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17 August 2010 ,

Eating organic on modest means

By Melanie Redman
Photo courtesy of Flickr and Ed Yourdon Photo courtesy of Flickr and Ed Yourdon
I'm always a little wary when someone gives me tips on how to do this or that on what they are calling "modest means." Depending on who you are and where you come from, the term can mean very different things.  

I just found a little piece on WikiHow that lays out some simple tips for eating organically on modest means. I will note that they are specifying modest means as at least $1,000/month after taxes. In downtown Toronto, that does comprise modest means.

The tips? Well, they make sense to me, and only one of them could be confused with the SUV to Costco/Sam's Club way of thinking (one of the tips is to buy organic products in bulk to lower the costs - 48 rolls of recycled toilet paper, anyone?)
  1. Buy food items in their raw, unprocessed form
  2. Cook from scratch
  3. Buy in bulk (you know, like organic flour and such)
  4. Buy in season
  5. Shop locally
  6. Befriend a farmer or gardener 
  7. Choose the foods that should only ever be eaten organically (think strawberries)
  8. Grow your own
There are some innovative solutions out there to support folks who want to buy local and eat healthier. I wrote a post a while back about a program that matches dollar for dollar spent at farmers' markets by folks who are using the food stamp program.


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Written by: Melanie Redman

Melanie Redman

Melanie Redman is a Social Mission Collaborator with more than 10 years of direct experience in strategic, leadership and advisory roles across the social mission sector in the U.S. and Canada. She calls many places home - most recently Toronto, Buenos Aires and Seattle - but was sprouted from the Ozark Mountains of Southern Missouri. Learn more about her work at www.melanieredman.com or on LinkedIn.

 

Responses to “Eating organic on modest means”

1
Shana Says: August 19, 2010 9:40 AM

I love this blog http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/ - they are a couple eating on $30 a week and much is organic and except for some things like tofu all are whole foods they make from scratch. Now they are vegetarians so that helps a lot and they've gotten a community garden plot this summer so that is adding a lot of "free' produce to their diet - but they did get most of their seeds and seedlings at seed exchanges and the like. I've tried several recipes from their site and they have all been good! They even manage to do a bit of entertaining and have dinner guests on this budget!

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