oh no-- canned tomatoes! are there any widely available brands that come in glass jars?

If it's best to avoid conventional apples, then can you tell me what unconventional apples are? This term is confusing. Thanks!

e53 & brianna - click the link above at the end of the post to Yahoo! Shine for their suggestions on jarred tomatoes and unconventional apples (organic).

Conventional means non-organic. It is a confusing term!

Great Post! This list makes it easy to prioritize at the grocery store. I'd add that Eden is a great canned foods brand that does not use BPA lining. They mostly sell beans though. Didn't see any Eden tomatoes at Whole Foods today.

I recently saw this show on PBS that explains the point about apples really well. There's a lot of interesting history there:

http://video.pbs.org/program/botany-of-desire/

i'm on a budget, i can't afford to eat everything organic. i also use canned food a lot in cooking because it is quicker, cheaper and easier. i'm still alive so i guess ill keep doing it!

Check out Pomi tomatoes, they are in paper cartons and they are fantastic! I love that they don't add anythin like salt or citric acid. If your grocer doesn't carry them, they are available on Amazon.

As a former fisherman in Northern Europe I strongly protest the way you word nr 5. For you Americans, if you substitute North America for North Europe and then think about how large and diverse the area is, you can understand the absurdity of the claim.
You say that Farmed Salmon is lower in everything except poison (well that is basically what you wrote :)) I could argue that the quality of the Salmon would depend on the exact location where it is farmed, which brings me to my protest. You then start to talk about N.E. fish on American Menus, like all fish from that area is polluted. The way you put it one could even understand that all fish on American Menus is polluted.
The North Atlantic Ocean, half of which belongs to Northern Europe, is one of the cleanest and healthiest oceans left in the world. Fresh Cod from that area is the best fish you can get.

Thanks for the tips on tomatoes, everyone, they're a staple in my pantry that I just don't think I could give up! Good to know there's still some safe brands.

Great list. Btw, organic apples are created by grafting, too. It's not really that weird. People have been grafting plants for thousands of years (really!). The only way to ensure that you'll get a particular variety of apple (granny smith, golden delicious, etc.) is to graft. I promise it's not weird or unhealthy. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting
love,
gardening nerd

I just made a delicious vegan stew. I used canned tomotoes. I used potatoes (I bet they were not organic) I also used "conventional" celery and carrots. It was so good!

Sorry for being a spoiler here. But I will add that I am going to go for organic milk for the bf (I have to drink soy and he hates soy) for the new year :)

I take serious issue with 'organic' products in stores.

Firstly-- they're far too pretty. My grandparents had a large enough veggie garden/orchard to feed a small army. And pesticides never got anywhere near their produce. Aside from the epic taste of the produce; there was one other quality that marked them as organic-- and that was that each piece of fruit/veggie was ugly as sin. (I'm talking bumps, scuffs, bug nibbles, splotched colouring) An apple was brown on the inside before you made one circuit around the core. "Organic" produce is neither ugly, nor does it oxidise in the same timely way that true organic produce does.

Secondly, in open-air areas, it's impossible for farmers to keep their own crops truly organic if there are other plantations nearby who are not organic. It's in the air, it seeps into the ground. Unless the produce is grown in a hermetically-sealed environment, it's highly unlikely that it's actually organic. Ergo, you're paying inflated rates for what's "semi-organic" at best. People keep getting taken for rides-- same snake oil, different tune.

Semi-Organic is better than non-organic.

How much research went into that article? I live on a dairy farm, (not organic) the cows diet is 95 percent grass, substituted with 5 percent bread as the yeast gives them a milk boost, cows are not fed or injected with hormones. Any cows that require antibiotics / penicillin are separated from the herd, and their milk is dumped. The dairy tankers test each batch of milk and if there are any traces of penicillin found the milk is dumped and farmers are fined. Yes I live in new Zealand but I find it hard to believe all us farmers are giving cattle artificial growth hormones...

In response to modestalmond and others: The "organic" produce you see in stores needs to be certified as such by the USDA. It's a rigorous process that takes some time and effort. However, "organic" does not mean that pesticides and fertilizers weren't used; it means that those that were used are "organic" also. Also, "organic" doesn't have anything to do with the types of plants that were grown. Hybrids, cultivars and varieties exist today that have resistance to pesticides and diseases, and many are selected because they produce uniform, long-lasting fruit. These plants may not have existed when our grandparents' organic gardens were producing "ugly" fruits and vegetables. The newer varieties aren't freaks of nature, though - crossing DNA in the plant world happens naturally; we humans have just figured out ways to do it more efficiently and are able to pick out the features we find to be useful or appealing. (I am not talking about genetic manipulation, like Monsanto does - I'm talking about basic cross-pollination.)

Regarding apples, ALL apples sold, organic or not, are grafted. Apple seeds always produce a new type of apple, so it's just not commercially viable to spend the time, money and space hoping that the seeds you've planted yield quality fruit. Grafting doesn't involve anything that doesn't happen (rarely and slowly, true) in the natural world - they simply take a piece of the wanted fruit tree and attach it to root stock. The root stock helps keep trees shorter for easier harvest, and it can be selected for other hardiness factors. The tops produce the wanted fruit. Franken-trees, sure, but completely natural, safe and un-GM.

Um ... yay horticulture classes. :-)

It's more expensive to buy food and beverages without hormones, but I think it's worth it.

@Fauxhemia You live in NZ. It's a far different story here in the U.S. Farms that practice what you practice are organic and are not the norm.

I remember biting into an organic apple only to discover part of it was brown and hollow. I didn't even look to see what bugs might be in there, just threw it away. From what I understand it's really hard to keep the bugs away from apples without some sort of pesticide.

What happens when you can't afford to eat this way? Because, I certainly can't, and I don't know many people (if any), who can.

Misterfox, I agree. I'm a poor college grad and there's no WAY I could ever afford to buy all organic, all the time... sigh.

As far as I know, the US is the only country where dairy cattle are regularly given hormones. There was a lot of pressure to approve the practise in Canada (and several Health Canada scientists are still paying for their refusal to approve without the long-term studies to justify it), but isn't approved and most European countries have pass positive bans (slightly different than just not approving the treatment).

Feeding corn to meat cattle (which is worse than other grains sometimes used to fatten cattle just before slaughter) is also US-specific, mostly because corn is so over-produced due too the bizarre set of American agricultural subsidies that distort the markets. Typical practise elsewhere is grass and hay feed, with a few months on grain (usually wheat) mixed in with hay and protein supplements to put on weight just prior to slaughter.

I learned the hard way about organic apples. I used to (with conventional apples) just wash them off and start eating. Organic apples may come with a bit of extra "protein" so I've learned to slice my apple, thinly, prior to eating it these days.

@MisterFox: It's all about prioritizing. My husband and I eat mostly organic foods, and we are by no means even comfortable. After about a week of eating mostly organic, healthier foods, we found that we eat a lower quantity of food at a higher quality. Our meals are a lot more filling, and while an individual meal-to-meal comparison has the organic as more expensive, we're not spending much more, because we aren't eating as much.

I rarely eat corn fed beef: only when I go out to eat. Corn fed wasn't available when I studied abroad, so the grass-fed foods and organic options were what was available.

It would be nice if local stores would provide us with more options that are healthy. I eat our most of the time (lots of reasons, not important here...) But when I cook, I rely on canned tomatoes for many dishes. Chili is an "emergency meal" when we can't or don't want to go out in winter. I keep the ingredients on hand. I have never seen glass jarred tomatoes since my mom canned them in my youth, certainly not in the places I shop regularly, regardless of affordability. (And I am NOT going to can my own tomatoes!)

As for beef -- it's pretty well documented that vegetarian diets are healthier than meat diets, so simply avoiding beef would probably be a healthier choice than even grass fed beef. If we REALLY care!

I'm a bit upset about the potatoes. I don't eat that many, but it bothers me that growers say they SELL what they won't eat themselves. It sounds like pushing drugs or poisons to me. Seems to me it should be a law -- you can't sell it for other people to eat if YOU won't eat it yourself. (Exemptions for allergies may be applied for!)

I have compromised. Organic is very expensive where we live, so I get ready-made pasta sauce in jars and add my own goodies, I only get organic potatoes, and we don't eat them often. I mostly get organic apples, and if they are not organic I peel them, since this gets rid of a good part of the pesticides. I only get organic celery. I just avoid beef generally, since it is so expensive to get the good stuff, so that is for treats. We get organic popping corn in bulk and make it the old-fashioned way, and eat it hot with nothing but a dash of salt.
Missing from this list is pretty much all hydrogenated vegetable oils, especially canola and soybean oil, which are almost certain to be GMO. We use olive oil for salads, coconut oil for homemade granola or baking sweeter things, and grapeseed oil for frying.
While a plant-based diet is a great start, there are some caveats. Some people really, really NEED a good dose of protein. We are all different.

Is it safe to buy nonorganic butter and other dairy products? I know that ideally you would try to buy these organic, but when the budget is tight...

I ALWAYS buy organic milk -- it tastes so much better, lasts longer, and is just the bee's knees all around. But I was wondering whether other dairy products are as risky in their non-organic forms.

@Frontporchpirate (love the name, btw),

Alas, I'm pretty sure the hormones and whatnot move into the other dairy products. I usually look for other dairy that is stamped as not having RBST (basically a bovine growth hormone), which is at least one fewer hormone, without it necessarily being organic.

For all fellow microwave popcorn lovers....I bought one of those glass microwave poppers from C&B last summer and it's one of the best purchases I've ever made. It takes a few times of trial and error to get the exact setting right (my microwave pretty much only gets used for this purpose and it even has a popcorn setting and I still burned it to a crisp the first few times.) But no chemicals, you can use any type of kernels you want and add butter and salt or anything, it's all up to you. Yay for (relatively) healthy snacks!