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We all know the value of eating healthy, and with the growing awareness of the dangers of pesticides in produce and wider availability of organic products, more and more people are considering organic options when choosing their food.  For the last couple of years, I also have been trying to incorporate organic into my diet whenever possible.  Now that I’m pregnant, my nutrition and the quality of food that I eat are even more important than ever.  However, I am also more cost-conscious as we now have all the baby-related expenses to worry about, and as we all know, organic food tends to be expensive.  While it’s impossible to put a price on healthy living, do we really know what exactly we are getting when we buy organic and when does it really matter?  To that end, I have put together the following facts and suggestions that take the guesswork out of choosing organic food and enable you to make smart choices when it comes to buying organic without going broke.

1. What does ”organic” mean?  According to Wikipedia:
   

   Organic foods are produced according to certain production standards. For crops, it means they were grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, human waste, or sewage sludge, and that they were processed without ionizing radiation or food additives. For animals, it means they were reared without the routine use of antibiotics and without the use of growth hormones. In most countries, organic produce must not be genetically modified.”

2. Not all “organic” food is created equal.  Just because something says “organic” on its packaging, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it meets the government regulations for organic food.  I’ve seen some products labeled “organic” where only one or two ingredients are organic, while the rest are conventional, so be careful when reading the label and make sure to read the list of ingredients.  The only way to really know that you are buying organic food is to look for label that says “certified organic”.  Each country has its own set of standards for the way food is grown and manufactured in order for it to have organic certification.  In the US, look for the “USDA Organic” seal that identifies products with at least 95% organic ingredients.
3. Some products are worth buying organic more than others.  When you think about buying produce, the main reason why you would want to buy organic is to minimize your exposure to pesticides.  The amount of pesticides used in commercial farming typically depends on the extent to which particular fruits and vegetables are prone to pests and parasites.  The more prone they are, the higher levels of pesticides will be present, and in those cases, buying organic would definitely be a wise option.  For the produce that tends to be lower in pesticides, buying organic is not as critical.  According to this guide, the following foods tend to be the most contaminated: apples, bell peppers, celery, cherries, grapes (imported), nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, red rasberries, spinach, strawberries.  The least contaminated foods are: asparagus, avocados, bananas, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, kiwi, mangos, onions, papaya, pineapples, peas.  Instead of memorizing this list, I recommend printing out this handy wallet guide for easy reference when grocery shopping.
4. Where to buy organic food.  It used to be that only specialty stores carried a wide assortment of organic products, but now most grocery stores offer many organic options and even entire sections dedicated to organic food.  Here are some of the options to consider:
   • Health-food stores such as Whole Foods are still the best source for organic food and products, but they tend to be very expensive.  I do like them for buying grains and spices in bulk, which tend to run significantly cheaper than the packaged ones. 
   • Other grocery stores can vary widely in their selection, but I would recommend Trader Joe’s because they offer many organic choices at very reasonable prices. 
   • Another option is your local farmers’ market, where you can find many fresh organic produce with the added benefit of supporting your local farmers. 
   • Finally, for non-perishable items, there are mail-order and online options.  One that I would recommend is Azure Standard, which offers a dizzying array of organic products at incredible prices. 

As you can see, buying organic doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing endeavor, and as a consumer you can make smart choices that will allow you and your family to eat healthy without breaking the bank.

Related Articles:

• The Dangers of Plastics and Food

Every Monday, I will do a digest of articles and news that may be of interest to my readers.

• My article How to Go from Overwhelmed to Productive was featured this week in two blog carnivals: FitBuff.com’s Total Mind and Body Fitness and The Carnival of Family Life.  Both of these carnivals feature some fantastic articles on important topics that are worth reading about. 
• Also on the subject of personal productivity, I was intrigued by the following article by Steve Pavlina: How to Create a Personal Productivity Scaffold.  As someone who never seems to have enough hours in the day to get everything done and has trouble staying focused at work, I appreciated this simple approach to setting up my day for success.
• Yesterday I wrote about how to choose a baby name; a recent Wall Street Journal article, The Baby-Name Business illustrates how some parents take something as personal as that to an extreme, even going as far as hiring consultants and numerologists to come up with a “perfect” name for their child.  It also underscores the underlying anxiety that today’s parents experience when it comes to naming their baby.

For future parents, choosing a name for their baby is probably one of the most fun tasks, but it can also be one of the most stressful.  After all, you are choosing the name that another human being is going to carry with them for their entire life.  Of course, an adult can always change their legal name if they absolutely hate the one they are given, but as parents you’d rather pick out a good name from the beginning. 

What makes picking out a name so challenging? First of all, there are so many different names to choose from.  Especially now, when unusual and non-traditional names are becoming commonplace, which makes for endless possibilities.  Second, you want a name to accomplish several things: be at least somewhat unique (you don’t want your child to be one of five kids in their class with the same name), be pretty (for girls) or masculine (for boys) so that they don’t get picked on in grade school, go well with their last name, and perhaps have some special meaning.  The third (and often biggest) challenge is the fact that people simply have different tastes and tend to have strong opinions about names that they like or dislike.  While naming a child is ultimately the parents’ prerogative, everyone under the sun (especially relatives) wants to weigh in with their suggestions.

So, where do you begin?  Having recently gone through the process of choosing a name for our little girl, here are some ideas that we’ve found helpful:

1. Start with a broad list of names.  While you and your partner may already have your favorite names, it’s still good to be open to other possibilities.  Starting with a broader list may give you ideas for names that you haven’t considered.  Where to find such a list?  You can turn to one of the many baby name books on the market, or use online resources, such as babynames.com or babynamesworld.com.  Many of these resources allow you to look up names by specific categories, such as country of origin, meaning, religion, or literary source.  In our case, we wanted to name our child according to the Russian Orthodox tradition that requires the name to be that of a saint, which was helpful in narrowing down the search.

2. Narrow it down.  Let each partner go down the list and write down all the names that he or she would consider.  These don’t have to be the names that they absolutely love but rather the names that they could live with.  Then, compare your lists and see if you have any names in common.  Then, write those names down.  This will be your new list to work from.  Chances are, it will be much shorter than either of your individual lists.  We ended up with 8 names for girls and 4 names for boys (we didn’t know at that time whom we were having).  What happens if your partner didn’t choose the one name that you absolutely loved?  Well, tell them about it and the reasons why you love it, and ask if they would reconsider.  Our rule was that each of us had the veto power - so if one of us absolutely didn’t like the name, it would be taken out of consideration.

3. Research.  Now that you have a short list of names, you can do further research about them.  Go to the resources mentioned above and look up meanings of the names - perhaps one would strike you as particularly special after you learn what it means.  Research your family history - is there someone with the same name that you would want to name the baby after (or not!).  Read what other people think about the name (pregnancyandbaby.com features baby name reviews, which I found helpful).  If you are so inclined, talk to other people you trust and ask for their opinions - but be careful, because the more people you involve in the process, the more diverse opinions you are going to get.  We decided to keep our families out of the decision process because we wanted to name our baby something that had a special meaning for both of us, and we didn’t want to be influenced by everyone else’s opinions.

At this point, you should be able to narrow down the list significantly, perhaps to just a couple of names.  Then, it really becomes a matter of your gut feeling as to which name speaks to you more.  The good thing is, you still have a few months to make that final decision.  (In fact, you have a couple of days after the baby is born before you need to put their name on the birth certificate.)  Some people choose to announce the name as soon as they know, while others wait until the baby is finally born, so that they can see the little one before making that final decision.  Make it whatever works for you.  Don’t forget that it is ultimately your and your partner’s decision, and it should be a joyous process, not a stressful one!

When I first found out that I was pregnant, I started suffering from insomnia.  No, not because of any physiological discomfort, but because I couldn’t get my brain to shut down.  I would lie awake, tossing for hours, feeling overwhelmed with all the things that needed to get done before the baby gets here and worrying about how I was ever going to do them all.  I would continue worrying during the day, to the point when I was feeling utterly miserable, and because of the sheer magnitude of this “to-do” list in my head, I wasn’t getting anything done because I simply didn’t know where to begin.

Very often, the most difficult part of of getting things done is actually moving from anxiety to action.  I knew that I had to change my approach if I wanted to get anywhere, so here is what I did to get out of that unproductive state:

1. Communicate:  It is easy to feel overwhelmed when you feel that you are carrying the entire burden yourself, but you don’t have to.  Share your worries with someone close to you - simply doing that will make you feel a lot better.  And guess what? You don’t have to always do everything yourself.  It’s OK to ask for help.  When I shared my feelings with my husband, he said “Tell me what I can do to help”, which immediately eased my anxiety because now I knew had someone who was willing to share the burden with me.
2. Write it down:  When you try to keep everything in your head, it’s easy to become overwhelmed because there seem to be a million different things that you need to be doing, and as soon as you start working on one, another one pops into your mind and you can no longer concentrate on the task at hand.  Before you can be productive, you need to create a clean slate in your mind by doing a “brain dump” - writing everything down on paper.  Simply take a large pad or a sheet of paper, and start writing things down as they come to you.  It doesn’t need to be in any particular order, or any particular level of importance.  Even the smallest tasks such as returning a phone call should go on that list.  I did that by sitting down with my husband, and it literally took not more than ten minutes to do.  Everything went on that list: things to buy, appointments to make, home improvements to do, emails to write.  At the end, when I could no longer think of anything else that needed to be doing, the list looked to be about 50 items long - still a lot, but actually much shorter than I had imagined it to be during those sleepless nights of tossing and turning!  The best thing about doing that was the feeling of relief.  I knew now that I wouldn’t forget to do anything important, because it was right there on the list, and for the first time, it all seemed quite manageable.
3.  Assign owners and due dates:  As the next step, go down that list that you’ve just made and assign owners to each of the items.  In our case, it was either my husband or me, or both of us.  Write down the owner next to each task.  At the same time, write down the timing for getting it done (for example, “before July 31″).  This way, you won’t miss an important deadline and will be able to track your progress against those milestones.
4. Make it visible:  One thing is to write things down, and another is to actually remember to do them.  Make sure that you have this action list visible to you every day.  You can do it by either putting specific tasks into your calendar or posting the entire list where you will see it every day, such as the bathroom mirror or the fridge (which is what we did). 
5. Get to action:  Now, there are no more barriers to getting all of those things taken care of - just start going down the list and getting things done!  As you do them and cross them off the list, you will get a tremendous feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment.  Aim to do at least one thing (or something that moves you towards getting one one thing done) every day.  If you do it together with another person, you can even have a little friendly competition to see who can cross items off their list faster.  The most important thing is that you will no longer feel overwhelmed and anxious - instead, you will feel in control and finally have peace of mind.

I have shared these tips with you because they really worked for me.  We are now about one-half of the way done with the original list, and now as soon as something new comes up that needs to get done, I simply add it to the list.  No longer do I carry all those things in my head and let them worry me.  Now that I have all my action items in one place, I control my to-do list instead of the other way around.

I love new beginnings, like the start of a new school year.   There is something about the promise of a fresh start, with the possibilities wide open, the future uncharted.  As with any new beginning, I have high expectations for this website, busybeemama.com.  I have created it with the primary purpose of reaching out to other women like myself, who struggle to balance family and work (be it inside our outside of home), while striving for personal fulfillment and well-being.  For more information about this site and myself, please visit the About page.  I have many exciting ideas and plans that have been sitting dormant, but now can find outlet through this venue.  Let the journey begin!