TED Talks. A Must See Video: Ocean's Glory - And Horror.

This video must be watched, and passed along. The ocean is so magnificent. Let's protect it. Please.

USDA Finally Admits Link Between Antibiotic Use in Farm Animals and Human Health

I would like to file this one under 'Duh' to be honest. We stuff our farmed animals with tons upon tons of antibiotics so that they can live in the horrific conditions we force upon them and we expect there to be no link in our growing resistance to antibiotics? It's amazing to me that this article is recent news, but here's the article anyway...

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The Meatrix!

I watched this video a few years ago and thought it was time to share it with my readers...



For more great information check out their site!

Take Me To The Movies...

I just got caught up on my daily emails, and had a wonderful Ideal Bite I had to share. Their daily email today focused on all of the eco-movies coming out soon. They included links to their sites where you can watch trailers. I am so excited about all that is to come. Top on my list are Earth, The Cove, Food Inc. and The Age of Stupid.

I've included a cut & paste below complete with links, enjoy and go see!

* The Cove - part whodunit, part eco-educational movie about a team of activists who set out to save fish and dolphins off the coast of Japan. Opens Jul. 31.
* Battle for Terra - stars like Danny Glover, Luke Wilson, and Evan Rachel Wood lend their voices to this animated adventure movie; plays in 3D in some areas. Opens May 1.
* Earth - the cinematographers behind the Planet Earth series bring you a beautifully shot, feature-length film about three animal families - elephants, polar bears, and humpback whales. Opens Apr. 22.
* Food Inc. – unveils the sometimes dirty politics of the food industry; features experts like Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schloseer (Fast Food Nation). Now in limited release.
* Fuel - slick docu on new energy sources, featuring interviews with eco-thinkers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and eco-celebs like Julia Roberts. Now in limited release.
* The Age of Stupid - faux documentary-style drama about a less-than-cheery dude who in the year 2055 looks back over the past few decades of climate change. Premieres in May.

And I urge you to sign up for Ideal Bite daily emails, here.

(Image:i147.photobucket.com)

Meat Myths

I was recently sent a link to "Eat this, Not That" (linked to the Women's Health magazine website, love that magazine!). The article I was sent focused on decoding meat label myths. I've mentioned a lot of this on the blog before, such as when you see 'Natural' that really means nothing since the word is not regulated by the government and anyone can use it on their products...

Here are some of the highlights, cut and pasted directly for your reading pleasure...

The Claim: "Free Range"

The Truth: If the claim conjures images of healthy birds roaming freely about rolling hills, feasting on nature's delicacies, think again. Technically, free-range chickens must have access to the outdoors for at least 51 percent of their lives, but the USDA, which approves each manufacturer's "free-range" claim on a case-by-case basis, does not strictly define "outdoors." The term could mean anything from idyllic open acreage to a puny pen. Guess which is true for the majority of free-range chickens available in supermarkets?

The Claim: "Organic"

The Truth: The organic chicken industry has grown wildly in recent years. Big Agriculture has seen the potential profit boon of charging an average of 100% percent more for organic chickens, and they have secured the coveted (and often pricey) USDA stamp for what some activists argue are less-than-reputable practices. Look for two certification stamps-the Secretary of Agriculture seal and the USDA Organic seal-confirming that the animals were fed organic feed and had access to pasture.

For the rest click here

The bottom line is to research what you eat! The beef Kevin and I purchase from our local health food store is delicious grass fed beef. The package explains where their farm is and I've been to the website and you can visit if you want! Any farm willing to have their customers visit is sticking up for their label claims....If you find this troublesome, look into purchasing your meat in bulk from an online purveyor that you trust, there are so many online now. Worth the shipping cost!

(Image:www.robertbolesta.com)

Deforestation in the Amazon

80% of Amazon Destruction can be blamed on Cattle Ranching. ie EATING MEAT

Yep, it's sadly become more common knowledge. Check out the rest of the article for more details.

(Image:pro.corbis.com)

Fact Shocker

Americans get over 19 BILLION catalogs every year! While many of us recyle them, catalogues are still among the top non-recyled items out there.

Step it up, recyle them if you get them.

More importantly get your name off of those lists with http://www.greendimes.com/

Green Your Diet Series V. 7: Don't Water It Down

The never ending bottled water topic, switching to a reusable water container is one of the easiest switches you can make in your life to make it a bit greener. This is one of those switches that is not only earth friendly but is easier on our wallet as well.

I was reading Eat Well magazine (love it!) and thought I'd share these facts I read:

*40% of bottled water is actually just filtered tap.

*In the US alone, nearly 10 BILLION barrels of oil are used to bottle water annually. (that's just production)

*It takes an average plastic water bottle 1,000 years to decompose.

*In the US we toss over 22 BILLION water bottles each year.

Yet another reason to say "screw you" to bottled water and stick with your reusable one. Kevin and I use a Pure water filter and love it. We used to tote home Smart Water in huge bottles wasting money and a lot of plastic. We are happy to have made the change.

Oh, and please stop buying those tiny baby bottles of water, that's just insane, do we really need to bottle our "sip size" water needs? I mean come on really. SIGG makes small, medium and large bottles, no excuses people!
(Image:drvino.com/.../uploads/2007/05/bottleh2o.jpg)

Green Your Diet Series V.6: Stearic Acid

I know that it doesn't always seem apparent why food ingrediants are on this environmental blog, I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and how I would explain myself. Well here it is:
I believe the following, what you consume, love, create, throw away and keep is what makes us who you are. Take that one step backwards and realize that everything you consume had a whole life before you came along to eat it.

I disagree with how animals in factory farms are raised and killed as well as what happens to them afterwards. I am not a vegetarian and don't plan on becoming one necessarily. What I consider myself is a 'ethitarian' (am I coining this term?), I care about what I eat and what it ate and how it was treated and so on.... It's easy to avoid a steak dinner, trust me, I've never had one. It isn't as easy to avoid the hundreds of products, both edible and non-edible that are in someway made from animal parts. Products you never imagined (I am sure many of you were shocked to learn that gelatin was made from animals!) are made from animal renderings.
So that brings me to the decision that this knowledge is vital to the health of our planet that we wake up and question the everyday norms, question where our ingredients are coming from and how they are made. We are putting some of these products in our bodies for god's sake!

To Summarize:

1.Factory farming not only treats animals with extreme cruelty but is environmentally damaging due to the use of chemicals, fertilizers, fuel, herbicides, antibiotics, poor waste systems in place etc.
2.The animals are turned into a products for humans consumption, beauty products, apparel etc. 3.Humans using products ignorantly thinking nothing is wrong.
4. Humans become generally unhealthy and watch as the environment deteriorates around them. (and all the while find someone or something else to blame other than what they eat)

All that said I believe strongly that each ingredient in our food and drink matters, and it is the responsible thing to do to learn what they are and if you want to put them into your body. A lot of times we make a bold statements while unknowingly still supporting the industry we are trying to stand up against.

So little by little I am trying to inform you all of what you are eating and small changes you can make that will make a huge difference. I believe strongly that eating mindfully will not only make you happier but healthier! The Green Your Diet Series is meant to help educate and give you the interest to question your ingredients and care about what you are eating. I hope it is working. Here is today's ingredient definition, I pulled this from a great site http://www.organicformulations.ca/know_no.htm check it out, it's a must! I will be posting from it again I am sure!

"Stearic Acid: Fat from cows and sheep and from dogs and cats euthanized in animal shelters, etc. Most often refers to a fatty substance taken from the stomachs of pigs. Can be harsh, irritating. Used in cosmetics, soaps, lubricants, candles, hairspray, conditioners, deodorants, creams, chewing gum, food flavoring. Derivatives: Stearamide, Stearamine, Stearates, Stearic Hydrazide, Stearone, Stearoxytrimethylsilane, Stearoyl Lactylic Acid, Stearyl Betaine, Stearyl Imidazoline. Alternatives: Stearic acid can be found in many vegetable fats, coconut."

Green Your Diet Series v.5: What is Gelatin?

So, as part of the Green Your Diet series, I will be sharing ingredient definitions with you to let you in one the things you eat and where they come from.

I thought I would start today with an ingredient we all may already know about.

Gelatin: This is a protein derived from the boiling of skin, ligaments, tendons and/or bones in water. Derived from cows or pigs. Gelatin can be found in candies, marshmallows, cake, ice cream and yogurts to name some. Gelatin is used as a thickener and as a coating for nutritional supplements. There are alternatives, you can find plant sources such as pectin from fruit, cotton gum and dextrins.

Check your ingredients, I don't know about you, but no thanks on the gelatin for me, thanks.

(Image:michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com)

Fact Shocker

Daily Fact, direct from my Earth911.com weekly email:

"We throw away an inkjet cartridge every eight seconds. Each one takes a gallon of oil to produce. Refilling or recycling your inkjet cartridges using Earth911.com is one easy way to reduce our oil dependency."

Green Your Diet Series v.3: Make Each Bite Count

I don't know why anyone would be still eating white bread and cooking up white pasta anymore. I realized that not everyone knows the real story behind the choice they are making, so I thought I'd share it with you in this greening your diet series. What better way to green your diet then to add vitamins and nutrients along with it!

Wheat is made up of 3 basic parts, starch, germ & bran. All together this is good healthy stuff. Somewhere along the way though it become desirable and better to eat whiter foods, the whiter the bread the better. Big no no, and we are only now figuring this out publicly. This is not new information by any means, people have been eating nutritious and unscrewed around with bread & pasta for thousands of years, but there definitely, in this country at least has been a moving away from the white bread sammies of years past.

When wheat is processed to make white bread, pasta, cereals and other foods it is heated to a level where the germ & bran fall off, leaving behind the white part, the pure white "goodness", the starch. By doing this you the eater are receiving next to nothing nutritionally. All the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients are in the germ & bran. Making white bread removes the only part worth anything. Big companies know this, so after doing that, they enrich (I love that they use the term 'enrich' as if what they are doing isn't totally wrong!) the starch with vitamins, fiber and iron, but never close to the amount of nutrition originally in whole grains. Wanna know another reason they do this? If you guess money, you'd be right! Starch alone, without the oh so nutritional germ & bran is more bug resistant and has a much longer shelf life. These two things are like dollar signs in a manufactures eyes.

The environmental toll to process already perfect wheat is staggering, the task creates waste, uses fuel to run machines and is likely using unnecessary chemicals to "enrich" what is left of the wheat after they've processed it to be nice and white for their consumers.

So, what to do? Stick to WHOLE GRAINS, meaning they haven't been processed, WHOLE being the keyword there. Whole wheat bread is great, but make sure you don't see "enriched with niacin, iron, fiber or vitamins" on the label, not to mention if you see this lovely ingredient, molasses, which only serves to darken white bread to make it appear more like whole grain bread. See they've got you! It's really you against the world in that bread aisle. Come armed with the knowledge I've given you and you'll do fine! Here are some pointers to remember

*Bran & Germ = only nutritional part

*Look for 16 grams or more of WHOLE GRAINS and NO refined grains

*16 grams of whole grains = 1 serving

*Refining = Bad

*Molasses = Bad (it's used only to color the bread so it looks more brown)

*WHOLE GRAIN or WHOLE WHEAT should be top 1 and/or 2 on the list of ingredients

*Ingredients should NOT include the word "enriched", if you see that even after the words whole grain or whole wheat you're only getting a percentage of whole grains and the rest is white enriched flour! Beware!

*This effects ANYTHING made with wheat flour, breads, muffins, bagels, pasta, cereals, crackers, the list goes on.....

Make every bite count!


(Image:www.wheatfoods.org)
(Image: bread slices: arm1.static.flickr.com)

Earth Mama: G is for Green and Good

As Mother's Day approaches I've been thinking about all the new or soon to be Mamas out there and what they are facing when choosing diaper systems. Disposable diapers make life much easier than cloth diapers I can imagine, but the effect on the environment has got to make a few new Moms shudder.

One company is leading the way in environmental design as well as functionality. G Diapers!

Here's how G Diapers work, basically G Diapers are a reusable, washable cotton "pant" (they look like a diaper) like item that your baby wears over and over, in turn saving tons of waste. There is a 'flushable' insert that absorbes the majority of what your baby is producing. There's also a snap in liner that catches any extra, that too is washable and it's suggested you purchase at least 2 so you can swap them out. The flushable/compostable/tossable pad is all you end up having to deal with! Flushing them is easy and simple, there's a great video on their website showing exactly how to flush properly. If you don't want to flush you can compost or toss out.

Since you can simply toss them into the trash it's just as simple as tossing disposable diapers!

To be honest, I have no clue how much diapers cost, but these babies are priced pretty well. The reusable diapers are $16.99 (they suggest getting at least 2 so you'll have one ready if you need to switch them out to wash) and you can purchase the inserts in different size packages, 40 diapers for $14.49 for example. You can shop online, but G Diapers are also available at Whole Foods locations around the country.

Facts to astound you!

*18-23 Billion diapers are sold annually in the United States and ALL are thrown away, ending up in landfills for roughly 500 years before they breakdown, G diapers break down in 50-150 days, that's a huge difference! This is due to the polyprolylene used to make the outer and other layers of the disposable diapers.

*3.5 million tons of poop and plastic go into the grown in the United States each year.

*Disposable diapers are the 3rd largest consumer item in our garbage system

*You can Compost, Toss or Flush your G diaper 'flushable insert'

Check out the G Diapers website, they've got tons of information about how diapers impact the environment and what you can do to make a difference. Learn how to use the diapers in their great short How To Videos and get your first set of G Diapers right on the website.

www.gdiapers.com

(Image 1: www.metaefficient.com)
(Image 2: blog.nau.com)

We are What We Eat, Aren't We?

The subject of grass fed vs. grain fed is in my thoughts a lot. Kevin and I have exclusively switched to drinking only grass-fed milk at home (we drink Natural By Nature whole milk and we love it), and grass fed beef as well. There are many reasons why, and I really wanted to share why. My next task is finding grass fed dairy products, which I think is a bit harder to locate, but just as important. I give a warning, this post is not pretty, but if you decide to stop reading it I hope someday you learn this information. We are all in charge of our own bodies and what we put in them is quite possibly the most important thing we decide daily. We are what we eat they say, right?
You should always be seeking out grass-fed/pasture raised poultry, meat and dairy products. Always! Cows are ruminants, their natural diet is grass, in fact what they are forced (list below) to eat causes major health problems which are addressed with high amounts of antibiotics (those of which end up in our systems and waterways through their waste runoff). Chickens naturally poke around on pasture for bugs to fill their stomachs; they don’t naturally eat what we feed to them.
In today’s industrialized factory farming industry cows, pigs and chickens are fed a range of things including; corn, soybeans, cattle manure, swine waste, poultry litter, feathers, skin, hooves, blood, plastic, sand, wood, dirt, intestines, rendered road kill, euthanized and rendered cats & dogs and finally rendered pigs and poultry can be not only be fed to cows but fed back to pigs and chickens (who are allowed themselves to eat rendered cattle, so in turn we are cannibalizing the cattle as well) I am not speaking of a select few underground factory farms doing this on the sly, this list is what is LEGAL in this country to feed farm animals. LEGAL! From my extensive reading on this subject, companies do this across the board, companies with names we all know. Why would they do this you ask? How can they sleep at night you ask, knowing they’ve fed their pigs their fellow pigs? MONEY. If that isn’t reason enough to switch to grass fed meat and poultry I will elaborate:

Here are some health reasons to switch:
Grass Fed/Pasture Raised Meat/Poultry/Pork contains much more omega 3’s, Vitamin A, Beta Carotene and other antioxidants. Grass fed beef fat and butter contains the powerful CLA (which is a hard to find nutrient), CLA is a powerful anti-cancer agent which aids in weight loss and builds lean muscle tissue. Grass fed animals contain more muscle and less fat because they are walking on pasture to eat instead of bending over eating from a trough of “food” (see above for reminder of their food). That translates to less fat for you and more essential nutrients.

Now, to the environmental benefits of grazing animals:
1. Grass is much more easily grown without the use of chemicals, as opposed to grain or soybeans which tend to need more care, leading most farmers to use pesticides and chemical fertilizers
2. When grazing, farmers move their herd around from patch of grass to patch of grass, thus allowing for regrowth and natural activity in the soil
3. When animals are outside there is much more room for them, leading to much lower rates of infection and disease.

Here’s a quote from ‘Real Food’ by Nina Planck that helps sum up the environmental benefits, “The constant cutting and regrowth of grazing stimulates dense root growth, improving soil fertility and preventing erosion, and because cows walk around manure is spread evenly, reducing nitrogen runoff."

Thank you for sticking through this post, I know it’s disgusting and I don’t want to gross you out, but telling you this in this way is the only way I know how to share the truth, and the only way I can imagine telling you, there’s no need to sugar coat this as the industry has, this is what we eat for gods sake and we are what we eat aren’t we? And if that’s true, what does that mean we are now?

Here are some choices you have when you shop:
For a range of dairy products:
http://www.organicvalley.coop/
http://www.natural-by-nature.com/

A great quick overview with lots of information on this subject:
http://www.eatwild.com/
http://www.ucsusa.org/- great resource for information, for information related on this article click the Food tab or go to the following link: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/
sustainable_food/they-eat-what.html#Same_Species_Meat_Diseased_Animals_and_F

Image: Painting by Lowell Herrero

A Shocking Truth

With the rising concern of GM (Genetically Modified) animals and foods we can rest assure that certified organic products are not allowed to be genetically modified. That means if it scares you that cows have already been cloned and their offspring have somehow been "lost" among the cow population and are making their way into your diet, stick to organic meat and poultry. In addition, conventionally (conventionally grown means NOT ORGANIC) grown produce is allowed to have 500+ additives in it! Think about that for just a second. Most of these additives are highly controversial chemicals under investigation as we speak. Why tempt the devil, buy organic and be safer!

(Image:http://foodsafety.blogs.bftf.org/)

A Shocking Truth

With the rising concern of GM (Genetically Modified) animals and foods we can rest assure that certified organic products are not allowed to be genetically modified. That means if it scares you that cows have already been cloned and their offspring have somehow been "lost" among the cow population and are making their way into your diet, stick to organic meat and poultry. In addition, conventionally (conventionally grown means NOT ORGANIC) grown produce is allowed to have 500+ additives in it! Think about that for just a second. Most of these additives are highly controversial chemicals under investigation as we speak. Why tempt the devil, buy organic and be safer!

A Shocking Truth: Fact of the Day

According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) of the approximately 75% of recyclable trash, only 25% actually is. I think we all know what we need to do. There's a lot more that you can recycle that can be done than the obvious paper and plastic, check out http://www.earth911.org/ for lots of recycling tips, you can also enter your zip code and find places near you that take a wide range of items! More to come on recycling, I promise.
(Image: http://media.herald-dispatch.com/)