Strategies, Tips, and Advice for Healthy Green Living

Archive for the ‘Organic Food’ category

Greening Your Family App

July 1st, 2010

About three and a half years ago I decided to go public with the idea of writing a book. Most of the people I told were pretty encouraging- except my friend Josh. When I told him about my plans he immediately said ‘You should make an App.’ I think I was vaguely aware that he wasn’t asking me to whip up a light snack before dinner- he was talking, back in 2007, about an app for mobile phones. Josh was on to something.

After the book came out last December, I created a handy little wallet card to hand out at books talks. The card lists the ‘Dirty Dozen’ and ‘Clean Fifteen’ produce items, along with a guide to making safe fish choices and a recipe for homemade all-purpose cleaner. I kept one in my own wallet because I had a hard time recalling all the pesticide load information while I was at the grocery store – organic asparagus? Plums? Alaska Salmon or Atlantic? Between the card becoming dog eared and difficult to extract, and the possibility of a wide reach with a mobile phone app I decided it was time to distill the Greening Your Family book into an app.

Apple released the Greening Your Family app on June 4th, 2010. It’s available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad and sells for $2.99. The description that appears in the App Store is reproduced below:

Practical Guide to Greening Your Family

The Greening Your Family app is a road map for making safe product choices for yourself and your family. Do you wonder if you should buy organic or conventionally grown apples? Want to know which fish varieties have the least environmental contaminants? What about the safest brands of children’s shampoo or toothpaste to buy? This app answers all of these questions and more.

The app is designed to make it easy for you to minimize your family’s exposure to harmful chemicals found in many of the products that line the grocery store shelves. It’s based on the award-winning book titled Greening Your Family, by Lindsey Carmichael, MPH.

Features:

Extensive information covering three broad categories: food, personal care and cleaning products

Recommendations for safe brands of products in each category

Information about ingredients to avoid in conventional products

Detailed information about labels on food, cleaning and personal care products

Ability to create a ‘favorites’ list for quick access at the store Easy social network integration for Facebook and Twitter

Updates ensuring current information about the ever changing green products landscape

Safe Guide to Plastics for foods

Guide to House Plants That Purify the Air in your home

Table of the top 15 ingredients to avoid in personal care products

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Posted in Indoor Air Quality, Organic Food, Pesticides, Uncategorized, food safety, green cleaning, parabens

Fish: Organic or Conventional, Fresh or Frozen, Farmed or Wild?

February 9th, 2010

Making informed decisions about your fish purchases is no small task, particularly if you want to make both a healthy and eco-conscious choice.

Answering the fresh or frozen question partially depends on your proximity to fresh fish. If you don’t live particularly close to coastal waters, then you might consider opting for frozen fish. There is increasing credence given to the notion of buying fish that has been flash frozen at sea (FAS). Frozen-at-sea fish is caught, filleted, and then frozen within hours of being caught. Experts point out that frozen fish can be transported via container ship or rail, whereas fresh fish, if it has far to go, is typically transported by airplane, the transportation method with the largest carbon footprint. The good news is that flash frozen fish have been shown to retain all of the nutrients, such as omega-3’s, of their fresh cousins.

Organic or conventional fish? Well, it turns out that in order to be considered organic, a fish must be raised on a fish farm. This is a somewhat new and murky area for those in aquaculture, and one that draws criticism in part because a truly wild fish, a pacific salmon for example, cannot be considered organic based on the recommendations of the National Organic Standards board (the body making recommendations to the USDA). The guidelines allow for a certain percentage of the fish feed to be from

I address the farmed vs. wild fish choice in more detail in Greening Your Family; the distilled findings are that wild fish tend to have lower levels of environmental contaminants such as PCB’s and mercury. Today, the choice between farmed vs. wild fish is tough. There doesn’t appear to be a good sustainable choice- sadly we have overfished and polluted our oceans. There is, however, an emerging trend in aquaculture that involves placing fish farms far out at sea, rather than close to the coast. This idea may prove to be both a sustainable and healthy way to raise fish!

Additional Resources

National Resources Defense Council

Marine Stewardship Coucil

New York Times Article: Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods

Article: In Search of New Waters, Fish Farming Moves Offshore

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Posted in Organic Food, PBDEs, food safety

Tags: aquaculture farmed fish fresh vs. frozen fish frozen-at-sea mercury in fish Omega 3’s organic fish PCB’s in fish safe fish

How Do You Like Them Apples?

September 18th, 2009

apple

The kids are back in school, the days are getting shorter, and in many towns across North America, the apples are almost ready to pick.

We eat a ton of apples in our house; in fact we probably eat more apples than any other type of fruit. Because of the large number of apples we consume and because apples have a heavy pesticide load, I always buy the organic variety. According to the Environmental Working Group’s Shopper’s Guide to Produce, apples are the second most pesticide-laden type of produce out there (peaches claim first prize)!

Conventionally grown apples are treated with herbicides and pesticides. Some are natural; however most are altered versions of natural chemicals. In agriculture, farmers use pesticides and herbicides to protect crops from various insects, weeds, and diseases. The concern with conventionally grown produce is that human exposure to a wide range of pesticides is linked negative effects on the endocrine, nervous, and immune systems and increased incidence of certain types of cancers. As with exposure to many other synthetic chemicals, children (born and unborn) are particularly susceptible due to their developing systems; their limited ability to detoxify, or excrete the pesticides; and their lower body weight relative to adults.

Lots of people wonder if thoroughly washing conventionally grown apples removes all of the pesticide residue. The answer is that it does not. Some amount of residue remains on the skin of the apples, while some is absorbed into the apples through the skin.

So when you’re strolling through the produce aisle this fall, think about opting for organic apples, free of harmful pesticides and herbicides. Not only will you be protecting your families’ health, but you will also be indirectly protecting the environment, because organic growing methods don’t contaminate the soil or water supply with their growing methods.

Tips for stretching your produce dollars:

Buy in season. Food that is purchased while it’s in season will always cost less than when it’s not readily available.

Check out all the varieties of the item you’re buying and be flexible. In our local natural foods market, they stock about seven different types of organic apples, ranging in price from $1.65/lb to $3.49lb.