Affordable Ways to Eat Organic Part II

I woke up last night thinking about a few things that bothered me about yesterday’s post. I know that I have been living in a special place with special opportunities for food. It wasn’t too long ago that Greg and I were living in Chicago, and for as large as Chicago is, it doesn’t even have a place like the Co-op here, I’m assuming because larger corporations like Whole Foods make it impossible in some ways. There are smaller stores that have this and that great thing, and I did see small start-up organic grocers pop up in different neighborhoods, but I always found myself doing the shopping at four different locations to even *find* what I was looking for, let alone save money on items. In another small town, or a strange town, or a town that is so small that it’s actually just a census-designated area, ahem, you get the idea, options will obviously be much fewer and farther between.

So I’ve added two more ideas to the saving money on organic food list:

speak up

- Ask your grocery store to supply certain products (like bulk organic beans) and get your friends to too. – Grocery stores sell what their customers want, and at a certain point, they’ll have to listen. When we were in Chicago, we frequented a very non-organic friendly grocer for our produce. Don’t get me wrong, the place had good produce, and lots of variety too. They still had the best looking peppers and tomatillos I’ve yet to see. As the neighborhood economy changed over the years that we were living there, the grocery started to change too. They restocked their shelves with more and more organic selections. I would find good deals on bags of organic apples or a huge box of organic spinach.

But write to your grocer about non-produce items especially, because these products get overlooked. Maybe your bulk section doesn’t have a single organic item in it! Maybe you’d love to eat tofu or soy milk, but you can only find non-organic brands that are loaded up with weirdness. Maybe you’d really love to replace the oatmeal you eat every single morning with organic oats and your grocer is going to miss out on your patronage because you might take the next thing I write seriously.

use the internet to your advantage

- Order online. I really hate this advice. I do. It’s not a green way to go, of course. There’s a lot of shipping waste and petroleum involved in this process. But if you are in the middle of nowhere and you demand organic flaxseed meal, you might find yourself doing this. You’d be surprised at how much food is sold directly through Amazon, so if you’re a member of their Prime thingy, you can even get free shipping. I’m not really sure how much this will help my Canadian friends, but it’s worth a look if you’re really itching to get going on eating organic food.

The Casual Vegan