If you have ever wondered why there is a general prohibition on the use of antibiotics in the organic supply chain, a study of baby food published by the University of Almeria (UAL) in Spain may provide the answer.
A report in the Food Chemistry journal showed that researchers had detected residues of antibiotics given to livestock in various samples of baby food made in Europe. Antibiotics, such as tilmicosine, or antiparasitic drugs, such as levamisole, are given to livestock in order to avoid illness but they can remain later in food. Although the concentration levels were very low, “it shows the need to control these products to guarantee food safety” said Antonia Garrido, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at UAL.
The study, which was conducted in Europe, highlights the importance of a zero-tolerance policy to veterinary drugs in food, as they can cause allergic reactions, resistance to antibiotics and other health problems.
So what can you do to ensure your food is safe?
We would recommend only choosing to eat organic foods wherever possible because animals must be free from antibiotics under certified organic farming.
Always check the label to make sure you are buying certified organic. That means you can be sure it has been audited and accredited.
Where you can, choose meat and meat products from Australia only. Australia has a zero tolerance policy where, for example, the European Commission has not regulated the levels of pesticides and other substances in animal based foods.
Obviously there is no cause for alarm, but it is another reminder of how invasive some of these chemicals can be to our food supply. It’s another reason why organic food, especially organic baby food, is a good choice as part of the diet for health conscious families. Bellamy’s Organic baby food range is produced in Australia from certified organic produce.
If you’d like to know more about Bellamy’s Organic baby formula, cereals and our other products click on this link. It will take you straight to our on-line store.
Given the health of the nation depends on a healthy eating, almost everything about food is being re- evaluated—from where and how it is grown, reliance on processed versus whole foods, biotechnology versus organic farming and the impacts of added fat, salt, and sugars.
But how can we compare foods holistically? How can you know that you’re giving your baby or toddler good nutritional value?
Here’s a quick quiz:
Which fruit delivers the most nutrition per 100 calories?
Does a 100-calorie serving of watermelon deliver more nutritional value than a Big Mac and cheese?
Does a 100-calorie serving of watermelon deliver more nutritional value than a salmon steak?
Not sure? Read on and then check the answers below?
Well now there’s a proposed method for measuring the nutritional quality of a typical serving of food, or 100-calories of one food compared to others. The Organic Center’s Nutritional Quality Index (TOC-NQI) is one such tool. It provides a comprehensive, data-driven measure of the nutritional benefits of individual foods, meals, and daily diets. It is the only nutrient profiling system that estimates the overall nutritional quality of a food or meal based on their content of 27 nutrients, including phytochemicals.
A smart food choice is one that:
Pleases the palate,
Delivers healthy portions of essential nutrients at a relatively low caloric cost and within a family’s budget,
Avoids pesticide or animal drug residues, and artificial food additives, and
Avoids baggage that can erode health, e.g. added sugar, salt or saturated fat.
Now we didn’t make up that list but at Bellamy’s it’s what we try to achieve in all our baby and toddler foods and we think that’s the sort of food that provides not only a pure start to life for babies but also a great way to engage in mindful eating as an adult.
As it happens, fresh vegetables deliver the greatest nutrient bang per calorie. A 100-calorie portion of the top 10 most widely consumed vegetables delivers an average TOC-NQI of 0.25, or 0.25 “nutrition units.” So, very roughly speaking, if all 27 nutrients were distributed exactly in line with RDAs/AIs across four different vegetables, just these four 100-calorie portions of vegetables could provide adequate amounts of the nutrients needed by a person in a given day (and at the “expense” of only about 18% of daily caloric intake)!
So, what are the answers to the quiz?
Strawberries deliver the most nutrition per 100 calories!
The watermelon delivers five-times more nutritional value per 100 calories than a Big Mac and cheese!
The salmon steak delivers about 50% more nutrients per 100 calories than the watermelon.
So you can see that whilst all calories are the same in as much as they are a measure of energy, equal intake of calories does not give you equal nutrition. This is why Bellamy’s are so passionate about the need for Mindful Eating – thinking about what we eat to keep healthy.
If you’d like to know more about Bellamy’s Organic baby formula, cereals and our other products click on this link. It will take you straight to our on-line store.
It’s hard to believe, I know, but yes, someone has put forward the outrageous idea that if we want to lose weight, we could eat less!
This is what researchers had to say:
“Up to 33% of people ordering at a fast-food Chinese-style restaurant in the U.S. accepted an explicit offer to be served smaller portions of starchy side dishes, according to a team led by Janet Schwartz of Tulane University. Those who accepted the smaller portions didn’t compensate by ordering higher-calorie entrees. Activating consumers’ self-control in this way was more effective in reducing diners’ intake than mandated calorie labelling.”
Of course it’s human nature to want to get around this simplest of notions that losing weight means eating less – permanently. And it’s great the way we kid ourselves – how many times have you seen an office worker with a large bag of chips and a diet cola? Any amount of money is spent on diet products that have little nutritional value with no thought given to simple mindful eating. But here’s the funny thing. To lose weight on a diet program requires the same willpower as losing weight by cutting out high GI carbs and excess fat. Perhaps that’s what the researchers above wanted to demonstrate! The dieting process can give you a good kick-start for sure, but that’s the period in which you need to re-adjust your eating habits. What you eat on a regular basis after your diet program must be different, and less, than what you ate before you started. If not, you’ll just gain weight. No tricks, it’s just simple arithmetic. If you eat more calories than you burn in a day, you tend to gain weight.
Eating wholesome nutritional food, like organic cereals and fruits, really makes a difference. Today’s over-processed foods with heaps of “added goodness” don’t stack up against an organic apple. That’s why we try to give babies and toddlers a pure start to life with our 100% certified organic fruit snacks and cereal range, because good eating habits start early.
If you’d like to know more about Bellamy’s Organic baby formula, cereals and our other products click on this link. It will take you straight to our on-line store.
We’re really excited to announce our new-look web site as it goes “live” today.
Naturally we are very proud of the products and services we offer and of the strong loyalty of our customers. We’re constantly trying to improve so that you have more information and more choice about organic baby food and its role in Mindful Eating.
Our dynamic new site will improve the ease with which you can navigate, find useful information about our brand and products and allow you to search for stockists closest to you. We hope this will create an even better Bellamy’s Organic experience for you.
Our on-line store will be greatly enhanced by these changes, and on-line customers will notice this straight away. You will be able to:
Navigate the store more easily than before;
Find items on sale or special more easily;
Shop specifically for your child, with products grouped by age range, by “most popular” or by related products that could benefit your child;
Benefit from an improved Cart and enhanced Checkout functionality.
Many of the enhancements you will find are based directly on feedback from our customers, so thank you for taking the time to tell us your thoughts. Going forward, our new on-line store will offer even more flexibility, for instance, we will shortly be offering an Express Shipping option, to get our products to your hungry little ones even quicker!
However, we do have one small problem that we just cannot fix in this changeover. If you are registered with our on-line store, when you log in next you will be asked to re-register. We know this is a pain and we have spent a lot of time trying to get around it but it’s not been possible. So, please bear with us on this one and take a minute to reregister with us.
We hope you like the new look and the new way in which we’re presenting ourselves. As always we really welcome your feedback, good and bad. Below, please find a few FAQs that might help you as we make the transition to the new site complete.
For now – yes it is. While we go through the final stages of our migration to the new site and new on-line store, you will find yourself being redirected from the old site to a new address and to the new, improved site.
“Why do I have to re-register as an on-line store customer?
This is to maintain the security and privacy of your information. Our current site does not retain some of the more personal details about you, such as your current password for instance. As such, we are not able to migrate all of your information across. We are sorry for any slight inconvenience this may cause you. However, we hope that the benefits of maintaining your personal security out weigh this.
“What information will I be asked for?”
Basic registration will only ask you for your first and last names and an email address. From here you will then receive an email containing your temporary password for sign-in purposes.
Once you have signed in, standard details apply at Checkout, in terms of billing and shipping principles: addresses: contact phone numbers.
Please remember that we never ever share your data and that we will ONLY use your personal information for the following purposes. :
To deliver goods to you that you ordered directly from us;
To deliver electronic services, such as newsletters or downloads that you request;
To help us create and publish content most relevant to you;
To alert you to amendments, corrections, special offers and other new services from Bellamy’s Organic;
To allow you access to limited-entry areas of our site as appropriate.
“Will the new site be secure?”
As with our current on-line store, Bellamy’s Organic’s new on-line store encrypts all your details using the latest SSL V3 128 bit encryption standard. This provides our customers with security and peace of mind when shopping on-line with us.
“Can I change my password?”
Definitely. Once you have registered with our new site, you will receive an email containing your temporary password. Once you have signed in with this, simply click on your name at the top of the screen (in blue) and you will be directed to a page where you can do this. You can also sign up for our newsletters from here. This is only necessary if you don’t already receive them.
“Will the new site have my order history?”
Sadly no. As mentioned above, we are not able to migrate all of your information across. We are sorry for any slight inconvenience this may cause you. However, please remember that you can continue to track your current orders through one of the following links: http://auspost.com.au/track/(AU); http://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/tracking (NZ)
“When I registered, I saw a pop-up box containing details about breast feeding. Why was this the case?”
When you first register on our new on-line store you will see this information in the form of a pop-up box. Unlike with our current site, if you visit our on-line store often, this pop-up will not necessarily display every time; around every two weeks this information will refresh, and you will see it again.
It is a World Health Organisation requirement that companies that manufacture breast milk substitutes comply with the ‘International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes’. Part of this compliance relates to displaying clear information on breast feeding/formula feeding. For further information on Bellamy’s Organic’s responsibilities in relation to this code, please visit http://www.who.int
“I don’t want to be registered with Bellamy’s Organic anymore. What do I do?”
Nothing at all. However, it will be a shame to see you go.
We understand that some of our customers may have signed up some time ago and that as children grow, some no longer want/need to be registered as an on-line customer. We hope that you enjoyed your time with us, and thank you for your business. You will shortly stop receiving emails from us too. Before we say goodbye to you however, please bear in mind that some of our products, such as our Rice Cakes, Fruit Snacks and Pinkies are great snacks for kindy, child care or even school lunch boxes. (Some of our mums enjoy them too!)
Our Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as our blog site also contain useful information for growing children. Please feel free to visit these at any time.
If you’d like to know more about Bellamy’s Organic baby foods, click on this link Bellamy’s Organic Online Store. It will take you straight to our new-look on-line store!
The slogan: “Better Soil, Better Life, Better Future” – too right!
Sounds fun, yeah? – And timely, as it finishes on our Mothers’ Day weekend!
So this Mothers’ Day, I’m thinking Mum would love a nice big bucket of worms, and some new gardening gloves (you don’t have to touch the worms)!
I’m a mum too (hint/nudge), so perhaps a new watering can for distributing worm wee onto the plants that do their best to stay alive in my wannabe deck garden would be nice.
It might sound like I am taking the.. worm wee.. here, but I really do support composting. I aspire to grow veggies like my mum does. She is a composter from way back, and the flavour and abundance of crop she harvests (and thankfully passes to the lesser gardeners in the family) is A.mazing! The really great thing about compost is that it’s organic and it passes all that natural nutrition to the veggies that grow in it. This is her composting recipe.
There are 2 ways to compost:
Have all the materials ready to make up a recipe
Add to a pile as you collect garden and kitchen scraps
The thing to remember is that the proportions of the recipe need to be maintained as you grow the pile, or you can end up with a slimy, smelly mess, if the compost is too wet with not enough dry ingredients, for example.
Your pile needs to be at least 1 square metre. It can be bigger of course, but no small than a metre is recommended when getting started.
Mum says she has had the most success with getting all the ingredients, and making up a complete batch. It is easier to manage, and you get the ratios right from the beginning.
What you’ll need:
½ dry ingredients– newspaper, shredded paper, dry garden stuff – high carbon stuff
¼ manure – chicken, cow, horse, rabbit, wallaby – taking straw out of chicken shed gives you manure plus dry, and composts so quickly. It is nitrogen rich, and makes vegies “jump out of their skin”!
¼ kitchen scraps or green, wet grass clippings
What to do with it:
Build the heap in layers (like a lasagne) so that the pile is wet throughout.
make up a mix and keep turning it.
Keep adding to the pile every day with clippings and scraps as you get them.
Remember to keep ratios as you are adding, so you will need to balance with dry stuff if you have just added a whole lot of kitchen scraps.
In summer it might be necessary to put the hose on the compost to stop it drying out.
The key is to keep oxygen in, so you need to move the compost from one place to another to jumble and get the air in, and turn it with a gardening fork.
Mum has 2 bins, side by side, 1 metre square when made up. Each fortnight, she transfers the compost between the two bins to get the air in, mix it up and ensure it is wet enough.
3 bins would be ideal because you could add ingredients to the third while you are moving the main pile.
So, have a happy Mothers’ Day. Make the most of one mum’s composting tips to another, and enjoy the new fruits of your organic gardening labour!
