Dozen members, in order of pesticide prevalence, are the first kinds of produce to stop buying conventional and start buying organic ASAP:

1. Strawberries
2. Spinach
3. Nectarines
4. Apples
5. Peaches
6. Pears
7. Cherries
8. Grapes
9. Celery
10. Tomatoes
11. Sweet bell peppers
12. Potatoes

They also produce a list called the Clean Fifteen, which are foods grown with the fewest pesticides. Interestingly, the foods that top the list all have a protective outer layer like avocados, onions, and cabbage. So if you’re going to buy only some organic produce, take a look at the skin and choose organic for thin-skinned fruits and vegetables like grapes and strawberries.

4. Do the prep in advance.

To make organic, alkaline foods more accessible to your everyday routine, prepare them as soon as you bring them home or set aside half an hour over the weekend.

When you get organic greens home, wash them, dry them with a spinner, and then store them in an airtight container with little oxygen. This way, anytime that you want to add extra greens to your meal, all you have to do is grab a handful.

Chop fresh veggies that you’ll use for lunches and dinners throughout the week and do the same for fruit that you’ll include in smoothies.

Prepare salad dressing in advance so you can make salad more like a snack food rather than a huge production, which is important when you are hungry and want something right away.

Throw alkaline trail mix together so you have it ready anytime you’re hungry using your favorite alkaline ingredients like raw almonds, cashews, unsweetened coconut flakes, cacao nibs, goji berries, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds

5. Read the stickers.

Buying organic in the grocery store isn’t necessarily as easy as just looking for the Organic signs that you see all over these days.

There have been cases of stores misrepresenting organic and conventional produce and in fact, Wal-Mart was sued a few years ago for mixing conventional fruits and vegetables in with the organics.

Here’s a great rule of thumb to make sure you’re getting the good stuff… Every single produce item has a SKU sticker on it. You’ve seen them, right?

• If a sticker begins with the number 9, it means it’s organic. Remember: 9 is fine (for example, 94357).
• If a sticker begins with a number 8, it means that it’s genetically modified. Remember: I hate 8.It’s GMO (for example, 84657)!
• If the sticker begins with any other number, like 3 or 4, it means that it was conventionally grown and is neither GMO or organic.More than likely, it was grown with herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers (for example, 4637).

6. Add 2 organic, alkaline foods to your diet every day.

You know my motto: Moderation, not deprivation!

So take the stress out of eating well and just think about foods you love that are alkaline, buy the organic versions of them, and eat a couple every day. That way, you feel like you get to indulge in foods you love that just happen to nourish your body.

So if you love avocado and pears for instance, make sure you eat an avocado with your lunch every day, and a pear as part of your breakfast. It’s that easy!

7. Shop the perimeter of the store.

Think about the layout of most grocery stores. Around the edges, you’ve got the cold cases, the deli and meat counter, and the produce section. What’s in the middle of all of that? Packaged, processed junk that you’ll pay a premium for.

And you have to be extra careful these days because many stores have created sections in the middle of the store for organics. These aisles appear to be full of healthy options, but often, there’s just as much sugar and ACID in the organics section as any other. Stick with the perimeter of the store for whole, nutritious foods.

As a general rule of thumb – of the food can spoil, it is generally good for you.

8. Buy organic supplements.

Even if you eat mostly organic, supplements are one area that often gets overlooked.

• Make sure your Omega 3 Fish Oil comes from a reliable source, from a company that has strict regulations to ensure all mercury, dioxins, and other contaminants are removed.
• Avoid ALL synthetic vitamins like One a Day, Centrum, and all tablets. Tablets are hard for your digestive system to break down, and the research shows that you only end up absorbing 10-30% MAX of the supplement. Virtually, it is expensive urine. But here’s the deal – most of these supplements have harmful ingredients, so the reality is IF you are using them, you’re probably better off NOT absorbing them anyway!
• If you take a protein supplement, make sure it’s made from good quality organic ingredients like Alkamind Organic Daily Protein. We carefully formulated this protein powder to bring to you something that was 100% organic and plant based, from the most superior sources of protein, Pea, and Sachi Inchi…not to mention a boat load of healthy fats that will help you BURN fat. Don’t fear the fat! You need fat to burn fat.
• Take Alkamind Daily Greens every morning. It’s made from 27 organic, nutrient-dense super foods to supply the antioxidants, chlorophyll, vitamins, and minerals your body may be lacking. If you are taking Daily Greens and Daily Minerals, this will become your new multi vitamin.

The superfoods are harvested in their peak nutritional state, then dehydrated at 88 degrees Fahrenheit to preserve the peak nutrition and all the enzymes. They stay dormant, until you activate the powder with water. Then the superfood nutrition comes alive as powerful as the day it was harvested!