Our Organic Food Mandate

Why We Are So Passionate About Fresh, Organic Foods

As you know by now, if you've been following our journey, Greg and I are diehard organic certification addicts – for a very personal reason. We love fresh food, ripened on the plant or grown naturally, because it really does taste better. It's as simple as that.

Now, when Greg says "it tastes better," it's because he has a heightened experience of taste over the average person. It's what makes him the brilliant chef that he is.

When I say it tastes better, there's a caveat. Because I am actually Autistic, I have a hypersenstive sense of taste – even more sensitive than Greg's in certain ways. The caveat is the food itself needs also to be clean and free from anything that might have been sprayed on it during the growing. Because I can taste it. Even worse is that not only can I taste it, but many of the sprays used in agriculture cause me serious digestive issues. 

You (dear reader) and Greg walk into a grocery store and see piles and piles of fresh fruit and veg – I see poison. But we didn't know until very recently (the last four years or so) that this was my issue with the vast majority of foods. We had been working on the "taste," to find foods that I would enjoy eating and Greg would be inspired to cook for us.

So, last night, Greg and I were discussing when we had actually "gone organic." Greg quickly responded, “OMG, I have been organic since the 70s.” Technically, then, under quick analysis, I had been too. But that's not really how it is. So, to set the record straight, we want to recount how we became so fixated on getting planetary agriculture to switch to organics, that I would actually petition the Town Council last year, and this year the Federal Government. So, in actual fact, we haven't been "organic" since the 70s, although a lot of what we eat has always been that way. We have actually been advocates of FRESH local food, though. So "Fresh Food," in actual fact, was where it began.

Sit back and I'll tell you how it actually came about and why it is so important.

So, in the beginning, it was all about fresh food coming from local farmers, which connected to food. Greg had benefit of living on an island in the middle of the ocean to learn about fresh food. When a hurricane would whip through, it'd pretty much wipe out everything that was growing in the garden. Until the gardens became fruitful again, sometimes months to a year later (depending on when the hurricane had hit), the natives of the island, much like Canadians, ate what was imported from the United States.

Now, the Bahamas doesn't have benefit of winter, so they can grow their gardens year round, and like Canadian plants, have different food plants coming to their peak of ripeness at varying times of the year. So, their food chain is sporadically broken by hurricanes whereas Canadians food chains are usually only broken by winter (until the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020, that is).

What Greg learned there, he brought to our table when we got married. The closer you are to the food that is grown, the fresher and riper it is when it goes onto your plate, the better it tastes. It’s as simple as that. It has no other value to life than that. Since, for Greg and I, life is all living it to the full extent of it's offerings, this is right up our alley. 

Then I got a new doctor a few years ago. These young doctors are such keeners, have you noticed? Well the first thing our doctor did was a complete physical over both of us. He found it remarkable that the only medications that Greg and I took regularly were an anti-oxidant mix. I had to have my shrink teach him about the effects that THC and CBD have on my Autistic neurology, and he's learned more about Autism from me than they taught him in med school, but I digress.

As he learned about my lifelong IBS, he sent me to meet with a "Nutritionist." She was really nice. I brought Greg along for the meeting because he does all the shopping and all the cooking. The meeting discussed what I ate, what could possibly be causing my issues and, by the end of the appointment, she had to confess that this was the first time she had met a patient who ate better than she does. 

So, then my doctor decided to do some internal examinations and he had a surgeon run a double camera unit through my digestive tract. When I woke up from the surgery, the surgeon told me I was celiac. She had seen it enough times to warrant the diagnosis. Interestingly, testing for celiac disease takes weeks, and so, she only had the visual affirmation of her diagnosis.

Greg, being the food expert that he is, instantly switched every possible trace of gluten from our diet. There was no change.

When I went back to the surgeon for the follow up, she told me that I must be "gluten intolerant" because the celiac test was negative. Except, now I had over a month of no gluten and had experienced no physical change. So, it couldn't be gluten. I left that appointment with both of us baffled.

My doctor wasn't satisfied, though. He wanted us to continue our food experiments until we could figure out what it was that I was eating that was causing my digestive issues.

By this point, we were pretty much simply buying all of our groceries with the organic certified logo and avoiding the things that we knew caused me issues, like lavender or conventional potatoes, both of which cause violent toxic reactions in me. Interestingly, the potatoes were a conundrum, because the only potatoes I could actually ingest were either deep fried or organic, but we didn't know what made only certain potatoes edible and other toxic.

Then we met True North Keto and Dr. K, the founder, started working with Greg to develop and make some Ketogenic food products. Eating Keto includes an essential elimination of most carbohydrates. It's a very useful diet for people with epilepsy, diabetes, or other maladies associated with sugars and gluten. So, one of the things that is not allowed on the Keto diet is potatoes. They are very high in carbohydrates, and so need to be eaten as rarely as possible. Greg is a bit of a geek when it comes to his recipe development, so in order for him to sensitize his palate to the Keto diet, there was nothing for it but for him, and I as his household (he's the chef, remember), to switch to Keto. So, even our beloved Miss Vickie's Jalapeno potato chips were out.

Then suddenly, something miraculous happened. For the first time in a very very long time, my IBS cleared up and disappeared. Aside from all of the organic carbohydrates we were eating, though, the only conventional product we were still eating were those potato chips. So, my IBS was still being caused by the potato chips.

Now, Miss Vickie's uses conventional potatoes. Which means they have been sprayed with Roundup and a chemical called Chlorprampam; which has interestingly been sprayed on potatoes since the 50s. Roundup, which has only really been aggravating the situation since the 90s, has become the worst of it, though, and is used in 97.8% of Canadian Agriculture, for various reasons.

We've discovered that, for me, it doesn't really matter if the food is fresh or not, it matters what has been sprayed on the food. And so, as time went by, we discovered that if the food is certified organic, it has less chance of making my delicate system sick, overall.

Now, I ask you; if the chemicals sprayed on the food makes ME this sick. How much damage do you think it is doing to the neurotypical digestive system? Perhaps it's causing more issues than you immediately perceive.