Fun with Organic Food

As I said a couple of days ago, reading The Omnivore's Dilemma has changed the way I'm looking at food. That means changing grocery stores.

I knew organic food tends to be more expensive than the chemically-produced kind, but I had quite a sticker shock when I started looking at prices locally. Most times, the organic stuff is two to three times the price. This makes feeding a family of five for $75 a week quite the challenge.

Being a bargain-hunter, I don't mind accepting that challenge. I've spent most of the last 10 years shopping at the local cost-plus-10-percent store, and can feed my brood comfortably on that. Whatever I can't find at that store I can fill in at Wal-Mart.

Of course, the El Cheapo food store doesn't carry virtually any organic food (how could it afford to?), which sent me to Wal-Mart to see what they had. Surprisingly, they do have some (and the variety seems to be growing). They carry Paul Newman's veggies as well as Laura's Lean Beef. For the most part, this is all the organic stuff you will find in Wal-Mart. You get meat and potatoes. Finding organic anything else is a bit trickier, although I did run across organic canned corn there the other day.

After Wal-Mart, I perused the goods at both Central Market and Whole Foods. The variety of food at both places is amazing and daunting. The prices are stunning. And after buying a couple of pounds of hamburger, I'm thinking of trying bison (anybody know what that tastes like or how you use it?).

Yesterday, I tried to do my weekly shopping at Central Market. If I'd bought the organic toilet paper ($12 for 12 rolls), I would have busted my budget. But I figured I would wait on that. Without the toilet paper, my bill came to $68.69, but didn't include staples like Dr Pepper, Pop Tarts, and bottled water. I also realized after I made my way to the frozen food that I could have cut my bill further if I'd bought some frozen veg rather than just fresh stuff.

Two things struck me about my trip to Central Market. First, shopping in there made me feel incredibly guilty about the stuff we usually eat. If a store doesn't offer something you typically buy (like PopTarts) or only offers it in small quantities (like Coke), it may say something about what you are putting in your body. My husband isn't happy that I am changing his eating habits, but it does give me peace of mind to think we could be eating better. But my mom guilt (and I have a lot of it) takes over when I also consider other aspects of my food purchases like how the workers are treated and how the farming affects the environment.

The second thing that I noticed about both Central Market and Whole Foods (which I visited, but didn't buy my groceries) is the clientele. Not only are they almost exclusively white, but they are usually older (lots of grey-haired folk) and have few or no children. I realize that when one doesn't have children, $10 for a pound of ground beef doesn't look so bad, but I have to wonder about what the clientele says about this eating philosophy. Why no children? Don't they want kids?