Green Options » eating

Organic Baby Food Recall: Plum Organics Apple and Carrot

Julie Knapp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:22:25 +0000

If you feed your little one Plum Organics, here’s a baby food recall you need to know about. The organic baby food company issued a voluntary recall yesterday due to a botulism danger. The only product affected is the Apple and Carrot Portable Pouch, which comes in a 4.22 ounce bag.

The pouches are being pulled from store shelves because of a potential risk of Clostridium botulinum contamination, which can cause botulism, a sometimes life-threatening condition that you clearly don’t want to mess around with.

In a letter on the Plum Organics website, founder Gigi Lee Chang explains that “after a routine test determined the formulation was incorrect. Plum Organics immediately investigated the matter and confirmed that a mixing error was to blame which resulted in an improper blend of carrots and apples.”

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Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating

Rhonda Winter — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:27:20 +0000

When I was in college I briefly dated a boy whose idea of a meal was eating cold meat chili from an open can. In retrospect, how and what he chose to feed himself provided a very telling insight into his character and values. How and what we eat shapes our lives and who were are. Nothing we do is more intimate; our meals sustain our very existence. When we choose to grow our own food, buy from local farmers markets and not eat highly processed packaged food, we are not only taking positive steps toward building and sustaining a locally based economy, but we are also lessening our collective carbon footprint upon the planet.

If you are starting to feel inspired to create some simple, affordable, tasty meals from locally available seasonal food, but are a bit clueless how to begin, Lisa Jervis‘ new book, Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating, may provide just the help that you need.

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Eating for Energy - 5 Helpful Foods

Amy Bell — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:28:23 +0000

The foods we eat have a direct impact on our overall energy.

Think about how you feel after having certain foods.

A greasy fast food meal more than likely leaves you tired, sluggish, and possibly feeling guilty, while a meal full of complex carbohydrates, healthy protein and fats, and fresh fruits and vegetables leaves a person feeling satisfied and energized.

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10 Foods to Prevent Cancer

Amy Bell — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 23:55:13 +0000

Every year more than 500,000 people die from cancer in the United States alone.

Many researchers and cancer specialists believe that up to 60% of those deaths can be prevented if Americans adopt healthier lifestyles.

According to Rachael Stolzenberg-Solomon, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute,

“The easiest and least expensive way to reduce your risk for cancer is just by eating a healthy diet.”

Here is an overview of ten important cancer fighting foods to include in your diet on a regular basis:

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Pay What You Want for Organic Food

Allison Boyer — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:55:03 +0000

In order to promote healthy, organic foods, one restaurant in Queens is offering an innovative pricing structure.

Tierra Sana, which is located at the corner of 67th Ave. and Queens Blvd, will be offering “Pay What You Want” pricing every Tuesday during lunchtime hours, starting on Feb. 3. After eating, you get decide how much the meal was worth, according to an article by the NY Daily News.

The special includes an array of appetizers, entrees, salads and desserts that are all health-conscious but still savory.

“Health food doesn’t have to be expensive or tasteless,” said owner Vic Fiallo, who began the “Pay What You Want” special to introduce Queens diners to cheap, healthy cuisine.

Alcohol is not included as part of the free pricing, but they do have a selection of organic wins available. Many of their meals are vegetarian and vegan options. Fiallo says that he’s confident that the food is so good that he’ll still make a profit during these lunchtimes specials.

Picture via sxc.hu.

African Roast Bat is Off the Menu, Population Soars

Andrew Williams — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:26:12 +0000

A colony of giant African bats has made a dramatic return from the brink of exctinction, thanks to a conservation drive discouraging people from eating them as delicacies.

As recently as 1989, the Pemba Flying Fox, one of Africa’s largest bat species, was critically endangered, with only a few individuals left on Pemba Island, off the coast of Tanzania. Since an intervention by Flora and Fauna International (FFI), numbers have soared to a staggering 22,000.

According to conservation worker, Joy Juma, “At one time roast bat was a very common dish on Pemba. Now people value the bats for different reasons.”

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Exploring Raw Food: Juices and Smoothies

Megan Prusynski — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:30:56 +0000

This year, one of my new year’s resolutions was to eat more raw and living foods. I recently started attending a monthly raw food potluck and have been inspired by all the delicious recipes and information. I have learned that eating uncooked plant foods is healthy for several reasons: raw fruits and veggies contain lots of fiber, are packed with nutrients, and also retain many useful enzymes that cooking destroys. Having a plot in my local community garden has definitely helped me eat more raw fresh produce as well as eat more sustainably.

As I try to add more living foods to my diet, I’ve tried eating salad with just about every meal, eating raw snacks like trail mixes and fresh fruit, and making more food from scratch. One way of incorporating raw foods into my diet that has been really easy is making fresh juices and smoothies. With the help of gadgets like my Green Star juicer and Vitamix blender, I’ve made many a healthy and scrumptious snack.

One word of juicing wisdom that I’ve learned is that you don’t want to overdo it with fruit juices. Because of their high sugar content, fruit juices can raise blood sugar levels. It’s healthier to drink vegetable juices, or a blend of fruit and vegetable juices. Juices are best in moderation because they deliver many nutrients but since the pulp is removed, they don’t have much fiber. Smoothies, on the other hand, use the entire fruit or vegetable, so the fiber is included. Both juices and smoothies are a great way to get digestible nutrients and add more raw fruits and vegetables to your diet.

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Life Cycle: Greening the Other White Meat

Simran Sethi — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:31:58 +0000

Sarah Smarsh and Simran Sethi are writing a series on the impacts of everyday things. They will be posting previews on Green Options before launching the posts on Huffington Post Here’s a peek at pork.

It’s lunchtime, baby. Panda Garden. Porky goodness. Mooshu style.

The “other white meat” in your takeout container falls behind beef and chicken in American consumption, but we do pig out on pig—on average, each of us consumes 51 pounds of Wilbur annually. That translates to big impact on our water and air.

Due to the high variety of bacteria, worms and other undesirables in pig flesh, and because of the quick-spread disease potential of crowded pig farms, heavy doses of antibiotics are administered routinely. Those same drugs end up in your body via waste streaming into our water supply, and via that Mooshu pork to go. Other side dishes you might not have ordered include growth hormones to encourage meat-heavy livestock and vaccines injected to avoid profit-damaging disease.

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Edible Activism: Changing the World Through What We Eat

Megan Prusynski — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:44:20 +0000

For as often as we do eat, it seems as if most of us don’t think too much about what we’re putting into our bodies. With food production so far removed from our every day lives, it’s easy to ignore where our food comes from and what it’s impact may be. But what we put on our plates has a larger footprint than what we drive. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,

“Livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Using a methodology that considers the entire commodity chain, it estimates that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.”

The things we choose to eat can obviously have an enormous impact on the planet and everything on it, including ourselves. Naturally then, our diet choices can say a lot about our ethics and beliefs. They can even be a political statement and a form of activism. I think that every choice we make has the potential to change the world, and certainly what I choose to eat has an impact.

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