The organic food culture is catching up in Leuven. The health, social and environmental benefits are only too well known. Yet, there remain several bottlenecks with regard to affordability and quantity.

Walking around the Vismarkt close to Leuven Centrum, one comes across a slightly unorthodox shop called Origin'O. Innocuous as it looks from the outside, when you go in, you are in for a treat. Delightfully lined organic teas, a fresh food bar with treats such as seitan broodje and moussaka, a wide selection of fresh fruits and vegetables and an array of natural and herbal medicines and medicinal supplements, welcome you to a world of healthy living and a promise of staying fit with food and products free of contaminations.

Moving on to the Oude Markt, the Parijstraat is home to Green Bay, a vegetarian restaurant that makes use of organic vegetables and food products in its offerings. The menu is varied and one can choose from a range of soups and sandwiches to freshly prepared fruit cocktails.

Yet another location for biological and eco-sustainable products is the Bio-Planet, Leuven located on the Tiensesteenweg, which is the first green supermarket of the Colruyt group. The Bio-Planet mission is to help customers "enjoy life in a healthier and more conscious way, thanks to a tasty, complete and reliable assortment of organic products". Bio-Planet has been put forward as a unique concept of a separate supermarket selling only organic food and ecological non-food products. It is designed as per the latest and best possible ecological performance indicators. Bio-Planet has thus set new benchmarks for developing an integrated green approach combining product and infrastructure aspects in a business context.

Organic and natural products come with a multitude of benefits. Most organic farms are independently owned family farms and serve as the last fortress against GMOs (genetically modified organisms), which are taking over the planet as a result of centralization of the farm industry. The low content or virtual non-existence of pesticides in organic foods protects current and future generations from cancerous chemicals. It has been reported that roughly 90% of all fungicides, 60% of all herbicides and 30% of all insecticides are carcinogenic. Again, small family owned farms consume less energy as opposed to factory farms which can be highly dependent on fossil fuels. Also, most organic farms have a variety of crops as opposed to factory farms which follow the practice of mono-culture.

The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) reports that since the early 1990s, organic farming has rapidly developed in almost all European countries. As of the end of 2005, 6.9 million hectares in Europe were managed organically by almost 190, 000 farms. It is estimated that within the EU, more than 6.3 million hectares are under organic management which constitutes 3.9% of the agricultural area. |