Organic Fruit and Vegetable Box Schemes in Holland
May 27, 2005 at 10:29 AM
by Ashleigh
I went into our local one, called De Halm, yesterday and had a look at some. The Odin tas had a rather lame looking selection of apples, bananas and a few limp oranges in the fruit bag, but the Vita tas had a nice selection of apples, kiwis and oranges. The Vita tas is slightly cheaper at about E6.80 a week. The vegetable selection in the Odin tas is very Dutch - being mostly cabbages, endive, radishes, etc, whereas the Vita tas has a more international feel with bok choi, leeks, red peppers, mushrooms. I might give it a try for a month and see how we go.
I also picked up some organic flour while I was there as the supermarkets seem to be decreasing the organic range one item at a time. I was dismayed to see that the flour was one of the items they were no longer stocking. The flour from De Halm is both organic and carries the Demeter mark for bio-dynamic foods.
I doubt we could eat organic to the exclusion of non-organically grown food, but I think we should try to change our shopping patterns to accomodate using the organic foods that we can get. One of the reasons I think we were healthier living in Africa was that the food knew where it came from and it had less chemical and antibiotic treatment than it does in intensely agricultural Holland.