It’s hard to swing a cat without hitting a pink ribbon this month — the grocery store, the gas station — hell, even the football players are wearing pink cleats.  The people have spoken in their support of breast cancer research, and when the people speak, the advertisers listen. It’s no secret that  companies are capitalizing on public interest by attempting to appear compassionate — saving polar bears, saving children, and yes, saving women with cancer. I’m ok with that when it’s sincere, but what if these same allegedly “woman-friendly” companies are producing some of the very products that are causing certain types of breast cancer? That’s where I draw the line.

It goes something like this. Women have been made to feel insecure from the beginning of time. Along comes a cosmetic company and they decide to capitalize on this insecurity by marketing products to make women “look better.” They convince us that our hair is too grey, our eyelashes are too short, our wrinkles are unsightly, our bellies are too soft. They sell us beautifully packaged chemicals to smear all over these undesirable parts of ourselves — chemicals that have been linked to certain kinds of breast cancer. They have stockholders to please, so they need to come up with an idea to sell even more chemicals this year. They notice that their customers are supporting breast cancer, so they decide to spend a little money to turn their packaging pink for awhile (only if they’ll recoup the cost in sales!), make a donation to breast cancer, and sit back and enjoy the benefits of strong sales and a strong reputation. As they applaud themselves, more and more women are diagnosed.  In my humble opinion, that is wrong.

The folks at Breast Cancer Action happen to agree with me. Their site, Think Before You Pink, has a series of questions that one might ask herself before buying one of these pink products, namely “is this company’s product contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?” 

I don’t like to rain on a parade without providing an umbrella, so here’s what to do if you’d like to support breast cancer this month:

1) Find an organization whose work you truly support, whether it be cure-based, cause-based, or both. Decide how much you’re able to contribute, and send it right to the organization so that you’re sure that they receive every single penny.

2) Spend a moment looking in the mirror (clothing optional). Admire your beautiful body in all of its perfect imperfection and notice three parts of yourself that you really love. While you’re there, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a self-exam.

3) Say out loud to those pinkwashing companies, “I’m too smart for you!” (and don’t forget to believe yourself).

 It turns out that you don’t need a magnifying glass, a calculator, or even a degree in nutrition to find the foods that are best for your body. Actually, you can go ahead and ignore all the numbers on the nutrition label.  When it comes to finding healthy foods, the old adage applies — you are what you eat. You can learn everything you need to know about a food by reading the list of ingredients.

 So, what exactly should one look for in an ingredient list? Allow me to introduce you to the ‘Three S’s of Ingredients’ — size, sweeteners, and science.

 1)      Size – When it comes to ingredient lists, size does matter, and the shorter the list, the healthier the food. In fact the best choices, such as fresh produce, have no ingredient list at all. When selecting a food product, strive to choose foods that have FIVE or fewer ingredients. This will ensure that you’re steering clear of processed foods, which are chock full of additives and virtually devoid of any real nutrients.

 2)      Sweeteners –Of course sweets contain sugar, but it may surprise you how often sugar appears as an ingredient in your ‘every day’ foods. If you check the ingredient list on some of your grocery store staples — cereal, salad dressing, crackers — you’ll almost certainly find sugar on the list, probably in multiple forms. It’s no wonder we’re overdosing on sugar! Once you find your favorite “five-ingredient foods,” make sure that none of the first three ingredients is a sweetener. How do you identify a sweetener? You’ll spot ‘plain-old-sugar’ fairly easily, but also keep your eyes open for its look-alikes, such as evaporated cane juice, various syrups (brown rice syrup, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup), and the less-bad fruit sweeteners, such as fruit concentrates and fruit juices. Sweets are okay in moderation, but if sweeteners appear as one of the first three ingredients in your favorite food, you’ll want to look for a better option.

 3)      Science – Science and innovation have done amazing things for our world, but when it comes to food, we’re all better off with a “low-tech” diet. Food additives, such as artificial color and flavor, are nothing but trouble for the human body. If any of your five ingredients sound like they may have come from a lab instead of a farm, you’ll want to stay away. Science is cool when it comes to iPhones, but when it comes to food, it’s better to do it the old-fashioned way.

 Eating really is this simple — fewer ingredients, less sugar, nothing artificial. Keep these simple guidelines in mind on your next shopping trip, and you’ll leave with a cart full of foods that nourish your body and leave you feeling great.

The fantastic folks that brought us the Story of Stuff have just released the Story of Cosmetics. Take a few minutes to watch it on your lunch break tomorrow, and you’ll have the whole weekend to think about which products you can do without and which ones you might want to replace with a safer option.

After all, we happen to think you’re quite lovely just as you are!

The Environmental Working Group, one of the finest organizations out there, has just released its Cancer Prevention Tips. Take a look to see how you can protect yourself from the environmental toxins that may be lurking in the water you drink, the food you eat, and the shampoo that you use.

Personally, I’m feeling pretty incensed about cancer these days. I’m watching my own mom fight a relentless battle against multiple myeloma. I’m cringing every time my son puts a toy in his mouth, unsure if contains a yet-to be-identified (or worse, a known-but-unpublicized) carcinogen. I’m paying a premium for food and products that aren’t doused in chemicals. Frankly, I’m a little pissed off that I have to work so hard to protect myself and my family from environmental toxins so that someone’s lawn can look a little greener or so that a multi-billion dollar corporation can increase their share price again this quarter.

I’ve been reading a lot about anger lately, and I’m realizing that anger is only productive in its ability to inspire action, so I’m on a mission, and I’d love for you to join me with these 3 steps:

1) Start by reading through EWGs cancer tips and get to work protecting yourself. Share it on Facebook or Twitter so that your friends can protect themselves too.
2) Vote with your wallet — Support the companies that are producing personal care products that have been classified as safe in the Skin Deep Cosmetics database. Get to your local farmers market and support the farms that are growing/raising food without pesticides, antibiotics and growth hormones. Search around on Etsy and support the folks who are making high quality, handmade goods without chemicals. Donate to groups like EWG.
3) Sign EWG’s petition and ask Congress to regulate chemicals in consumer goods.

On behalf of our own family, we thank you for helping to make this world a safer place for all of us.

– Liz

As this week’s New York Times article discusses — the clear, obvious, and definite winner is . . . brown rice!  And here’s why . . .

Brown rice is a whole grain.  White rice is not.  What that means is that brown rice is the thing you’d get if you picked it directly off the plant — it’s the WHOLE grain — the whole thing.  White rice on the other hand has been processed.  Specifically, white rice has had it’s outer coating (the husk, bran, and germ) removed.  The effect is that with brown rice you’re eating the whole thing, while with white rice, you’re eating only the starchy interior — basically sugar.

The impact of this on your body is huge and we think about it in terms of evolution.  Basically your current body is just the present form of something that’s been evolving over hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.  And, over that long, long, long period of time, your body has evolved to function optimally when certain things have been put in it.  Forget the last 50 years — that’s only a blip on your timeline — what were you eating 1,000 years ago?  5,000?  10,000?  50,000?  250,000?  Because for all that time you ate a certain way, and since that way is the overwhelming majority of your “life,” it’s what you’re used to.  10,000 years ago were you eating the whole grain or processed food?

Sugar — the kind that spikes your blood sugar (what white rice is, what’s called high-glycemic) — was not part of your ancient food.  So, your body didn’t evolve to process it.  As a result, any time you eat high-glycemic sugar, your body freaks.  Your body digests what it can, the excess goes into your blood, your blood sugar level rockets, your pancreas goes into overdrive to produce insulin to get the level down, the level comes down somewhat, the rest is pulled out of your blood in emergency mode and stored around your organs as fat.

The result of doing this regularly (probably every meal — check out your ingredients) is that: 1. Your pancreas gets totally burnt out (diabetes); 2. Sugar gets stored as fat (obesity).  And, at a societal level — we get explosive diabetes and obesity epidemics that kill huge numbers of people and threaten to topple our health care (and even economic) systems.

At the end of the day, what to do?  Choose brown rice.  But, even more importantly, forget the nutrition facts label for now and start looking at the ingredients of everything you eat.  Begin to understand what’s what.  Choose what you would have eaten a long, long time ago.

– Steve

1. We try very, very hard not to eat processed, artificial, chemicalized, junk food.  We eat real food — of which bacon and blue cheese are great examples.
2. We don’t eat bacon and blue cheese all the time.  We practice what IIN calls the 90/10 diet.  About 90% of the time we tons of fruits and veggies, whole grains, lean proteins, healthy oils — and the other 10% of our diet is whatever we want (with the exception of processed, artificial, chemicalized, junk food).

So, today for lunch it’s our variation on a cobb salad!

And, while it’s not all local, the majority is.  There’s such bounty this time of year — especially for salad ingredients.  Enjoy the fruit (and veggies) of your land.  Be inspired!  Create!

Liz & Steve’s Bacon-Blue Cheese Yum

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes

Yields: 2 hearty servings

Ingredients:

• 1 head/bunch of your favorite in-season greens (we used a delicious red/green leaf lettuce combo from our wonderful CSA)
• 8 oz. antibiotic, hormone, and nitrate-free bacon (to find a great local option check here)
• 2 organic eggs (these you can definitely find local — check the bacon link)
• 1 generous handful sustainably-produced blue cheese
• 1 cup of cooked whole grains (we used leftover organic brown rice)
• Your favorite veggies to taste (we used avocado, tomatoes, peppers, and CSA scallions)
• Your favorite healthy dressing (we were in the mood for something creamy and used this)
• Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Chop and rinse greens (we like to chiffonade).
2. Cook bacon.
3. Hard-boil eggs.
4. While the bacon and eggs are cooking, crumble cheese (if necessary) and chop veggies.
5. Chop bacon and slice eggs.
6. Mix lettuce and veggies, and plate artfully with grains, bacon, eggs, cheese, dressing on top.
7. Enjoy!

This is, of course, easily adaptable to your taste preferences including a vegetarian or vegan diet — if you’re in this boat, try some sauteed tofu or tempeh to replace the bacon, add your favorite beans or sprouts to replace the eggs and cheese.

Bon appetite!

– Steve

For our parents’ generation, being an adult seemed to come in a perfectly wrapped package. Inside you’d find a good marriage, a couple of kids, a steady paycheck, and a house. There’s certainly much to be proud of in that package, but our generation’s paths to adulthood seem to be slightly more difficult to wrap.

Probably because we’ve reaped the benefits of our parents’ stability (thanks, Mom & Dad!), our paths have been more circuitous. A recent NY Times article reports that our generation is seeking more education (formal and otherwise), marrying later, seriously thinking about whether we want to be parents, and experimenting with multi-generational living (that’s the new term for living with one’s parents). We’ve noticed this trend among our own friends and family, but as the article points out, it’s interesting to note that the trend holds true across all demographics.

What does being grown up mean to you?

– Liz

Particularly on the heels of the new report by the President’s Cancer Panel (warning of huge linkages between day-to-day chemical exposure and cancer — see Marion Nestle’s report here), we’re on high alert for what we put in and on our bodies.

Do yourself, your family, and your friends a favor — check out the EWG’s sunscreen report and choose what’s truly best!

– Steve

This afternoon, taco salad!  And, like most of our meals, very unplanned.  We love opening up the fridge and without forethought or a recipe, allowing our creativity to come alive.  This is what we came up with today — hope you enjoy it!

Liz & Steve’s Taco Salad

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: None

Yields: 2 hearty servings

Ingredients:

• 1 head/bunch of your favorite in-season greens (we used some delicious red leaf lettuce from our wonderful CSA)
• 2 fist-sized portions of lean protein (we used leftover sustainably-raised, grass-fed, local ground beef from our farmers market)
• 1 cup of cooked whole grains (we used leftover brown rice)
• 1/2 cup of organic jack or cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup of organic salsa (we used store-bought)
• Veggies to taste (we used avocado, tomatoes, and CSA scallions)
• Your favorite healthy dressing (we were in the mood for something creamy and used this)
• Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste
• A few handfuls of organic tortilla chips

Directions:

1. Chop and rinse greens (we like to chiffonade).
2. Crumble protein or cut into bite-size pieces.
3. Grate cheese.
4. Dice veggies.
5. Mix together greens, protein, grains, cheese, salsa, veggies, dressing.
6. Plate artfully with some tortilla chips.
7. Enjoy!

We enjoyed our salad with some freshly made mint iced tea.  For this we simply tore off some leaves of our CSA mint, dropped them in our tea infuser, dropped it in our hot water, let it steep for a few minutes, let it cool, dropped in some ice cubes and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and — voila!  So refreshing.

Let us know what you think!

– Steve

These things go in phases. In the 80′s, it was low-fat this, low-fat that. In the 90′s, the focus changed to calories. The new millenium brought the attack on carbs, then trans fats, and now we’re engaged in combat against salt.

I’m not suggesting that these aren’t worthy battles — too much salt is surely harmful to one’s health — but this, and the other battles, are just smaller skirmishes against the true enemy, PROCESSED FOOD.

Processed foods need additives to taste good because they are not actually food.

The article talks about how common processed foods taste without salt, saying ‘Without salt the (Corn Flakes) cereal tasted metallic. The Eggo waffles evoked stale straw. The butter flavor in the Keebler Light Buttery Crackers, which have no actual butter, simply disappeared.“

I also love their description of processed meats without salt, describing them as having a “warmed-over flavor” or tasting like “damp dog hair.”

If we ask companies to reduce the amount of salt in food, they’ll simply increase sugars or other flavor enhancers to make their non-food taste food-like. I encourage you to send “food” makers a real message by simply choosing not to purchase their products at all, no matter what health claims they print on the box!

–Liz