Keeping it real

The time when villagers jostled for rations and desperately grabbed anything edible to fill their stomachs is gone. Today, more and more people are instead jumping on the organic food bandwagon, bound for a pesticide-free and nutrient-packed dietary utopia.

Organic food is seen as synonymous with health. Despite the steep price tag, many people are willing to spend money on organic commodities, to soothe their anxiety about food security.

At the Organic Day Carnival held in March in Hong Kong's Central, the venue was full of organic food exhibition booths. Ecstatic visitors besieged the booth's hosts, grilling them about the organic items for sale.

Drinking bread sounds counterintuitive; but it is real. Bread Drink, a groundbreaking line from a German food company, was selling like hotcakes.

The whole-grain used to produce the bread is handpicked certified organic grain. The cooked bread spends six to eight months' in fermentation in clear well water.

Popular fruit and vegetable diet drinks are also making inroads into the organic market.

"We are happy to hear our customers reporting that health benefits really kick in after consuming our vegetable and fruit mix," says the booth supervisor of Melilea Organic. "They said their constipation was visibly relieved and they shed some weight."

Designed as a meal replacement, the instant organic drink was marketed as not only nutrient-packed but also able to ease hunger pangs.

Melilea's soya drink targets arthritis sufferers and vegetarians.

It minimizes purine content by picking beans' sprouts and weeding out the residue.

Compact bags of condensed organic juice can be spotted in exhibition booths. Office workers are especially fond of these because the handy packets are portable and advertised as richly nutritious. Between grueling meetings, taking a shot of juice refuels energy.

If fruit and vegetable juice is nothing new, then packaged ginger and black garlic juice is a novelty. People may initially feel grossed out at the thought of drinking these strange juices, but actually, they are intended for cooking stew.

"Young people today have little idea about making savory and healthy stew," product consultant of the Health Factor, Isaac Wong, says. "Pouring a bag of garlic juice into your stew not only helps with the flavor but also improves your health because black garlic helps rid harmful bacteria from your bowel and thus improves your digestion and absorption."

Organic seeds have been making their way into household snack jars－flaxseed, mustard seed, hemp and quinoa. Their lasting health values and versatility are often raved about.

Organic fruit puree, functional food and beverage, low-temperature dried fruit, no-addictives spreads, non-GMO (genetically modified organism) wheat and corn, farmed seafood and free-range poultry－the organic list is endless.

Going green is not reserved for food. Clothing, bedding, cosmetics and even tampons are now organic.

While the wider public is crazy about organics, some experts have their doubts.

Sylvia Lam, chairman of Hong Kong Dietitian Association, is dubious about organic food.

"At this moment, there is no evidence to show organic food is healthier than conventional food. Actually, they are more or less the same in terms of health values," Lam says. "I can't say it (popularizing organic food) is totally misleading or at fault 100 percent, but I can say there is an exaggeration of organic food's benefits."

Lam says there are few specialized or well-established organic food organizations in Hong Kong at present. A large proportion of organic food is imported from overseas, from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere that has an organic food-certificate system in place.

Lam cautions customers should take claims food is organic with a pinch of salt.

Yet Lam also gives organic food due credit.

"Organic food does taste better than its counterparts," she say. "Organic food takes more time to grow without artificial boosters that speed up the growth. For that reason, more flavors and nutrients are accumulated over the course of cultivation."