Posts tagged ‘organic’
Talking Fruit and Knowing What You Really Get?!
How to de-code the information on those little stickers
While unpacking groceries, you pull out the bag of apples and decide to eat one then and there. You take it over to the sink, wash it off and — with some effort — peel off the little sticker. Pausing to look more closely at the sticker you wonder, “What do those numbers mean?”
As much as we may dislike them, the stickers or labels attached to fruit do more than speed up the scanning process at the checkout stand. The PLU code, or price lookup number printed on the sticker, tells you how the fruit was grown.
As reported by Maria Gallagher, in the June 26, 2002 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, by reading the PLU code, you can tell if the fruit was genetically modified, organically grown or produced with chemical fertilizers, fungicides, or herbicides.
Here’s how it works:
For conventionally grown fruit, (grown with chemicals inputs), the PLU code on the sticker consists of four numbers. Organically grown fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 9. Genetically engineered (GM) fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 8. For example,
The numeric system was developed by the Produce Electronic Identification Board, an affiliate of the Produce Marketing Association, a Newark, Delaware-based trade group for the produce industry. As of October 2001, the board had assigned more than 1,200 PLUs for individual produce items.
Incidentally, the adhesive used to attach the stickers is considered food-grade, but the stickers themselves aren’t edible.
Do you REALLY know what’s in your dinner?
By Marion Owen, Fearless Weeder for PlanTea, Inc. and
Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul
February 3, 2012 at 3:40 am holisticgesundheit Leave a comment
Making Your Own All Purpose Household Cleaner
Hello all you green and conscientious people out there!
Today I came across a real cool video from a website called notacoolmom.com.
For the last several years now I have severely downsized my use of chemicals around the house for cleaning purposes. But I still ended up buying the “organic” and green version of an all purpose cleanser because I did not really know what goes inside that bottle.
Coming across this little video made me realize that it is not that difficult to experiment with a home made concoction. Also making your own all purpose household cleanser saves money
and plastic packaging over time.
Real essential oil of lavender smells better than the commercial products too! I personally will try mine with pine essential oil and maybe a little eucalyptus oil? Let me know once you found a good smelling version for yourself!
Gesundheit,
Angela
August 15, 2011 at 5:19 am holisticgesundheit Leave a comment
Revitalizing Your Life (and your colon) Through Food – Raw Green Vegetable Soup
Here is a recipe I got from my teacher Patricia Cramer last year –
I made it several times in different variations, depending what I did have on hand at home.
The summer is the perfect time for light, cool, refreshing meals. A raw soup, which is completely uncooked, is extraordinarily nutritious and easy to make in your blender. It’s very important to include raw vegetables in your daily diet as they still have all of their natural enzymes and nutrients intact. Heating destroys some of these compounds. I also urge you to buy organic when you can. Your exposure to pesticides will be much greater if you’re eating a lot of non-organic produce.
RAW Green Soup
1/2 cucumber (with unwaxed peel)
1/2 to whole avocado
2-3 tablespoons miso (wheatless better) or pink sea salt or salt
1 whole lemon peeled and deseeded
Greens to fill the blender:
3-4 Kales peeled from stem
hand full of parsely or cilantro or dandelion greens, or whatever combo you like
ie…beet greens, chard, etc….
1 garlic cube (optional)
2-3 mint sprigs
Blend the heck out of it so that there is only heaven
GUTEN APPETIT!
holisticgesundheit.com 