I can see how confusing it is when you get thrown all sorts of gargle at you. Everyone has ideas about how to get this mineral or vitamins or how to combine foods to get the best phytonutrient absorption. For Pete’s sake, just relax!

Here are what I think are the most basic of health principles.

1. The closer the food is to it’s original form the more healthy it is for you. When you eat whole foods you give your body the maximum nourishment available. Even eating more raw food will help you reap the total benefits of the food you eat. Heat can often times kill or deactivate enzymes in our food.

The bottom line is: when you are adequately nourished you will consume less and maintain a healthier weight. So make your meals from scratch and stop eating out of a can or a box!

2. Artificial sweeteners etc. do not stop you from losing weight. Studies show that artificial sweeteners actually cause weight gain. When you eat garbage like diet pops you are assaulting your digestive system and that affects how your metabolism works. You will gain weight and could cause damage to your body. There have been studies that show that when rodents are exposed to artificial sweeteners they develop tumours and have babies with birth defects.

You can read the article and view the comments on my artificial sweeteners article for starters.

3. Try to eat less sugar (even natural sources of sugars (not including fruit)). Sugar suppresses your immune system and makes you more likely to get sick. It also affects your mood in a negative way. You’ll be happier without that box of chocolate chip cookies. Trust me.

Cut out all forms of sugar for a week or two and you’ll be able to eliminate the craving. If you choose to do that just be aware that there is sugar in all  sorts of items you wouldn’t automatically think of…like bread for instance.

4. Watch your portion sizes. Meat is one of the items that is often over eaten. I am quite serious when I say that meat will kill you. You would be better off switching to plant sources of protein. These help fight disease instead of encouraging it’s growth and will help keep your digestive system more regular and healthy. Try to incorporate more vegetables into your diet. These are your disease fighters! Plus they keep you regular and that is a major component to good health.

5. Make better choices by reading labels. Let’s say you really want a salty treat. Potato chips are out. See my post on MSG. You can substitute with some tortilla chips (I choose one that uses organic corn because I try to avoid GMO when I can) and some homemade or organic store bought salsa or guacamole. I really try to advocate for making your own food but certified organic can be almost as good since they can not use chemical preservative etc. When it’s organic it has to be food! You can’t have organic chemicals.

Just find a better alternative to your craving. An organic dark chocolate bar instead of a Snickers, a cup of fruit juice instead of pop.

6. Get some fresh air and sunshine. This will make you happier and therefore healthier.

7. Try to use less chemicals in your home.  I have been cleaning with lemon juice, baking soda, vinegar and cream of tartar for over a month now and it works just as well. If you clean with vinegar though, make sure you air out the room before you have company over. The smell does linger a bit. But it’s still better than that stinging Windex smell to me.

But most importantly, just enjoy your food. Don’t get frustrated that you don’t know which salad to eat. Just take it one day at a time.

First off I want to apologize. I have a pretty bad headache today so I can’t guarantee that my blog entry will make the most sense.

Earth Day is almost here and there are some of us who actually do care.

I wanted to talk about a couple of changes that someone can make to their lifestyle that will greatly reduce their carbon footprint.

When you stop eating meat you reduce your contribution to global warming.

Think of all these wasted resources associated with meat:

1. Ten times the land is needed to grow food for cows than humans would consume. Without out all that land being used to feed animals we could easily have more than enough asparagus to go around. That is a great misappropriation of resources.

2. The by-products of feedlots and slaughterhouses pollute water supplies. I am pretty confident that with less meat farms there would be less e-coli contamination etc.

3. And as Al Gore was so brilliant in pointing out, cow farts yield greenhouse gases. Personally I think gas shouldn’t count but it’s a point regardless.

3. Then there is the transportation of cattle from fields to fields to slaughterhouses to grocery stores to your home. There is a pile of greenhouse gasses just in emissions from trucks.

Even Al Gore (Al Gore pff!) mentions it on his Inconvenient Truth website. Granted he slips it right in there along with using energy efficient light bulbs. But can you blame him? Cattle ops are in his family.

As a bit of an off topic, I really resent someone when they get paid thousands of dollars per engagement for sharing something that is supposed to be of critical importance. It detracts from the message if you ask me. If Saint Gore was truly worried about the earth you’d think he’d be more worried about getting the message out there and less worried about padding his wallet. But whatever…

There are other ways to reduce your carbon footprint. You can try to buy food locally grown (and it would be healthier too. Not just because the food is riper but because the U.S. and Mexico use more chemicals than we do and they use ones that are banned in Canada).

That leads me to point two, buy organic. You’ll be supporting farms that are sustainable and are gentler on the soil as well as food that is not covered with cancer causing chemicals.

And one more thing, eat whole foods. The more processed a food is, the less nutritious it is and the bigger the carbon footprint.

Anyways, this Earth Day, be green and make yourself a tasty, whole foods vegan dish!

1. Reduce the amount of unnecessary items we purchase. Every few months I go through my whole house and send about two bags worth of stuff to my sister or Goodwill. This is a clear indicator of how we consume too much stuff. In many places of the world there are people who are barely surviving on less than what would be allocated for one person. Yet in the U.S. (Canada ranks a tiny bit better) people consume ten times what is allotted per person. I am sure that if you just take a look at your house you can see thousands of dollars of worth of rarely used items. Not only that, but most of those items are likely purchased using credit. This is a very unstable existence!

2. Borrowing more books/movies etc. from the library instead of buying them. Same premise as #1.

3. Reducing the amount of dining in/take out we participate in. Take out food is over-packaged with materials that aren’t always recyclable. This contributes to overfilled landfills. Also, any form of eating out is often unhealthy (especially compared to home cooked wholefoods meals) and far more expensive.

4. Trying to unload my plastic junk. Now this one requires some buying but it is a long term investment that is good for the family. Plastic is horribly toxic stuff and the sooner I can get it out of my home the better.

5. Using my computer and TV less and lowering my heat in the winter. This little effort can save hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. It’s funny that what benefits the environment often benefits my budget. I can’t lower my heat too much with a new baby in the house but I do try to lower it during the day. I also plan on spending much more time outdoors when it gets warmer out and that will mean a lot less time when the TV is on. We don’t have cable but we use it for watching movies and as a CD player these days.

6. Going fully vegan. The only vice left is cheese! We have given up all meats, eggs and all dairy except cheese. This will need to be a slow transition if we are going to stick to it but we will get there, so help me, by the end of 2009. The meat and dairy industry uses up piles of land and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions tremendously through all the different attributes of farming (from cow farts, to transportation of goods, to processing, to packaging).

7. Not eating any processed food. This is one that won’t be very hard for us to acheive. We didn’t eat much before. The processing of food often exposes it to chemicals and other garbage. It also reduces the nutritional value of many food items and makes them higher on the Glycemic Index scale. This means you aren’t nourished adequately and your body sends you signals to nourish it causing you to overeat and gain weight. Eating fresh foods means less packaging and less of a carbon footprint from all the over-packaging and processing.

8. Eating/buying items locally. Also buying organic food. I already boycott anything from Mexico (because of the pesticides) and try not to eat things from the USA either because of the GMO. The hardest will be giving up avocado but, I will likely allow myself to indulge in the healthy fruits and veggies. I want to start shopping at the Farmer’s Market more often too.  This also means that I’ll have to stop shopping at Wal Mart. Ha ha ha. I have hated shopping there but it is the closest store to my house and the prices are often what we can afford as a family of five living off of one income. But I am hoping that we can save a lot of money by changing our buying habits and can afford to shop in more local shops. Organic farming is much easier on the environment and the fruits/veggies from organic farms are often more nutritious and contain less pesticides. Another perk is that they cannot contain any GMO’d products.

9. Getting back to using cloth bags instead of taking plastic ones. We are pretty good about this one. When we do forget and are only buying a few, easy-to-carry items we often decline a bag and then just bag it in the car with one of our reusable bags. My goal for this year is to stop forgetting to bring the bags!

10. Streamlining our errands (ie. wasting less fuel because we go out to go get one container of soy milk).

Other, more personal goals:

1. Cheap dates. There are so many activities that are considerably cheaper than a dinner and a movie. We have thought of going swimming, going for walks on walking trails and playing tennis. There is also dancing at a latin club (we are taking lessons in the spring). These activities have the added benefit of offering quality time together and making our bodies healthier.

2. Exercising regularily and losing my baby weight.

3. Clearing out debt and not buying any large items with credit. Learning to have patience and save for the items we need.

4. Being more involved in my children’s education (see last post for details.

I started looking up some of the online stores that sell Waldorf toys a few days back. There are some great ideas that would be simple enough for us to make ourselves.

My husband is a cabinet maker and would be more than capable of doing some of the projects on these sites. Things like building castles, lace-up cheese, teethers etc.

I can sew and would be able to make dolls, dress up clothes, play scarves etc. I have even been fortunate enough to find instructions for making Bambolettas. They are so beautiful but quite pricy (which is fair considering the price of the materials (wool batting etc.) and the time required to make them.

The upside to making my own, besides saving money and personal pride in my work, is that I can make it out of cotton instead of wool and make it vegan-friendly while still staying true to the doll.

Anyways, I am having so much fun making toys and planning for the next ones. I can’t wait to make it to the wood shop soon and buy some more wood trinkets for my next project!

Who knew that making my own toys could be so much fun for me and for the kids? Not to mention how much healthier these toys are for their bodies and minds.

As I have said in previous posts the best you can do for your body is to eat whole foods and avoid processed food. But eating a diet based exclusively from the produce isle can be difficult. I find myself buying lots from the canned good isles and even some cereals.

For soy milk there are some options. Silk uses primarily organic, non-GMO soybeans. However, Silk is also attached to a major cow’s milk distributor. This may be a conflict of interest for vegans. There are also other brands of Organic soy milk. President’s Choice, for example, has an organic soy milk. This would also be a conflict of interest because PC also makes products that include meat and cheese and all sorts of animal derived ingredients. I suppose you have to sort out your priorities. My family’s health is number one and the welfare of animals and the environment rank a very close second.

In the canned good isle there can be some healthful options but that is where label reading is important. I try to buy beans that contain beans, water, salt and just about nothing else. Some have calcium chloride, Disodium EDTA and other like ingredients. These aren’t particularly healthy for you, especially the EDTA. There are certain cheap cans of beans that will have the natural ingredients but there are differnt varieties of beans that I have to buy organically to escape chemical additives. I find that when I can’t get away from the additives, even in organic beans, that I can go to the Eden Organic brand and they are always safe.

Cereal is an iffy one. I prefer not to buy it but my hubby and kids love it. I let the hubby pick out whatever crappy cereal he wants but I choose the children’s cereal. I have been buying organic cereal because of the GM issue. Not only are they packaged more safely and with healthier ingredients they also have less sugar. I can still buy “corn pops” without all the garbage.

 When buying produce I want to you to refer to my “clean/dirty” list in the previous post. All grocery stores carry a decent supply of organic food and that makes your consumer choices easier.

As for bread I have no idea! I make my own bread with grains I buy from Planet Organic. It is pretty easy to do this with a bread machine but some people still don’t have the time to make bread. I would advise to buy something with whole grains and probably bakery fresh. The stuff that is travelling from Colorado and still smells fresh will undoubtedly have additives.

I want to talk about common additives/ingredients in processed food that non-vegan (as in coming from animal sources). Here is the list (this was obtained from The Vegan Sourcebook):

 Albumin, calcium stearate, carmine/chocineal, capric acid, casein, clarifying agent, diglycerides, disodium inosinate, emulsifiers, flavour enhancers (see MSG), some folic acid, gelatin, glycerides (mono, di, tri), glycerol, isinglass, lactose, lactic acid, lanolin, lard, lecithin, magnesium stearate, myristic acid, some natural flavourings, oleic acid, plamitic acid, pancreatin, pepsin, propolis, Royal Jelly, sodium stearoyl lactylate, stearic acid, suet, tallow, Vit A1/Retinol, Vit A2, Vit D1, D2, D3 and Whey.

Alive magazine printed a great article this month taliking about MSG (unami). MSG is very bad for you. It is associated with obesity, lethargy, headaches etc. Unfortunately, it’s very common in a variety of food such as chips, Chinese food, cookies, salad dressings and canned soups etc.

Labels have all sorts of sneaky names for MSG. If you see any of the following I would put the food back on the shelf. I ate a bunch of Pringles and ended up with MSG wheezies for the rest of the night.

Other names for MSG: Ancoma, autolyzed yeast extract, L-glutamic acid, monosodium salt, D02280, disodium guanylate or inosinate, DL-monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed soy protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed yeast, monoammonium glutamate, monohydrate, monopotassium glutamate, monosodium glutamate (NF), monosodium glutamate monohydrate, MSG monohydrate, protein isolates, sodium glutamate, sodium glutamate monohydrate, sodium hydrogen glutamate, soy extracts and whey protein.

Obviously making educated food choices is not only confusing but it will also take time and perseverance. There are ingredients that sound healthy but really aren’t.

Who would have guessed that “sucralose” would not actually be sugar (sucrose) but rather a pharmacy lab-made chemical sweetener. Splenda states that sucralose is made from sugar and that’s why is tastes like sugar. This is ridiculous. By the time that Splenda hits the shelves it has little resemblance to nature made sugar. If you are diabetic and eating Splenda you should seriously consider switching to Stevia. Stevia is plant derived and natural. It is insanely sweet and doesn’t alter blood sugar levels. Not only that but artificial sweeteners have been accused of being improperly digested meaning that there are concentrations of aspartame or sucralose or whatever floating around in your body doing who knows what! Also, artificial sweeteners have also been linked to weight gain. When you factor in the fact that most diabetic diagnoses are a result of obesity is seems stupid for fat people to drink diet pop because they don’t alter blood sugar levels! Why not put down the pop and have a cup of tea instead? I am very passionate about artificial sweeteners. Splenda is still new but studies on aspartame have revealed extensive lists of side effects and have even caused tumours in rodents. Happy drinking/eating!