'Organic Life' Magazine Launches
On Tuesday, Rodale’s Organic Life, a rebranded, arguably foxier version of Rodale’s Organic Gardening, hit newsstands. Helmed by former Saveur editor-in-chief James Oseland, it has an even greater emphasis on food, home, and well-being than its antecedent. We reached out to Oseland to find out which common misconceptions of organic food — he insists it’s “sexy” — drive him crazy, how his audience spans from septuagenarian hippies to hipsters, and which three organic foods you should be buying right now!
Yahoo Food: Why does organic food matter? Some might say it’s just a bunch of hype.
James Oseland: Organic food matters for every reason! The fact that most pesticides and chemical fertilizers are prohibited at every stage of organic food’s lifecycle — from when it’s planted to when it hits your plate — is huge. It means better working conditions for farmworkers; fewer pollutants in the environment; fewer carcinogens, neurotoxins, and endocrine disruptors in our bodies — not to mention more nutritious and delicious ingredients to cook with. It’s so much better, not just for the food system, but for all living systems. Organic is becoming so widely available these days that it’s easy for us to take it for granted, but it’s a pretty big deal.
Your magazine just shifted its focus from gardening to food, generally. Are these different readers, or are they the same?
I tend to think that the organic food-obsessed reader and the organic gardener have their hearts in very similar places. Excitingly, the demographics are wildly unpredictable and completely defy statisticians. You’ve got hipster 22 year olds who are already die-hard, dedicated organic eaters and gardeners; retiree hippies in their ‘70s listening to Jefferson Airplane on their cell phones as they weed the lettuce patch in Marin county that they’ve been cultivating for 50 years; and everybody in between. Our audience is a cross-section of really fabulous people who care not just about what they eat and grow, but also about doing better by the planet.
Do you do any organic gardening?
I volunteer some weekends at the Rodale Institute, an experimental organic farm in Kutztown, Pa. Any given morning you might find me knee-deep in mud with baby pigs or weeding a ginormous field of beets. I love it.
There’s a “contributing political editor,” the well-known food politics author Tracie M. McMillan, in the masthead. That’s unusual for a food magazine. What should we expect from her?
We think of Tracie as our spirit guide into the world of all things political. She’s a brilliant reporter and thinker; her book The American Way of Eating should be required reading. Expect to see her byline in our next issue — and expect to see her writing, not just about food, but about everything under the sun.
A number of names are familiar from Saveur; how’d you get New Yorkers to move to Emmaus, Pa., two hours away? Any good city mouse versus country mouse stories?
Hey, on the one hand, I just bought an 1800-era stone house and six acres, and it’s heaven on earth; on the other, this winter I slipped and fell horrendously on the considerable amount of ice that had accumulated on the driveway-in-the-middle-of-nowhere at said property, and hurt [myself] so badly I thought I’d broken my hip. But wow, overall, what an amazing place this is to live! And there’s something incredible and centering — and slightly surreal — about working with world-class editors in an office building that looks out on acres of sleepy woodland. I love it. And I’m pretty sure that [two of] my fellow Saveur transplants — Deputy Editor Karen Shimizu and Assistant Editor Zoe Schaeffer — both feel the same way.
Do you think gardening is on the rise, nationally? How much, and why?
There’s no way to quantify it, but my feeling is that there are more gardeners now than there were 20 years ago. I think gardening satisfies an innate need we have in our overwhelmingly busy lives to connect to the world in a primal way — whether it’s by spending a couple of hours a day in a raised vegetable garden or simply tending to a few potted cooking herbs on the windowsill. It’s a wonderful way to bow at the altar of nature.
What’s the most common misconception of organic food?
That it’s just about kale salads and detox diet juices, which is to say food that might be good for you but isn’t necessarily particularly tasty. It’s my belief that organic food can be more delicious than any other food on the face of the planet. It’s inherently global, flavorful, and sexy. It’s a lavishly spiced Vietnamese beef stew and a bowl of rigatoni tossed with ripe garden tomatoes and creamy burrata. Oh, and it’s a really good kale salad, too.
What are three foods you think we should all be buying organic, and why?
Apples: The first GMO apples to get USDA approval, Arctic Granny and Arctic Golden, are about to hit supermarket shelves, and even non-GMO conventionally grown fruits regularly top the Environmental Working Group’s “dirty dozen” list for produce carrying residual pesticides.
Carrots: Their roots act as vectors to draw water and other nutrients from the soil to feed the plant, so whatever’s put on the soil — whether it’s a herbicide or a pesticide — is likely to cycle through the roots and end up on your plate.
Celery shows up regularly on the USDA’s pesticide monitoring program for a wide variety of pesticide residues. Definitely put an organic stalk under your peanut butter!
For more organic goodness:
‘Civil Eats,’ the food policy blog you need to be reading
What the heck is organic chicken, anyways? A shopping guide
Do you buy organic food? Why or why not?
