How many of you choose organic over normal foodstuffs?

[Fio2]

I am quite amazed at how much organic stuff people buy on here, with repect to looking at what your child ate yesterday thread. I have to say I buy no or very little organic foods (not that I can get hold of any!) and if mumsnet represents a 'typical' population how come the variety of organic foods is so minimal? And how do you all afford to buy organic milk? My kids drink nearly a full six pinter a day between them (is this excessive? )

sophable, have you read the John Humprhies book about it? I think it's THe Great Food Gamble.

www, no i haven't, just have a dh who cares a lot about salmon (so he can fish for them...oh irony of life) and has done loads of reading up about salmon farms, they have v v bad chemicals in them...is the book good? i don't really like humphries, esp on mastermind (magnus was so twinkly and kind, john h is pompous and not imo)

But non organic oven chips potentially use potatoes sprayed with pesticides. (I can hear Coddy sniggering at me. Not only do I bang on about this, I READ about it too... slinking off now)

marialuisa: we're talking a lot of olive oil...do you live in italy??? or spain??? bet they taste gorgeous tho

Foxinsocks and Sophable: I buy bags of frozen wild Alaskan salmon from Sainsbury's - it has the dryer texture and paler colour of wild salmon and is much much nicer than lurid, fatty fresh farmed salmon - but is cheap. Is it ok to eat?

careful coddy or you'll start reminding me of the stuff and nonsense ladies from french and saunders (does anyone remember?)

yes blu and it is lush...

Cd-should add that growing up on a farm I really don't give a toss about the pesticides etc. I buy for taste and nothing else. but can't quite figure out why you'd be so worried about pesticides you'd need to buy organic oven chips but not so worried about the additives...i don't like processed food 'cos it tends to taste nasty and have miserable childhood memories of potato waffles and microchips.

Sophable-nope I'm in the miserable north-west, mediterranean papa though. i'm afraid we do get through litres of olive oil though

Olive oil is about £1.50 in Lidl for 750ml

I bet macro is cheaper

would that be organic olive oil?

i think everything is ok if you're only eating a little bit, which is why i generally go for organic non-processed, but aren't fascist about it...except for farmed salmon that is

Lidl = organic! I think not .

This is Sofia Ames' area. She doesn't hold with all this organic stuff I don't think.

LOL at lidl, I miss it so much, sniff sniff

oh Blu, I shop in Sainsburys and have never seen that wild salmon. Is it in the frozen foods bit?

organic wine, oh well i just remembered I tried it once and I started halucinating

I mean the main frozen foods bit rather than the fish bit (where I normally get fish)

Can I just pop in here to add something about farmed Salmon.......

I studied Marine Biology at Uni and as part of our course we studied Aquaculture, this included fish farming and ALOT of dissections! We were studying a unit on parasites and we were given farmed Salmon to dissect as they have an unusually large number of parasites present in their bodies. I removed 14.... yes 14 liver flukes (liver worms) from one farmed Salmon. It's liver was so unhealthy it had gone a funny colour!!
The pink colour of the flesh in farmed trout and salmon is achieved by including a dye in their food.

I have never liked fish trout or salmon, but since then I've put DH off them too!

I have more horror stories if you want them.......

i didn't want to go into detail toothache, but am glad you have

Oh, I had organic wine the other night from the Co-op. Now is it better to buy co-op stuff from a co-operative or organic? Better if they are both but if have to choose, which is better ethically?

actually it's from my papa's olive groves...
so yep, organic but by accident rather than design!

marialuisa I can quite safely say that I would not buy oven chips, organic or otherwise! They taste like cardboard. If I want to make chips I just make big wedgie ones, slice up an (organic) potato, squirt (organic) olive oil on them and stuff them in the oven! Not a fan of chips really.

thing is, it wasn't that long ago that salmon was a treat, for bdays and christenings kind of thing...seems logical to me that if it goes from that to cheap as chips there is probably something up iykwim...oh and the colour and taste change completely