[squirell nutkin]

We shop at our local food coop and we are really lucky that we live in a very vibrant farm community and have a very large garden.

I rarely buy organic from the big chain stores, would only shop at Whole Paycheck, if there were no other grocery stores around.

There is a lot of deliberate misinformation when it comes to describing food. For example the term "free range chicken" has a specific, legal definition. All that is required to call a bird "free-range" is that it have access to the outdoors. You could have 60,000 chickens in a gymnasium with no ventilation or lights and a single 12"x12" opening leading to a barren concrete lot as far as the eye can see and you can legally call your chickens free range.

Organic produce is suspect to me, it is not necessarily better for you for starters, the definitions of organic have been cut off at the knees by the gov't so it is pretty much meaningless. Friends of ours who are not "certified organic" actually have better, stricter growing practices than certified organic farms. They can't afford to be certified.

At the Park Slope Coop where mrs. nutkin was a member there was a memeber whose job it was to test all the produce that came in for traces of herbicides and pesticides. (It is a big coop) They were always finding non-organic stuff.

I wouldn't spend my money on a label whether the label is Organic or Gucci. It means nothing.

Save your money buy things that haven't been cooked already, cultivate relationships with farmers and growers, eat in season, you can reduce your food bill and eat healthier.

Still, $200. a week for a family of four doesn't seem out of line.