Over the past few years, I have developed a relationship with the founder of Living Tree Community Foods, Jesse Schwartz.

Jesse is the person who urged me to check out Organic Circle, an amazing organic kosher supermarket in Brooklyn, that I profiled last month in my Supermarket Spotlight column. Needless to say, I trust his judgment.

When he wanted to send me more samples of his products recently, he was pushing real hard for his almond butter.

I said to him, “Jesse, I am sure it is great, but I really can’t eat almond butter anymore. For some strange reason, I now have an allergic reaction to eating almonds. It is better that you send me your lemon olive oil because that’s what I really want to write about. It is the best olive oil that I have ever had.”

This is not hyperbole. It truly is the best organic olive oil that I’ve ever had.

And when you learn how this lemon olive oil is produced, you’ll understand the reason for my enthusiasm.

The olives and lemons are co-milled, which means that they are crushed at the same time. Hence, a single oil is extracted from the combination.

According to Living Tree Community Foods, most flavored olive oils are infused, with an extract being added. The process of co-milling, versus adding an extract afterward, results in a very different final product.

The olives are a Mission variety, which has been used in Europe for cooking and healing in Europe for thousands of years. Introduced in California a few hundred years ago, the Mission olive contains phenols that are not found in other varieties, particularly oleuropein aglycon, which has significant health benefits.

Not to be outdone, the organic Lisbon lemons are an heirloom variety that is richly flavored and deeply aromatic.

Yet, the story gets even more interesting.

The Mission olives are grown by family farmer Darro Greco on a 100% certified organic estate called the Berkeley Olive Grove.

Founded in 1913 by a group of professors from the University of California at Berkeley, the Berkeley Olive Grove brought experts in from Europe to create an olive grove that would sustain itself. The award-winning grove is located in Sacramento Valley, 150 miles from the town of Berkeley, and is situated in a unique geographical area at the western escarpment of Table Mountain. Water naturally percolates from an underground aquifer, and the trees are 100 years old and are dry farmed. Read more »

(National Organic Standards Board meeting, photo courtesy of The Cornucopia Institute)

As we are getting ready to see either Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump take up residence in the White House, many of you may be wishing that we had another four years of President Obama.

But whether you are for or against this current president, one thing has been irrefutable: he has been a complete and utter disaster for organic.

Not only did he recently sign the worst GMO-labeling bill imaginable, which has put the future of organic in serious jeopardy, but his administration has approved every single genetically-modified crop that has been applied for, including genetically-engineered salmon, Agent Orange Corn and three types of genetically-engineered apples that don’t turn brown.

And these are just the high-levels initiatives that the much of the organic industry knows about. Yet, when you dig into the details of the day-to-day operations at the National Organic Program, it gets even worse. Read more »

One of the myths that GMO apologists constantly promote is that genetically-modified food produced in the U.S. is required to “feed the world” and anyone who fights against GMOs, according to Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, is “callous, heartless and cruel”.

With the United Nations estimating that the global population will reach 9 billion by 2050, Monsanto et al has positioned GMOs as a “moral imperative” to stave off global hunger. After all, people in developing countries can in no way feed themselves, they would like us to believe. American agriculture is the only solution. Read more »

A few months after the DARK Act passed, which many in the industry called a massive betrayal of organic by the Organic Trade Association, the fallout continues.

As I shared the news on Facebook recently, Dr. Bronner’s, one of the leading and most vocal GMO-labeling advocates in the country, has quit the Organic Trade Association in protest. Read more »

As I do at the end of each Expo East and Expo West, I list my top 5 organic food products of the show.

Some of the criteria that I use to judge the best products include originality, taste, and innovation. Also, I try as hard as I can to include products that most people have never seen before.

At last week’s show in Baltimore, there were many great organic products to choose from but here are the ones that I found to be the most compelling. These are My Top 5 Organic Products from Natural Products Expo East 2016.

FORAGER PROJECT’S DAIRY-FREE STRAWBERRY CASHEW YOGURT

Having watched this company for several years now, I give major kudos to the folks at Forager Project.

Despite being one of the country’s leading pressed organic juice brands, Forager has not been sitting still. Instead, it has pushed very hard to expand into food, with a complete emphasis on plant-based ingredients. Read more »

Supermarket Spotlight is a new column that I am launching today, and it will showcase independent, organic supermarkets throughout the country that people ought to know about, such as Organic Circle.

This column will run every other month and is sponsored by my friends at RangeMe, the leading platform that empowers retail buyers with an efficient way to discover innovative new products and to manage their inbound product submission process. RangeMe gives product suppliers and manufacturers increased control over the marketing of their products and greater access to retail buyers. Read more »

(To follow my day-to-day organic food adventures, please be sure to add me on Snapchat: maxorganic)

Last week, I got a mysterious shipment from Suja and it was six black bottles of juice with a note inside of it that said:

A Secret So Juicy We Had to Share

I found this to be very strange on several levels.

Normally, when the company sends me product, I get advance warning and I also know what they are shipping out to me. In this package, not only did I have no idea that it was coming, but I had no idea what these juices were when I opened the box. You couldn’t read the label while the bottle was full of juice.  Read more »