The New York Times has a good article
about five easy ways to add organic foods to your life. What's most horrifying -- not Halloween horrifying, but "Oh, great, I'm full of chemicals, horrifying" -- is the statistics about how much pesticides remain in the potatoes and apples you buy even after you wash and peel them. The five foods they suggest buying organic are: milk, potatoes, peanut butter, ketchup and apples.
We've tried the Heinz organic ketchup from Whole Foods and it's good. It doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in it, which is a plus. We always drink organic milk, not wanting to ingest any more hormones or antibiotics than need be. The peanut butter thing is different story, though. The peanut butter we grew up on -- Peter Pan and Skippy -- is loaded with extra oil and sugar. But it's thick and tastes right. Our all-natural peanut butter sits there in its jar, the naturals oils separated from the peanut part in an unappetizing mess. So you stir it up, but when you spread it, it goes everywhere because it's so runny. It makes us sad just to behold it.
Organic apples and potatoes are fine, but they are quite a bit more expensive than the regular varieties. They don't look as pretty as the ones grown with pesticides, but we think they taste better.