How to eat organic without breaking the bank | with Dr. Liza Oates

Organic food is often seen as healthier, more sustainable, and better for the planet - but it also has a reputation for being expensive and hard to access. In this episode of Let’s Talk Health, host Natalie Cook is joined by Dr Liza Oates, Clinical Supervisor and Learning Facilitator, to unpack what “organic” really means and share practical ways to make it work for your lifestyle and budget.

From understanding certification labels to knowing which foods matter most to buy organic, Dr Oates offers clear, research-based guidance and accessible hacks that can help anyone eat more organically without breaking the bank.

In this episode, we cover:

• What “organic” means in Australia vs overseas labelling standards
• Why organic plants often contain more phytonutrients
• How eating seasonally can make organic food more affordable
• Which foods are worth prioritising as organic on a limited budget
• The impact of organic diets on pesticide exposure - including the surprising 7-day effect
• How organic choices affect pregnancy, early childhood development, and male fertility
• The role of eco-nutrition and how organic farming supports planetary health
• Tips for reducing food waste, growing your own produce, and making organic eating sustainable for the long term

Curious about the world of Naturopathy and want the opportunity to learn from Dr. Liza Oates? Explore the Bachelor of Health Science (Naturopathy) at Torrens University Australia.

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Transcript

Speakers: 0:15

Welcome to Let's Talk Health. I'm your host, Natalie Cook, Director of Innovation, Industry and Employability in Health and Education at Torrens University Australia. On this podcast, you'll hear from experts who'll share their knowledge to help you make more informed choices about your health. This week we're taking a trip to the grocery store. We are talking about something that some people find confusing, some people maybe are a bit intrigued, and others swear by it, and that's organic food. You might have heard that it's better for you, maybe you've heard that it costs more. What is true is that it's becoming increasingly common in regular supermarkets and it can be surprisingly affordable. So today we're going to get real about organic food. Why eat it? What are the health benefits and what's the difference compared to the rest of the food at the supermarket? To talk to you about all of this and more today, I'm joined by Dr. Liza Oates, Clinical Supervisor and Learning Facilitator at Torrens University Australia. Hi Liza. Hi Nat. How are you? Good. Thank you for joining me. And so when we talk about organic foods, what does that even mean? Some cynical people say all food's organic because it grows, it's an organic, it's an organism. It was a terrible choice of term, really. The organic. In Europe it's referred to as bio. The term organic was sort of randomly chosen, and really anything with a carbonatom is organic. So yeah, it's probably not a right choice of term. When we're talking about organic, we're really talking about certified organic products. So those ones that have actually been audited and follow the national guidelines for what they can and can't do, etc. When we're talking about things like phytonutrients, so these are the ones that are produced by the plants. So things like vitamins and minerals, because the plant produces these compounds to defend itself against predators and these sorts of things, organic plants have a lot more phytonutrients because they have to. Whereas if you're a conventional plant and you're being protected by artificial chemicals, then you don't need to invest your energy in creating these chemicals to protect yourself. Does the nature of organic farming, whether that's crop or animal farming, make it more expensive to produce the food? And is that why it's much more labour intensive? The way I like to look at it is you get what you pay for. Sure, you can produce food cheaper, but I think there are compromises to do land. When I was a kid, you know, food was a much bigger part of the family budget. We've got used to food being quite cheap and we expect things to be available 24-7. I think that's part of the issue that in order to get that variety of food to us year-round, certain things have to happen to make that possible. So there's a price you're paying it might cost less at the cash register, but there's a price you're paying elsewhere through the efficiency to get the food production cheaper than that. Organic is relatively affordable when you're eating it in season. If you insist on having asparagus in January, yeah, you're gonna have to pay a price premium for it. But if you're having asparagus during asparagus season, there probably won't be that much of a difference in promise. So there's kind of a hack. If you can eat seasonally, the price difference isn't going to be the issue that people perceive. Are there some foods where if you could eat anything organic, eat this organic? And if there's something where maybe it doesn't matter as much? Look, uh it's actually a tricky question to answer in Australia because we don't do a lot of testing. Whereas in the United States, you'll probably be familiar with the dirty dozen and the green and the clean 15 list. That's produced by the environmental working group in the United States, but it's based on US data and there are different patterns of use. For chemicals, there are different pests, there are different patterns of use. There are some things that we use here they don't use, vice versa. So it's really not very representative of Australian foods. So the first thing I would say is probably ignore that. Probably have not enough data to really answer the question as thoroughly as we could. But I guess there are some general principles. So if you've got a limited budget and you're trying to prioritize which foods are going to get you the biggest bang for your buck, it's really about how much something's sprayed and how close to harvest time it sprayed and when you eat the bit that was sprayed. So things like berries are sprayed quite close to harvest time, and so there's more likely to be residues on them at the time that you're eating them. Something that's got a lot of surface area is also going to be a problem. Things like broccoli, where there's a lot of surface area for the chemicals to get in, at the end of the day, these chemicals are absorbed into the plant. So if there's a lot of surface area, there's a lot of absorption. I would say prioritised various pump fruit, green leafy vegetables, herbs, and especially things like broccoli. Okay. And the logic back the other way then would say maybe something like a banana? Yeah, something where it's protected and you're going to throw that peel away. There may have been some absorption, but it's somewhat protected. You've got a bit more of a buffer. And then how does that extend to products like dairy, where I think the product itself hasn't been necessarily sprayed, but the cow, say or the goat that ate the greenery? Yeah, look, I think when it comes to animal products, it's a very different kind of situation. And I would say we eat less. And this is one of the things that came out in the research is that people who moved to an organic diet ultimately ended up with a better diet because organic food is more expensive, especially the animal products. So they just ate less almond products and more plant-based products, and that's how they offset the cost of the organics is by just choosing different foods and eating a lot more whole food and less processed food. Because also there's less availability of processed organic food. Interesting. I mean, which sounds a lot like a Mediterranean diet when you describe it. Very much like, yes, which is where all of the research, not all of the research, but an awful lot of research, yeah, says that's if you can follow a diet like that, mostly whole food, lots of vegetables, not too much animal products. Yeah. Or as Michael Pollen says, food eat food, not too much, mostly plants. We spoke a little bit before about sustainability and how that fits with the organic farming principles. And there's a phrase here on econutrition. Could you explain what that means in the first instance? Well, I guess um starting back at what consumers are after. So some consumers are interested in the potential health benefits to organic food, and that's probably more about what they're trying to avoid than what they're trying to get. So most organic consumers are not buying organic food because they think it has more nutrients. They're buying it because of what it doesn't have, that it doesn't have pesticides and antibiotics and all of those sorts of things. So it's what they're trying to avoid. But a bigger reason is this interest in protecting the planet, also protecting farm workers. So, you know, the people who grow our food, and it's, I guess, out of respect for the people who are involved in producing our food, that organic consumers might say, Well, I don't want the people who grow my food to have to be exposed to these chemicals in order to bring me food a little bit cheaper. I'd rather invest in that. So part of it is planetary health, and part of it is also the health of farm workers as well. And this comes back to those organic principles as well: health, ecology, fairness, and care. And I can't help but reflect on how holistic a view that is and how much that really resonates with an atropathic approach to health. I've actually mapped that in the past and it pretty much lines up with all the holistic naturopathic tenets. Yeah. There you go. So it's first do no harm, treat the cause. I guess in the same way as our bodies are infinite numbers of cells all working together to do something. We're just individuals working together as communities, which are working in ecosystems, which are part of a planet. And I think it's important to sort of remember it's pretty hard to be a healthy person in an unhealthy world. That we are connected with our planet, with our universe, and we do need to look after it. What of the world we're creating both in ourselves but also the planet for the next generation? So a couple is looking to conceive how much can they do to protect their next generation with what they're doing now, and how long does it take? Do you have to eat organic for a day, a month, a year? Yeah, not very long actually. This was one of the things that I looked at in my research, and what we found was seven days on an organic diet, pesticide residues drop by 90%. Wow, 90%. It's pretty quick because the old-fashioned pesticides had very, very long half-lives, and a lot of them are still around. You can find them in Antarctica and that sort of thing. But in the 70s, after Silent Spring came out, and that sort of thing, there were changes, and so most of the pesticides that are used these days have shorter half-lives. The problem is that we're constantly exposed to them, so we have this chronic cumulative exposure to these things because we're reingesting them, we're having them all the time. So ultimately, it doesn't take that long to get them out of the system because they are now chemicals that are reaped from the body a lot quicker. You've got to remember that you know the eggs are developing for several months before concession. So you really want to sort of start that organic diet at least maybe four months before you start trying to conceive. The other thing to be aware of is that egg also contains the genetic material for the next generation. So to a certain extent it comes back to what your grandmother ate. That kind of makes the picture a little bit more complicated. Thankfully, our grandparents ate food. And I know that you know the phrase you might talk about conventional food versus organic, but they didn't call it anything, they just ate that's uh food. And also, really, the the rise of pesticides and things like that was the Green Revolution, it was after the Second World War. So, really prior to that. Which is my brain parents' generation. What about for male fertility health? There is some interesting research on the effects of pesticides on sperm quality and all those sorts of things. We know that that's definitely a thing. Most of the research though comes from farm workers who are exposed as part of their job. Actually, really difficult to track natural populations of organic eaters to see if there's a difference between eating organic and conventional. Most of the research we have is from people who are working in environments where they're exposed to more chemicals. And the research doesn't come from an overt, I'm going to research this, but it's that retrospective observations like this is weird, why is that happening? How can we explain a massive drop in birth rate or something like that? And you have to know this sort of patristic inference. But I do think pregnancy is an important life study to consider dying or born. So in terms of populations or groups in the population where you're getting more of an impact, pregnant women, preconceiving couples and children in that sort of first five to seven years of life. That is the first seven or eight years. Seven or eight, okay. Yeah. And I would say that they're the periods where you really want to consider it. It mentioned in Australia we have called it organic food, for better or for worse. In Europe, bio, bio, you see labels on products. How much can we know about the labelling? How consistent is it? How is it governed? And what does it mean? Because I think you see a green packaging and it says the word natural, for example, terrible word. What does it even mean? Yeah, yeah. So I mean there's a lot of greenwashing where marketing hype around words like organic, which is a little bit more protected, but natural and chemical-free, and you know, those sorts of things. At the end of the day, unless you can speak to the person who produced that food and you can ask them questions, you're gonna probably need to rely on certification systems. In Australia, we have a number of different certifiers, but really there's only two main ones here, and that's Australian Certified Organic, which is the Bud logo, or NASA with an extra eye. For good luck. So they're the two that you'll see on Australian products. You might see the bio label, which looks like a little leaf that's imported from Europe. You might see the USDA label, organic label. The European requirements are pretty strict in line with ours. The USDA requirements maybe not as strict. So I would generally look for the Bud logo or the NASA logo in Australia, and then you know it's Australian as well. Yeah, great. Because you do see some interesting things with labelling. And also if we're talking about the environment and that sort of stuff, then you want things that are locally grown as much as possible. You don't want something to be organic for the sake of it being organic, but it's being transported across the blog. The holistic perspective of people choosing organic is that it's not just about it being organic for organic sake, it's what that says about sustainable practices, ethical practices for workers, fair trade, I guess, is often part of that. It is part then, yeah. And also animal welfare is hard that it's so you know things like free range requirements are pretty loosey-goosey, but the organic standards are probably more enforced than some of the free range standards. So if you're getting something that is certified organic, you know it's free range because that's part of that structure as well. That's a great hack as well. So that you're not having to then worry about, oh, but I want the animal fed, you know that that's bundled up. But it's more than just the button door was left ajar. Yeah, no. Yes. I think if you go for certified organic, you've got a lot more confidence because there are auditing processes and they do recall things. So if something is found to accidentally contain chemicals, and that can happen maybe in transport, in other situations. In Australia, we have what are referred to as the maximum residue limits. Typically, organic standards will have a threshold of 10%. So if the maximum residue limit is for conventional food, organic standards will have a limit of maybe 10% of that, and any more than that would need to be recalled. It can be sold as conventional, but it can't be sold as organic. A lot of the certifying bodies actually have a threshold of 5%, so that's often the subtle difference between self-certifying bodies. So food might not be 100% chemical free. I think it's impossible for things to be 100% chemical free. There was a study in Victorium years ago, and they did detect chemicals very small amounts in a couple of organic products. One of them was a very old class of chemical which had a really long half-life and had been used previously in that orchard, and they discovered that's where that came from. And the other one was from the crate. It got picked up in a crate that had contained some conventional food. A question that often comes up is you know, I'm trying to sort of do the right thing, and when I try to buy organic food in the supermarket, it's wrapped in plastic. And part of that is because they spray in the supermarkets. So if you don't wrap it in plastic, then it would pick up chemicals when they're fumigating the supermarkets. How interesting. I hadn't thought of that, because you're right, people do mark up that it's contrary to what they're trying to achieve by having the organic food wrap, but it's actually all saying it's to protect the integrity of the food. Yeah. Huh. That is interesting. This is another hack if you like. The closer you get to the food source, the cheaper it's gonna be. So the more middle people you cut out of that process, which is why if you go directly to a farmer's market, A, you're probably mostly going to be buying stuff that's in season and where there's supply. And apart from the fact that it's gonna be cheaper, it's gonna be close to harvest time. So it's gonna have more nutrients as well. Because once you harvest something, it starts to degrade in terms of its nutrients. Whereas if you buy something from the supermarket that's been in cold storage for anything up to 18 months, you're going to have had some nutrient loss there. You get an added bonus by getting your organic stuff from a farmer's market because it's also recently picked. The supermarkets are stocking more organic produce. People are choosing it. And so the supermarkets therefore are offering it. It's not as huge a variety as you would get from the conventional produce, but there's certainly more availability. Interesting. And there's also more box schemes and things like that these days where you've got funds that might get together and cook together boxes of organic food. Yes. So that's another way to sort of make it a bit more affordable. Then you've got that. The trade-off often is you're not choosing what's in your box. Yes. But you're going to get something that's absolutely more likely to be in season, therefore more cost-effective. And probably hiring nutrients because it's just be picked and it's in season. Yeah. So, and it makes you creative, doesn't it? It does make you creative. And it's this is the other thing I find about organic consumers is they waste a lot less because it's like the food was more expensive. I'm gonna, you know, I'm not gonna throw this out, I'm gonna use this, I'm gonna use every part of this plant, I'm gonna use those cauliflower leaves, and I'm gonna use the whole thing and I'm not gonna waste it. Lisa, you obviously advocate for people to take decisions about their health and well-being seriously, and you support them in making those sorts of informed decisions. Pretty much the job, yeah. Is it a one-size-fits-all? Well, no, nothing ever is. Um, I think ultimately there's so many different things that affect our food choices and should affect our food choices. We all have slightly different needs to begin with. Life stages will change your nutritional needs. But in terms of whether you're going to choose organic or not, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It can be, you know, do what you can. If you live on a really busy, noisy street and there's a lot of noise pollution, you're not necessarily going to move to somewhere that's completely silent, but you could move away from that busy street where there's less noise. So it's really just about minimizing. I think sometimes people can get too focused, and even in my research, we didn't expect our consumers to be 100% organic. We set a target of 80%, and most of them were about 90%. They were able to achieve about 90, but 100 is unrealistic. I try to control the main things that come into my house. I make sure I've got organic staples, I buy mostly organic produce for what I create in my own kitchen. But I don't, I'm not fussed when I go to a friend's place or I go out to dinner and that it's got to be organic. I think sometimes the stress invoked by trying to be too strict is worse for you than in a candle course. So it's just about trying to minimize what you can. And I think your point around how stressful trying to be perfect can be. I mean, I think it impacts people in so many realms of their life, but I know from a past life working in the environmental sector, people get overwhelmed at the size of the problem and then they become paralysed by feeling like they can do some of your talking. That's right. If I can't do everything, I won't do anything. Look, the other thing I would say too is maybe grow a few things yourself. Grow a few lettuces or some herbs or things, even if you live in an apartment. You can grow a few things on your balcony or on a windowsill. There are often ways of supplementing the food that you purchase with things that you might be able to grow yourself. I feel like there's been a lot of good packs in our conversation. This one growing some things, perhaps yourself. Like you said, I mean parsley, anyone can grow a bit of parsley. And it's the things you throw out the most. Like you buy a big bunch of herbs and you use a tiny little bit of it, and most of it ends up going out. Or you buy a lettuce and you use a few leaves off it, and then it's starting to get a bit banky after a couple of days. Whereas if you're growing lettuce, you just pick a couple of leaves off. Have a couple of leaves off that one and a couple of leaves off that one, and it's so true. So grow it if you can, and even like you said, even if you've just got a little balcony or a pot on windowsill. Do make sure the soil is orgamphoid because if you're growing in a typical backyard, straight into the ground, the soil may be contaminated. So good point. So good soil matters for our farmers, matters for us. Yep. Grow some things, perhaps yourself, eat seasonally, by close as close to the source as is practical. And so for most people that'll be a farmer's market or whatever. And choose the things that matter the most. If you can't eat, no one's going to eat 100% organic. And as you said, the stress of that might actually be not even worth the price of trying to do it. But there are some key characteristics to look for that can give you the best bang for your buck. The other one I would add is waste less, which I think we should be doing anyway. Roughly 20% of food ends up in landfill. So, you know, that in itself, wasting less and using what you actually have reduces the overall cost. So I mean I have a couple of personal hacks. One is when I go to the farmer's market and my local farmers market is only on months a month, so I come home with my body weight and fruit and vegetables. So anything I'm not going to be able to produce in the next few days, I will chuck through the food processor. So I just end up with these like medleys of chopped-up veggies that I then freeze in a silicon sandwich bag. I've got this little library in my freezer of all these sort of chopped-up vegetables. The rest of the month when I'm cooking things off and sort of throwing that into kind of and that's where you chuck in the cauliflower leaves and the whole thing. At the end of the week, whenever I've got stuff left, it's sick. What I love is that it's something that I think some people can find very overwhelming, or it seems expensive, or it seems too hard to do, or you can't access. But I think what we've covered off is this can be accessible. You can make it cost-effective, and some of it's just getting your data on a bit and doing things, like I said, the way our grandparents did when they didn't have to choose between organic cooking, committing vegetable food, but just ate boomed. That's another Michael Pollen thing, isn't it? It's like if your grandparents wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. There's should be our number one lesson for all of this. Thank you so much for joining me today. I thought it's late. Thanks, Liza. And a disclaimer.