The Earth Savers Blog

Wake up and small the C02 at Starbucks....it's GOOD.

I went through the Starbucks drive through yesterday and was handed my gorgeous refreshing Ice coffee along with a freebee. I Love free! what’s this? This is THE GOOD SHEET! A weekly series that will tackle the do’s and don’ts; bad and ugly; in’s and out’s of carbon emissions, health care, global warming, and politics. I love GOOD magazine, but I love it doubly now that they partnered with the hipsters at Starbucks. This IS GOOD!

And so I like it Sam you see, Green coffee at Starbucks is good for me, and I will drink it on a train, and I will drink it in the rain, I will drink it with a fox, and I will drink it in a box...

You can share your ideas and any creative thoughts with Starbucks on mystarbucksidea.com.

The Garbage Free Lunch

It’s that most wonderful time of the year for Parents, FREEDOM!
I mean of course for our children…Ahem, back to school.

Most of us get very excited for this magical time of the year. It’s time for new school supplies, shiny new shoes, a new routine, and a clean slate to start the school year off on the right foot. It’s also an exciting time of the year for retailers who want to sell you all kinds of things you don’t always really need including at the supermarket where manufacturers make convenience for mom look really enticing with prepackaged everything from fruits,  and snacks to pre-sealed and divided luncheon meats, crackers, and sandwiches.  Unfortunately for our kids, these may not always be the most nutritional choices, and they are certainly not good for the environment as it makes for excessive packaging and use of plastics, foils, and paper products which are an unnecessary waste of resources and money. Here are a few eco- tips to kick start the year on the right foot in the lunch room:

1. Brown Bagging is OUT. I imagine if a tree had bad karma it would come back as a brown paper lunch bag. Surely there are better uses for a tree, (like letting them live to help clean our atmosphere,) so Invest in a sturdy, roomy, and durable eco-friendly lunch box for your kids this year and pack your bag with green.
2. Take the garbage free challenge…no Saran Wrap, juice boxes, foil, wax paper, paper napkins, or paper towel
3. Buy lead free and BPA free food containers in few sizes that fit in your lunch box (XXS; XS; M; LG; XL) for condiments, pretzels, fruit, sandwich, etc.
4. Invest in a re-usable aluminum or BPA free water container or thermos for water, juice, milk or tea (Sigg makes some great ones)
5. Invest in cloth napkins. Depending on how many kids you have in school you may want to buy a bunch and distinguish them by either getting them personalized or sewing on an embellishment. For those of us who are germ-o-phobes please take a moment to compose yourself before reading the next sentence.
6. Have them re-use their napkin throughout the week and send it to the washing machine on Friday’s. Remember… it’s not GROSS, It’s GREEN.
7. I love lunch notes as much as anyone else and it simply makes my daughters day if she gets one. This is where your home recycled paper bin can come in handy. REUSE a piece, or make use of cereal box tops or anything else you can write your sweet nothings on.
8. Buy in Bulk to avoid small excess packages. Fill your child’s containers every evening and pack your lunch the night before to avoid the morning rush.

Voila… You are that much closer to a greener more conscious school year for yourself and your children, You will save money, your kids will inspire other kids and parents to do the same, and imagine all the garbage you will avoid making this year! Every little bit counts.

12 Foods

Ok, so as creepy as I sometimes find the great Dr. Mercola , I appreciate his newsletters, and read them faithfully. Today's email was quick and easy, and had very little dooms day drama (which is so rare for him.) In his article titled 12 foods you don't have to buy organic he offered a quick list of veggies that tested as having very low pesticide load and so therefore are not the more important to buy organic.

The following veggies can be safely bought as non-organic:

• Broccoli
• Eggplant
• Cabbage
• Banana
• Kiwi
• Asparagus
• Sweet Peas (frozen)
• Mango
• Pinapple
• Sweet Corn (frozen)
• Avacado ( which are my favorite and are so expensive to buy organic!)
• Onion

and this next list is the MOST important to buy organic due to having the highest pesticide load:

• Peaches
• Apples
• Sweet bell peppers
• Celery
• Nectarines
• Strawberries ( Highly TOXIC)
• Cherries
• Grapes
• Pears
• Spinich
• Potatoes

He then went on to say that Non- organic meats have far higher concentrations of pesticides that all of the fruits and veggies, and the highest concentration of pesticides is actually found in non-organic butter!

and now I quote:

The biggest study ever into organic food – a four-year EU funded project called the Quality Low Input Food (QLIF) project
– found that organic food is FAR more nutritious than ordinary produce,
and can help improve your health and longevity. You’re likely to hear
more about this again, once they publish their findings in full, which
is expected to occur by the end of this year

This study may have considerable impact, as its findings may even
overturn government advice – at least in the U.K. – which currently
states that eating organic food is no more than a lifestyle choice.

For example, this study found that:

• Organic fruit and vegetables contain up to 40 percent more antioxidants
  
• Organic produce had higher levels of beneficial minerals like iron and zinc
  
• Milk from organic herds contained up to 90 percent more antioxidants

The researchers even went so far as to say that eating organic foods
can help to increase the nutrient intake of people who don’t eat the
recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

 

Food grown in healthier soil, with natural fertilizers and no
chemicals, simply has to be more nutritious. It is common knowledge --
though knowledge that is greatly suppressed in the United States. But
science is catching up, making suppression of this fact more difficult
to sustain.

A 2003 study in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry, for example, found that organic foods are better for fighting cancer.
And in 2005, scientists found that, compared to rats that ate
conventional diets, organically fed rats experienced various health
benefits, including:

• Improved immune system status
  
• Better sleeping habits
  
• Less weight and were slimmer than rats fed other diets
  
• Higher vitamin E content in their blood (for organically fed rats)

Does this mean that you should ditch all of your conventional
produce and meat, and only buy certified organic foods? Well, yes … and
no.

What Should You Buy Organic?

Aside from the fact that organic food contains higher levels of
vital nutrients, organic foods are also lower in other residues and
compounds that are seriously detrimental to your health, such as
herbicide-  and pesticide residues.

Additionally, the use of pesticides and herbicides in conventional
farming practices contaminates groundwater, ruins the soil structure
and promotes erosion. They’ve also been linked to the mysterious
“colony collapse disorder” that threatens pollinating honeybees around
the world. With that in mind, buying or growing as much organic food as
possible is not only best for your health, but for the health of the
entire planet.

That said, however, certain fruits and vegetables are subjected to
far heavier pesticide use than others. And with food prices rising,
many are looking for ways to buy the healthiest foods possible at the
lowest cost. One such way would be to focus on purchasing certain
organic items, while “settling” for others that are
conventionally-grown. 

This is where the EWG study of pesticide residue on produce really helps.

* the above is quoted directly from mercola.com

lettuce be green

Learning about biodynamics and organic winemaking

Doing a little reading (and learning about blogging with Adam) when I stumbled across this article on organic wine making on Treehugger.

Biodynamics is the theory that getting back to the earth, becoming more in-tuned with the seasons will improve the health of your farm. Bonterra is in a very good location for winemaking, both in terms of their location along the Russian River, and their proximity to the marine effect, which helps to drop temperatures every evening, thus making great grapes.

Pretty cool huh? Being a curious type, I went over to wikipedia to look up a little more on biodynamics.

I love getting smart on the intarwebs. ;)

You are what you eat

You are what you eat, so eat well. A stupendous insight of civilizations past has now been confirmed by today's investigative, nutritional sciences. They have shown that what was once called 'The Doctrine of Signatures' was astoundingly correct. It now contends that every whole food has a pattern that resembles a body organ or physiological function and that this pattern acts as a signal or sign as to the benefit the food provides the eater. Here is just a short list of examples of Whole Food Signatures.

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye...and science shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Eggplant, Avocadoes and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? .... It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow.

Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well to overcome male sterility. Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.

Grapefruits, Oranges , and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts. Onions look like body cells. Today's research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.

'The news isn't that fruits and vegetables are good for you, it's that they are so good for you, they can save your life.'

David Bjerklie, TIME Magazine