Health food - a pediatrician's insight

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Health food

Doctor practices what he preaches by going organic.

McClatchy Newspapers

Published Thursday, December 28, 2006

http://columbiatribune.com/2006/Dec/20061228Busi009.asp

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - Last fall, Danville, Calif., pediatrician Alan

Greene toured an organic dairy farm in Vermont, where cattle and calves

roamed open hillsides, chomping on grasses and clover.

Unlike their corn-fed counterparts, the livestock wasn’t crammed into

feedlots or pumped with antibiotics and synthetic hormones.

Siemon, the CEO of the nation’s largest organic farm cooperative,

who accompanied Greene, observed that the lifestyle tended to extend the

cattle’s lives by seven to 10 years.

Greene wondered whether an all-organic existence would have a similar

effect on a human’s well-being - and decided to find out. He took blood

tests to establish a health baseline and switched to a 100 percent organic

diet. " I’m off the conventional food grid, " he said.

It hasn’t been easy. Nearly every recipe he tried necessitated scavenger

hunts at natural grocers to locate a particular organic oil, herb or

condiment. Much to his children’s chagrin, decent organic pizzas were, for

a time, nearly impossible to find. And Greene, who travels frequently,

found the options on airlines and in many Midwest cities to be limited, at

best.

But finding restaurants that serve organic food hasn’t been difficult,

thanks to the Omorganics.org Web site, which lists dozens of Bay Area

places such as A Cote, Baywolf and Hidden City Cafe.

Traveling still presents challenges, but none unworkable. Greene has taken

to packing his own organic meal for the plane. He also found that many

restaurants are only too happy to try their hand at an all-organic meal,

so long as they have a day or two’s notice.

So what are the results a year into the experiment?

It’s hard to say. For one thing, Greene was already eating a high

proportion of organic food. For another, his initial blood work proved

fairly healthy.

Anecdotally, he feels he needs less sleep and his immune system is

stronger: His constant contact with sick children usually results in

several illnesses a year, but lately he hasn’t had so much as the

sniffles.

Greene is the first to admit the health impact of an all-organic lifestyle

on a single person is scientifically meaningless. He mainly wanted to

satisfy a personal curiosity, nudge restaurants and grocers to widen their

offerings, and present a model that would encourage others to incorporate

more organics into their diet.

He also believes there is a strong social justice rationale for eating

only organic food: Growing produce without synthetic pesticides and

fertilizers is better for the health of farmworkers as well as people who

live on or near the field. " I personally prefer not to eat food that’s

harming the people who grow it for me, " he said.

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