Wednesday, April 30, 2008 -- 3:35 p.m.

On Sunday, I visited the Global Food & Style Expo at McCormick Place, which included All Things Organic. The organic portion of the expo focused on everything from organic fruits and veggies to flavored drinks and dairy. Also on display were green cleaning supplies and compostable and biodegradable containers, bags and to-go boxes.

My overall impression? Anything that can be organic is being made organically--and people seem to be buying it (or at least pretending for the samples).

The consumer's desire for "all things organic" is high, and companies are buying into it. Even Del Monte pickles are going the organic route.

I also had the opportunity to speak with Sara Snow, a green-living expert who had TV shows on the Discovery Channel. She was there on behalf of Blue Horizon, a sustainable seafood company her dad, Tim Redmond, co-founded.

One of the most fascinating things about Snow was, in my opinion, the fact that she grew up in a family that lived an eco-friendly, organic, natural lifestyle. Redmond also founded Eden Foods in the late 1960s. According to Snow's bio on her Web site, the Redmond family also built an eco-friendly home with solar energy in the '70s.

Talk about an eco-friendly family.

So it wasn't surprising to see her family working the Blue Horizon booth at the expo. Her mom and sister were cooking up samples of the company's frozen skillet meals and spring rolls while Snow and her dad talked to me.

And Snow managed to answer my first question without me ever having to ask it: What does organic seafood mean exactly?

Snow acknowledged that organic seafood was not something on most people's radar, but compared it organic meat in that the shrimp are hormone and antibiotic free and are farmed in a sustainable way. There isn't a USDA certification for organic seafood yet, but they follow standards set by an organic program in Europe, according the the Blue Horizon Web site.

As a non-meat eater (and yes, that includes seafood), the idea of animals being pumped with hormones and such to make them bigger and plumper sounds pretty disgusting, but, from what I can tell, some meat-eaters also find it less than palatable.

I also asked Snow about how she felt about "greenification" of everything and the eco-culture becoming more mainstream. She said that for a while, the "fad factor" didn't worry her, but it recently has started to cause some concern. Especially the celeb involvement.

But Snow said she things that even if the green trend fades, the message of health and the need to put good things in your body will stay with people because that's something there's always interest in.

I also spoke to Snow's sister, Elizabeth Redmond, who invented human-powered electric grids, some of which were installed in Millennium Park in October (see some of the pics here). The tiles essentially harness our body's kinetic energy and uses it to generate energy to power other things like lights, E. Redmond told me. She said these tiles would be particularly useful in places like parks and airports.

Pretty darn cool, I think. The city could light up the entire lakefront path with all the runners and walkers that pass over it each day. Or we could light up the room if a dance floor was filled with them. Oh, the possibilities.

And it's true--there ARE lots of possibilities, lots of opportunities, lots of ideas.

So, I went into the organic food expo slightly jaded by all the so-called natural, organic products out there; I left excited and optimistic realizing how many great ideas there were out there to make a healthier person--and planet.

(I know, I know. Very cheesy.)

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