Organic Chicken Green

One of the biggest reasons people do not eat organically grown and raised food is the higher price. We're so accustomed to artificially low priced food available in massive quantities that we balk at the higher prices. Rightfully so. In a belt tightening economy, we want to get the most value for our dollar, and food is a necessity. Everyone needs to eat.

healthy &
happy chickens get a chance to move!

Today, Our Daily Green's focus will be on chicken, as it's the most popular meat in the nation and considered healthier because chicken breast is a white meat. The myth of white meat being healthier is a clever marketing campaign that confuses what is truly healthy or unhealthy. Ounce for ounce white meat is lower in calories, but dark meat is higher in nutrients.

So what is the big deal about organic chicken?

As we've discussed previously, factory farming produces a lot of food at low costs but high risk. In the case of animals, they are force fed an unnatural diet and given massive doses of antibiotics (ever wonder why antibiotics don't work so well on us anymore when we get sick? We've built up a resistance to them).

One of the things to be cautious is the advertising claim on chicken that it contains no growth hormones. That is because it is illegal to feed growth hormones to chickens. Instead, chickens are fed growth additives. One of the commonly used additives is roxarsone, which has been used since the 1960s by commercial chicken farmers. Roxarasone controls internal parasites, stimulates growth and improves the color of the chicken meat. Roxarasone also contains arsenic. In 2009, New York Representative Steve Israel introduced the Poison Free Poultry Act of 2009, but the bill never became a law. Commercial poultry is still fed arsenic laced additives to make it look pretty. We can only imagine what it is doing to the inside of our bodies.

Eating free range, locally produced chicken is the way to ensure safe food. Find a local farmer and ask what they feed their chicken. Look for chickens that eat bugs and plants, foraging for the food that they've always had naturally. Learn what you're eating and spend a few extra dollars today. Don't let food factories sneak additives into your food so they can sell you cheap food and make huge profits by volume. Local Harvest is a fabulous resource for finding farmers by zipcode.

Don't be chicken! Go find a safe, healthy source of poultry!

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