Healthy Food Choices: Organic Dairy

Organic dairy products are a smart way to avoid exposure to harmful pesticides and still get needed nutrients. Learn some tips about choosing organic products for you in this video clip.

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No antibiotics
No added growth hormones
Look for lower fat contents

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Alice Merritt is currently the Campus Dietitian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She has a masters degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in public health with a concentration on nutrition. Alice has worked as a registered dietician for four years, and believes that helping people reach their nutritional goals will lead to a long and healthy life.

ALCIE MERRITT: Now I am going to talk to you about organic dairy products. More people are moving towards buying organic products because animals are raised in organic conditions, actually have no exposure to antibiotics, no added growth hormone and they are also fed organic feed and a lot of times are more free-ranging and not as constricted as some conventionally raised animals are. You might want to consider buying organic dairy if you are at a high growth stage such as in infancy, childhood or if you are pregnant. These stages in our life make us more vulnerable to a lot of the harmful things that can be added into dairy products. When you are thinking about organic dairy, you still want to look for things that are lower in fat, such as fat-free organic milk or one percent. Two percent or whole has higher saturated fat content and there is really no difference between nutrition value between whole milk and skimmed milk. So things to think about when you are buying organic dairy products is, again, if you are in a high growth stage, infancy, childhood or pregnancy, you might want to consider buying organic. You still want to look for lower fat choices, fat-free or one percent, is going to be a better choice. Buying local dairy at your local farmer's market may also be helpful. And you really want to make sure that it has the USDA organic symbol or says a hundred percent organic to ensure that it is really organic and not a conventional source. These are all good things to consider when buying organic dairy.

Healthy Food Choices: Organic Dairy Video

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