If your going to buy all those fruits and veggies for your Meatless Monday, or any other day of the week for that matter, you need to figure out which ones are safe to buy, right? Thankfully for us, most of the information we need is literally stuck right onto our produce. The stickers are called PLU (price look-up) numbers and can reveal more than just the price when it comes to your apple or bell pepper. They are an indicator of how your produce was actually grown! This method would only apply to when you are shopping in grocery stores, not when your at the farmer's market. If you want to know how your food is grown at the market, just ask the farmer who's working the booth. Just becasue they booth doesn't say USDA Organic, doesn't mean they don't grow organically. The USDA certification can be extremely expensive for small farms and can take years to obtain for financial reasons.
So without further a due...Let's crunch the numbers!
A four-digit number starting with 4 & a five digit number starting with 0 means it is conventionally grown.
Conventionally grown: These fruits & veggies were most likely grown on a large industrial farm that uses chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The food was most likely picked before it was ripe and shipped a long distance to get to the store. On average, this food is shipped about 1500 miles from the farm to your dinner table, giving it a significant carbon footprint. Large farms like this tend to contribute to ground and water pollution through chemical runoff.
A five digit number starting with 8 means it's genetically modified.
Genetically modified: This is one of the scariest to me, genetically modified food is banned in many countries due to the lack off significant safety testing. This process is different than traditional cross breeding where two similar plants are combined to create a different variation of the food. A GMO (genetically modified organism) is created by taking the traits, or genes, of one plant and inserting them into another. Not enough is known about the long-term ramifications of this gene manipulation on human health or the environment.
A five digit numbers starting with 9 means it's organic.
Organic: The food was raised without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides, it cannot be treated with sewage sludge, and is not genetically engineered or irradiated. This produce can still be shipped long distances so try to find produce that is marked both local and organic. Some natural pesticides may be used, depending on the farm.
Now that you know what these numbers mean, you can be sure about what happened to your food before you plopped it in your grocery cart. :)
Photo credit: gorawhavefun.com
Resources: sustainabletable.org
Monica Schrock is a vegetarian, bicycle-riding environmentalist, tattoo enthusiast and social media junkie. You can catch her drinking an iced coffee and reading a comic book (probably Tank Girl) at any given moment. She hearts our planet and gives tips on how to lower our environmental impact on her own site, Low Impact Betty. Stay updated on her low impact adventures by connecting with her on Twitter and Facebook.
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