Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Organic food and ecological products in Oman

This is gonna be a bit different blog post, based on my interest in organic food and ecological products. I am not a vegetarian, only small part of my food is organic but I try to use as many ecological products as possible. Being here I have had several positive and negative surprises considering the topic.

Being vegetarian in Oman and junk food
My friend who is a vegetarian told me that it is very easy to be a vegetarian here in Oman. Selection of vegetarian dishes is usually good in most of restaurants. On contrast, international junk food chains are in every corner and - the locals seem to be fond of junk food as well.

Organic food
The big supermarkets have got some selection of organic food. In Carrefour there is a special counter for organic fruits and vegetables, and special counter for other organic food but organic products can be also found in between regular products. In example choice of raw cane sugar, stevia and similar is very good and the prices are cheaper than in Estonia. Lulu and Al Fair have also got many organic food products.

When it comes to regular food products, one always have to read the ingredients' list on the label, in example there are some juices that say 100% natural or 100% juice but when you see the ingredients there are very often added sugar or it contains some E-ingredients.

Ecological products in Oman
One of our first tasks here was to find ecological house cleaning stuff. In between huge shelves full of different home chemistry we were lucky to find few Ecover products. I have also seen some "natural products" shop in some malls but there was only cosmetics and body/hair care products sold. Well, better than nothing. And "natural" can mean anything here! In general, locals seem to have very little or no knowledge of what you mean by ecological/organic.

Organic food shop in Muscat?
Even if web search gave us information about a store called Organic House in Muscat we did not find it. After some more research I found one organic food store in Dubai that also delivers to Muscat (http://www.organicfoodsandcafe.com/)

Ecological/natural disposable diapers in Oman
...do not exist! This is my conclusion after many days of research: web search (only one article telling about the disadvantages of the usual diapers but when I sent the question to the person who wrote the article she had no idea if there were any ecological disposable nappies available here. At least she gave me some tips where to ask), sending e-mails (to Mothercare who has natural diapers in their UK webshop but the local unit said they did not export any nappies to Mothercare stores in the Middle East), asking in forums (got some hope when someone answered there were some natural diapers at Al Fair but we did not see any; another response was that such diapers were not available here at all). My only hope is to order some from Dubai.

EDITED: I found cloth diapers at Lulu! The selection of diaper covers was also good! Well done, Lulu! (It does not help with the problem of not having natural disposable diapers available, but a good alternative anyway).

28 comments:

  1. What an interesting article - thank you for sharing. Can you drop me an email at zara.shirwan (at) gmail.com please? I'd love to talk further with you about this ~ thank you :)

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  2. Organic food has plenty of advantages when compared to the non-organic food that have been processed with artificial preservatives and chemicals. I turned to organic and natural food quite some time ago and since then I have reaping the benefits. My overall health has tremendously improved with no more digestion issues, reduced skin trouble, and a general improvement in my fitness. Well, I guess this was bound to happen since the organic food products are literally free of harmful chemicals and additives having been prepared with minimal or almost no use of synthetic food processing materials. The idea, I guess, is to have food that is as fresh and natural as nature would give to us.

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    Replies
    1. Hi shobana, r u buyig organic vegetables & fruits in Oman? am looking for it. pl share the shops where u buy organic? dilemma in trusting whether its organic or the fake one..

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    2. Hi shobana, r u buyig organic vegetables & fruits in Oman? am looking for it. pl share the shops where u buy organic? dilemma in trusting whether its organic or the fake one..

      Delete
  3. Hello! I'm a journalist from Times of Oman and I'm working on an article on organics in Oman. I would love to talk to you about this. If you'd be willing, kindly email me at sarah @ timesofoman . com

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    Replies
    1. Hello Sarah,
      I sent you an e-mail. Sorry that I noticed your comment only now.
      Best regards,
      Eda

      Delete
  4. Hi,Dear friends end of this month our new farms opening in Barka Oman . its very special farm this one is the Aqaponics farms .we are products 100% organic vegetables . this is the first projects in Oman also we need everyone's support .one day we are planning to call everyone's and showing all farms .also can buy vegetables from our farm

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  5. Hi,Dear friends end of this month our new farms opening in Barka Oman . its very special farm this one is the Aqaponics farms .we are products 100% organic vegetables . this is the first projects in Oman also we need everyone's support .one day we are planning to call everyone's and showing all farms .also can buy vegetables from our farm

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello,we would love to come and visit your farm. could you kindly share a location with us?

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    2. Hello,we would love to come and visit your farm. could you kindly share a location with us?

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  6. Hi Anish kurian can you send your contact number

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  7. We Kikaboni, providing Organic products dealing with B2B exports to Qatar, Dubai, USA, PAN INDIA etc.. We also deal with retail business for the local people. Visit kikaboni.in

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