A recent New York Post article sparked a food fight. If you missed it, you can read it here. Naomi Schaefer Riley uses Julie Gunlock’s new book to back up her claims that the organic mommy mafia embodies “arrogance and class snobbery” and is an “outgrowth of helicopter parenting.” Throughout the article words like “harassed,” “crazy,” and “controlling” pop up in support of this claim. According to Schaefer Riley, these mothers are misinformed, they are mean and they use food as a status symbol.
FAIR published a well thought-out rebuttal from Kari Hamerschlag and Stacy Malkan. You can read it here. The authors brought to light that the NY Post piece left out some facts, cited some shoddy research and was a thinly veiled special interest piece at best. You might be wondering who would be interested in targeting the Organic Mommy Mafia. According to the FAIR article all roads lead back to a company I’d never heard of: Koch Ag & Energy. Wikipedia describes them as the second largest privately owned company in America, raking in $115 billion in 2013. If you’re wondering about their interest in our food supply, I lifted this from their website:
Fertilizer: We make things grow with fertilizers and high-efficiency
plant nutrient technologies that allow our customers to succeed.
I guess if I was trying to ensure my company’s success and the success of my client base, I wouldn’t want a bunch of crazy controlling neurotic mommies switching to organic either. As a side note, if you’re curious as to their political leanings you can see whom they’re backing for election in Kansas here.
The real issue is not the social implications or even the political and financial implications. Robin O’Brien says it best here: It’s the health implications that matter. More and more of our kids are getting sick. They are needlessly acting as canaries in the “coal mine”. (You can learn more about the Canary Kids project here.)
If you understand how the body works, then you understand the heart of the issue is really reducing toxic load on the body. 100 trillion cells generate a lot of metabolic waste. The body’s number one priority is removing waste from the cells and eliminating toxins from the body. Chemicals from food and our environment add to the load. Toxic build-up leads to cell death and causes disease.
Safefruitsandveggies.com may say the exposure is minimal, but they’re not considering chronic exposure. However, they also don’t take into account the impact of these chemicals on our environment or how the increased exposure affects the health of a farm worker. It’s clear that cleaner, safer food benefits everyone as evidenced in a recent National Geographic article.
I hope you’ll take the time to read through the hyperlinks so that you may make better-informed decisions for yourself and your family.
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Jillian Burne is a holistic health coach with a private practice in Manhattan. She is a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Jillian is dedicated to helping families and adults with ADHD manage their symptoms with diet and lifestyle modifications. Her approach is geared toward effective changes that can be implemented in today’s busy, high-tech world. Her work in functional medicine led her to create a 4-step program to help busy families and adults recover from ADHD, autoimmune and so much more. For a free 15 min phone consultation to see if this approach is right for you call 646-226-9312.
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