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Going Organic without Going Broke: a book review and meditation

By Linda Eckhardt on February 2, 2012

Do you have to be a vegetarian to eat for $5. a day?

Linda Watson has written a thoughtful book whose title says it all: “Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet. All on $5. a Day or Less“. Really? My question is this. Do you have to go totally vegetarian to pull this off? Hmm. If you have experience with this, let me hear from you.

This new book which crossed my desk last week: Wildly Affordable Organic, Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet. All on $5. A Day or Less., by Linda Watson, the founder of “Cook for Good”. DaCapo LifeLong Books was certainly welcome to me.

I wanted to like this book. I wanted to love it. In fact, I’ve been nagged for a long time about the seeming “truth”, that to eat organic, meant to give over your life and life savings to Whole Foods, et al.

Buy in season produce for best value

I am also acutely aware of the fact that if we don’t scale up the organic food offerings to meet the needs of most diners, then it becomes little but an exercise in Marie Antoinette thinking.

“Let them eat cake”, was Ms. Marie’s suggestion to the starving people of Paris during the French Revolution. When you consider that we have a large and growing population of people who are “food insecure” for at least part of the month, it would seem that the cognoscenti (including myself) may be making food recommendations to a well-heeled few. This is not a good place to be.

Now food insecure is just a bureaucrat’s way of saying hungry. If the stats are to be believed, a whopping 32 million adults and 16 million children lived in “food insecure households” in 2010. From “Food Insecurity and Very Low Food Security”[2] by www.feedingamerica.org. this means they went to bed hungry at least some nights during the month.

It’s important to understand that food insecurity isn’t synonymous with poverty. More often, it is synonymous with people who lose their jobs, and therefore begin to depend upon public assistance to get through the month. SNAP, the federal food stamp program has risen sharply during this time.

Linda Watson, who wrote Wildly Affordable Organic began her project by living on a food stamp allotment for an entire summer after reading Michael Pollan’s work.

organic produce and pasta

She found what is often found. The poor, who have little money to spare, often spend more than their deeper pocketed relations. How is that? Foods bought in small volume, often cost more on a per serving basis.

So there’s your Costco world view, eh? People who live in so-called food deserts, who have no car, and who have such a small disposable income, can often not take advantage of buying in bulk, or stocking up.

On the way to the market

So Linda Watson took on this challenge and the book is her answer to the question. Can you eat well on a small budget? Yes, is the answer.

However, I can’t really agree with many of Linda’s suggestions. She recommends eating peanut butter on toast with tea for breakfast. Oh puhleeze. Oatmeal, or a couple eggs cooked any way you want them provide a much more nutritious base for the day, and at about the same price.

My daughter, who has ravenous 14 year old twins feeds those kids eggs every day, in one form or another. Today it’s boiled, tomorrow it’s in crepes which are mostly egg, then she folds in cheese and/or vegetables. These kids never suffer that late morning crash that comes to people who eat inadequate protein for breakfast.

organic eggs from the farmers' market

If Watson’s book has a fatal flaw from my point of view, it’s too much sugar and overly processed carbs. Spare me all that flour and sugar. Even if you are making chocolate pudding at home, it’s still pudding, and none too healthy. This is a problem I find with most vegetarian regimens from American cooks.

Americans just seem to have to have that sugar fix. And the idea of eating a sensible whole grain, like rolled oats, just doesn’t hack it unless that hot cereal is drowned in sugar. Adding whole berries to a steaming hot bowl of oatmeal, along with cream, is not only nutrient dense, but it is flavorful. Without any sugar. Honest.

organic rolled oats

This isn’t to say there aren’t healthy vegetarian plans. My friend, Parvathy, a high Brahmin Hindu is a dedicated vegetarian, and I find her food both delicious and healthy. And she never even looks at white flour or sugar. Never.

But back to my daughter. She also gives the teenagers full fat milk to drink. None of that blue john stuff for these kids. They get 4% milk for satisfaction and for maximum brain development. They’re both in honors classes so something must be working.

glass of full fat, 4% milk

But in the main, Mz. Watson’s recommendations are sound. Eat seasonally, use lots of dry beans, buy fresh, organic produce at the farmer’s market based on its being at the peak of the harvest and at its lowest cost.

I do not recommend being a vegetarian, which Mz. Watson is. But that’s just my own personal belief (backed up by some pretty solid science).

Chicken in Every Pot for Best Nutrition

However, all that said, I still recommend my own book, Feed Your Family Fast Healthy Meals on $10. A day. I wrote this book in 1993, and while the numbers may be a little low, the principles are still valid. And you can buy it used from Amazon for as little as 13 cents + shipping.

I didn’t really mean this to be a plug for my own book, but I do say, that eating healthy food on a reasonable budget is always a good idea.

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About Linda Eckhardt

Linda West Eckhardt, is an award winning journalist, food writer, and nutritionist. Her more than 20 cookbooks have garnered prizes including the James Beard prize for the best cookbook for a text she wrote with her daughter, Katherine West DeFoyd, entitled Entertaining 101, Doubleday. Their follow-up book, Stylish One Dish Dinners, Doubleday, was also nominated for a James Beard prize. Their next book, The High Protein Cookbook, Clarkson Potter, remains a best seller after 12 years. That book was designed to accompany low carb diet plans. Her ground-breaking book, Bread in Half The Time, Broadway Books, was named the Best Cookbook in America by the prestigious IACP, The Julia Child award. Her award winning radio work with Jennifer English, for a national show on the Food and Wine radio network, was nominated for a James Beard Prize for a show called, “I Know What You Ate Last Summer.”