As I picked up the bananas to put in the shopping cart, I noticed the words on the banana boxes for the first time: Sprayed with Thiabendazole or Imazalil or Azoxystrobin.

I came home and looked them up. Fungicides, all toxic to a degree, sprayed on the produce I can only hope after picking, to keep fungus away. Still. According to all those scientists who keep publishing stuff that is supposed to be in the consumer's best interest, bananas are one of the types of produce you can safely buy as non organic. Yet, still sprayed with this stuff.

Sure, they will tell you if it is sprayed after being picked it stays on the peel, which you throw away. I just hope that is really true. I have been purchasing organic produce only for those fruits and veggies where it makes the most difference, according to this website: http://www.foodnews.org/fulllist.php I don't buy all organic all of the time because we just don't have that much money.

Every time I see it printed on a box of produce that it has been sprayed with something, or a notice that the fruits and veggies in this market may have been coated with a food grade wax that is petroleum based, or I read something in the news that concerns be about the food supply, I wish I had enough money to buy all organic all of the time.

I look at my family and wonder, what are we doing to the children?

Is it better to just get their fruits and veggies in them? I keep fresh fruits and vegetables available to them at all times to snack on. I serve salad with almost every dinner. Vegetables every night. I don't buy junk food (can't afford it anyway). Is it enough?

Conventional wisdom says better to have produce that is non organic than to eat junk. Still I wonder, is it enough?


Today is:

Crater Day, Virginia

Copperhead Day

Dog Day

Father-In-Law Day

Independence Day, Vanuatu

Kiss Your Cat Day (Highly unsanitary, sorry.)

Marseillaise Day, France (The song was first publicly performed on this day in 1792, sung by 500 men from, where else? Marseilles.)

Mutomboko Ceremony, Zambia (Lunda tribe's celebrations of victories and honoring of their ancestors.)

National Cheesecake Day (Remember the cheese you bought yesterday? To sacrifice? If you bought the right kind, sacrifice it to a cheesecake.)

St. Abdon's Day

St. Silas' Day, Greek

Tisha B'Av - Jewish

World Vegetable Congress


Birthdays Today:

Delta Burke, 1956
Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1947
Paul Anka, 1941
Buddy Guy, 1936
Casey Stengel, 1891
Emily Bronte, 1818


Today in History:

First Defenestration of Prague, 1419
Samuel de Champlain shoots and kills two Iroquois chiefs at Ticonderoga (now Crown Point), New York, setting the tone for French-Iroquois relationships for the next 100 years, 1608
The first elective governing body in what would become the US, the House of Burgesses in Virginia, is seated, 1619
Founding of the City of Baltimore, 1729
Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismark, dies at age 83, 1898
The Wright brothers deliver the first military plane to the army, 1909