Many grocery shoppers are seeking ways to healthier lifestyles but also want foods that offer value, selection and convenience. Provide their family with nutritious, well-balance meals and affordable products. Research shows that consumers prefer organic and natural foods, the demand for these foods has grown 10 to 15 percent annually over the past 15 years as consumers have become mindful of the food they buy.
The demand for organic and natural foods is partly attributed to parents who see the value in feeding. Other consumers eat organic and natural foods because the taste is better since the product have not come in contact with pesticides. Secret to eating well and living well can be simple as choosing organic foods from the wide array of branded supermarket foods. Store brands are often as good or better quality and priced are lower.
Chef Bill Telepan has been using fresh, natural and organic foods for more than 15 years, cooking for his customers and family. Chef Telepan says “Today’s families, like my own, want affordable, natural and delicious foods. I feel the impact of this trend through the requests I receive from customers for these types of foods in my restaurant. Wild Harvest organic foods address the need for a good selection of fresh and healthy foods that are convenient and a good value.”
Here are five easy tips for going organic
First tuck organic juice pouches, organic applesauce cups and organic animal crackers into the kids into your kids. Second serve organic pizza at your teen’s slumber party or after sports events. Third set the table with a healthy breakfast assortment: cage-free eggs, wild harvest banana walnut granola, organic yogurt and vibrant fresh berries. Fourth marinate all-natural chicken breasts using bottled marinade. Choose an interesting flavor, such as roasted garlic balsamic vinaigrette. And the fifth give your babies a nutritional head start with organic baby foods.

Tracey Smith the founder of International Downshifting Week and author of The Book of Rubbish Ideas is licking her lips in anticipation of this year’s Organic Food Festival in Bristol this coming September 6 – 7 September. This is set in Bristol’s famous harbor side it is Europe’s largest celebration of all things organic, incorporating bustling food markets, very best organic food, drink, fashion, skincare and home ware products, the green planet pavilion, a talks program, a kitchen demonstration, food cruises around the harbor and an arts and entertainment.
Neal’s Yard Remedies have their dedicated skincare marquee with an area set aside to offer visitors a mini vitality MOT. This year Neal’s Yard Remedies will be hosting a special talks and workshop area on their stand, there will be practical talks on anti-aging through to the natural approach for mothers and babies.
With Organix sponsoring the Children’s Zone and such delights as the Food for Life Cookery Bus and the Whole Earth Food Trail. Wander into the fashion and textile marquee and see how a sheep’s fleece is turned into a garment. Cornish Organic Wool is supplying organic fleece from Bosigran Farm, Zennor as recent winner at The Royal Cornwall Show in the fleece competition which will be carded, spun and knitted by Spinning Weal from Clevedon.

Local Blues Legend and shake your moneymaker for one summer time blast, a Second Annual Blues for Food Festival. Blues for Food Fest is an all age event featuring some of the finest blues bands in the Northwest, organic food vendors, a homemade pie auction, and children’s hands-on gardening activities. Lettuce Link/Solid Ground will be at the Blue for Food Festival to collect fresh organic vegetable donation at the “Beet Hunger” booth. It will be harvest time, so you can donate generously, the food banks need s.
Local farmer’s market favorite, Green Go Food will serve up delicious organic grass fed beef hamburgers and savory polenta cakes. A Homemade Pie Auction, P-Patch Pie Queens will be tempting your taste buds with delicious and satisfying harvest time pies.
This event will be held at Magnuson Park Amphitheater, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle, WA 98115 on August 30, 2008 11 am to 7 pm. The local blues bands schedules: Brian Butler Blues 11:00am to 11:50am, Billy Roy Danger and the Rectifiers 12:00nn – 1:30 pm, Crossroads Blues Band 2:00pm to 3:30pm, Polly O’ Keary and the Rhythm Method 4:00 to 5:30 pm, and Mark Riley 6:00 – 7:00pm.
The Blues for Food Fest benefits the P-Patch Trust. The P-Patch Trust provides community gardens with small development grants, plot rental fees for low-income gardeners, and tools for all at the garden to use. Seattle’s P-Patch food bank gardens, community farms, and community fruit tree harvest donate more than 20 tons of fresh organic produce to local food banks, meals-on-wheels programs, shelters for women and children and transitional housing. The ticket cost for the children under 12 years old is $10 while the teens and adults is $20; the tickets are available at Brown Paper Tickets. This event will be an alcohol-free.

The Department of Health and Human Services defers questions about organic foods to the Food and Drug Administration.  The FDA has no policy on organic products; it says they are the domain of The Department of Agriculture.  But its mandate is simply to regulate the use of the certified organic label.  The agencies entrusted with safeguarding the food and health pass the potato, a fast-growing body of scientific literature suggests the connection between farm practice and the healthfulness of the foods merit attention. Not to judge the relative benefits of organic product against the conventional food products.

Organic foods do not come out ahead, but they rise to the top often enough to suggest that organic farming can increase the nutrient density of the food that we put in our mouths.  Researchers of University of California at Davis found 10 years mean levels of quercetin were 79 percent higher in organic tomatoes than in conventional tomatoes.  Quercetin and kaempferol are flavonoids that studies suggest protect against cardiovascular disease, cancer and other ills.

Other Davis study compared organic and conventional kiwis found that all the mineral constituents were more concentrated in the organic kiwi fruits.  Also has higher ascorbic acid a precursor of vitamin C and total phenol content, resulting in higher antioxidant activity.   Study measured 1.5 times more carotenoids, associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in a Spanish study.  In Swiss researcher Lukas Rist found, mothers consuming at least 90 percent of their dairy and meat from organic sources having 36 percent higher level of rumenic acid in their milk. 

Based on a data collected by the Centers for Disease Control, “Thirty percent or more of the U.S. population ingests inadequate levels of magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin E and vitamin A, and all nutrients that we get from plants.” says Brian Hawley a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute.  These studies give hope that organic farming can reverse the nutrient decline of fruits and vegetables.

If you want to have a healthy lifestyle, one to be consideration should be eating organic food. Natural food process without chemicals or pesticide would seem like a no brainer.  Nowadays people have to make choices. Product at your local grocery store is much cheaper than that purchased at a health food store or organic food stores.
Many proponents of organic food are looking to buy foods that are produced locally to boost the local economy.  While some organic food producers share these ideals.
Organic products also have some problems; the organic foods have made it more difficult to find foods that are produced locally.  Production has necessitated the use of some ingredients that may not be available enough quantities in local.  Some so-called organic products those are not really safer.  Certain vegetables or fruits contain significant amounts of pesticides in their conventional grown.  Processed foods that claim to be with organic ingredients often contain inorganic ones.
The prices for organic foods are substantially. The payment is about from 10 percent more, twice as much for an organic product.  Producers of organic products tend to incur higher costs in an effort to keep the ingredients pure.  Determining an organic product is worth the cost, it is important to know as much about it.  People make mistake of assuming the organic food are equal.