Yes To... Sustainability!

          Recently while in my local Rite Aid, I found a very unique and surprising product. I had never heard of it before and I wanted to do some investigating. I discovered a line of products all made with natural ingredients and organic fruits and veggies! How cool is that?! The Yes To brand is truly amazing! 

          There are many different products from this brand, including chapsticks, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, moisturizers, face washes, cleansers, and much, much more all made with natural components! The Yes To company is proud to stand by their claim to have developed a product that is guilt-free, uses REAL fruit and vegetables, "is all about positivity," and really works!

          There are four different "branch" brands in the Yes To collection: Yes To Carrots, Yes To Tomatoes, Yes To Cucumbers, and Yes To Blueberries.  Each one doing a different job (example: Yes To Tomatoes helps treat acne with tomatoes using salicylic acid). The difference in using these products rather than the other ones you're used to is that the Yes To brand refuses to use parabens, SLS, phthalates and petroleum. Parabens, SLS, phthalates, and petroleum, for those who don't know (I didn't!), are chemicals used in cosmetics, shampoos and soaps and have been connected to cancer and can be very dangerous to your skin and health in general. This is why the Yes To Team decided to cut them out of their clean and natural products! 

          Yes To products are also recyclable friendly! Adding onto that, there is ZERO animal testing. All in all, Yes To is a great company that delivers and also gives back to the community! They donate a percent of their proceeds go to Yes To Seed Fund (an organization committed to funding organic school gardens, educate children and provide lunches!) Recently, the Yes To Seed Fund teamed up with Mama Hope (Yes To Hope) to have organic gardens in Africa hoping to provide 10,000 kids with all organic lunches! This will work through video chat and email from U.S. schools to African schools to help maintain gardens and teach children the importance of sustainability all of the world! 

Yes To Website! Check it out!!

Why is petroleum in my shampoo?

What are parabens?

Fresh Produce Out of a box

Inspired by Patrick’s recent termite solution, I decided myself to try stubleupon to see if I could find any out of the box ideas to promote sustainable eating. After clicking through numerous pages of junk I finally “stubleupon” an interesting yet intriguing way to grow your own produce. Two green entrepreneurs have come up with a surprisingly easy kit to grow your own fresh sustainable mushrooms at home. Granted it is only one to grow one specific vegetable. Anything can help right?

            Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora came up with the idea of growing your own mushrooms during their final semester at UC Berkeley and have now turned into a full-fledged sustainable business. Using the recycled coffee grounds from Peet’s Coffee and Tea houses around the San Francisco bay area as a growing medium, they came up with a full circle pearl oyster mushroom growing kit. Providing a way to grow your own fresh produce in the home while utilizing a waste product, they further complete the circle by selling their mushroom/coffee ground compost ‘waste product’ as a premium soil amendment.

The Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Garden kits are sold in Whole Food Markets nationwide, or can be purchased directly on their website for $19.95 and produce up to 1.5 pounds of fresh pearl oyster mushrooms right in the box. Additionally, if you post a picture with your kit fully grown on their Facebook page, they will donate a kit to an elementary classroom of your choice to support youth sustainability education.

            I thought this was so cool! The mushroom kit also sparked another idea, what if we took this one step further and tired to grow a variety of produce ourselves and continue to use the premium soil in our own gardens? People are doing little things around the country everyday to support sustainable living we just need to open our eyes and take action.

To read more about Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Aroar and buy your own mushroom kit click here! http://backtotheroots.com/

Home grown foods

Has Your Food Traveled More Than You?

         Like most college students, one of the hardest parts about coming to college was leaving my home cooked meals every night. Unlike most students however, I was leaving actual fresh produce that was grown in my backyard. For as long as I can remember, we have had a garden full of fruits and vegetables in our backyard. It wasn’t anything extravagant, just a simple garden big enough to supply food for our family, but small enough for my dad to tend to with help from my siblings and me. I remember my dad digging holes and me following behind him dropping in the seeds. It was always fun to watch the seed that you helped plant and tend to grow into something you could eat.

Every summer we grow onions, squash, zucchini, corn, potatoes, green beans, apples, and tomatoes. While in season, we never had a meal that didn’t have at least one food item that came from our garden, and it was also always the best tasting food on our plate. Our friends look forward to our freshly grown vegetables every year. Why is that? Because they are actually fresh and didn’t travel miles and miles in a storage truck before ending up on your plate. Some of the things we grow can even be stored and saved to eat throughout winter. Our potatoes, for example, will last us almost all year long. One of my favorite things about summer is being able to eat fresh food for dinner every night.

It wasn’t until global class when I realized the positive environmental impact of home grown food. I always enjoyed it because of the fresh taste and the fun of planting, tending to, and picking the fruits and vegetables. So why don’t more people plant their own garden? If not for the environment, why not for the taste? It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, its doesn’t even have to be more than one or two food items. I encourage each and every one of you to try to grow at least one vegetable at your home. If it is truly impossible, which I know for some it is, at the very least start shopping for groceries at a local farmers market. Buying locally is one of the key things to help improve our environment. Most of the foods you buy at grocery stores have traveled an average of 1,500 to 2,500 miles from farm to table. It is weird to think that the food you are eating has probably traveled more than you have. So next time you need to go stock up on food, think about all the energy that goes into the well-traveled food at the grocery store and head to your local market!

How fresh and tasty is the food you consumed?

The transition from your hometown, or in my case, country, to college is always difficult. Whenever I am asked what I miss the most about home, I always answer, without hesitation, food.  Back home in Panama, fruits are freshly served for breakfast each morning, especially coconuts, mandarin and mangoes. I can literally go out to my backyard and grab fruits from the trees. Since I was a little girl, my mom always made me eat a cup of fruit for breakfast with eggs, waffles or cereal. When I arrived at Elon it was a bit difficult getting used to the food because on campus it is hard to find mangoes, coconuts, mandarins, watermelon, etc. On campus, they offer a very limited variety of fruits. If you go to Harris Teeter, you may find all the delicious fruits previously mentioned; but sadly the taste is not the same. Why does it taste different if it is the same fruit, just in a different location?

            As most of you may know, oil, coal and natural gas are also known as fossil fuels. 85% of all the energy produced in the U.S. comes from burning these fuels. 23% of the energy used to produce food corresponds to processing and packing goods. The other 32% is burned in home refrigeration and cooking. I bet you didn’t know that reusing a glass jar five times at home could save about half the energy used to make five disposable containers. Approximately 95% of all the fresh vegetables that are consumed in the U.S. are produced in California. Shockingly, a typical carrot has to travel 1,838 miles to reach YOUR dinner table. That represents large quantities of fossil fuels to transport food products to consumers. $120 BILLION of agricultural products crossed borders as imports and exports. Average American food travels an estimate of 1,500 miles BEFORE being consumed.

As the author of Lilies Chickens said, her daughter does not need the toxins, preservatives and hormones that lace American food. Guess what? Neither do you! If I am able to eat fresh fruits and vegetables from the trees and the ground, you can do so as well. What can you do? Buy goods grown locally, like Farmer’s market or the nearest supermarket that leads you to consume the less fuel. Avoid purchasing processed foods, which take more energy and have less nutritional value. Choose foods with minimal packaging, like whole foods that reduce the energy spent on processing, packaging and storage. Cut out meat, I know meat is delicious, and personally, I am a huge meat eater, but reduce the amount you in ingest daily. Large quantities of this good require huge amounts of energy for cultivating, harvesting, shipping animal feeds, transportation and animal slaughtering. Even Lilies Chickens affirms that 1 cup of oil is used to make meat. The extensive travel of foods in the U.S. prevents consumers from actually experiencing the freshness and REAL taste of food.
The following links would provide you more information about this cool and interesting topic:
http://home.dejazzd.com/kgard/bcn/calories_in_gallon.html
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/eatlocal/

Sustainability Hits the Dairy Market

The dairy industry is a powerful, multi-billion dollar business that lies in the grasp of only a handful of firms, most of which are European based. The United States sells eighty percent of the milk it produces to these firms and as a result, these firms  have great influence over the price of milk and the way it is made. Thus, the farmers who work to cultivate the milk have little to no say in how they make their milk and how much they are able to sell it for. Similarly, with America's craving for more dairy at lower prices, farmers are forced to use unconventional and unnatural means to maximize the output of milk and satiate their customer base. 

Enter the use of breeding, unnatural feed, and hormone injections into the dairy industry simply to meet the ever demanding, fast paced American society. The use of these unnatural techniques to increase dairy production has potentially severe consequences both for the animals and those who eat dairy products. First of all, unorthodox breeding and feeding methods have the potential to pass diseases into the animals which in turn, ends up in our dairy. Secondly, the injection of synthetic hormones into cows ultimately reflects on our dairy as well because really, does anybody want to be consuming dairy products that they know are tainted by synthetic hormones? 

I realize that simply going to a grocery store and purchasing the store brand gallon of milk or pint of ice cream is the easiest and cheapest way to get dairy products, however, there are still many small farms across the United States that are devoted to keeping their milk organic and free of the pesticides and hormones present in that store brand milk. Though it may be a bit more expensive and out of the way, it is important for us to keep these farms thriving because the milk they produce is high quality and does not have the potential to carry diseases. When attempting to live more sustainably, sacrifices must be made to obtain the most natural and high quality products available, and buying milk from a smaller local farm seems to be a small change that has a lasting impact. So, make a sacrifice for the cows, yourself, and the environment and research the local dairy farm nearest you because the quality of the product is well worth the time spent getting it. 

Local Food For Local People

          So, I know this topic has been touched on briefly before, but I wanted to share my experience as well! I stumbled upon our local market in Downtown Burlington last week while shopping with my mom. I was so surprised to find it! It was such a cute, hip place and only saw a few fellow students there having a delicious-looking lunch. I wondered why more students were not there and if this place was well know or not. It is an amazing little market selling organic and local foods! I took plenty of pictures to document my visit and to share with all of you!
          The aisle with all of the cleaning products were all eco-friendly and recyclable! There was toilet paper, paper towels, environmentally friendly dish soaps and detergents, tissues, and much more. Most products and the containers in which they come in are mostly (if not all) recyclable! In the frozen foods section, there is an entire section of "Sustainable Farming" products. Fruits, vegetables, ice cream, and cool whip can be found there. Totally awesome. In the meats section, all the meat is from local farms and completely delicious. There was even a section in the market for eco-friendly make-up! I was so happy to find all my favorite foods at this market and at the same time being able to support local farmers by buying them.
           There were seeds people could buy to plant their own organic gardens as well as t-shirts made of local cotton all made in North Carolina. This market is such a wonderful place to buy groceries or have a nice lunch. I am definitely going to be spreading the word about this to EVERYONE! BUY LOCAL.

Healthier Bodies, Healthier Planet: Eating Local

After visiting the farmers market on Thursday I was thinking that all the food I consume on a daily basis is not grown anywhere near Elon. My curiosity continued to grow and I was wondering about all the energy it took to get the food from the farm to my plate? I had never considered about how my food purchases might affect the food system.  The newly popular movement “eat local” has inspired conscientious consumers all over the country to reconsider how we can each improve the planet at meals. The issue has become so mainstream that TIME magazine published a cover story about it.

            I was naïve thinking that switching to an organic diet was just as effective as eating locally. Sadly, I was mistaken food that is produced organically still travels hundreds of miles to reach my plate. On the food’s journey to my plate it emits pollutants in the air and burnings copious amounts of fossil fuels. When starting to research consuming locally produced food I found a definition that pretty much sums up why one would eat locally. It comes from Columbia’s Gussow, a reporter for Time in the 1950s who eventually went on to become a local-eating pioneer. She has lectured on the environmental (and culinary) disadvantage of relying on a global food supply for 25 years. Her most famous statistic is that shipping a strawberry from California to New York requires 435 calories of fossil fuel but provides the eater with only 5 calorie of nutrition. I was SHOCKED by that alarming statistic and that’s only strawberries what about all the other food I consume. In her memoir, Gussow offers the meaning of local: “Within a day’s leisurely drive of our homes. [This] distance is entirely arbitrary. But then, so was the decision made by others long ago that we ought to have produce from all around the world.”

            We should want to eat locally not only for the environment but for our bodies and to support our community. Eating local is simple today there is information all over the internet with blogs telling where sells local produce and connects local eaters all over the world.  

To find local produce near you click on this link http://www.eatwellguide.org/i.php?pd=Home