Filed under: eco-friendly, food, green, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: breakfast, california, children, dad, dinner, eat, eco, ecostiletto, family, food, green, infants, kids, los angeles, lunch, mom, organic, parent, pesticides, sarnoff, sustainable
Yes, you can get away with just buying organic milk and meat products. Yes, an organic apple is twice as expensive as conventional. Yes, there’s a reason they call it Whole Paycheck.
But then you come face to face with the truth: Unless you’re buying organic, your food is full of chemicals that are banned in other countries because they’re dangerous to our health.
The Pesticide Action Network’s new WhatsOnMyFood website is a revolutionary resource that makes this fact undeniably clear. Created with information from the USDA’s Pesticide Data Program cross-referenced with data from Environmental Protection Agency (among others), WhatsOnMyFood.org is destined to do to grocery shopping what the Skin Deep Database did to beauty product perusal.
Scroll down their list of common foods—from almonds to watermelon—and click on your favorites to pop up a list of pesticides and information on their toxicity. Like the aforementioned apple, which presents the residue of 14 different pesticides such as dimethoate, a carcinogen, hormone disruptor, neurotoxin and developmental (or reproductive) toxicant. Or blueberries, which can include a record 48 different pesticides in each tiny little globe.
You can also search by pesticide, such as Atrazine, a cancer-causing chemical that it’s banned in Europe, but so widely used in the United States that it’s found in 71% of our drinking water. Or check out water-cooler facts such as: Apples can be sprayed up to 16 times with 26 different chemicals, just a few of the 400 pesticides that are legal in the U.S.
In fact, according to Pesticide Action Network, “Pesticide regulations in the U.S. are well behind much of the rest of the industrialized world.” In a country that represents more wealth per capita than most others, how can this be possible? PAN cites agrichemical corporations with serious pull in Washington, for starters, but also because “pesticide regulation in the U.S. does not adequately account for things like additive and synergistic effects.”
Huh? Basically, what this means is that the EPA regulates chemicals on an individual basis, rather than considering the cumulative effects the mixture of pesticides that the average American ingests each day.
And here’s what all of this means to parents: The average child gets five or more servings of pesticides in their food and water every day. According to the Department of Health & Human Services, organophosphate pesticides are now found in the blood of 95% of Americans tested, with levels twice as high in blood samples taken from children. Exposure to organophosphate pesticides are linked to hyperactivity, behavior disorders, learning disabilities, developmental delays and motor dysfunction.
And we wonder why our kids are having problems in school.
Parents, please feed your children organic food. I know it’s more expensive. I know times are tough. But think about that $4 Starbuck’s latte you ordered yesterday. Or that lunchtime sandwich you could have brown-bagged. Cut out a few weekly splurges of your own to make up the difference in grocery bills for your family. But please don’t cut costs when it comes to your kids.
Filed under: beauty, eco-friendly, fashion, green, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: animal, cooking, eating, eco, fashion, food, green, meals, meat, pescatarian, peta, sustainable, vegan, vegetarian
A friend of mine forwarded me a recent pic of Alicia Silverstone* the other day. The subject line was simple: Body by vegan. And yes, it got my attention. Because even though I try to work out two or three times a week, there remains that stubborn five pounds of fat that took hold right around my belly button while I was pregnant with The Barnacle (read: baby) and never came off. Now I know that I’m active and healthy, and I knock wood daily for that. But there is a vain teenager inside of every woman. And on the day that my friend sent me Alicia Silverstone’s picture, that teen spoke up. I wanted to have a body by vegan. Desperately.
My friend happens to be a vegan, mind you. And she also happens to have a smokin’ bod, which may have less to do with the fact that she doesn’t eat animal products, and more to do with the fact that when you don’t eat animal products there is really very little that you can eat. She’s also 25.
Bitch.
And my raw foodie friends say that this type of diet—which also happens to fall into the vegan category—means that you have more energy throughout the day, because your body isn’t taxed by processing high density foods like meat. In fact, Ani Phyo, raw food chef extraordinaire and author of Ani’s Raw Food Desserts, swears that eating her chocolate ganache cake (which you can now buy boxed) is actually good for your body. Go figure.
There’s also the environmental factor: Livestock produce methane, which is a major greenhouse gas that some experts say contributes more to global warming than carbon dioxide. “You can’t be an environmentalist and eat meat,” is a PETA-popular phrase.
Here’s what you can eat if you’re a vegan: Vegetables. Fruit. Rice or soy milk. Bread made from weird grains. Fake cheese made from soy. Tofu made from soy. Meat made from soy. And lots and lots of nuts.
Here’s what my family eats: Whole wheat pasta made with eggs, whole wheat pizza made with cheese, bean-and-cheese burritos, grilled fish (wild-caught), chicken and hamburgers (grass-fed and organic), scrambled eggs. Give or take a few vegetables and fruit.
Fight, much? Soy barbecue “ribs” may taste like heaven to me, but to my kids they’re just plain weird.
So my body by vegan has to wait. In the mean time, I’ve gone pescatarian, and cut down my family’s meat and fish consumption. We’re still experimenting with tofu. And eating lots and lots of nuts.
Have you ever attacked the last five pounds? Gone vegan? Tell me about it!
*This photo is courtesy of 944 magazine’s April 2009 cover shoot, styled by the extraordinary Monica Schweiger, who contributes EcoStiletto.com’s fashion page. Stiletto-size me!
Filed under: eco-friendly, green, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: california, children, daughter, eco, ecostiletto, family, father, garden, green, kids, los angeles, organic, parent, sarnoff, sustainable
My dad likes old cars, albeit tuned up with tires full for optimal performance. He can’t pass a sock sale without buying five pairs, although he has drawers full of them. And he recently discovered Sam’s Club, where he likes to buy my children lots of plastic toys made in China.
But when I was a kid, things were different. Although my dad grew up in a white-bread family and a small midwestern town, as an adult he was adopted as a blood brother to the patriarch of a Lakota Sioux clan. In the late ‘60s, he started teaching the novels and poetry of Native American writers to students in his English classes; eventually he co-founded the Native American Studies Program at UCLA. When I was five, he caravanned a group of these students from California to North Dakota, meeting Native American writers and elders along the way. I remember a Monarch butterfly that landed on my finger at Sitting Bull’s gravesite and stayed that way for the next two hundred miles.
So as an adult, I never thought of my dad as much of an environmentalist. But then I started looking at the ways my life has changed in the last few years, and I realize that much of the inspiration comes directly from him.
Take the garden, for example. As a child growing up in the canyons of Los Angeles, we planted corn, tomatoes, salad and squash; even when he lived in a condominium, my father had edible plants growing on the balcony.
And he doesn’t just grow them to eat: My dad believes in the power of plants. If you cut your finger, he’ll offer you an aloe vera leaf. Feeling under the weather? He’ll brew up some foul-smelling concoction of Chinese herbs. On important days—my wedding day, and the first time he met each of his three grandchildren—my dad will sprinkle our heads with corn pollen as he says a prayer to the four directions.
But most importantly, my father taught me that plants—and all living things, really—deserve our respect. That when you cut a flower or an herb you should give the plant some water or food in return, and thank the plant for what it gave you. And he helps me pass these lessons on to my children.
There are some childhood habits that die hard, however. My father now buys organic milk when we come to visit, but he still likes his meat bought in bulk and eaten daily. He does not believe that my Green Wash Ball can actually get his clothes clean. He stocks up on antibacterial soap and scoffs at my inspection of shampoo labels when he sends my kids to shower at his house. And regardless of how many times I talk with him about the dangers of chemicals in cleaning products and fertilizer, he still cleans his tub with Tilex and douses his weeds with Round-Up.
But hopefully, just as his lessons changed my life, mine might change his someday.
Thanks, Dad.
Filed under: eco-friendly, green, organic, parenting, sustainable, travel, vacation | Tags: animals, babies, baby, bug, california, camping, eco, ecostiletto, family, green, kids, los angeles, mom, outdoors, parent, sarnoff, sunscreen, sustainable, toddler, vacation, wild
Last weekend I packed up the chemical-free bug spray (gotta love that citronella scent), zinc oxide sunscreen and four reusable shopping bags full of organic food and set off on a camping trip with six other families from my kids’ school. “Camping” is really a euphemism—the cabins we booked were more like hotel rooms, with refrigerators, full bathrooms and daily maid service—although we did cook over a campfire, scared away some skunks and endured nightly visits from inquisitive mice.
We’re all pretty tuned-in parents, so my eco offerings didn’t raise any eyebrows—though I was a little dismayed to find that even the families who packed their kids’ school lunchboxes with BPA-free, stainless steel reusable water bottles stocked up on cases of eight-ounce plastic water bottles for the trip. As I was filling up my glass as the tap in another family’s cabin, one of their kids pointed to the plastic and told me, “There’s clean water over there.” It drove home the point that most kids see tap water as “dirty” and bottled water as “clean,” when the reality is just the opposite. What ever happened to the good old-fashioned canteen?
But I digress. My goal for this camping trip was to tune out of work and tune into my family. Because although I write about sustainability for a living, the truth is that lately my life hasn’t been all that balanced. I work from home, so I can take my kids to school and throw in a load of laundry while still managing to meet my deadlines. But I’ve gotten so overwhelmed these days that I can’t seem to turn off the work part. I leave my office door open so I can pop in and check my email while my girls are in the bath. I bring my mobile phone downstairs to text with an editor while I’m making the pasta. I put the kids to bed, then write copy until midnight.
And I check email. It’s the first thing I do in the morning, and the last thing I do at night. I check email in the car, on a walk, after yoga. I check email while talking to people. I check email while texting.
I noticed a few days ago that whenever I meet friends for lunch these days, we all put our phones on the tables so we can glance over as the messages come rolling in, and deal with whatever’s urgent. But what’s really so urgent that it can’t wait an hour?
So after interviewing Mariel Hemingway a few weeks ago and listening to her talk about “showing up” in our lives, I started looking at the amount of email checking I was doing. I thought about how many times my husband has begged me to just turn off the phone when we go away for a weekend. And I realized that our luxury camping trip provided the perfect opportunity.
On Friday morning, I cut the cord.
I gave myself some back up, of course. An auto reply included my cell phone number, should anyone need to reach me. And I did keep my phone on, though email free. But you know what? I didn’t miss it, and nobody missed me. I spent three days just hanging out with the Barnacle (read: baby) and the rest of the family and relaxing (read: beer). My husband snapped this picture on Day Three. Do you see any electronic devices in my near vicinity? I don’t think so.
I came back to 200 emails, which I waded through for two hours on Sunday night. But nothing fell through the cracks. And this week, so far, I’m continuing to manage the addiction. The email function on my phone isn’t working, and I’ve decided not to fix it. I ate breakfast, took a shower, made lunches and read the paper before I checked my messages this morning.
I guess this stuff isn’t so urgent, after all.
What do you do to check out? Tell me about it.
My 10-year-old had his first school dance on Friday. Streamers, balloons, frowning chaperones, the works. But of course he downplayed it. My son is against anything that might be misinterpreted as vanity. He lives in shorts and flip-flops, refuses to cut his hair, and frequently will attempt to wear the shirt he slept in to school the next day.
Ah, the tween years.
Gabe’s not yet into girls, and although some of his friends are “dating” each other, there’s no one calling our house yet—except the fifth-grade basketball bully who crank-called a message from “Lisa” the day before the dance. My son did, however, arrive at the event in his favorite worn-out Green Day t-shirt, only to make us take him home to change into a button-down, long-sleeved shirt I’d made him wear for Thanksgiving last year.
Guess he’s not that not into girls.
I only wish I’d found these Fat Tie t-shirts a few years ago—or that they made them big enough for Gabriel’s next dance. Crafted from organic cotton and soy ink with the motto “Dress Smart. Start Early.” in mind, they’re silk-screened with a cool, retro-looking tie silk that transforms the basic tee into something super hip.
And they’re organic cotton, as opposed to conventional, which takes approximately one-third of a pound of pesticides to make enough cotton for a t-shirt. (And two-thirds of a pound for a pair of jeans. But that’s another story, and one that you can watch me talk for a minute more about here.)
Chemical-free chic masquerading as your basic sleep shirt. That’s my 10-year-old’s fashion formula.
What’s yours?
