There is no government regulation of organic claims on body care products (lotion, shampoo, toothpaste, etc.), so those labeled as organic could have as few as one or two actual organic ingredients. That’s all it takes to be called organic! Here are a few suggestions:
Read labels to determine amount of organic ingredients.
Select products that use post-consumer recycled plastics to decrease production of plastics and reduce the release of greenhouse gases.
Check out some of the bigger retailers that now have their own line of organics (Whole Foods, Safeway) which tend to be more reasonably priced. (Still read the labels, though!)
We found this great list of words used on food labels and what they mean. Here’s the beginning of the article to explain it more – we encourage you to click the link and read the whole thing, plus the comments.
These days, grocery shopping involves a lot of reading. Food is rarely content to just be, and instead, must include dozens of labels designating it as CAGE-FREE, HIGH IN ANTIOXIDANTS, or the dreaded ORGANIC. And even if you know your PASTURED from your HUMANELY-RAISED chickens, odds are you still need a PhD to decode most of the other language.
So, to make navigating your supermarket a tad easier, here are 26 food labels, defined and explained in terms understandable to humans. I have to be honest – 36 hours ago, I couldn’t tell the difference between LOW-FAT, LITE and REDUCED-FAT. Now, I can. And I have this guide to consult when I forget.
Eleven-year-old Birke Baehr talks about “What’s Wrong With Our Food System? And How Can We Make A Difference?” at the TEDx Next Generation Asheville conference in August 2010.
One of the ways your body takes care of itself is with its waste disposal system. The system works best when it has sufficient fiber to carry the waste. Yes, fiber is your personal garbage collector.
What is fiber? * Fiber is plant roughage. Animal-derived foods have zero fiber. Plant roughage is the part of beans, grains, seeds, nuts, vegetables, and fruits that resists digestion.
What does fiber do? * Fiber moves everything through your intestines, picking up and pushing it through, even scrubbing it clean as it goes. Fiber also absorbs all the chemicals and toxins you’ve ingested and gets rid of them.
How does it work? * The waste disposal system in your body starts with the liver, which continuously filters your blood. As your blood passes through the liver’s network of capillaries, liver cells remove toxins, chemicals, cholesterol, medications, waste hormones, and whatever else your body doesn’t want. These undesirables are sent from the liver through the bile duct and into your intestine. There, fiber soaks up this waste bile and carries it out with other waste products.
As long as you’re eating lots of plant foods, your waste disposal system will work pretty well. If you eat a lot of animal-derived foods, the liver filters out the toxins and chemicals, sends them through the bile duct, and then… they have nowhere to go. So they get reabsorbed back into your bloodstream, and the whole process starts over. Think of it this way – not enough fiber equals a higher percentage of waste in your blood. And that makes your blood the garbage dump… and not the toilet.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! You don’t have to be Irish to GO GREEN today.
Evaluate your recycling habits. Can you do more? Check with your recycling provider to find out if you’re taking advantage of all the programs (for example, hazardous materials collections, electronics collections, etc.).
Add a green vegetable (not salad) to every lunch and dinner. Tired of broccoli and green beans? Look at all the produce you’ve been ignoring, and try something new.
Check your lawn care products – are they horrible chemicals? There are other options – look for environmentally friendly (earth-, air-, and water-friendly, not to mention people- and pet-friendly) lawn care.
Reduce your junk mail. Seriously. You get enough in your spam folder; you don’t need it in your actual mailbox, too.
Drink a green smoothie at least once a week. Just add a couple of handfuls of spinach to your favorite smoothie. (If the color bothers you, put it in an opaque or colored glass or mug.)
Reduce your energy consumption. Energy costs are skyrocketing between the civil unrest in the Middle East and the issues with nuclear power in Japan. How can you cut back? Where can you walk, or carpool, instead of drive? What can you turn off?
Make your salads from a variety of greens – get more adventurous than romaine and spinach. Try arugula, mesclun, baby herb mix, butter lettuce, red or green leaf lettuce… there are lots of choices.
Don’t use the dry cycle on your dishwasher. After it’s done washing, open the door and let everything air-dry. If you start it before bed, set it to “air dry” – everything is dry in the morning.
Plan – or plant – your garden. Depending on your growing zone, it may be planting season already. Even in an apartment, you can grow herbs in pots. If you have a balcony or deck, you can grow tomatoes and strawberries. If you have a yard, you can grow just about anything.
Real oatmeal contains no ingredients; rather, it is an ingredient. As such, it’s a promising lifesaver: oats are easy to grow in almost any non-extreme climate and, minimally processed, they’re profoundly nourishing, inexpensive and ridiculously easy to cook.
EXACTLY. Oatmeal is easy, cheap, and nutritious. It’s hard to make it wrong – you almost have to do it on purpose. And apparently, that was exactly what McDonald’s set out to do.
…in typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice. (Not only that, they’ve made it more expensive than a double-cheeseburger: $2.38 per serving in New York.) “Cream” (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavor”).
Seriously? How can oatmeal contain seven ingredients – before you add the “cream,” sweetener, and dried fruit? Oatmeal is… oats. And water. And maybe (because it’s totally optional) a pinch of salt. What “natural flavor” needs to be added to oatmeal? Doesn’t it taste like oats already? (We couldn’t even hold back the laugh when we typed that.)
Others will argue that the McDonald’s version is more “convenient.” This is nonsense; in the time it takes to go into a McDonald’s, stand in line, order, wait, pay and leave, you could make oatmeal for four while taking your vitamins, brushing your teeth and half-unloading the dishwasher. (If you’re too busy to eat it before you leave the house, you could throw it in a container and microwave it at work….
If you don’t want to bother with the stove at all, you could put some rolled oats (instant not necessary) in a glass or bowl, along with a teeny pinch of salt, sugar or maple syrup or honey, maybe some dried fruit. Add milk and let stand for a minute (or 10). Eat. Eat while you’re walking around getting dressed. And then talk to me about convenience.
Thank you, Mark Bittman. There’s nothing inconvenient about making your own oatmeal. If you like to cook over a stove, you can even make a big pot on a day you have the extra 10 minutes, and keep it in the fridge all week. Scoop out a serving, add some liquid (we like soy milk for this, but water or any plant milk, or even apple juice works), and warm it quickly on the stove. You know, while you half-unload that dishwasher (we’re glad he said that, because that’s exactly how we use our time).
We love this article. Please go read the whole thing.
Did you know that plain water is just as effective at removing germs and pesticides from your produce as those special sprays and washes?
Yes, plain water.
To get ride of bacteria and viruses, use a solution of one part vinegar to three parts water, and scrub or soak the produce, as appropriate. Then rinse under running water for about 30 seconds. That’s it.
Use the cheap distilled white vinegar for this – very budget-friendly!
Do you know what this is? >>> Nitrate, sodium stearyl lactylate, and moncalcium phosphate.
It’s a turkey sandwich with potato chips.
Eating “real” food and avoiding flake flavor enhancers, preservatives, and other potentially harmful chemicals is one of the most important components of a healthy diet.
In order to do this, you must learn to read between the lines of food labels (especially the ingredient list), since food manufacturers are allowed to make misleading claims like “all natural ingredients.” A general rule of thumb is to avoid any food that requires a long paragraph to describe the ingredients (“to be continued on the next can”), have ingredients you can’t pronounce, and/or ingredients you can’t identify.
Do not flush old medications down the toilet. Our water treatment facilities aren’t equipped to handle the volume or variety of drugs that need to be disposed of.
Your community may have a prescription drug collection – if so, take advantage of it. Clean out your medicine cabinet, and drop off the old drugs. You’ll want to remove your name and the prescription number from the container (remove the label or use a permanent black marker to mark it out).
If you need to dispose of old medications at home:
Keep the medication in its original container. Again, remove the label, or black out the patient name and prescription number.
Modify the medication to discourage consumption. For pills or capsules, add some water to partially dissolve them. For liquids, add something like salt, flour, charcoal, turmeric, or dried mustard to make a pungent unsightly mixture that discourages anyone from eating it. For blister packs, wrap in several layers of duct tape.
Seal the container with duct tape, then place it in an opaque bag or empty margarine tub (or other opaque container) so the contents cannot be seen.
Discard the container in the trash. Do not recycle it.
A human health crisis is brewing on our nation’s farms. An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics used in the United States are fed to animals that are not sick, a practice that breeds antibiotic-resistant bacteria and causes costly, painful, and sometimes deadly human diseases.
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledged the scientific consensus on the connection between human health and this nontherapeutic antibiotic use on the farm. Yet the FDA’s actions, including a recently released set of principles on this subject, have not yet tackled the problem.
