ORGANIC IS THE WAY TO BE

because we haven't the faintest idea on where to get chemical-free food stuffs, but Nils Al Accad is different, over fifteen years ago, he was taken seriously ill, "a toxic overload from pesticides and preservatives, right here in Dubai," he says, and after what seemed to him like an eternity, was cured by a homeopath in Germany.

This 'bad' experience set him on the quest for organic foodstuffs but could find none, "I tried importing some and supermarkets were not so friendly at that time," he says, "I guess it wasn't selling that much and later getting organic foodstuffs from outside became quite expensive."

And guess what, he decided to open a retail organic store and chased the idea with a single-minded devotion. The store, Organic Foods and Café, which is now open on the Satwa roundabout has everything from green chillies to chicken and sauces to tee shirts, all organic ... produced without using an ounce of chemical on them and is quite spacious, compared to most 'organic food' shops in the West which are tiny and tight on space.

The products come from every place in the world — Saudi, a small farm in Uganda, South Africa and Egypt. "Everything that you see in the shop is either directly from the farmer or a family business," says Nils. What's amazing is that he reels off the names of the farmers who grow the stuff he sells now, that's something which is quite different to the supermarket shopping experience, where vegetables and fruits sit there, all forlorn.

The general market trend is that these organic foods are priced higher and Nils explains why. "Some products are actually cheaper but some are unfortunately more expensive, but there's a reason for it," he says, "Some things, like chicken. When you consider putting only a 1,000 chicken in a small farm rather that 15,000 of them in a small room and there's the age of the chicken that is three times that of a non-organic one, so obviously it eats much more and then it's fed a vegetarian diet and not starch and scraps, so the cost is bound to be a little more."

Just a month and a half since opening, the store stocks everything from chocolates, honey, coffee, soaps, tee-shirts, all of which are made with organic materials. They also stock meat and fish that's purely organic.

Nils explains, "Our beef is from New Zealand, where the animals are hand raised on farms there are no fertilisers in the grass they eat, no chemical weeders to get rid of the weed, they don't chemically drench the animals and use no chemicals to get rid of the internal parasites, ticks or louse. As for the fish, we have Salmon from Ireland and the local varieties are procured from Oman, as there is a lot of shipping and drilling around the UAE, so you don't get that good fish."

"We've got a German master baker in the bakery section who used to work in the Jumeirah Beach hotel. The wheat we use in our bakery products has been grown without fertilisers, pesticides, no preservatives, no artificial rising agents," he says.

Everything we use and eat these days is stained with a host of chemicals and we definitely do not know where our food comes from let alone how they are grown but at Nils' outlet, everything is vouched for and certified. You know exactly what went into growing those fruits and vegetables. You even know who grew it, when it was planted.

And unlike most big supermarkets, his store stocks a host of gluten-free items, which sounds like manna to those who have gluten intolerance and have to literally import every food item — even bread — from other countries.

Nils goes on a song when asked why governments do not do anything to contain the chemical content in foods, "After World War II, world governments wanted cheap food to feed the masses and this is how they did it the genetics, chemicals, etc., and the FDA has a history of retracting on the things they approve. Governments approved DDT and later said that it causes cancer, why did they approve it in the first place. I'll not wait for them to tell me that all that I eat is bad for me at a later date, I'll start eating organic foods right now," he says.

Not for nothing is he critical of the authorities, the facts are that the soap we use is all chemical; the Ayurvedic products we use are not organic — they just use herbs and if these herbs were grown using fertilisers then the whole purpose is defeated. "Most of the pesticides have chemicals that destroy the nervous system of the insects, it obviously effects humans and we're eating this everyday, because when it is sprayed on the vegetables, they make sure it doesn't come off with the rains, so there the chemicals stay," he elucidates.

He shows his enthusiasm every time a customer has trouble choosing the right product or hesitates in front of a display, he walks up to them — even though he has a whole lot of staff — and advises them on how to choose vegetables and gladly takes them on a tour of the store.

The store, he informs, has household cleaning products made from oils and natural ingredients and not chemicals; olive oil from trees grown without pesticides; organic supplements like wheat-grass tablets, tee-shirts that have not been bleached; organic cosmetics. Even the carrybags the store uses are made from organic materials like paper and other compostible materials but what's heartening to note is the cafeteria to one corner of the store, where one can actually sit and savour all the delicacies, secure in the knowledge that every ounce of the material you eat, has been grown as nature intended it to be.