Food labelled farm fresh or organic usually lives up to its name, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the items are free of toxins.
With so much variety available at the grocery store and farmers’ market, it’s easy to get confused about what’s in the food we’re buying.
But perhaps the most important question is simply, ‘Is it safe?’
Dr. Keith Solomon at the University of Guelph’s Centre for Toxicology says organic isn’t always the answer.
“Organic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s free of toxic chemicals…many toxins in food come from natural sources.”
So while organic items are grown without additional chemicals added, that doesn’t make it chemical-free.
Nonetheless, Brenda Otawa has good reasons for trying to minimize the chemicals she is exposed to.
“As a cancer survivor, I am concerned about what I ingest,” she says. So Otawa chooses to buy most of her food from a farmers’ market.
She believes it’s good to know where the meat is coming from, who the farmers are and “that it is safe and free of antibiotics and hormones.”
Cindy Gerber of Oakridge Acres Country Meat Store says she has many customers like Otawa who “want an all natural product start to finish and a lot of them are concerned about how the cattle are raised.”
Customer Chris McGough has confidence in buying directly from the farm gate.
“I think we’ve seen over the last few decades the amount of increase of food allergies, cancer, to all those things and I’m a big believer that a lot of those causes are from a lot of the stuff that’s being put into our food and different chemicals and all sorts of things.”
Still, Solomon says organic or natural isn’t always the answer.
“Cider produced from organic apples has higher levels of fungal toxins than the conventional product…Tomatoes come from a group of plants that includes some quite toxic members such as the deadly nightshade.”
There are many more examples, but Solomon adds that in research labs testing for toxins is extensive, making us much safer and allowing us to live longer than we ever have.
He notes that while everything has the potential to kills us, it’s a question of the dose and amount of exposure.
“I wouldn’t worry about toxins,” he says, “I would worry more about the calories in your diet.”
