Tag: EarthTalk

Healthy / Green Snacks, Q&A with EarthTalk

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I’m looking for ideas for healthy, green snacks to have around the house and for packing with the kids’ lunches. Any ideas?
–Mickey P., Salt Lake City, UT

There are so many healthy, green food options out there today that the work is no longer in finding them but is instead in choosing between them. One favorite for kids’ lunch boxes is gimMe Snacks roasted seaweed. Some 15 to 100 times more volume of seaweed can grow on the same footprint as lettuce. And while seaweed requires no water to produce, lettuce needs 15 gallons per pound. The entire gimMe product line is made with organic, non-GMO seaweed sustainably grown in South Korea.

Seaweed — easy to grow without chemical inputs — is one of many healthy green options that kids love to snack on that parents can get behind as well. Credit: Roddy Scheer
Seaweed — easy to grow without chemical inputs — is one of many healthy green options that kids love to snack on that parents can get behind as well. Credit: Roddy Scheer.

Forager Project takes the skin, seeds and pulp that other food companies toss and rehydrates it into veggie chips that are like eco-friendly Doritos. Cheezy and Wasabi are among the company’s signature flavors. You won’t feel like a bad parent when your kids pull Forager Project chips out of their lunch boxes.

If you’re beyond milk, Modest Mylk could be just what you’re looking for. Purchasing just one (recyclable glass) jar gives you 42 servings of nut mylk and saves 11 milk cartons from going to the landfill. When blended for just 60 seconds with water, the shelf-stable base creates fresh homemade nut mylk—free from carrageenan, gums, emulsifiers, preservatives, and artificial ingredients.

Another favorite non-dairy treat is Nuttzo, which makes nut butters without using antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides or fertilizers—and with ingredients farmed under national standards of renewable resources and soil and water conservation. It’s Organic Power Fuel Chocolate spread has cashews, brazil nuts, almonds, flax seeds, chia seeds, hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, chocolate and sea salt—and no palm oil.

Stonyfield Organic, which started as an organic farming school before adding on yogurt production some 35 years ago, still supports the planet through renewable energy and packaging its products in plant-made material instead of plastic. Snack lovers young and old still love their organic string cheese, fruity cows, graham crackers and cookies, not to mention the New Hampshire company’s signature yogurt.

Since its beginnings at an Austin, Texas farmers market in 2009, GoodPop’s frozen pops have always been made with non-GMO, Fair Trade Certified, rBST-free, organic and locally sourced ingredients. We like Cookies N’ Cream and Banana Cinnamon, but you might be more the Chocolate Milk or Watermelon Agave type. GoodPops are made with whole foods and never concentrates, extracts or artificial flavors.

Alter Eco’s tagline “Enlightened Indulgence” perfectly describes this green-minded chocolate company’s ethos. Whether you like truffles, caramels, smothered almonds or just good old-fashioned chocolates, Alter Eco lets you enjoy without the environmental guilt, as their Swiss-made chocolate is crafted from organic cacao by farmers who are replanting South American rainforests.

There are plenty of other ideas out there. Just browse the aisles of Whole Foods and you’ll find lots of other choices. And don’t forget about good old-fashioned fruit and veggies. Crunchy carrots, juicy apples and tart blueberries never go out of style on the kitchen counter or in the lunch box.

CONTACTS: gimMe; Forager Project; Modest Mylk; Nuttzo; Stonyfield; GoodPop; Alter Eco.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk.

Climate Change Drivers: Food Choices or Electricity Generation and Transportation? Q&A with EarthTalk

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A chef told me that our food choices are the major driver of climate change around the world, but it seems to me that electricity generation and transportation are really more the problem, no?
-Melanie G., Moodus, CT

It depends how you slice it. Producing electricity (power plants) and getting ourselves and our stuff around (transportation) do generate the majority of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. But while the agriculture sector in and of itself is only responsible for about 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of our food choices ripples throughout other sectors as well, with the untold transport miles devoted to shipping food within and between continents, driving to and from restaurants and the grocery store—and all the disposable packaging food is wrapped in that gets tossed into landfills.

Meanwhile, we all use lots of electricity and gas to cook and prepare our food and to keep it cool in the fridge until we’re ready for it. And since we throw away some 30 percent of the food we buy, much of the carbon emitted to produce and transport it is for naught. No doubt, our food choices are an important factor in moving society away from our profligate use of fossil fuels and toward a greener future.

Whether or not you’ve already taken steps to reduce your carbon footprint by driving or flying less and boosting the efficiency of the buildings and appliances where you live and work, you can do a lot more by changing your diet. The UK office of the non-profit WWF has teamed up with Knorr Foods, one of the largest food brands globally, to launch a new initiative called The Future 50 Foods which encourages people to diversify their diets beyond the carbon-intensive staples so many of us rely on day-to-day.

Greater diversity in our diets is essential, as the lack of variety in agriculture is both bad for nature and a threat to food security,” reports WWF. “Currently 75 percent of the world’s food comes from just 12 plant and five animal species.”

This so-called dietary monotony is not just bad for our bodies, given the lack of diversity and limited consumption of some vitamins and minerals, it is also linked to a decline in the diversity of plants and animals used in and around agriculture. According to WWF, we’ve lost some 75 percent of the genetic plant diversity in agriculture since 1900.

Some of the “future 50 foods” that WWF and Knorr would like us to eat more of include some familiar ingredients—lentils, kale, wild rice— as well as others that you’ve probably never heard of let alone considered eating, like pumpkin flowers, cactus and fonio, a nutrition-rich, ancient West African grain that Cooking Light magazine calls “the new super grain that could replace quinoa.”

Fonio Paddy
WWF and Knorr are working together to encourage people around the world to diversify their diets so as to include more climate-friendly foods — such as fonio, a West African grain which is not only nutritious but also easy to grow without lots of chemical inputs. Credit: Communication JOKKALE, FlickrCC.

Many of these have higher yields than the crops we currently rely on and several are tolerant of challenging weather and environmental conditions, meaning they could not only reduce the land required for crops, but also prove invaluable in the face of growing climate uncertainty,” says WWF. “It’s essential that we change our eating habits to ensure we protect our planet whilst feeding the growing global population.”

CONTACTS: WWF; Knorr’s Future 50 Foods Report; Cooking Light

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk.

Is There a Link Between Chemicals in Hair Dye and Cancer? Q&A with EarthTalk

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Dear EarthTalk: My hairdresser was just diagnosed with leukemia and I wonder if there is a link between the chemicals in hair dye and cancer?
–Cyndi B., Tallahassee, FL

The short answer is…maybe. Scientists have found links between certain types of cancer and repeated exposure to so-called “permanent” hair dyes (that is, the kind you would get in the hair salon that would stay put until the hair is replaced by new growth).

Studies are mixed about whether permanent hair dye causes cancer, but there is no doubt that conventional formulas contain carcinogenic ingredients. Credit: Samantha Steele, FlickrCC.

These dyes contain a cocktail of potentially harmful substances, including formaldehyde (linked to cancer and fetal damage in utero), p-Phenylenediamine (lung and kidney problems, bladder cancer), DMDM Hydantoin (an immunotoxin restricted in other countries but not the U.S.), ammonia (respiratory problems and asthma), coal tar (a known carcinogen), resorcinol (a hormone disruptor) and eugenol (cancer, allergies, and immune and neurological issues). These dyes penetrate and bind with hair shafts; darker dyes require more of the potentially harmful coloring agents and are therefore more dangerous.

Three-quarters of adult women in the U.S. color their hair, but it’s the hair care workers, exposed to noxious chemicals daily, who are most at risk. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), some studies have shown that hairdressers, stylists and barbers who work with these dyes do indeed have a slightly elevated risk of developing bladder cancer, leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, while others proved inconclusive. If working with hair is your job, you might want to consider limiting your exposure to permanent hair dyes, or at least look for and offer safer alternatives, even if they don’t last as long.

A good place to start is the “Hair Color & Bleaching” section of the free online Skin Deep database, launched in 2004 by the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) to provide information on the ingredients of common household cleaning and health and beauty products—and to highlight potential hazards and health concerns. The database contains listings for hundreds of hair color products, both for at-home use and in salons, that won’t make you sick. Some favorite all-natural, non-toxic brands to try include EcoColors, Hairprint, Organic & Mineral, Logona, Good Dye Young and Naturigin.

According to Nicole Cothrun Venables, a Hollywood-based stylist, there are many all-natural ways to enhance, brighten or alter your existing hair color without subjecting your locks to carcinogenic chemicals. “Fruit, vegetable, and herb restorative color cocktails are excellent rinses that can be applied once per week to refresh your color,” she reports. “Tea, coffee and wine hair stains are also gentle ways to add subtle hints of opaque color, depth, highlights and shine.” Check out her DIY hair color treatment recipes and techniques in her HuffPost article “7 Non-Toxic Solutions to Healthy Hair Color.”

Another way to avoid potentially dangerous hair color treatments is to just get over your misplaced vanity and accept your natural hair color—even if it’s gray—as a beautiful expression of who you are and what you stand for in the increasingly manicured, colorized and fabricated world we now inhabit.

CONTACTS: ACS’s “Hair Dye”; EWG; EcoColors; Hairprint; Organic & Mineral; Logona; Sante; Good Dye Young; Naturigin; HuffPost.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk.