Living Maxwell
Company Stories
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.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
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.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
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.
Living Maxwell
Must-Read
For people who are new to organic, the first question they generally have is “Why should I be eating this food?”
The easy response is “because organic food does not contain synthetic and toxic chemicals”.
Organic food also forbids the use of genetically-engineered ingredients, often known as GMOs (genetically-modified organisms).
Since GMOs are a little bit more complicated and a little less tangible, this point either gets overlooked or is not fully understood.
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Living Maxwell
Better Choices
I spend an inordinate amount of time learning about the healthiest and newest organic food products available. Through my research at the various trade shows — most notably, Natural Products Expo East and Natural Products Expo West — talking to industry contacts, roaming supermarket aisles, speaking with as many well-informed food people as I can and reading books, I have come to the following conclusion:
You can take almost any food in the world and some health expert will have something good to say about it while a different health expert will have something bad to say about it.
So, what I do is educate myself as much as I can and then make my own decision about whether I should be eating it or not.
The following five organic foods seem to be the most controversial. While books could be written on all of the foods below and by no means am I covering all of the pros/cons of each, I will try to highlight the most salient points.
Living Maxwell
Personal
I got a call at about 8AM this morning from my good friend Karl, who lives in Miami.
It was very surprising to hear from him at that hour because we normally talk late at night. However, he had some interesting news to share – my Fox News Channel interview had made The Colbert Report.
Colbert reported on the loss of I-522, the GMO-labeling initiative in Washington State, and took serious aim at GMOs and the GMO-companies who are fighting against labeling.
Organic Insider
Company Stories
Last week, Naked Juice agreed to settle a very important class action lawsuit which accused the company of deceptive labeling.
The primary basis of the lawsuit stemmed from the company’s use of the words “All Natural” on products that contained Archer Daniels Midland’s Fibersol-2 (“a soluble corn fiber that acts as a low-calorie bulking agent”), fructooligosaccharides (an alternative sweetener), other artificial ingredients, such as calcium pantothenate (synthetically produced from formaldehyde), and genetically-modified soy.
Since these ingredients are either genetically-engineered or synthetically produced and do not exist in nature, it is completely misleading to consumers for these juices to claim to be “All Natural.”
As part of the settlement, Naked Juice, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, has agreed to remove the label “All Natural” from all of its juices and to pay a $9 million settlement to the class action group.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
The lawsuits against industrial food companies just keep piling up.
First, it was Wesson Oils who got sued for using GMOs in its products that the company claimed were “100% Natural”.
Then, Kashi got sued for using prescription drugs, irradiated substances, pesticides that are a by-product of uranium mining, and federally declared hazardous substances in products that it claimed were “All-Natural” and contained “Nothing Artificial”.
Living Maxwell
Must-Read
The more time that you spend in the organic industry, the more you learn about what is truly going on and what you find is pretty scary.
While I try to remain as optimistic as possible, the reality is that the organic industry is under a constant existential threat from genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).
Even though organic food has never been more popular, nearly 80% of the food on supermarket shelves contains GMOs and organic remains less than 1% of all farmland acreage in the U.S. While 64 nations around the world require GMOs to be labeled, the U.S. does not. Why?
Because the ag-biotech industry has “purchased” agricultural policy in our country, by spending $572 million on campaign contributions and lobbying from 1999-2010.
Organic Insider
Must-Read
It is bad enough that we have to deal with genetically-engineered foods, but now we are facing the prospect of something potentially even more scary: genetically-engineered trees.
Tree biotech company ArborGen is requesting an unprecedented USDA approval for its genetically-engineered (GE), “freeze tolerant” eucalyptus. If the USDA grants this approval, it will be the first-ever GE-forest tree to be commercially grown in the U.S., allowing ArborGen to plant massive, unregulated GE-tree farms.
