How to Read those Produce Labels

Sometimes I get an apple with a sticker on it and it just won't come off.  It's not meant to be a pest but to be informative. On the sticker may be the name of the specific type of apple (or whatever produce) you may be eating.  More importantly, what's also on there is the price look up (PLU) code.  This code is a really important tool in identifying the way that your produce was grown.  There's actually a whole site devoted to helping you decipher fruit labels.

There are really only 4 types of stickers to remember and 3 categories. Labels with:

4 digits beginning with 3 or 4 are conventionally grown, non-GMO produce.  This produce has been sprayed with weed killers and chemical pesticides but is not genetically modified

5 digits beginning with 8 means that the produce is genetically modified (boo! hiss!)

5 digits beginning with 9 means it is organic! (refer to my post on the Dirty Dozen to see what foods to prioritize in buying organic)

Here are examples of different tomatoes:

~Conventionally grown with pesticides and plant killers but not GMO	~Conventionally grown with pesticides and plant killers but not GMO
∅ Genetically modified! Don't buy it!	♥ Organic

This may be confusing but very important when you are buying produce at the supermarket!  Here's an easy little rhyme I learned to help you remember all this information:

"8, we hate.........4, is poor.........9, is mine."

Happy Shopping!

Why We Need to Detox

Sorry for the hiatus! My May was quite hectic and my body was telling me to take a break and take it down a notch in June. So here I am after listening to my body with my first post for the month.

Continuing the conversation on detoxing, I would like to spend a brief moment on why our modern day bodies need assistance in detoxing. Our bodies do indeed naturally detox. We breathe, sweat, urinate, and defecate, all functions of our body that release toxins. However, we constantly bombard our bodies with toxins, at a greater rate than they naturally can get rid of. This is a very complex topic that includes environmental factors, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle, and the food we eat. I am only going to touch upon food at a high level now as it is most relevant to cleanse I am holding later in the month. Check the Events section this weekend for information and registration!

What we eat and do not eat contribute to much of the toxic overload of our bodies. Our diets have deviated from what we have ingested for hundreds of thousands of years.  This is significant because our bodies have adapted for a certain type of diet and we have drastically changed that diet in the past century.  Our bodies are meant to eat whole, unprocessed foods, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in particular. These foods have natural fibers that help move along our digestive system and also our elimination system. In a diet devoid of fiber, our bodies do not eliminate toxins as efficiently and store them  in our bodies.  The Standard American Diet has very little whole foods and...

Not only are we not eating whole foods, but we are eating massive amounts of processed foods. Some processed foods have fiber, but that is not the issue. The major issue with processed foods is that there are countless chemicals and additives. The majority of American diets are made up of processed foods laden with MSG, high fructose corn syrup, artificial colorings, artificial sugars, trans fats…and the list goes on and on. When ingested, our bodies naturally try to digest these chemicals but they do not react the same as natural foods react in our bodies. Some of it exits after going through the digestive system, but before doing that, they tax our liver.  Many get absorbed into the body and store themselves in fats and organs. As they are stored in our body, they can actually cause a vast variety of health issues like developmental problems, learning disorders, obesity, tumors, and even cancer.

As much as I try to stick to a whole foods diet, I still eat processed foods like pasta/noodles, rice crackers, chocolate, pre-made nut butters, and almond milk. Also, I know that the conventionally grown vegetables and fruit that I eat contain pesticides and other chemicals sprayed on during growth (see Dirty Dozen). That is why I think it is really important for us to assist our bodies to detox through a cleanse.  Ready for my cleanse yet?

Sewage Sludge aka Green Smoothie

 drink up! (yes, I reuse glass jars to bring stuff to work...like my mama!:)

You know what I would l absolutely LOVE? No, not flowers or candy. I would LOVE if everyone tried to eat greens at EVERY meal. Yes. Every. Single. One. Lunch is easy-add a salad (no, the lettuce on the Italian sub does not count). For dinner have a side of steamed broccoli or sautéed kale. So that leaves breakfast...sure you can add spinach to your scrambled eggs but what about a green smoothie?  

We all know that smoothies are delicious and chock full of fiber but it also has a good amount of sugar-usually from juice bases or loads of fruit. However, we can replace some of those sugary fruits, amp up the nutritional and fiber-ous value of a normal everyday smoothie by adding in glorious greens, and upgrade your breakfast! I promise that it does not alter the taste of the smoothie, just the color. You can add any green you want (e.g., kale, cilantro, celery, parsley, seaweeds). So far I have used spinach and spirulina powder (it’s a seaweed!) and neither has affected the taste of the smoothie at all. The beauty of smoothies is that you can put ANYTHING you want in there. So dig deep in your freezer for all those bags of frozen fruit. Also, summer is coming up and the warm mornings will be the perfect time to start drinking green smoothies.

I don’t have an exact recipe for the smoothie pictured above (which I've been having the past couple of mornings) but here is approximately what I used to make my sewage sludge green smoothie:

• 1 banana
• ¾ C frozen Trader Joe’s berry mix (includes cherries, blackberries, raspberries, & blueberries)
• 1 T (or more if you want) nut butter (I used Trader Joe’s organic chunky peanut butter)
• 1 T Bob’s Red Mill ground flaxseeds (you can leave out or use chia seeds, if you want)
• ½ C Whole Foods organic rice milk (you can use water if you want or another liquid, use your better judgement)
• 1 T of cocoa powder (the kind used in baking)
• 1-2 C organic spinach
• 1 T spirulina powder (I got mine from the bulk section of a local co-op)
• Add ice and water to your desired consistency.

There are a lot of ingredients listed. Do not feel like you need to use all of them.  Adjust it to your taste and to what you have in your kitchen/pantry.  Also, I used a lot of organic ingredients, and you don’t have to. I specified them to remind you to keep the dirty dozen top of mind when making your purchases. Buy organic ingredients if you can, but remember that a smoothie with non-organic ingredients is better than a bowl of cereal and milk or a triple mocha frappucino for breakfast.

Drink up and get ready to answer questions from inquisitive or grossed our minds :) And please share your favorite or ideal green smoothie “recipes” with me!

Organic Foods

One large component of the “Food Revolution” is the growing interest in organic foods. As people become more health and environmentally conscious, they are becoming more and more interested in eating organic foods. In fact, they are the fastest growing sector in the food market. There is no universally accepted definition for what is organic but here are some general guidelines:

• Fruits & vegetables: Grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or ionizing radiation
• Meat & animal products (including eggs and dairy): From animals that do not take antibiotics or growth hormones
• Processed foods (e.g., cookies, pasta, sauces): Made with a minimum of 95% organic ingredients.

The dangers of conventional foods are still scientifically inconclusive. Some studies state that organic foods are way better than conventional foods; others have shown that there are no nutritional advantages to eating organic foods over conventional and some state the complete opposite. Currently, choosing organic is very much a choice guided by your personal views on health, science, and the environment.

I’m not a scientist so I can’t say whether or not organic foods are healthier than conventional foods on an elemental level. But I trust my instincts on what food should be and make my decisions based on them. Whatever your beliefs are around the nutritional benefits of these foods, I would like to point out that when you eat conventional foods, maybe you are getting the same amount of nutrients, but you also get a healthy dose of pesticides and other foreign chemicals with it. These chemicals have been linked to diseases like cancers and allergies. Is that a chance you are willing to take? And a thought for another post, pesticides are just plain bad for the environment.

Whether you agree with my personal views or not, I’d like you to follow one of my beliefs and that is minimizing the bad stuff. I don’t think it’s reasonable to completely eliminate all the foods that are bad for us from our diets but if we set a mindset of minimizing, we can make small choices with big results. One of those is buying organic for a group of fruits and vegetables called the Dirty Dozen. The Dirty Dozen is the twelve most pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables. If you want to purchase organic foods but only have a limited budget, these foods are where you should invest. Here are the Dirty Dozen in order of worst to less worse:

Peaches
Apples
Sweet bell peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Lettuce
Grapes
Pears
Spinach
Potatoes

Bonus Tip: Download this list onto your phone or write it in your notebook that you keep your grocery list so that you can always refer to it when you are food shopping.

Thanks for reading the long Monday post. This is such an expansive topic, I could go on for a long time.  In the meantime, check out these recent articles: 

• Organic, local farms get a boost from USDA 
• More Americans are buying and asking for organic wines 
• Organic: What it means on different products

 Have a great week and happy shopping!