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The organic food market has been on the rise in recent years with the rising obesity epidemic, and other health concerns related to food and food production, but there are some things that you should know about this industry to potentially make it easier for you to find high-quality organic food.

When a product is deemed organic, and stamped by the USDA as organic, that means that the seed was grown according to the USDA’s guidelines for organic production. This means that your food is free from antibiotics, hormones, genetic engineering, radiation, and were grown without the use of synthetic fertilizers.

What this going to do for you is give you a food that is more nutrient dense and healthier for your consumption.

What if there is limited access to an organic market?

Luckily, a food can still be ‘organic’ even without the USDA’s seal of approval.

The USDA is governed by our Federal government, but each state has its own organic regulations and inspection departments to regulate food production. This is usually signified by a seal on the food that you buy that says it has been inspected by a third party.

A couple of things to note about food inspected by a third party. First it is still considered organic by certain standards, but may not necessarily conform to the USDA guidelines and some farms select that inspection process because of the price of the inspection and it may be all that they need to do business, which is good because food inspected by third-party inspectors can’t be shipped over state lines.

If you find yourself buying food from organic websites and wonder why they can’t ship it to where you live that is likely the reason. You can still go pick it up and bring it home, but because they were not inspected by the USDA it cannot travel out of state.

If you still find yourself outside of a region with good organic food, then there is still one more way for you to get your hands on some high quality food, and that is to buy locally.

A lot of local farmers conform to organic practices and they either don’t want to spend the money for the inspection, or the volume of food that they sell in a year isn’t large enough to warrant the inspection in the first place. With that said, you can still find some hidden gems growing in your own back yard.

All of this aside, this isn’t an attack on non-organic food. One way to look at it is if each food was a car, non-organic food is like a sedan. It will get you to where you want to be and do it efficiently but it may not be as fast as you expect it to be, and organic food is like a sports car, it will get you to where you want to be and do it that much faster.