Whenever I have mentioned that our family eats mostly organic foods, many of you have asked:  Is it worth it to pay extra money for organic food? Is eating organic food really that important? Is non-organic food really so bad for you? And really…isn’t this whole “organic eating thing” just kind of trendy and gimmicky?

After much research and thought, my answers to those questions are:  Sometimes, Sometimes, Sometimes and Sort Of But Not Necessarily.

Okay, so did that clear up any confusion? Good. Now what questions would you like me to answer?

Just kidding. I’ll elaborate. I’m definitely not an organic food expert, but our family has been trying to eat a whole foods and mostly organic diet for about six years now, and I really wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t feel like it was important. We also don’t have unlimited funds in our budget, so don’t assume we eat organic, whole foods because we’re rolling in dough. (Unless you’re talking about bread dough, because then occasionally I’m rolling in it.)

The fact that eating organic food is “trendy” in some areas was big news to me. Where I live, eating organic food is not very popular and pretty much not the norm. Therefore, my very uneducated and inexperienced opinion on why many see organic eating as a trend is that not everyone who buys and eats organic food “gets it”. They might just see it as “the thing to do” and feel  like if the package says “natural” or “organic” is must be better for you.

I personally am not an advocate of eating organic, whole foods (or doing anything for that matter) simply because “everyone else is doing it”. What a silly reason for me to go out of my way to find healthy foods. I try to feed my family organic, whole foods because my extensive research tells me that this is best. For the record, there are many foods with an organic label that I do not recommend. (I’ll elaborate on that soon.)

When I mentioned in this post that I wasn’t sure I felt that eating a non-organic apple was better than eating no apples at all…I really am not convinced that it is as a general rule. Some suggested that they’d rather feed their kids a non-organic apple than a bag of chips. Well sure. But I wasn’t comparing apples to chips. I was suggesting that maybe I should skip the non-organic apple and just stick with in-season organic produce instead. I have my reasons. I’ll talk about them in the next few posts in this series.

And then there’s milk and meat and grains. Those subjects deserve to be talked about a little bit too.

Thus begins a little series inside a series. (Did this just get complicated?)  I’ve been working slowly but surely through this Simple Steps Toward Healthy Eating series, and now within that series, I’ll be writing a few posts entitled, “Should I Eat Organic Food?”

See? It’s a series inside a series. While you wait for these posts, I’d appreciate it if you go back and read some of my other series, which means that this is a series inside of a series inside of a series.

By the way, did you know that the plural form of the word series is series? I find that funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but the kind of funny that makes a person shrug and say, “Huh, how ’bout that?”.

Yeah, okay, it’s really not that funny.

Anyway, you may want to read the following series:  Feeding the Family, particularly these posts:

• Our Real Foods 2011 Grocery Budget
• No Grocery Budget Comparing Allowed!
• Very Limited Income for Real Food Purchases
• Do You NEED To Cut the Grocery Budget?
• Ways to Stretch the Real Foods Grocery Budget

You should also read this series:  Our Healthy Eating Journey so that you know where I’m coming from.

Also, you need to be reminded that with all of my talk about healthy eating, sometimes our family throws out all the great organic, whole foods ideas and buys frozen pizza rolls with all the no-no ingredients in them. It’s called a compromise and I don’t freak out about it. (Nor, ultimately, do I freak out about the occasional non-organic apple, but again, I’ll get back to that within this series.)

Stay tuned for the following topics within this series of series:

• What  does organic even mean anyway?
• Which foods should I focus on for eating organic?
• What if I can’t afford organic food or have any resources close by?

I’ll be posting the next post in this “organic food series” next Sunday night. Until then, I’ll leave you with this question:  Do you eat mostly organic food, some organic food, no organic food?

Also, the particular word series that I printed in green above, is it singular or plural? Yeah, see? Very tricky. And a little bit funny. But not really.