Green Options

[Image Credit: Sugar. Creative Commons photo by Uwe Hermann]

If you’re an avid Eat. Drink. Better. reader, you know sugar’s not exactly ideal. You probably also know that we’re eating an overly-sweetened diet due mostly to corn-based sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. In a recent lecture, University of California San Francisco professor Robert Lustig dug deep into the real hazards of sugar, from its effects on our bodies to its strong link to the obesity epidemic. The complete lecture, Sugar: The Bitter Truth, is below.

Confession: In college, I was a complete Diet Coke head. There was always at least one case of the stuff in my refrigerator, and I usually kept an assortment of other diet sodas. I had no idea at the time that aspertame and other artificial sweeteners were so terrible for my body, and it was tough to kick my soda habit, but every time I read something new about diet soft drinks, I’m glad that I did.

Not too long ago, Zachary talked about a suspected link between aspartame and cancer. Now, researchers are saying that these low- and no- calorie sugar substitutes tend to defeat their purpose: artificial sweeteners might be making us fatter.

If you are thinking about going vegetarian, here is a list of things that should help you to actually do it,… and to stick to it once you’ve started.

Phthalates, as you know, have been ordered removed from children’s goods, which includes food contact materials. But they’re still found in common items, such as shower curtains, personal body care products, and various medical products, among many other things. Phthalates soften plastic and bind “fragrance” to the products that contain it. [Hint: look for PVC and fragrance, and you'll find phthalates.]

So what’s the big deal? They’re endocrine disruptors, which means they interfere with the normal functions of hormones. Phthalates have been linked to early onset of puberty in girls, obesity, lower sperm count and testosterone level, under-virilized boys, and male genital deformities such as hypospadias (in which the urinary opening is located somewhere besides the head of the penis, like the underside). Whee!

And now they’ve been linked to preterm birth. Makes you wonder if we should kick the chemical out of all products, doesn’t it?

In a previous post, I listed five of the best things I think you can do in order to live a sustainable lifestyle — #6-10. Now, here is the top five list.

This post was originally posted at Nature’s Child, the site for sassy & sage natural parenting advice. And don’t forget to enter the Summer Essentials Contest while you’re there!

We all know someone who was thrilled when they learned they were pregnant. Yes, because they were bringing life into this world. But also because they could finally “eat for two” and let their diet go.

All of us with sense know that this is a pregnancy myth. You can’t actually eat for two and expect to lose the baby weight anytime in the next decade.

The eating “extra” may not be the best choice for every pregnant woman.

Pregnancy is not a time to eat twice as much, but twice as well.

Women who are already obese when they become pregnant may not need to gain “baby weight” as long as they and their care provider focus on a healthy diet.

Think a romantic meal of beef tenderloin with a side of potatoes sounds delicious? Maybe with a nice Bordeaux?  Perhaps it does (especially if it’s grass-fed beef!), but it may decrease your chances of conception.

A new study shows that men who want to be fathers should increase their intake of fruits and veggies and decrease their consumption of fatty foods like red meat and creamy dishes.

Men who ate healthy diets not only had faster sperm, they had more sperm in their semen. It was both a quality and quantity effect.

Dr. Jaime Mendiola of the University of Murcia, Spain said of his research:

In this study, we have found that people who consume more fruits and vegetables are ingesting more anti-oxidants and this is the important point.

We saw that, among the couples with fertility problems coming to the clinic, the men with good semen quality ate more vegetables and fruit than those men with low seminal quality.

There are obviously many factors that influence fertility, and this is only one.

Fast food isn’t only a dumb choice environmentally, it can actually harm kids’ test scores, too. Factory-farmed meat? All that packaging? No thanks.

But if living a greener life isn’t a good enough reason for you and your family to avoid the junk, perhaps this is: kids who regularly eat fast food score lower on tests. Some kids had their test scored drop on literacy and mathematical tests by 16 percent compared to the average.

Kerri Tobin, who oversaw the research, said,

It is possible that the types of food served at fast food restaurants cause cognitive difficulties that result in lower test scores.

Wow. Just can’t picture Mickey D’s using that in a marketing campaign anytime soon. But the corporate giant isn’t the only culprit…

The climate change finger-pointing hit a new level of insanity when a paper was published recently that links overweight people to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Obese children have a 26 percent higher chance of allergies, especially to food, than their slender counterparts. The food allergy rate was 59 percent higher for this risk group.

Researchers aren’t sure yet whether the heaviness is the cause of allergies. But further study is clearly needed, as the asthma and allergy rates for kids is higher than in the past.

Altogether, 4,000 kids were surveyed through the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Said director Dr. Darryl Zeldin,

While the results from this study are interesting, they do not prove that obesity causes allergies. More research is needed to further investigate this potential link.

So what defines “obese”? And what can we do for these kiddos?

Yes, we hate plastics!  Not only is this evil material bad for our environment, over and over again the news reports the negative effects of plastic chemicals on our children’s health. From BPA to phthalates, plastics are to blame for a slew of health problems.

Now, a long term study of girls living in Harlem has linked exposure to the chemicals in plastics to childhood obesity.

Yes, plastics make kids fat, well at least there is a correlation.

Researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center discovered that when phthalates are absorbed into the body and act as endocrine disruptors, obesity levels rise in mice.  The East Harlem study is the first one to link endocrine disruptors ro human obesity.  Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai, explains: