Things You Should Know Before Feeding Herbs and Plants from Your Yard to Your Baby
Organic is all the rage in parenting and family magazines. Protecting your kids from pesticides and other toxins is important. However, as a first time mother, you need to make sure that you don’t unintentionally make the situation worse. Even those regular fruits and vegetables from the grocery store aren’t always the best options, they generally aren’t outright toxic. And if you choose herbs, plants, and the like from your own yard, you could wind up poisoning your child inadvertently.
Lawn Treatments
Just because it grows out in a park or in your yard does not mean that it is safe. Oftentimes, these areas are sprayed with chemicals and pesticides that are more toxic than the ones used on crops. After all, most people aren’t eating the things that they find on the lawn, and so there’s no reason to use food grade pesticides. Picking up dandelions, fennel, catnip, and other similar herbs and plants may seem like a good idea, but they may be toxic. The types of treatments often used on lawns can actually create significant health problems, ranging from nausea or dehydration to death.
Cleansers
If you do pick up some of these herbs and plants, you might assume that you can clean them off. After all, vegetable soaks and cleansers can be used to remove a number of pesticides from regular fruits and vegetables. However, these do not work on lawn and industrial grade pesticides. The plants and herbs have often absorbed these chemicals into their cellular structure. You can’t remove them all. Even soaking them for an hour will still leave a significant amount behind. If you’re concerned for your kid’s health, you need to make sure that you don’t feed these to your children.
Verify What Is Done to the Herbs and Plants
If you want to find natural herbs and plants, you will need to verify what is done with them. You should know just about everything that goes on in your own yard, but bear in mind that your neighbors may use pesticides. You can politely ask them what they use. Also, if you have a homeowners’ association, check with them to find out what treatments they use, if any. If you want to collect herbs and plants from a local park, you need to talk to the managers. First of all, find out whether you are allowed to forage. Then find out what is done to protect the plants from pests. Remember that you generally can’t collect herbs and plants in national or state parks.
Collecting herbs and plants for herbal remedies, snacks, and the like can be a great way to get inexpensive organic foods. From dandelion to fennel to catnip, these herbs and plants can be quite beneficial. But you cannot assume that everything you see is healthy. Pesticides sprayed on lawns and parks are more toxic than those sprayed on regular crops. These pesticides can be deadly. Using vegetable cleansers will not cut through the pesticides. Instead, if you want to use these plants, you must verify what is actually done with them. Otherwise, you could be making your baby sick without meaning to.
This is a guest post by Marry Clark.