Going Beyond Organic Food Standards

Hello, my name is Karen Castiello, and I’m responsible for Food Product Development at Seeds of Change. I’ve been with the company for two very exciting and fast-paced years, but I’m new to the organic industry. Truthfully, I had never heard of Seeds of Change until I went for that first job interview. But as I researched the company, its mission to promote sustainable agricultural practices intrigued me. I grew up on a small farm in the Midwest, so I have a real appreciation for what a difficult lifestyle farming can be -- and farming organically makes it all the more challenging.

What I’d like to talk about today is how Seeds of Change is striving to be 100% organic in as many products as possible. That might sound obvious since all our products are already certified organic. But you may be surprised to know that the USDA Organic Standards state that up to five percent of the ingredients in an organic food product can actually be non-organic. These non-organic ingredients usually consist of USDA approved synthetics and natural, non-organic ingredients that do things like keep a salad dressing from separating or aid in thickening or firming.

The synthetics are used in very small amounts. Nonetheless, Seeds of Change has chosen to avoid using the allowed synthetic ingredients whenever possible. This means product developers like me have to seek out alternative organic solutions, and we challenge our ingredient suppliers to do the same.

Occasionally we have to make some compromises: our salad dressing might separate a little more than if we’d used synthetics. But it will taste great, and we’ll sleep better knowing we went the extra mile to make each product as truly organic as possible. We’re not yet at the 100% organic mark in every last product, but it’s a goal we’ll be able to achieve in the very near future.

Another objective at Seeds of Change is to create food that’s nutritionally responsible. That means minimizing the use of salt and sugar, limiting the amount of fat in our products to nine grams per serving or less, and using whole grains whenever we can.

Reducing the fat, sugar and salt means a greater reliance on herbs, spices and ingredients that create savory notes such as mushrooms, concentrated broths, eggplant and even figs. To find ways of layering flavor complexity into a dish, we’ve done research on various ethnic cuisines and regional cooking practices. We’ve even, on occasion, asked our mothers for advice. (I tried to convince my boss that attending cooking school in Italy was an absolute necessity but it seems he’s going to take a bit more convincing.) Once again, it’s more work to create dishes this way, but we believe it’s the right thing to do. And we think our customers feel the same way.

Finally, there’s the challenge of finding interesting organic ingredients in a commercially-available organic form to create a dish. It’s one thing to gather the necessary ingredients to create an organic meal for your family; it’s quite another to source ingredients in the quantities necessary to create organic meals for hundreds, even thousands, of families.

To that end, our ingredient buyer has been challenged to find things like South American peppers, multiple colors of amaranth and quinoa, and a variety of vegetables that you typically can’t find outside of a farmer’s market. Luckily, over the last couple years we’ve noticed a real increase in the number of commercially-available organic ingredients, and more and more interesting options are presenting themselves. There are some pretty incredible red carrots and blue and cranberry-colored potatoes in the Seeds of Change seed catalog that I just know would make a great snack or entrée. It’s just a matter of finding a grower who’s willing to plant them. (Which takes us back to that first train of thought: It’s not easy being a farmer — and it can be even harder when someone’s trying to convince you to plant blue potatoes!)

So that’s a little peek inside product development at Seeds of Change. We’ll keep you posted as we work to achieve our goal of making every delicious Seeds of Change product 100% organic. And in the meantime we’ll continue to provide truly healthy products made with a wide variety of interesting ingredients.

Thanks for reading and happy eating!