Teamed up with Mother-Talk.com, I’m happy to be a part of The Complete Organic Pregnancy Blog Book Tour. I reviewed The Complete Organic Pregnancy on my blog back in late July so I’m not going to rehash it here. However, if you have not read my review and would like to feel free to click on this link and go there.

We were asked to present the authors with some questions about the book so that is what I will focus on here.

1. Eating organically seems like it would be really hard to do or at least more work than the way I eat now. Is it?

It might be more work in the beginning as you’re learning to eat differently. Any diet change takes a bit of time. Once you’re in the organic mindset it isn’t any more difficult that what you’re doing. You’re already shopping and feeding yourself and your family, right? So this is just doing the same thing, but organic. Say you’re eating rice, chicken, and spinach. You’re still eating rice, chicken and spinach, just organic. If you join a local organic farm through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA – see my answer to your second question below for more details) it’s actually easier. You get a weekly share of vegetables (and sometimes fruit and meat) and you don’t even have to pick and choose. Some farms have websites so you know what you’re getting in a delivery before it arrives so you can plan meals ahead of time.

2.) Is eating organic more expensive? If so, how can you eat organically on a budget?

It is and it isn’t. An organic peach in a store might be $2.49 a pound, while a conventional peach is .99 cents a pound. You can’t argue with that math. But the organic peach didn’t involve spraying pesticides and herbicides into the world. That’s pretty priceless. There is another way of getting less expensive organic produce: join a local farm through Community Supported Agriculture. Members support a farm by purchasing “shares” of the harvest, and pay the farmers before the growing season begins so that they have money to farm the land. In return they get a wide variety of vegetables during growing season (which depends on where you live). Members also share the risk of things like bad weather and crop damage. For more information, checkout www.localharvest.org. Organic meat and diary do tend to cost more than non-organic versions. We think it is well worth the extra money in exchange for keeping hormones, antibiotics, and the sludge the non-organic animals are fed out of our systems, especially when pregnant. Many health food stores and other stores that tend to carry organic produce, dairy, and meat often offer bulk items (nuts, grains, cereals) that can be less expensive, too.

Also: when you get into the groove of eating organically, you eat much less packaged foods. This makes your grocery bill drop drastically. Chips, prepared foods, cookies, crackers, and other snack foods are more expensive than most people realize. Though there are organic versions of these now available, we suggest eating a whole foods diet in “The Complete Organic Pregnancy.” This means eating food as close to how it came out of the earth as possible. A potato has a great number of nutrients, a potato chip (as we all know) does not. You want as many nutrients as possible for your growing baby, for you, and eventually for your child when she enters the world.

3.) You mentioned not reusing plastic water bottles. Do plastic sippy cups and plates pose the same danger?

The plastic water bottles we tell pregnant women not to reuse are made from plastic #1 which is a plastic meant for one use only. Repeated use of it (and exposing it to heat by washing it) can break it down, making its chemicals likely to leech into drinking water. Sippy cups and plates are usually made from plastics #2 (high-density polyethylene or HDPE), #4 (low-density polyethylene or LDPE) or #5 (polypropylene). These are all food quality, safe choices if you want to use plastic. The problem is that often sippy cups and plates (and baby bottles, breastmilk storage containers, ice cube trays people use to store homemade baby food and the like) aren’t labelled with which kind of plastic they’re made from. Which means they might also be made of plastic #3 (polyvinyl chloride or PVC), #6 (polystyrene or PS), or #7 (polycarbonate). We discuss PVC a lot in the book. It is a known human carcinogen that can lead to a number of cancers, endocrine disruption, endometriosis, neurological damage, birth defects, impaired child development and reproductive and immune system damage. Doesn’t exactly sound like something you want touching your child’s food, right? #6 is known to leach chemicals into food, some of which can disrupt hormonal functioning. And #7 can release bisphenol-A, a suspected hormone disruptor, into food.

Scary, right? Not really because these can all be easily avoided. There are good non-plastic choices – even for sippy cups – made out of stainless steel and other substances that won’t leech into food and won’t break when tossed around by a toddler. If you’re concerned about plastic, opt for these. Or call the manufacturer of your kid’s favorite plate or sippy and find out which plastic it is made of. Like we said, #2, #4 and #5 are thought to be okay.

Thanks to the authors for answering my questions. To order the book, go here.

*Edited To Add*: I also have a few of these books to give away. If you want to win one, leave a comment on this post or email me.