Worried Parents Turning to Organic Food by Libby Quaid, CommonDreams.org
Erin O'Neal has two daughters and a fridge stocked with organic cheese, milk, fruits and vegetables in her Annapolis, Md., home. She is among the increasing number of parents who buy organic to keep their children's diets free of food grown with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics or genetic engineering.
"The pesticide issue just scares me — it wigs me out to think about the amount of chemicals that might be going into my kid," said O'Neal, 36.
Since last year, sales of organic baby food have jumped nearly 18 percent, double the overall growth of organic food sales, according to the marketing information company ACNielsen.
As demand has risen, organic food for children has popped up at more than just natural food stores.
For example, Earth's Best baby food, a mainstay in Whole Foods and Wild Oats markets, just reached a national distribution deal with Toys R Us and Babies R Us. Gerber is selling organic baby food under its Tender Harvest label. Stonyfield Farm's YoBaby yogurt can be found in supermarkets everywhere.
The concern about children is that they are more vulnerable to toxins in their diets, said Alan Greene, a pediatrician in northern California. As children grow rapidly, their brains and organs are forming and they eat more for their size than do grown-ups, Greene said.
"Pound for pound, they get higher concentrations of pesticides than adults do," said Greene, who promotes organic food in his books and on his Web site, http://www.drgreene.com
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