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Last week, I was in New York City to attend two fantastic trade shows — 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show and Good Food Mercantile.

Whenever I go to these shows, I always come across some outstanding organic products, and this year was no exception.

Here are my Top 10 Organic Products of the 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show and Good Food Mercantile.

For those of us who are fans of Dr. Bronner’s, the company’s products have a constant presence in our households, and we use them to clean our bodies and physical surroundings on a daily basis.

While this is unquestionably a critical component of our lives and imperative to maintain good health, cleaning transcends removing whatever is on our skin, on our clothes or on our kitchen countertops. It also affects our emotional well-being and directly impacts how we show up in the world.

And this is precisely why Lisa Bronner’s Soap & Soul: A Practical Guide to Minding Your Home, Your Body and Your Spirit with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps spoke to me so much, as it squarely touches on the importance of cleaning both the tangible and intangible — an essential formula for a meaningful life.

For as long as I have been covering the organic food industry, I have attended Natural Products Expo East, with my first show in Boston in 2009.

So, it is very bittersweet to report that after last week’s show in Philadelphia, there will be no more Expo East moving forward. New Hope, the organizer of the event, has decided to launch something new in 2024 called Newtopia Now.

Dr. Bronner’s, the beloved soap brand that donates 8.6% of its revenues to social and environmental causes, has released a limited-edition, cannabis-scented fragrance of its classic bar soap to support a new consumer education and crowdfunding campaign for Sun+Earth Certified.

Founded by the International Cannabis Farmers Association, Cannabis Conservancy and Certified Kind, along with deep support from Dr. Bronner’s, Sun+Earth is a program inspired by and aligned with the Regenerative Organic Certification standard but tailored to the way cannabis is grown and produced.

A while ago I did a story on gold nugget mandarins and when I saw this unknown fruit above, I couldn’t help but think of them because of the similarity of the rind.

And just as I had never seen gold nugget mandarins before, the same was true with these organic kaffir limes.

When I started asking the woman at my local organic market about kaffir limes, she quickly asked “Do you want to try one?”

With a bit of reluctance, I said “Ok, I guess.” After all, eating limes isn’t something that I normally do.

Whenever I go to a market in NYC these days and check out the refrigerated section, I am constantly amazed by the inordinate amount of shelf space that REBBL occupies.

But it’s for very good reason.

Under the brilliant leadership of CEO Sheryl O’Loughlin, REBBL has become the hottest brand in the beverage world, and people have become obsessed with the company’s adaptogenic coconut milk drinks.

One question has been really bothering me as of late: Is there such a thing as USDA certified organic honey?

Despite the picture you see above, there is good reason for me to have serious doubt.  Here is why.

In the past, I have spoken to numerous local beekeepers and when I asked them if their honey is organic, they have all told me that there is no such thing as USDA certified organic honey.

Yet when I go to the market, I see one or two brands of honey that have the USDA organic seal on the label. Almost all of the honey that has the seal on it comes from Brazil, which has made me wonder whether there is some type of corruption going on with the certification.

With the ag-biotech industry having made incredible progress brainwashing consumers and politicians into thinking that GMO foods are perfectly safe, the fact remains that no independent, long-term safety studies of these foods have ever been conducted on humans.

And because the general public has been falsely convinced into believing that GMOs are safe and government oversight has been minimal, scientists are pushing genetic engineering into other areas that could spell potential disaster for our planet and our survival.

Whenever I get asked the question of which are the best tasting organic foods, my response is always the same: the Biodynamic ones.

For quite some time, I have been wondering why exactly Biodynamic tastes so delicious, so I went digging for an answer.

THE BASICS

To understand why Biodynamic tastes so good and different from the rest, let’s first discuss its origins and then define it.

When I was at EARTH University in Costa Rica, I got a chance to learn everything about sustainable banana production – from how they are grown in the fields to how they are shipped to the U.S.

In this video, I’ll take you onto the banana plantation of EARTH University and show you the issues that they have to deal with when growing bananas in such humid conditions.

What’s important to note is that it took EARTH University many, many years for its sustainable bananas to reach profitability and the school was told by consultants that the program wasn´t going to work.

EARTH University’s president refused to give up because he knew that this was the right way to do business – for the environment, for the farm workers, for consumers – even though his bananas were more expensive than conventionally-grown ones.

Whole Foods recognized the importance of what EARTH University was doing and the values that it stood for, and decided to distribute the school’s bananas throughout the U.S. Not only has this partnership been critical for the long-viability of EARTH University’s banana program, but the strong demand for the school’s bananas has proven that sustainability is good business.

Without question, EARTH University’s bananas are the best that I have ever eaten. If you have the chance to buy them, definitely do so.

You’ll be eating a fantastic product and also be supporting an incredibly important endeavor for sustainability.

Also, being such a huge fan of bananas, I can’t tell you how interesting this day was for me. Enjoy!