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Report: Andrew Collins
The organic foods industry is benefiting big time from an unlikely demographic - children under the age of eight.Major Industry members say parents, who themselves often remain on a diet of non-organic produce, are increasingly keen to raise their young on organic foods.Rick Carmont, organic category manager with dairy exporter, Fonterra, said kids are making up a huge chunk of their organic dairy sales."Looking at all the research and there's a lot of it, we're estimating somewhere pretty close to a third of the organic products, dairy products, will be consumed by children under eight years old."Biological Farmers of Australia nutritionist, Shane Heaton, said parents are increasingly realising the health benefits organic produce can give to their children."One of the key life events that brings people into buying organic food is having children, so they often start buying organics with things like baby food and fruit and veg to make food for their kids," he said."Children have a greater susceptibility to toxins than adults. They have a higher intake of food and drink per kilo of body weight. They have still developing immune systems and still developing brains. All these things combine to mean they are susceptible to a toxic burden and parents intuitively understand this."On a retail level, Mal Green, who runs an organic food store in Darwin, said while parents may introduce kids to organic produce, it appears that the kids are the keenest to stay on that type of diet."The kids, they just roll through the door, they usually beat mum and dad through the door most of the time and they think its fun coming there, you can see it, its so obvious, it shocked us a bit over the years," he said.And after years of witnessing the behaviour of children around organic produce, Mr Green believes kids are hooked by the taste."We've heard it so many times that mum would start shopping buying organic food and she'll tell dad that the kids can tell the difference...and dad has said rubbish and he's gone and done his shopping at one of the supermarkets, come back and cooked the food, the kids stuck his fork in the piece of carrot, put it in his mouth and spat it out...it shocks us how often we hear that story."
The organic foods industry is benefiting big time from an unlikely demographic - children under the age of eight.Major Industry members say parents, who themselves often remain on a diet of non-organic produce, are increasingly keen to raise their young on organic foods.Rick Carmont, organic category manager with dairy exporter, Fonterra, said kids are making up a huge chunk of their organic dairy sales."Looking at all the research and there's a lot of it, we're estimating somewhere pretty close to a third of the organic products, dairy products, will be consumed by children under eight years old."Biological Farmers of Australia nutritionist, Shane Heaton, said parents are increasingly realising the health benefits organic produce can give to their children."One of the key life events that brings people into buying organic food is having children, so they often start buying organics with things like baby food and fruit and veg to make food for their kids," he said."Children have a greater susceptibility to toxins than adults. They have a higher intake of food and drink per kilo of body weight. They have still developing immune systems and still developing brains. All these things combine to mean they are susceptible to a toxic burden and parents intuitively understand this."On a retail level, Mal Green, who runs an organic food store in Darwin, said while parents may introduce kids to organic produce, it appears that the kids are the keenest to stay on that type of diet."The kids, they just roll through the door, they usually beat mum and dad through the door most of the time and they think its fun coming there, you can see it, its so obvious, it shocked us a bit over the years," he said.And after years of witnessing the behaviour of children around organic produce, Mr Green believes kids are hooked by the taste."We've heard it so many times that mum would start shopping buying organic food and she'll tell dad that the kids can tell the difference...and dad has said rubbish and he's gone and done his shopping at one of the supermarkets, come back and cooked the food, the kids stuck his fork in the piece of carrot, put it in his mouth and spat it out...it shocks us how often we hear that story."
1 comment:
And the GM industry say that there is no increase in organics. So many lies they tell, so many furphies.
Justaconsumer
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