Ashley’s answer: To eat chemically produced vegetable or no vegetable at all, well, that IS the question! Vegetables play many important roles in the body, including being the primary clean-up services. So consider this: how healthy and safe would your home be if you didn’t clean it up one day, for a full week, for months? The same consideration applies to eating vegetables. We need vegetables—all of the different colors that exist in nature—daily in order to maintain health and certainly to improve health. So is there any reason we can skip them? The answer is no. Now, what about organic? Organic means you are getting the best clean-up tools because what’s going into your body is what your body recognizes and knows what to do with. Organic produce doesn’t come with anything that disrupts the veggie’s cleaning efforts. Back to your sandwich. We’ve determined that, yes, you should eat your veggies and, yes, you should try to make them organic. But what if that’s not an option? First, if you are having a food daily, you need to find a way to get it organic. What about keeping a stock of organic sun-dried tomatoes or organic tomato sauce to throw on your sandwich when organic tomatoes aren’t available? Or skip the tomato when it’s not organic and enjoy a cup of organic tomato soup. If you eat a food—take tomatoes—more sporadically, try keeping it to one slice of non-organic tomato and adding an organic green salad to your meal. Or cut up organic veggies as a side dish so that you get more cleanup power and great taste. The right nutrition answer isn’t making a “perfect” choice; it’s realizing that there are always better choices and identifying what those are instead of making a less quality choice. Chewing over a food quandary? Send it to AskAshley@Prevention.com Ashley Koff is a registered dietitian, Qualitarian, nutrition expert, and
