Thursday, July 29, 2010

eating organic in korea

eating raw in korea is challenging enough (ie the massive food suitcase) and i've had to just ignore the fact that my cafeteria vegetable and fruit intake is almost 100% positively not organic.
i emailed my nutritionist friend who is korean and works just outside of seoul and she was not concerned with pesticides as "they could be removed by washing well" and that it's a "more important thing to keep the environment clean, safe to grow crops well". and some people told me before i left for this trip that perhaps korea didn't use the labels of 'organic' but didn't have to use pesticides on their crops.
today, i happened to come across a blog post on seoul eats about organics in korea. read it here! it was written just one week ago and says korean farmers use 15 times the amount of pesticides as american farmers do! and koreans have a 25% cancer rate!? yah, stats can be interpreted (and compiled!) so many ways, but wow, it's so hard for me to consider how people think fooling and guiding nature is best... pesticides, hormones... totally destroying nature!
anyways... i get a day away from camp tomorrow and i'm mostly checking out art and drinking juices and eating at the loving hut buffet (not raw and probably not organic, but at least vegan and surely there will be raw options) but i hope to get to huckleberry farms (a nz organic market chain) if i can find it and it still exists. or perhaps i will have to check out the shinsegae food floor and some other nice stores to check out their selection of organics. and maybe if i happen to go to the foreigner-infested itaewon, i will check out mind body seoul, a "learning center/well being studio".
and maybe by the next time i come to korea, there will be an organic, living foods cafe!

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