Due to the great popularity of “Can Diet Coke Kill You?” combined with a lot of controversy over it, I have decided to write this follow-up post.

Most of the controversy over the last article was around the fact that the documentary I referenced cited data from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) but that organization itself claims there is no proven link between aspartame and cancer.

What was presented previously was a short explanation of why aspartame is expected to cause cancer and other health problems and a summary of some information presented in Sweet Misery, including findings from analyzing NCI and other data. This article, however, cites other scientific findings and discusses the economic-political history of this topic a little bit as well.

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As a female farmer myself, running Inn Serendipity farm and B&B with my husband, John Ivanko, in Wisconsin, this increasing blending and crossover between new women farmers with a passion for raising both cabbage and change cultivates a hefty serving of inspiration. These new women farmers grow more than food for our table; they rethink the status quo approach to our food system and provide keen insights into what needs to change.

“As one of the fastest growing groups of new farmers, women can be the change makers that transform our agricultural system into one that provides organic, healthy and fair food to us all,” explains Faye Jones, Executive Director of the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES), a Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) member organization that sponsored two women farmers to attend this conference. Wisconsin women farmers Jai Kellum of King’s Hill Farm and Erin Schneider of Hilltop Community Farm attended the CFSC Conference on behalf of MOSES.“It is important to keep the voice of farmers represented in the national discussion on food and agricultural policy and priorities,” sums up Jones.

Here are four of their tips for politicians to policy makers from Kellum and Schneider to improve our agriculture and food system:

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Gender concern in water resources management is globally seen as instrumental in
achieving greater efficiency, effectiveness and equity in the sector. The role of women in water management has long been recognized by the Indian administration. One of the reasons for this is the importance of women in terms of their numerical strength and the significant contribution they make to the agricultural labor force.

In the primarily agricultural Indian setup, there is a strong need to encourage participation of women in even greater strength. Consequently, at least one of the states in India (and a drought hit one) has now declared reservation for women in all local water governing bodies at all levels.

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The “Women on Conservation” event was kicked off by Surdevi Community Forest User Group President lighting the ceremonial candle.

This lively theatrical competition was held at the Surdevi Community Forest User Group Office on August 23, 2009 and presented by Partnership for Rhino Conservation and Friendship Chitwan. A total of seven groups from the Chitwan Buffer Zone and surrounding villages participated in the program with songs, poems, and stories about wildlife conservation.

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As a pollutant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAH’s as we call them in the business), are of concern because they have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic (not good things if you were wondering). PAHs are created as a byproduct of the burning of coal, oil, and fossil fuels. Often they are of concern in urban areas where there is a higher carbon footprint, and it forms that nice cloud of yellow smoke you see floating over some of your major cities.

Now, new research out of Columbia University is showing that exposure to PAHs, can reduce neonate’s intelligence. The study performed in New York city where PAHs are in no short demand, showed IQ scores that were 4.31 and 4.67 points lower, respectively than those of less exposed children.

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Women entrepreneurs, don’t miss the Keiretsu Forum’s 4th Annual Summer Solstice panel discussion tonight about “How Women Investors and Entrepreneurs Will Revive the California Economy.”

The event will bring together the Bay Area’s most talented minds to:

•          Foster a collaborative atmosphere between women and the angel community
•          Confront the critical issues facing women entrepreneurs and investors today
•          Drive the recovery of the California economy
•          Build businesses and invest in thought out ventures
•          Explore compelling investment opportunities

In addition to a networking reception, attendees will hear brief presentations and a panel discussion regarding the larger role women investors and entrepreneurs need to play in the California economy. More than ever, the angel community is eager to attract women investors. Women investors are considered a largely untapped market that is critical to “financial and mentoring support for new companies.”

REGISTRATION


Please register at http://summersolstice.eventbrite.com $25 by June 26, $40 thereafter.

PANELISTS AND KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The Summer Solstice will feature a unique panel of business women who will discuss a myriad of issues confronting the entrepreneurial community today. The panel itself will be comprised of notable members and entrepreneurs from the Keiretsu Forum and Women’s Initiative.

Agenda

5:30-6:30pm     Registration, Networking, and Booth Exhibitors

6:45-6:50pm      Welcome and Opening Remarks

6:50-7:10pm     Key Note Speaker

7:10-7:20pm     Panelist introductions

7:20-8:00pm     Panel Discussion

About the Keynote Speakers

Amanda Wallis is the Managing Director, Market Executive for the Northern California and Nevada Regions of U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management.  Wallis is a member of Bank of America’s San Francisco Leadership Team, comprised of the company’s top executives in the market. The team manages the bank’s ongoing relationships with local community leaders and organizations and makes decisions about how to use Bank of America’s resources to support the San Francisco community.

With more than 30 years of financial services experience, Wallis joined U.S. Trust from American Express in London where she served as executive director, and Europe, Middle East, Africa Region Head of the American Express Private Bank. In that role she led a region with seven international locations.  Prior to her role at American Express, Wallis spent over 10 years at the legacy Private Bank of Bank of America. During this period Wallis served in several leadership roles in San Francisco and London.

Wallis earned her undergraduate degree from Smith College and completed the executive program in Leadership and Managing Change at Stanford Business School. In 2007 she was named one of the “20 Most Influential Women in European Wealth Management” by Global Investor Magazine.

Rashmi Sinha is co-founder and CEO for SlideShare, the world’s largest community for sharing presentations and documents. SlideShare is growing rapidly (more than 18 million monthly uniques) letting everyone from marketers, conference speakers and academicians share presentations and connect with others. Rashmi has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Brown University and did research on search engines and recommender systems at UC Berkeley. She is a frequent speaker at conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo and Future of Web Apps. She writes a blog at rashmisinha.com about running a startup.

Translation: “Open Women Festival Song Competition: Women on Conservation - Welcome”

The banner welcomes contestants and audience members, and prominently features Nepal’s flagship animal: The Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros.

A teacher from the local community presents his conservation-related poem.

In addition to the Chitwan Buffer Zone groups and villages, local individuals and community-based organizations were encouraged to participate in the “Women on Conservation” festivities.

Lively performances were enhanced by festive attire.

Local community leaders were in attendance, and appealed to audience members to join them in supporting conservation issues. President of Friendship Chitwan, Koshraj Dallakoti chaired the event. The jury committee was chaired by Suman Bhattarai, Team Leader of Partnership for Rhino Conservation.

For Teej, red is considered auspicious and fabric stores stock up well in advance!

In the past, Teej included traditions such as arranged marriages for girls as young as five years old. But in these modern times, women of Chitwan celebrate Teej by singing conservation songs to mark the importance of protecting wildlife in their local areas.

Local children showed off their theatrical talents for an audience of over 800 people.

Suman Bhattarai, Team Leader of Partnership for Rhino Conservation, believes that children are the future of natural resource conservation and management. Sustainable conservation and management of wildlife can be expected only if this new generation embraces conservation.

A group of Korean ladies joined the festivities on stage.

“Women on Conservation” turned out to be an international event: People from outside Nepal arrived to enjoy the performances and support Chitwan Buffer Zone conservation efforts.

First place winner Jaya Manakama Youth Club!

Second place went to Parewashwori Community Forest User Group, and third to Surdevi Youth Club.

In all, there were seven participant groups:

• Hands for Conservation
• Surdevi Youth Club
• Parewashwori Community Forest User Group
• Jaya Manakamana Youth Club
• Parewashwori Dugdha Utpadak
• Ban Devi Community Forest User Group
• Pashu Pati Kailashpuri Community Forest User Group

Event organizer Suman Bhattarai was pleased with the contestant participation, audience commitment, and overall turnout for the event. He declared “Women on Conservation” a successful educational outreach endeavor.

Here’s to Women on Conservation!

All images courtesy of Suman Bhattarai, PARC/Nepal.

Not long ago, I wrote a post on argan oil and its many beauty benefits.  From anti-aging and antioxidant properties to hair and nail treatments, this oil is a wonder ingredient.  Safe and natural, light and hydrating, argan oil has many uses in the beauty world.  But the argan tree and its fruits have a long history with Moroccan women that goes beyond beauty.

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If you are a woman or love one (or several, whatever), I hope you will consider carefully how damaging the gun-toting Gov. and her ‘maverick’ boss could be to women’s rights and reproductive rights among other vital issues of course.

The next president will likely have to make a Supreme Court appointment.

And why should we care?
The next president will likely have the opportunity to appoint one possibly two Supreme Court justices. More than once in the last 8 years, the conservative right has attempted to stack the highest court with ‘pro life’ judges. If even one of the more left-leaning judges that is getting ready to retire is replaced by a conservative right-leaning judge who is inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade, there are many States waiting in the wings with ‘trigger’ laws just waiting to make abortion illegal. This is only one aspect of why the next president and their potential to appoint a Supreme Court justice is critical.

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Despite the fact that women living in poverty are the most threatened by the dangers that stem from global warming, they also key actors in ensuring their communities’ ability to cope with and adapt to climate change.

In general, women lives are more intimitately connected to the environment more than men. Oftentimes, men tend to be away in the cities while the women look after children and work on the land in rural areas.

Many women depend on the ecosystem for food, energy, water and medicine, the very ecosystem which is threatened by the specter of climate change.

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Ask Iowa farmer, Denise O’Brien. But she’s not trying to teach the old farm dogs new math – she’s advocating for women to organize and reinvent the system.

For the past twenty years, O’Brien has led the charge of organizing and promoting the voice and face of women in agriculture and is founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network. “Finally, the tides are starting to turn for women farmers as policies just start to change,” explains O’Brien. “But it should have happened a long time ago and there’s still much we as women, from growers to grocery shoppers, can do to create a healthy food system for future generations.”

O’Brien racks up a history of seeing opportunity in crisis.

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The farmer takes a wife,
The farmer takes a wife,
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The farmer takes a wife.

Talk about stale lyrics in dire need of an update. As women make up the largest and fastest growing group buying new farms today, we should be teaching kids something more like:

“The wife took over the farm.
To the land she did no harm,
Hi-ho, times change, you know, These chicks can really grow.”

Consider Iowa farmer, Denise O’Brien, chief song lyric rewriter and female farmer stereotype smasher extraordinaire. For the past twenty years she has led the charge of organizing and promoting the voice and face of women in agriculture and is founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network. “Finally, the tides are starting to turn for women farmers as policies start to change,” explains O’Brien. “But it should have happened a long time ago and there’s still much we as women, from growers to grocery shoppers, can do to create a healthy food system for future generations.”

O’Brien racks up a history of seeing opportunity in crisis.

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Why would women need to gather to discuss the topic of water?

• Pastoral women wake up at pre-dawn hours to walk great distances in order to collect water and relieve themselves. By midday they must walk out into the desert at a greater distance to avoid being seen, often returning ashamed and sometimes soiled.
• Water privatization makes water inaccessible to most because it raises prices. Male water vendors dominate the communal water points, so women have to wait in long lines. Women get beaten if it takes too long to return home, accused by the husbands that they are cheating on them.
• Desperate women exchange sex for water to avoid the line.

Every single women agreed, and took for granted, that water is their responsibility and that it’s a problem.

The AWWC, held in Kenya, was comprised of 30 women from all over Africa. These women were eager to learn and share with their communities. The five-day schedule was packed, going well into the evening. Between activities women broke into song and dance. They learned how to implement new technologies, write business plans, test water’s safety, and use the Peer Water Exchange collaborative model. The women were excited to join a global network and liked that the PWX application is standardized.

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When I began Eco Child’s Play over a year and a half ago, I pledged to make Kiva loans on behalf of our blog. After making several Kiva loans, I’ve decided it is time to donate to and highlight different organizations helping families and/or the environment around the world. This month, I have made a donation to Women for Women International on behalf of Eco Child’s Play.

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“Women farmers today are reinventing the face of organic agriculture,” explains Denise O’Brien, executive director of the Women in Food and Agriculture Network. “They’re focused on raising healthy food for their community and often sell their products through farmers’ markets or community supported agriculture initiatives.” Young women, such as Zoë Bradbury in Oregon, are ditching traditional career paths early on to go for their dreams of being a farmer and contributing to creating a local, healthy food system. Or these women may run diversified farm-based businesses, such as Marguerite Ramlow who runs Artha Sustainable Living Center from her farm in Wisconsin, conducting organic gardening, yoga, renewable energy and sustainable living workshops on-site.

Why this trend of women launching farm and food based businesses?

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As if cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing were not enough, the women of Santa Fe also lead a powerful organization, the Santa Fe Women’s Group, which fulfills many vital roles for the community. One of the group’s biggest projects has been producing biogas.

The Project

The Santa Fe Biogas project, in its initial stages, was simply a concern communicated in Women’s Group meetings: “How can we avoid buying expensive tanks of gas and inhaling smoke in the kitchen?”

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Can women make the world a greener and a better place with their purses? Diane MacEachern believes they do and she wrote a great book Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power To Create a Cleaner, Greener World, which is a call-to-action for women to use their power as buyers (women spend 85 percent of every dollar in the marketplace) to make a difference.

MacEachern’s message is simple but revolutionary: if women harness the “power of their purse” and intentionally shift their spending money to commodities that have the greatest environmental benefit, they can create a cleaner, greener world.

We covered the book few weeks ago, and since I was fascinated with the simple but yet powerful message of the book, I wanted to learn a little bit more about it from the author itself and interviewed Diane MacEachern. I know that not all of you see green consumerism as the best way to fight global warming and achieve sustainability, but Diane makes a very good case here in explaining how realistic and powerful option it is. you are welcome to read and judge for yourself. The book was published last Thursday, February 28.

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There are many benefits of exercise during pregnancy, including improved physical conditioning, strength, flexibility, and stamina. It builds endurance for labor and delivery and a quicker postnatal recovery. By exercising regularly, you may be able to reduce some of the common discomforts of pregnancy such as backache, swelling, and constipation. Most of all, you feel great about yourself when you exercise.

How Exercise Can Help More Than Medication

Let’s take a look at the effects of exercise versus medications for two of the most important complications of pregnancy.

Gestational Diabetes

As many as one in eight women will develop gestational diabetes sometime during their pregnancies, increasing health risks for themselves and their babies. Researchers at the University of Southern California School of Medicine studied a group of women who had already developed gestational diabetes and who had fasting blood glucose levels high enough to require insulin. Half of the women in the study received the recommended insulin. The other half got personal trainers instead. The trainers supervised the women while they did simple twenty-minute stints on exercise bikes. The results were startling: moderate aerobic exercise was equally effective to insulin! Blood glucose levels were statistically the same in both groups.

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The N-WEG, an NGO organization, welcomes abused women to their shelter, where they harness their native knitting and spinning skills to “rebuild their lives, while continuing to care for their children. Proceeds provide a safe shelter, health care, education and the dignity of financial independence.”

Woven from the yarn of old saris and sarongs, Mango Moon yarns comes in an infinite concoction of colorways.

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If having a gift-free holiday is not something your family would go for, why not get them something sustainable? Just by looking through the eco-links collection on my website, one can easily see that there are cornucopia of green stores to choose from. For the next two months, I’ll be featuring some of the freshest shopping destinations the world wide web has to offer, helping you get to the bottom of that twice-checked list faster than ever.

Trying to decide who to feature in my first Green Shopping Spotlight was a darn tough decision, but the answer came to me in a snap, or an e-mail as it were. Two days ago, I got a delightful message from Jennifer, half of the two-woman team that started Max and Zane, the other half being April. I’d never heard of the online outlet before so I quickly clicked on over to see what the scoop was, and boy (or girl, haha) was I in for a treat!

Handmade, vintage, recycled, repurposed — Max and Zane has it all. We’re not just talking accessories and t-shirts either — paper goods, bath & body, kid & baby, men, women and special gift lists are full of unique items that I haven’t seen on any other sites. "Max and Zane was born out of a love for all things extraordinary and the knowledge that not everyone has the time or the patience to seek them out."

While the goods sold on Max and Zane are green, does the rest of the business operate under the same principles? You bet! "Not only do we have a love for vintage and repurposed goods, but we use recycled office supplies and support eco-friendly companies whenever humanly possible. Your purchases from Max and Zane will most likely arrive at your door in recycled cardboard boxes with reused packaging … we figure, if we can provide secure shipping in materials that are reused, why waste valuable resources?"

Need a simple gift for a co-worker? Shopping for a relative that is "difficult" to pinpoint? Ready to start putting slash marks on your holiday list? Click on over to Max and Zane — you won’t be disappointed.

Translation: “Open Women Festival Song Competition: Women on Conservation - Welcome”

The banner welcomes contestants and audience members, and prominently features Nepal’s flagship animal: The Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros.

A teacher from the local community presents his conservation-related poem.

In addition to the Chitwan Buffer Zone groups and villages, local individuals and community-based organizations were encouraged to participate in the “Women on Conservation” festivities.

Lively performances were enhanced by festive attire.

Local community leaders were in attendance, and appealed to audience members to join them in supporting conservation issues. President of Friendship Chitwan, Koshraj Dallakoti chaired the event. The jury committee was chaired by Suman Bhattarai, Team Leader of Partnership for Rhino Conservation.

For Teej, red is considered auspicious and fabric stores stock up well in advance!

In the past, Teej included traditions such as arranged marriages for girls as young as five years old. But in these modern times, women of Chitwan celebrate Teej by singing conservation songs to mark the importance of protecting wildlife in their local areas.

Local children showed off their theatrical talents for an audience of over 800 people.

Suman Bhattarai, Team Leader of Partnership for Rhino Conservation, believes that children are the future of natural resource conservation and management. Sustainable conservation and management of wildlife can be expected only if this new generation embraces conservation.

A group of Korean ladies joined the festivities on stage.

“Women on Conservation” turned out to be an international event: People from outside Nepal arrived to enjoy the performances and support Chitwan Buffer Zone conservation efforts.

First place winner Jaya Manakama Youth Club!

Second place went to Parewashwori Community Forest User Group, and third to Surdevi Youth Club.

In all, there were seven participant groups:

• Hands for Conservation
• Surdevi Youth Club
• Parewashwori Community Forest User Group
• Jaya Manakamana Youth Club
• Parewashwori Dugdha Utpadak
• Ban Devi Community Forest User Group
• Pashu Pati Kailashpuri Community Forest User Group

Event organizer Suman Bhattarai was pleased with the contestant participation, audience commitment, and overall turnout for the event. He declared “Women on Conservation” a successful educational outreach endeavor.

Here’s to Women on Conservation!

All images courtesy of Suman Bhattarai, PARC/Nepal.