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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.

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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.

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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.

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Better Choices

Whether it is with a salad or any other dish that I am making at home, organic fermented foods – usually sauerkraut (above) or kimchee – can almost always be found on my plate. Why is this?

I have come to understand that if we want to have a strong immune system, we must take care of our gut and provide it with beneficial bacteria.

And that is exactly what fermented foods give us – beneficial bacteria.

Dr. Natascha Campbell-McBride, a Russian neurologist and founder of the GAPS Diet, says that:

“about 85% of our immune system is located in the gut wall. This fact has been established by basic physiology research in the 1930s and the 1940s. Your gut, your digestive wall, is the biggest and the most important immune organ in your body. There is a very tight conversation and a relationship going on between the gut flora that lives inside your digestive system and your immune system.

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Must-Read

Organic beet kvass isn’t exactly a household name, similar to a coconut water or even kombucha.

And I don’t believe that it will ever come close to having the same name recognition as these other two drinks.

Yet, its health benefits and utility may surpass them both.

A lacto-fermented beverage of Russian origin, beet kvass provides the body with beneficial bacteria and aids in digestion.

It is also touted as a blood purifier and an excellent way to cleanse the liver.

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Personal

In the summer of 2001, after being on Prozac for more than a decade, I made the life-altering decision to go off of antidepressants.

Despite what doctors and nearly everyone else around me were saying – that I had a chemical imbalance and that antidepressants were essential to keep me going – I believed otherwise. Intuitively, I knew that there was a better way to live, yet almost no one in my support system was in agreement with this line of thinking.

For the millions of people facing depression and who have similar doubts about medication being the only answer, a book has arrived that completely validates our concerns.

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Company Stories

I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to share with you great-tasting organic products that are also making a big difference in the world.

One such product that I recently discovered at Whole Foods Tribeca is Sol Simple Solar Dried Bananas.

Produced in Nicaragua, the organic bananas come in thin spears and are dried indoors using a solar drying technology, which enables Sol Simple to reduce carbon emissions.

According to the company, traditional outdoor drying techniques take 2-3 days, expose the fruit to mold and bacteria, and allow the fruit to oxidize.

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Better Choices

For many of us who understand the importance of organic, we eat and buy organic food without thinking about it.

We know that we don’t want to consume food that contains artificial growth hormones, synthetic pesticides or genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

We know that it is essential for us to purchase the highest quality food possible.

We know that food is medicine.

Yet, there are too many people out there who are just not that concerned about the food that goes into their bodies. They largely assume that since our government allows it on the shelf, it is safe.

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Must-Read

The next time some expert tells you that the most important thing to do for your health is to consume large amounts of fruits and vegetables, regardless of whether they are organic or not, you may want to educate this person about the latest scientific research and government data.

As I wrote about the other day, a study out of Harvard found that women undergoing infertility treatment in the U.S. — and who were also consuming fruits and vegetables with high amounts of pesticide residue — were associated with a lower chance of pregnancy and a higher risk of pregnancy loss.

Men are equally as impacted by the harmful effects of pesticides.

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Better Choices

When most people think of the reason to drink organic milk, the first thing that pops into their mind is the desire to avoid hormonal milk – milk that has been produced from cows who have been injected with synthetic growth hormones.

Yet, a recently released study gives us an additional reason as to why we should drink organic milk.

In research published in PLOS One, the scientists of the study reported that organic milk contained 62% more omega-3 fatty acids and 25% fewer omega-6s.