So why am I giving my DNA all the credit? Well, you don’t know how I used to eat. If the food’s been processed, packaged, dyed, or genetically engineered, it’s been in my stomach. My wife would browse broccoli at the grocery store; I was a 7-Eleven man. I bought sugar stuffed in cellophane. I ate premade lunches that featured atomic-orange cheese. I would knock back a Coke Slurpee and be ready for action. I ate like a teenager for two decades because I never had to face the negative impact of my decisions. That is, until last year. As I inched closer to my 40th birthday, the food I was consuming began to fight back. It started this past spring with my stomach gurgling when I tried to sleep. It moved to the middle-of-the-night heartburn stage a few months later. Most days I felt tired, lethargic, beaten. I’d sit in my office in downtown Denver and look at my preservative-laden lunch, wondering if that was the culprit. “Why do I keep doing this to myself?” I asked the sandwich one time. By November, after a particularly sleepless week, I’d had enough. I needed to change. That’s when I decided to give myself the most radical remake of my adult life. One night after work I devised the plan: I’d live organically for 30 days—no breaks—and then see how I felt afterward. But I’d also take this beyond food. I wanted to make it a lifestyle. That meant no artificial junk of any kind. Everything—the beef I’d ingest, the shampoo I’d use on my hair, the underwear that would cover my butt—would be 100 percent organic. “You’re crazy,” my wife told me. My two kids thought I was stupid. I knew there’d be skeptics. I was one of them. My decision to overhaul my eating was based on a common assumption about organic food: that the stuff is better for you. As it turns out, the science has been a bit unsettled, at least until recently. But in 2014, the British Journal of Nutrition analyzed a whopping 343 studies and concluded that organic food generally had higher concentrations of antioxidants and a far lower incidence of residual pesticides than conventionally grown food. MORE: What Does It Really Mean When Food is Labeled as “Organic”? Still, what really sold me was the anecdotal evidence. I have friends and coworkers who’ve gone organic and espoused the benefits. They told me their meals never tasted better. They have more energy. They’re thinking more clearly. It was hard to dismiss their stories—or the sheer number of people making the shift. In 2012, organic food sales in the United States hit roughly $28.4 billion. Last year that number was expected to reach $35 billion. And according to a recent Morgan Stanley report, the organic and natural food industry will continue to grow an estimated 9 percent a year. Organic products, the USDA notes, are now available in nearly 20,000 natural food stores and roughly three out of four conventional grocery stores. Places like Costco, Target, and Walmart are filling their shelves too, carrying a host of 100 percent organic foods ranging from salsa to whole wheat spaghetti. Yes, even Walmart. But what did I do? I started with the Nordstrom of organic: Whole Foods. As I walked the aisles, it was like my high school prom all over again: Me grabbing at stuff I didn’t know how to use, just because it was there. I checked out deodorants, shampoos, toilet cleaners. I loaded up on organic chocolate bars, $15 facial scrubs, grated cheese, arugula. The packages were so enticing, so beautiful. I wanted it all. After half an hour, I stared into my basket and realized I’d filled it with a bunch of unnecessary stuff. I’ve never used a facial scrub in my life. Looking back, I see I made a rookie mistake. When you’re stocking your fridge and pantry and bathroom from square one, you need to think about staples and build from there. (Add these 20 Best Organic Foods to your grocery list to upgrade your diet, strengthen your body, and help heal the planet.) “You go for foods like rice, oatmeal, tomatoes, leafy greens, and citrus, all of which are readily available in good quality and can be used as the backbone of your diet,” says Charles Benbrook, Ph.D., a research professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture & Natural Resources at Washington State University. “By expanding the percentage of calories you’re getting from those staples, cooked into various meals, you avoid the cheap, processed alternatives that make up such a big part of the average American diet.” I reset and grabbed some bread, tortillas, milk, cereal–the basics. MORE: 10 Easy Ways to Go Organic Then I went home and plotted my next course: a new wardrobe. About that. clothes were the only area where I was forced to compromise on my 100 percent organic goal. I mean, good luck finding shoes with no chemical content. I had to settle for a pair that had rubber soles and a mostly organic toe box. I found T-shirts that were almost entirely organic except for the trim. Socks and underwear were close too, but you need elasticity to keep those bad boys up. I have nothing to back this, but organic cotton certainly feels softer than what I’m used to—and my wife complimented me on my butt. By my second week, I’d bought a pair of $100 mostly organic corduroys to go with my $10 dress socks, $19 undershirt, and $14 briefs. (More on the bill for organic in a moment.) While I was getting comfortable in my new threads, I was also feeling more at ease with food shopping. Eventually I was able to tackle my family’s regular grocery stores. I made discoveries in the frozen-food aisle and in the bratwurst section. I found a favorite peanut butter, a go-to cereal. I researched a certified organic farm and bought into a community-supported agriculture project. For a little more than $60 total, I got six helpings of farm-canned vegetables and 18 fresh eggs, spread over a month. Maybe most exciting, my food had a story. MORE: Maria Rodale, CEO of Rodale, Inc. and author of Organic Manifesto, shares her 11 Easy Ways to Go Organic. By week three, I noticed my kids were finishing their dinners—chicken and burgers and chili and vegetables—and asking for seconds. My daughter said the food tasted better, and she was right. (My organic beets marinated in rosemary and garlic really were excellent.) I might have been surprised, but nutritionist and horticulturist Jana Bogs, Ph.D., was not. “With organic methods, the soil generally has a broader spectrum of nutrients, which allows plants to express their full genetic capacity,” says Bogs, the author of Beyond Organic… Growing for Maximum Nutrition. “This results in the formation of more flavor compounds.” Still, winning my kids over was only a partial victory. I knew I’d pulled off a seismic change in my household when my wife came home from the store one morning with four bags of food, almost all of which was organic. She’d bought tomato soup, sour cream, and pork chops, and exclaimed, “I even got you cookies!” Don’t think this was all non-GMO cupcakes. There was the price. It’s an odd disconnect. I would pick up an organic orange and think, If pesticides weren’t used on this, shouldn’t it cost less? The simple answer is no, but the reasons are complicated. For one thing, crop rotation is needed to keep the soil healthy for organic agriculture. A conventional farmer can ride a profitable crop from year to year, says Benbrook, but an organic farmer might have to switch out to less-profitable crops as part of the rotation. What’s more, “cover crops,” such as certain kinds of peas, must be planted to add nitrogen and organic matter to the soil. That takes time and money, while simply spraying the fields with nitrogen might be done in a day. On top of that, fewer chemicals can mean higher labor costs for weeding and land cleanup before planting. “Organic food might never become as cheap as conventional food,” Benbrook says. In a way, the high price reflects the real cost to grow food. And then there’s the basic economic side of it: Organic is a hot commodity. Demand exceeds supply. In my case, the higher price actually produced a positive outcome. My organic soda cost more, so I drank far less of it. I wasn’t tempted to gnaw on a big bar of chocolate every day, because I wasn’t going to pay for it. My tiny box of cereal cost me $4—about twice what I’d paid for a generic brand the previous month. MORE: Should You Splurge on Organic Fruit? Because of the price, I no longer chowed down on a bowl before bed. Instead, I made myself a small, greens-only salad. At some point my heartburn stopped. I’m not saying there’s a cause-effect thing here, but it happened. Marisa Bunning, Ph.D., of Colorado State University, who’s an expert on postharvest produce safety and quality, says many factors could have been at play in my case. Most likely my organic diet pushed me to eat more vegetables and powerhouse greens while also cutting back on a bunch of the bad stuff. “There’s a more limited selection of unhealthy organic food,” she says. “You made a real change in your lifestyle.” By my final week, I was sleeping through the night again. I took a few runs in my neighborhood. I went sledding with the kids and didn’t huff and puff my way up the hill. Had my new lifestyle changed me this much in such a short time? Hard to say. Maybe I was feeling a placebo effect. Or maybe, as Bunning said, my diet had changed significantly enough that my body stopped reacting so terribly. Even though my 30 days are over now, I’ve stuck with much of my 100 percent organic diet. I pack my lunches with organic bread, peanut butter, and honey. I haven’t touched candy in weeks, and I don’t do late-night snacks packed with sugar. In fact, I haven’t been to a gas station food mart in two months. Of course, if they find a way to make an organic Slurpee, all bets are off. The article “A Former Junk Food Junkie Tries Living Organically for 30 Days” originally ran on MensHealth.com.
