Did you know...

STICKER SHOCK

Do you know what those little oval stickers on your produce mean? Besides saying what type of fruit you are purchasing, it also has a bar code that helps track inventory and when read by a bar code scanner, will give you the price, location, etc...

But there is another little number on that sticker.  Sometimes a four digit number, sometimes a five digit number.  You can tell a lot about your produce from that little piece of information.

These little numbers reveal if your fruit is organic, or...has been genetically modified! (Gasp!)  

This nectarine has four digits on the sticker. That means it has been grown using conventional methods. Conventional. Sounds safe. After all, conventional means normal. Or conforming to accepted standards. But wait. Accepted standards. Have you looked around at our world lately?  Look closely at your surroundings and the things that you have come to accept as standard. This piece of fruit has been grown using conventional methods. That means that this unassuming little nectarine has been grown using fertilizers and pesticides.

There are many different types of fertilizers. Including organic. But none of them are without their problems. Sometimes they can hurt the soil and groundwater while they're helping to grow bigger and more fruit. What's really disturbing to me is what it can do to bugs.  Those of you who know me know just how much I loooove the creepy crawlers. (If you didn't recognize the sarcasm, trust me it was there.) Fertilizer not only helps to grow bigger plants, but it also increases the birth rate, longevity and overall fitness of some agriculture pests. Which brings me to...

Pesticides. Pesticides are chemical or biological agents that deter or kill those darling little pests. But you have to wonder...if these pesticides can kill these bugs, what will it do to me?  Now, I'm not going to go into all the different kinds of pesticides. I just don't have that kind of time. If you'd like to devote an afternoon to that, be my guest. I will tell you that right now, there are 1,055 active ingredients registered as pesticides. When put together they produce over 20,000 pesticide products that are marketed here in the United States. 

I'm sure you're telling yourself, "Well, there has to be some type of regulation." Well, yes, sort of. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits the amount of each pesticide that can be on a food item.  However, there is no limit of how many different pesticides you can use. Oh those darn loopholes. 

When you have billions of people to feed, using fertilizers and pesticides makes good cents sense. For every $1 spent on these things yields $4 of crops saved.

All this information from a four digit number on your produce sticker. But wait...there's more!

Some fruit have five digit numbers. And if that number starts with 8 then look out. That food is genetically modified. Lately it seems everyone has been up in arms over genetically modified foods (GMOs). But again, look at the hordes of people we're looking to feed. And the gmo foods can help to do that. They're bigger, have a longer shelf life, like a Twinkie.  They have even come up with a banana that will produce human vaccines that can guard against infectious diseases. They're not in use yet. But they've made them. Even your favorite t-shirt could be gmo. Yep, cotton is genetically modified. So all the PETA people saying you shouldn't wear leather, well, their cotton might not be as pure as they thought.

So what's a person to do? Conventional growing doesn't sound very tasty, with fertilizers and pesticides. Genetically modified sounds like you're eating a science experiment, which in effect you are.  What's left?

Check that number closely on that sticker the next time you're at the store. Five digits. But wait...it starts with a 9. Hooray! That means that it is Certified Organic. GMO and pesticide free!

If you're brave enough, go ahead and take a bite out of a piece of fruit with a four digit sticker. Then eat one with a five digit sticker beginning with a 9. Oh yes, you can taste the difference. And yes, organic foods do cost more. But you can pay now...or you can pay later. 

I love summer fruits. Get out and enjoy the sunshine. Go to a Farmer's Market. Meet your local farmers. And enjoy food the way it is meant to be.

To find your local Farmer's Market, go to www.farmersmarket.com