I’ll never forget the evening I tested a new Glorious One-Pot Meal recipe at a family gathering. “It needs a little more spice,” my aunt confided at the table. “I would go heavier on the oregano.”

“No!” my mother (her twin sister) insisted. “It’s too spicy already! There are too many herbs.The flavors are too confusing.”

I looked at the other family members licking their plates. “What did you think?”

The husbands thought the meal had been appropriately seasoned.

Lesson: you can’t please all the people all the time.

As it happens, taste is a complex interaction between taste buds and olfactory receptors. Some people are more sensitive to taste and smell, while others are less so. Head injuries and viral infections can rob some of their sense of smell, sending them running for chile peppers to get some sensation to call “taste” on their tongue.

My philosophy is to try to hit the middle ground with my recipes and offer people the option to add more or less spice, according to their personal preferences.

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Food, Inc.

Following the honorable footsteps first laid in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle,and coming from a movie lineage that includes Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me, Food Inc.’s goal is to raise awareness and bring focus to these dirty little industrial food production secrets that make us sick to think about as well as physically ill.

Watch the Food, Inc. trailer to get a taste of what’s in store… or rather, what’s in the stores.

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

In her Huffington Post article, “Vote First, Eat Later,” Susanne Freidberg reminds us that the dollars we spend on food purchases don’t necessarily influence farm legislation, food safety inspections, or desperately needed corporate oversight of the mega food producers.

” But as foods labeled organic and local become more available,” she notes, “it’s worth remembering that these alternatives do not guarantee better working conditions for farm and packhouse workers. They do not touch the crop subsidies that fuel overproduction at home and hunger abroad. They do not fix the weak food safety laws that sent consumers searching for alternatives in the first place.”

I agree, Susanne. Thanks for bringing up a good point. It’s easy to focus on the trees and forget the forest around us.

Susanne points out that many groups are working to overhaul the USDA, strengthen farm workers’ rights, and counter the agribusiness lobby. “These activities deserve our support, yet tend to get overshadowed by shopping tips aimed at “changing the world with every bite.” Wouldn’t it be better if we did not feel obliged to do this? Informed consumer buying power is not trivial. It is also no substitute for political actions to empower everybody to worry less about their food, and enjoy it more.”

Here are some of my favorite groups to support in this mission. Share your favorites in the comments below!

- Environmental Working Group and their Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

- Organic Consumers Association

- Oceana

- Safe Tables Our Priority (S.T.O.P.)

- Slow Food

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

I can fit a sandwich (or the fixins’ for a build-your-own sandwich for my 6-year old who needs things just a certain way!), or leftover pasta salad, or chicken and veggies, or whatever I’m packing them for lunch that day. The latches are easy enough for small hands to open and close and the containers wash up easily in the dishwasher or by hand.

I really like the look and feel of this Rectangular Stainless Steel Lunch Box System, too. It may be one of my next purchases for the school year…

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

The Environmental Working Group’s brand new review of 1,572 products found that 3 out of 5 sunscreens offer inadequate protection from the sun or contain ingredients with significant safety concerns. And for the first time, they also review sun-protective lip balms and lotions.

The EWG identified fewer than 100 products that offer very good sun protection with ingredients that present minimal health risks to users. Leading brands like Coppertone, Banana Boat and Neutrogena fared poorly.

Remember to look for safe sunscreens without oxybenzone, a hormone disruptor, and with sun blocking minerals like zinc and titanium.

I’m happy to see that my favorite sunscreen by California Babymade the top 10 for safety and effectiveness.

Check out your favorite sunscreen with this handy widget and see how it ranks!

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

With a pH of about 12, similar to that of household ammonia or soap, chemical relaxers are among the most caustic cosmetic products on the market, says the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental organization that is behind the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Along with hair dyes, hair straighteners are the source of more complaints to the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors than almost any other product.

While I’ve never been one to use a chemical hair straightener, there have been many, many times when I’ve wished for a good solution to managing my wild tangle of curls and frizz. You should see the shelves of half-used hair products around my bathroom — if you’re not someone who has struggled to control their hair for decades, then you might think it was overkill.  

Luckily, my sister introduced me to Ouidad products a few years ago, though it wasn’t until I made the trek into a Ouidad salon a few times that I got the right cut and the hang of how to style it. Now I can celebrate my curls instead of curse them. I’ve even entered the Ouidad curl contest — you can help me out by casting your vote below and passing it along.

Here’s to beautiful curls without toxic chemicals!

If These Curls Could Talk! Sponsored by Ouidad

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Aluminum is a heavy metal that is bioaccumulative, that means that once it enters your body most of it doesn’t leave (except through breast milk, scarily enough). Accumulation of aluminum builds up over a lifetime and can cause neuro-degeneration, along with other problems. So far, aluminum toxicity has been linked to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and — particularly from antiperspirant/deoderant use — breast cancer.

For years I have been searching for a viable alternative to aluminum-based deoderants and antiperspirants to use in our sweat-phobic culture. For a while I used the Crystal Body Deodorant, which you wet and apply to your armpits, but I was never very satisfied with how it stopped sweat or managed odors.

For a few months I tried Tom’s of Maine Natural Long-Lasting Deodorant, the Lemongrass scent, but didn’t like the way it interacted with my body’s chemistry, mostly it made my sweat acrid smelling. Yuck! (I really like Tom’s of Maine Natural Care Toothpaste, though!)

Then I stumbled across this video from down under on Youtube by HighOnHealth about using “soda bicarbonate” as a deoderant. I thought I’d give it a try and spent several hours scouring several grocery stores before realizing that we call it “baking soda” in America. Since more than one grocery worker sent me to the soda pop aisle to find “bicarbonate soda,” I don’t feel all that foolish. Well, kinda.

Anyway, I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now and have to say that I really like it. I definitely seem to sweat less, and due to the anti-bacterial properties of baking soda, I seem to be odor-free. Watch the video and she’ll give you a step-by-step demonstration of how to use baking soda as a natural underarm deoderant.

I confess, I’m hooked. Let me know if you try it, or if you have other solutions/suggestions for natural sweat control!

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Luckily, we, the purchasing public, are not so easily fooled.

High fructose corn syrup is the result of a highly complex chemical process conducted in a laboratory — this stuff does not occur naturally on our planet, it has to be synthesized. Just knowing this should be setting off warning bells.

If you read Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, you know that we overproduce corn in this country, and in an effort to help our farmers add value to the US corn crop the University of Iowa developed a host of corn byproducts, including HFCS.

A sample of products made with high fructose corn syrup

HFCS exploded on the market in the early 1980s because it was cheaper than sugar and had a longer shelf-life. Coincidentally, the obesity epidemic in this country really began to build around this time (it really exploded in the 1990s). In the last twenty years, HFCS has captured 56% of the sweetener marketplace. Hmmmm…. Could there be a connection?

There have been enough complaints stirred up about high fructose corn syrup in products that some companies are responding to customer demand by switching to real cane or beet sugar, including Snapple, Ocean Spray, Log Cabin Syrup, and some Pepsi products.

Is it better to ingest products made with sugar than those made with HFCS? In a word: Yes.

And no.

While sugar will be metabolized much better than HFCS, it can still carry a glycemic load and can spike blood sugar levels and then send you crashing down afterward. The most preferable way to eat sugar is to have sweet things following a healthy meal, when the stomach has other foods in it to buffer the digestion. The least perferable way to eat sugar is on an empty stomach.

Most unfortunately, I did see recently that soon all of the sugar beets in this country will be genetically modified beets. Sigh.

When I purchase sugar to use at home, I choose raw, unbleached, organic cane sugar.

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

These days my husband supplies me with dust masks to wear when performing nasty airborne chores like cleaning the litter box or mixing rocks with soil, but I’ve often wondered if my early stupidity would lead to lung problems decades later, the way asbestos exposure leads to mesothelioma cancer down the road.

Laura Hasha of Mesothelioma Info sheds some light on this subject in today’s guest post on vermiculite and mesothelioma:

Vermiculite is a versatile mineral commonly used in agriculture and home gardening as a soil aeration product. It is popular among gardeners, especially those who grow their own fruit or vegetables because it has a very low density and is extremely lightweight. Those two properties make it an ideal additive for soils that are very dense or highly compacted.

The addition of vermiculite to aerate such soils increases moisture and nutrient retention. In fact the material is one of the main components of the popular square foot gardening technique.

Production

Vermiculite mines are typically large, open pit excavations from which rocks containing vermiculite are collected through the use of heavy machinery. These rocks are transported to a processing plant where they are then crushed and screened repeatedly until reaching a desired size. These flakes are then graded for size and type before being shipped to exfoliation plants where the material is heated in furnaces that reach temperatures of 1600-2,000 degrees F.

Similar materials

The most similar material to vermiculite is perlite which is produced by hydrating obsidian. When heated it expands and many companies that produce vermiculite produce perlite as well.

Vermiculite Controversy

In Libby, Montana a commercial vermiculite mine exposed people because the material was contaminated with a form of asbestos known as tremolite. The mine later sickened the town resulting in deaths from asbestos related diseases such as mesothelioma.

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency purchased 16 different vermiculite containing products from the Seattle area and found 5 of the products contained asbestos fibers.

Asbestos formations can occur within close proximity of vermiculite and four of the major formations in the United States have been confirmed to contain asbestos. But it is important to note that vermiculite is not a form of asbestos and exposure to vermiculite from a non-contaminated source poses no known health risks.

*** Thanks for the info, Laura! I wish it made me feel more confident that my previous vermiculite inhalation will not lead to cancer, but I guess it would depend on if that particular vermiculite product that I was using contained asbestos.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my journey into natural health and safe products it’s that there are so many things in our daily lives that can harm us that I should focus my attention on the things I can change in my life and not the things I can’t.

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

“I do put it in the dishwasher,” she confessed next.

Here’s the problem: the dishwasher can overheat plastic, causing microscopic flaws in the material. These flaws allow the plastics to microscopically disintegrate and leach chemicals into the foods or liquids placed in them. Nalgene (the company) recommends using these methods to clean water bottles:

• Soak in warm soapy water
• Soak in warm water with lemon
• Soak in warm water with baking soda

In our house, we now hand-wash anything we use that is made of plastic — including travel coffee mugs, food storage containers, and water bottles. We’ve got a pile of non-BPA-free water bottles waiting for the next garage sale and have transitioned the kids completely to glassware and ceramic dishes.

While we do not have a plastic-free house by any means — yet –, we are trying to eliminate BPAs little by little in our journey toward living naturally and robust health.

©2009 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.