Organic Food

Now that I have a baby, I’m thinking about buying more organics. What do you do?

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply: I try to buy organic foods whenever I can. A generation ago, people smoked because they didn’t know how bad it was. Now we do. Along the same lines, I believe that we might yet not know how bad conventionally grown foods are, but someday we will.

The one thing I always buy organic is milk. There’s a dramatic price difference between conventional milk and organic, but I think it’s well worth the extra cost. Milk is a huge staple of my son’s diet, and it’s one thing I can’t wash.

For fruits and vegetables, I try to buy them organic when I can. When I can’t buy organic, I wash the fruits and vegetables three times in cold water, very vigorously.

—Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, FAAP, a mom two sons ages four and two, a board-certified pediatrician, and a blogger for Seattle Children’s Hospital, in Seattle, WA

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply:  When my older son was a baby, there wasn’t much organic baby food available, other than what we grew ourselves. But as soon as I was able to get organic food, I shifted over to an almost-all organic diet. Today, about 90 percent of our food is organic. We belong to an organic food buying club, and I buy almost all locally grown organic vegetables, meats, and poultry.

People often say organics are too expensive, but actually I think because organic foods are higher in fiber and nutrients, you eat less, compared with highly processed or simple carbohydrate foods. Plus you can pay a lot for packaging in all of those processed foods. The Farmers Market is a good place to buy less expensive organic foods.

—Michelle Storms, MD, a mom of 24- and 20-year-old sons and a 21-year-old daughter, the assistant director/research director of the Marquette Family Medicine Residency Program in Marquette, Michigan. She is also a member of the health professionals board for Intact America, an organization devoted to protecting the genital integrity of children.