• Mambo Sprouts – Be healthier, greener and save money on your grocery bill when you use our printable coupons.
• Simply Organic – Organic spices, seasoning, salad dressings, and bake mixes.
• Lundberg Farms – Organic rice, rice cakes, pastas, flours, and gluten-free foods.
• Organic Valley – Organic dairy, soy, meat, juice, and produce products.
• Kashi – Cookies, crackers, cereals, frozen foods.
• Newman’s Own – Everything under the sun, with all proceeds going to charity.
• Arrowhead Mills – Baking, beans, breakfast, gluten free.
• Santa Cruz Organic – Organic juices, sauce, peanut butter, spreads, teas.
• Earth’s Best – Tons of products, including many for babies and children.
• Horizon Organics – Organic milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, butter.
• Cascadian Farm – Cereals, granola bars, frozen vegetables, fruit spreads.
• Brown Cow – All natural yogurt.
• Amy’s Kitchen – Organic and natural frozen prepared food items.
• Seventh Generation (OK, so not organic nor food. But they do have coupons for their cleaning products.)
• Seeds of Change – Rices, pastas, salad dressings.
• Muir Glen – Organic canned tomato products.

Did I miss any of your favorite places to get coupons for organic foods? Let everyone know in the comments! And if you are looking for some advice on how you should allocate your money spent at the grocery, here is a list of which fruits and vegetables you should be buying organic. Keep these products in mind next time you head to the store.

Image from BigStockPhoto

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!

Here’s a glaring example. A 1996 study explored the desirability of feeding stale chewing gum to cattle.(1) Amazingly, the gum was still in its aluminum foil wrappers. Wonder of wonders, the experts concluded that bubblegum diet was a net benefit—at least for the producers. I quote: “Results of both experiments suggest that [gum and packaging material] may be fed to safely replace up to 30% of corn-alfalfa hay diets for growing steers with advantages in improving dry matter intake and digestibility.” In other words, feed a steer a diet that is 30 percent bubblegum and aluminum foil wrappers, and it will be a more efficient eater. With a nod to public safety, the researchers did check to see how much aluminum was deposited in the various organs of the cattle. Not to worry. The aluminum content was “within normal expected ranges.” As always, there was no mention of the nutritional content of the resulting meat.

When I first read the bubblegum studies, I assumed that no one would actually feed bubblegum to their animals, despite the “positive outcome” of the research.. Then a professor of animal science drove me by a Beechnut gum factory in upstate New York where dairy farmers bought truckloads of bubble gum to feed to their cows.

The view from the other side of the fence is just as sobering. Most experts in human nutrition are equally blind to the feed/food connection. To them, beef is beef, eggs are eggs, and milk is milk. Thus, when the USDA says “eat less red meat,” the edict applies to all red meat, whether it’s a fatty steak from a grainfed cow, or a lean steak from a grassfed cow with its invisible bounty of omega-3s, vitamin E, beta-carotene, and CLA.

I’ve spent the past four years trying to forge the missing link between animal and human nutrition. It’s been tough going, especially when it comes to pasture-raised animals because virtually all the studies focus on feedlot animals. To fill in the gap, I’ve searched through yellowing journals published before the advent of factory farming, pieced together small studies financed by farmers, and combed through the research from Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand—parts of the world where animals are still kept home on the range.

Finding the amount of vitamin E in grassfed meat has been one of my biggest challenges. I began tthe search when I learned that grass has 20 times more vitamin E than corn or soy. Given the magnitude of this difference, I reasoned that meat from grassfed animals must have an extra helping of vitamin E.

At long last, I located one American study that broached the subject. The impetus for the study came from disgruntled Japanese buyers who complained that American beef spoiled more quickly than Australian free-range beef. Knowing that vitamin E helped prolong shelf life, the American researchers investigated the amount of vitamin E in the two types of meat. Lo and behold, they discovered that the meat from grassfed cattle had three to four times more vitamin E than feedlot beef, thanks to all that vitamin E-rich grass.

Now, what did the researchers do with this finding? True to form, they began studying how much synthetic vitamin E to add to synthetic feedlot diets. I doubt that it even occurred to them to investigate pasture-based ranching.

Why this lack of interest in the natural model? Much of our animal research is funded by commercial interests—specifically the grain, chemical, pharmaceutical, farm equipment, and meat-packing companies. Together, these vertically integrated behemoths have a multi-billion dollar stake in perpetuating factory farming. The USDA, meanwhile, aids and abets the feedlot industry by focusing virtually all of its efforts—and our tax dollars!—on tweaking the system. For example, the USDA Meat and Animal Research Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, is more willing to spend $100,000 researching how quickly feedlot manure seeps into the water table than to spend a similar amount of money investigating pasture-based ranching, the holistic model that keeps the contamination from happening in the first place.

What will it take to draw more scientific attention to pasture-based ranching? Pressure from an enlightened public. And what will it take to enlighten the public? The national media.

I have a fantasy how this might happen. First, a prominent media source such as “60 minutes” or The New York Times will decide to spotlight pasture-based farming. Building on this ground-breaking work, an award-winning TV producer will create a documentary that deepens the discussion. The program will conclude—as it must—-that raising animals on pasture is better for consumers, the animals, the environment, and small farmers. Before long, dozens of news shows, newspapers, and magazines will follow suit.

As the momentum builds, grassfarming will become the talk of the town. Serving organic meat won’t win points in Los Angeles anymore unless it’s grassfed as well. Meanwhile, Ted Turner will stop sending all of his bison to feedlots to be fattened like cattle, and by 2005, his “Turner Reserve Grassfed Bison” will be the thing to serve at celebrity gatherings. Propelled by this groundswell of interest, private and government institutions will finally devote more time, money and energy to exploring pasture-based farming.

Will grassfarming ever become the darling of the media? Only time will tell. But even if the media misses the boat, the good news about grassfarming will keep spreading on the grassroots level, one satisfied customer at a time!

Jo Robinson is the founder and director of www.eatwild.com, a science-based website that details the benefits of raising animals on pasture. She is also the author of Pasture Perfect, How You Can Benefit from Choosing Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Products from Grass-fed Animals.

1) Wolf, B. W., L. L. Berger, et al. (1996). “Effects of feeding a return chewing gum/packaging material mixture on performance and carcass characteristics of feedlot cattle.” J Anim Sci 74(11): 2559-65. Photo from BigStockPhoto

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!

There is a website called Eat Wild which is a tremendous source of information on finding “safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, pork, dairy and other wild edibles” all around the United States & Canada. Their state-by-state map has details on over 1,300 pasture-based farms which meet their criteria for providing well-cared for animals high in nutrition and free of antibiotics and added hormones.

Many of the farms are organically certified, and others lack certification but follow organic standards. By searching for and purchasing local, healthy food products, you are supporting local farming efforts instead of giant conglomerates interested only in profits. These corporate factory farms provide almost all the meat, eggs, and dairy products found in the supermarket today, coming from animals raised in confinement in large facilities called CAFOs or “Confined Animal Feeding Operations.” Choosing grassfed meat and dairy is better for the animals, better for the farmers, better for the local economy, and much better for you.

Support your local farmer, and visit Eat Wild to find a farm near you to purchase your local, pastured meat and dairy from. The animals and the planet thank you!

Image from BigStockPhoto

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!

A coalition of medical and public health groups referred to the increase in salmonella outbreaks, as well as an abundance of other scientific studies and U.S. government reviews, in a September 2011 letter urging federal authorities — including the FDA, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and President Obama’s Chief of Staff William Daley — to take action on the issue.

“The evidence is so strong of a link between misuse of antibiotics in food animals and human antibiotic resistance that FDA and Congress should be acting much more boldly and urgently to protect these vital drugs for human illness. In fact, government data show that the vast majority of antibiotics in the U.S. are sold for use in food animals, not people,” the letter states.

In 2009, the FDA itself reported that 70 to 80 percent of antibacterial drugs in the U.S. were sold for use in livestock animals to promote growth, prevent disease and treat illnesses caused by unsanitary conditions.

It may just be me, but I would imagine that with tens of thousands of people dying each year from anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in the U.S. alone, that regulating these antibiotics would be seen as a good and necessary thing by the FDA. However, money and pressure from corporations is often stronger than the principle of doing the right thing for everyone else, especially here in the United States.

Image from BigStockPhoto

Help support The Good Human! If you do your Amazon shopping through my Amazon link, a very modest sales commission is generated. This is true for any product at Amazon, not just the eco-friendly ones. Please keep this link in mind for all of your Amazon purchases, as when you click through one of them and do any shopping, it really helps keep The Good Human going. -> My Amazon.com Affiliate Link. Thanks!