FitSugar

Book Review: Core Performance Women

FitSugar — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:00:29 -0800

After dealing with a back injury, I was drawn to Pilates - it was the only thing that lessened the pain. Why? Because it was all about creating core strength. So of course the title Core Performance Women ($32.50) piqued my curiosity. Written by trainer Mark Verstegen and journalist Pete Williams, the book is much more than a fitness regimen. A little over a third of the book is dedicated to diet and nutrition. Verstegen, who has trained the likes of soccer star Mia Hamm and NFL quarterback Brett Favre, states early in the book, "The nutrients you decide to eat and the delivery form that you choose to eat them in will directly affect the way you think, feel, and act." Food fuels your everyday life, not just your workout. The Core Performance eating philosophy is a non-diet; it's not about deprivation, but "proper fuel for a hectic life." In fact, Verstegen even refers to meals as fueling times. He also offers simple-to-follow rules for eating, like focusing on lean protein and unprocessed carbs.

To hear about the fitness section of the Core Performance, read more.

While I can talk about food for hours, the movement section of the book got me seriously fired up - there's an entire section on foam rollers. The workouts consist of "pillar prep," which is essentially core work and variations on planks and bridges, followed by movement prep (lunges of all sorts and more) to warm up the body for strength and power training with dumbbells and cables. The strength training exercises build on the movement prep exercises by either adding weights to the exercise or by complicating the movement pattern. The book even contains a section on trigger-point self-massage with tennis balls, a great way to fend off overuse injury. There is even a section on what to massage when you have pain in different body parts - low back, knee, hip, etc. It's a weekend warrior's guide to incorporating fitness into the workweek.

If one of your New Year's resolutions was to train for a race or get back in shape, I suggest you invest in this book. It is a thoughtful eating and training regimen to help you obtain your goals and avoid injury. You can find the book on Amazon for $11 off the cover price.

Book Review: Core Performance Women

FitSugar — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:00:29 -0800

To hear about the fitness section of the Core Performance, read more.

Happy New Year!!!

MireMolnar — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:07:20 -0800

From www.nonprofitshoppingmall.com
As I get older it seems that the holidays come faster and faster each year. When you have children it’s almost like there is never a break from holidays. Once the New Year begins I hardly have enough time to breath before it’s time to start planning birthday parties and designing new Halloween costumes. I can’t complain though, I love my job as a mother and I am as close as it gets to being a hip Martha Stewart to the 30 something’s. Although, I prefer to identify myself as June Cleaver with an edge. My point is, it gets more difficult each year to find time for resolutions when there are so many other obligations on the table. Most of us tend to make resolutions that focus on common issues like weight loss, quitting smoking or drinking, and securing our financial futures. Let’s be honest though, how many of us actually stick to these promises? At best we survive on ambition alone for a couple of weeks after New Year’s Eve, but eventually the majority of us become so overwhelmed with daily life that we quickly fall back into old patterns. It is no secret that these common resolutions are notoriously ridden by failure. It’s not always our own fault. So many factors weigh heavily on the success of weight loss, and improving our health, and sometimes we may have to tap our life savings when a failing economy hits us below the belt. After so many years of falling off the resolution wagon myself I decided to change my thinking. Rather than making myself empty promises of fitting into the jeans I loved so much in high school or putting away enough money to finally travel abroad, I chose to set goals that are not only easy to fulfill but also provide eternal enrichment for my soul.
It all began in 2001 when my daughter was only 1 year old. I wasn’t getting any closer to losing that baby weight and my wallet was surely getting thinner as I purchased a thousand diapers a day. I had quit smoking, but a glass of red wine was a bedtime staple. I took a moment to think about the things I missed the most, the things that used to bring me peace but that I could no longer find the time to enjoy. What was it that I could resolve to bring back to my life without killing myself trying to obtain it? After racking my brain for a bit it hit me….READ A BOOK! Yes, that was it. If I could just read everyday even it I only had 10 minutes to do it, I would be so much happier. And what does happiness bring? Well, happiness creates more endorphins in my brain. Endorphins give me energy and ambition. That energy and ambition gives me the strength to be healthy minded. A healthy mind encourages me to take better care of myself. When I take better care of myself I lose weight. Weight loss helps me save money because rather than buying new clothes I can pull out those skinny jeans. I love the way I feel in those jeans so I strut around with pride and confidence and the confidence clears up all the clutter in my head and helps me to get out into the world and share my contagious joy. With all that joy my body feels so great that my desire to smoke or drink is almost non-existent. So you see, a small resolution that is easy to keep can have a profound effect on your entire life. It’s been 9 years since I resolved to simply pick up a book and since then I have read every single day without fail. The moment I finish one book I already have another one right next to me to begin. I have lost 50 pounds and I occasionally have a drink on the weekends. Before I made that change in my life I was a young mother that couldn’t even chase my daughter around the yard without being in pain, now my daughter can’t keep up with me. You wanna know something else that happens when you succeed at your personal goals and feel happiness? You feel a desire to help other people as well, because you have that extra joy to spread around. When you get to that place in your soul where you have the ability to help others it’s sometimes hard to decide where to start, so I have a few suggestions for you. There are thousands of foundations out there to support but I chose a handful to share with you that are near and dear to my heart.

RAINN: The nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization. One of “America’s 100 Best Charities” -Worth Magazine
RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline, and publicizes the hotline’s free, confidential services; educates the public about sexual assault; and leads national efforts to prevent sexual assault, improve services to victims and ensure that rapists are brought to justice. In 2007, RAINN expanded its hotline services with the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline, the nation’s first secure web-based hotline that provides live and completely confidential help to victims through an interface as intuitive as instant messaging. RAINN uses its community partnerships to put critical information into the hands of young women and men at concerts, on campus and in communities. Through these efforts, RAINN educates more than 120 million Americans each year about sexual assault. And that is just a small taste of what RAINN does for the world.

Founded by its member charities in 1988, EarthShare is an opportunity for caring employees and workplaces to support hundreds of environmental charities through workplace giving campaigns. A workplace giving campaign is an annual, employer-sponsored program that lets employees contribute a few dollars per paycheck as their charitable donation. Today EarthShare represents 71 national organizations and hundreds of local groups in 19 states. EarthShare’s member charities work hard every day to safeguard your health, our quality of life and the natural resources we depend on. All of these efforts are supported by EarthShare’s mission: To engage individuals and organizations in creating a healthy and sustainable environment. But you don’t have to be an employee to help Earthshare’s efforts. You can help by simply contributing through your everyday online purchases. You can feel good about your decision to give through EarthShare. EarthShare practices financial transparency and earned the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance Accredited Charity ranking.

Do Something believes that you have the power to make a difference. It is their aim to inspire, support and celebrate a generation of doers: people who see the need to do something, believe in their ability to get it done, and then take action. At DoSomething.org they provide the tools and resources for you to convert your ideas and energy into positive action and to be part of a generation of doers. At Do Something they have five guidelines that they live by:

Believe in teenagers. Teenagers can lead today. We don’t require adults.
Trust teenagers. They provide reliable, easy to access information and activation strategies, but teens decide for themselves what to do.
Celebrate teenagers. They think all measurable contributions from teens are valuable.
Respect teenagers. They understand that teenagers have diverse abilities and constraints.
Value teenagers. Their programs and products are free. They’re not after teens’ money; they want their passion, time and creativity.

With guidelines like that it’s hard not to give kudo’s and contributions to such a fantastic organization.

This simple guiding principle is one of the reasons why TakingItGlobal been successful in enabling youth leaders. How this blueprint is achieved differs for everyone, but they all emerge from this process with the same results. Inspiration from a global community of their peers builds self-confidence. Information provided by tools and resources accelerates their transformation into better agents of change. Involvement through opportunities enables their capacity as active citizens.
Their vision: Youth everywhere actively engaged and connected in shaping a more inclusive, peaceful and sustainable world. Their mission: To enable a collaborative learning community which provides youth with access to global opportunities, cross-cultural connections and meaningful participation in decision-making.
If you’ve been on this planet long enough I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “the children are our future” and it couldn’t be more true or relevant than it is today. Let’s face it folks, we have a pretty grim future unless we inspire and nurture our children on a global scale. TakingItGlobal is an excellent resource to help you get started.

Their mission is simple but their impact is profound: To save children’s lives and protect people’s health by increasing access to immunization in poor countries. How do they do this? A few ways is through their innovative partnership, funding and technologies. Launched in 2000, the GAVI Alliance is a global health partnership representing stakeholders in immunization from both private and public sectors: developing world and donor governments, private sector philanthropists such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the financial community, developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers, research and technical institutes, civil society organizations and multilateral organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank. By working together, Alliance members achieve objectives, that no single agency or group could achieve:
-Accelerate access to existing underused vaccines; -Strengthen health and immunization systems in countries; -Introduce innovative new immunization technology, including vaccines.
This prevents millions of deaths worldwide and contributes to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal for child health.
You might be asking what you can do to contribute to one or all of these incredible foundations. I have a very simple solution for you that will tie into some of those personal resolutions you have for yourself. It all starts with basic online purchases by using NonProfitShoppingMall as your resource for some of the best retailers in the world. Each and every purchase you make will contribute a percentage of your final sale to the non-profit organization of your choice. For Instance, let’s say you’ve made a promise to yourself to relax more this coming year, or perhaps you’d like to take a trip. There are 2 great retailers out there to help you succeed. Pick up some pajamas from BedHead Pajamas and settle down with that DVD you keep meaning to set aside time for. Or how about purchasing some airline tickets from Expedia.com for that unforgettable trip you’ve always dreamed of. Another great resolution is to boost your ego with a fabulous new wardrobe from Roots.com. Roots has some of the cutest jackets and sweaters for the whole family to keep you warm all winter. One of the most common and difficult resolutions is to be healthier. Whether you want to shed those holiday pounds or have an even bigger health goal at hand, Drugstore.com is the place to purchase all of your nutritional supplements as well as goodies such as a neck & shoulder massager to help you relax. By purchasing from these retailers online you have the ability to help organizations all over the world. This brings me back to my original point….help yourself and you will have the power and the desire to help others. IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE. To each and every one of you, I wish you a beautifully enriching new year.

Happy New Year!!!

MireMolnar — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:05:28 -0800

As I get older it seems that the holidays come faster and faster each year. When you have children it’s almost like there is never a break from holidays. Once the New Year begins I hardly have enough time to breath before it’s time to start planning birthday parties and designing new Halloween costumes. I can’t complain though, I love my job as a mother and I am as close as it gets to being a hip Martha Stewart to the 30 something’s. Although, I prefer to identify myself as June Cleaver with an edge. My point is, it gets more difficult each year to find time for resolutions when there are so many other obligations on the table. Most of us tend to make resolutions that focus on common issues like weight loss, quitting smoking or drinking, and securing our financial futures. Let’s be honest though, how many of us actually stick to these promises? At best we survive on ambition alone for a couple of weeks after New Year’s Eve, but eventually the majority of us become so overwhelmed with daily life that we quickly fall back into old patterns. It is no secret that these common resolutions are notoriously ridden by failure. It’s not always our own fault. So many factors weigh heavily on the success of weight loss, and improving our health, and sometimes we may have to tap our life savings when a failing economy hits us below the belt. After so many years of falling off the resolution wagon myself I decided to change my thinking. Rather than making myself empty promises of fitting into the jeans I loved so much in high school or putting away enough money to finally travel abroad, I chose to set goals that are not only easy to fulfill but also provide eternal enrichment for my soul.
It all began in 2001 when my daughter was only 1 year old. I wasn’t getting any closer to losing that baby weight and my wallet was surely getting thinner as I purchased a thousand diapers a day. I had quit smoking, but a glass of red wine was a bedtime staple. I took a moment to think about the things I missed the most, the things that used to bring me peace but that I could no longer find the time to enjoy. What was it that I could resolve to bring back to my life without killing myself trying to obtain it? After racking my brain for a bit it hit me….READ A BOOK! Yes, that was it. If I could just read everyday even it I only had 10 minutes to do it, I would be so much happier. And what does happiness bring? Well, happiness creates more endorphins in my brain. Endorphins give me energy and ambition. That energy and ambition gives me the strength to be healthy minded. A healthy mind encourages me to take better care of myself. When I take better care of myself I lose weight. Weight loss helps me save money because rather than buying new clothes I can pull out those skinny jeans. I love the way I feel in those jeans so I strut around with pride and confidence and the confidence clears up all the clutter in my head and helps me to get out into the world and share my contagious joy. With all that joy my body feels so great that my desire to smoke or drink is almost non-existent. So you see, a small resolution that is easy to keep can have a profound effect on your entire life. It’s been 9 years since I resolved to simply pick up a book and since then I have read every single day without fail. The moment I finish one book I already have another one right next to me to begin. I have lost 50 pounds and I occasionally have a drink on the weekends. Before I made that change in my life I was a young mother that couldn’t even chase my daughter around the yard without being in pain, now my daughter can’t keep up with me. You wanna know something else that happens when you succeed at your personal goals and feel happiness? You feel a desire to help other people as well, because you have that extra joy to spread around. When you get to that place in your soul where you have the ability to help others it’s sometimes hard to decide where to start, so I have a few suggestions for you. There are thousands of foundations out there to support but I chose a handful to share with you that are near and dear to my heart.

RAINN: The nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization. One of “America’s 100 Best Charities” -Worth Magazine
RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline, and publicizes the hotline’s free, confidential services; educates the public about sexual assault; and leads national efforts to prevent sexual assault, improve services to victims and ensure that rapists are brought to justice. In 2007, RAINN expanded its hotline services with the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline, the nation’s first secure web-based hotline that provides live and completely confidential help to victims through an interface as intuitive as instant messaging. RAINN uses its community partnerships to put critical information into the hands of young women and men at concerts, on campus and in communities. Through these efforts, RAINN educates more than 120 million Americans each year about sexual assault. And that is just a small taste of what RAINN does for the world.

Founded by its member charities in 1988, EarthShare is an opportunity for caring employees and workplaces to support hundreds of environmental charities through workplace giving campaigns. A workplace giving campaign is an annual, employer-sponsored program that lets employees contribute a few dollars per paycheck as their charitable donation. Today EarthShare represents 71 national organizations and hundreds of local groups in 19 states. EarthShare’s member charities work hard every day to safeguard your health, our quality of life and the natural resources we depend on. All of these efforts are supported by EarthShare’s mission: To engage individuals and organizations in creating a healthy and sustainable environment. But you don’t have to be an employee to help Earthshare’s efforts. You can help by simply contributing through your everyday online purchases. You can feel good about your decision to give through EarthShare. EarthShare practices financial transparency and earned the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance Accredited Charity ranking.

Do Something believes that you have the power to make a difference. It is their aim to inspire, support and celebrate a generation of doers: people who see the need to do something, believe in their ability to get it done, and then take action. At DoSomething.org they provide the tools and resources for you to convert your ideas and energy into positive action and to be part of a generation of doers. At Do Something they have five guidelines that they live by:

Believe in teenagers. Teenagers can lead today. We don’t require adults.
Trust teenagers. They provide reliable, easy to access information and activation strategies, but teens decide for themselves what to do.
Celebrate teenagers. They think all measurable contributions from teens are valuable.
Respect teenagers. They understand that teenagers have diverse abilities and constraints.
Value teenagers. Their programs and products are free. They’re not after teens’ money; they want their passion, time and creativity.

Eating Better Than Organic

supermommie — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:51:39 -0700

Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple (which was labeled conventional, since that sounds better than "sprayed with pesticides that might kill you"). It shouldn't have been a tough choice--who wants to eat pesticide residue?--but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I've been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support--the one who rejected pesticides in California or the one who was, in some romantic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn't the apple's taste suffer after the fruit was crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?

In the end I bought both apples. (They were both good, although the California one had a mealy bit, possibly from its journey.) It's only recently that I had noticed more locally grown products in the supermarket, but when I got home I discovered that the organic-vs.-local debate has become one of the liveliest in the food world. Last year Wal-Mart began offering more organic products--those grown without pesticides, antibiotics, irradiation and so on--and the big company's expansion into a once alternative food culture has been a source of deep concern, and predictable backlash, among early organic adopters.

Nearly a quarter of American shoppers now buy organic products once a week, up from 17% in 2000. But for food purists, "local" is the new "organic," the new ideal that promises healthier bodies and a healthier planet. Many chefs, food writers and politically minded eaters are outraged that "Big Organic" firms now use the same industrial-size farming and long-distance-shipping methods as conventional agribusiness. "Should I assume that I have a God-given right to access the entire earth's bounty, however far away some of its produce is grown?" asks ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2002 memoir, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Nabhan predicted my apple problem when he vacillated over some organic pumpkin canned hundreds of miles from his Arizona home. "If you send it halfway around the world before it is eaten," he mused, "an organic food still may be 'good' for the consumer, but is it 'good' for the food system?"

I had never really thought about how my food purchases might affect "the food system." Even now I don't share the pessimism and asceticism of the local-eating set. In her 2001 memoir, This Organic Life, Columbia University nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow writes that her commitment to eating locally "is probably driven by three things. The first is the taste of live food; the second is my relation to frugality; the third is my deep concern about the state of the planet." I don't have much relation to frugality, and, perhaps foolishly, I'm more optimistic than Gussow about our ability to develop alternative energy sources.

But I care deeply about how my food tastes, and it makes sense that a snow pea grown by a local farmer and never refrigerated will retain more of its delicate leguminous flavor than one shipped in a frigid plane from Guatemala. And I realized that if more consumers didn't become part of the local-food market, it could disappear and all our peas would be those tasteless little pods from far away.

Still, the fact that not all locally grown products are organic had me worried. Even if most Americans wanted to buy locally grown organics, they wouldn't be able to find many. In a few not-too-dry, not-too-wet, not-too-warm regions--central California is one--it is possible to find abundant organic produce grown locally. But if you live in a humid climate, say, the moisture that encourages bacteria and fungi means that growing without pesticides is much more risky, expensive and rare. Consequently, in the Hudson Valley of New York, near me, it's very difficult to find fruit that hasn't been sprayed with chemicals at least once. In other regions, like the upper Midwest, most big farms don't grow any vegetables for local markets, conventional or organic. Instead, they produce commodity crops like corn and soybeans for sale to food processors. At a large Hugo's grocery store in Jamestown, N.D., last summer, I noticed only one local product: flour, which is milled in-state from local wheat. But there were organic apples and oranges from out of state.

Farmers' markets often feature organic produce from nearby farms, but not everyone lives near a farmers' market--and most products at the markets aren't organic. "I've been to farmers' markets, and there's people hauling stuff from the truck that they got at a wholesaler," says Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards. Mendelson prefers the "gold standard" of locally grown organics, but he is rather frightening on the subject of nonorganic food, whatever its origin. When I asked him whether I should favor local products, he replied, "I don't know what local means. Do they use local pesticides? Does that mean the food is better because they produce local cancers?"

All of which further tangles my original question: The organic apple or the conventionally grown local one?

It turns out to be a frustratingly layered choice, one that implicates many other questions: What's the most efficient way to grow food for all? Should farms be big or small, family- or corporate-run? How do your choices affect the planet? What tastes better? And then there's that little matter of cancer.

Let's get that one out of the way at the start. If scientists could conclusively prove that agricultural chemicals are harmful, we would all go organic. But it's not clear, for instance, that the low levels of pesticide typically found on conventional produce cause cancer. The risks of long-term exposure to those residues are still undetermined.

Even if conventional foods don't turn out to be as dangerous as organic advocates claim, several recent studies have suggested that organic foods contain higher levels of vitamins than their conventionally grown counterparts. In a paper published in October in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a team from the University of California, Davis, demonstrates that organically grown tomatoes have significantly more vitamin C than conventional tomatoes. Even so, the same study shows no significant differences between conventional and organic bell peppers.

"We're just beginning to understand these relationships," says U.C. Davis food chemist Alyson Mitchell, one of the paper's authors. "We understand, and have understood for a long time, that there is some relation between soil health and plant quality, but we still don't have a solid scientific database to link this to nutrition."

Organic adherents take it on faith that the way food is grown affects its nutritional quality. But advocates of local eating are now making another leap, saying what happens after harvest--how food is shipped and handled--is perhaps even more important than how it was grown. Locavores.com a site popular among local purists, asserts that "because locally grown produce is freshest, it is more nutritionally complete." But Mitchell says she knows of no studies that prove this.

In short, science can't tell you what to eat for dinner. Many of us end up relying on the government to keep food safe, or we just don't think about it. For those who do start to think--nervous new parents, say, or McDonald's burnouts--there are more alternative grocers than ever. There are online purveyors of gourmet health foods (pricey), the old food co-ops (too political for me), and of course those farmers' markets, which--in spite of basic limitations like not being open every day--have grown larger and more sophisticated. (According to Samuel Fromartz's valuable 2006 history Organic Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew, there were 3,706 U.S. farmers' markets in 2004, double the number there were a decade earlier.)

But for the past few years, the easiest answer for food-baffled Americans has been a single company: Whole Foods Market.

Whole Foods now has 190 locations from Tigard, Ore., to Notting Hill in London. In fiscal 2006 the chain's sales grew 19% (to $5.6 billion), a bit lower than 2005's 22% growth. Fretful about increasing competition from mainstream grocers who are offering more organic products, investors have punished Whole Foods in the past year; its stock price has fallen more than a third since February 2006.

Still, Whole Foods is expanding rapidly. It recently said it would acquire Wild Oats Markets Inc.; the merger would give Whole Foods an additional 112 locations in North America. Already, many Americans have come to see Whole Foods as the repository of both their dietary hopes and fears--the place we can buy not only organic arugula but a decadent chocolate bar too. I have shopped at Whole Foods off and on since 1990, when I had a summer job in Austin, Texas, where Whole Foods began in 1980. If I was going to decide whether to buy organic or buy local, I figured Whole Foods' ceo, John Mackey, could help me. After all, he is vegan, and his politics lean libertarian, so he thinks hard about different paths. And he has made a great fortune by joining two previously antagonistic alimentary impulses--health and excess.

When we spoke last fall, Mackey was at first diplomatic about the organic-local choice. He told me that when he can't get locally grown organics--and even he can't reliably get them--he decides on the basis of taste. "I would probably purchase a local nonorganic tomato before I would purchase an organic one that was shipped from California," he said. He called the two tomatoes "an environmental wash," since the California one had petroleum miles on it while the nonorganic one was grown with pesticides. "But the local tomato from outside Austin will be fresher, will just taste better," he said.

However, he also noted that products like hard squash that can last months in storage don't taste so different for being shipped. In that case, he said, "I might purchase the organic version from California." Mackey acknowledged that organic agriculture is "flawed"; he criticized organic-milk farms where cows are pumped with feed in factory settings just like conventional-milk cows. But he also bristled at criticism from local activists. He noted that just because a farm is near your home doesn't mean it practices sustainable farming. "There's an assumption that small is beautiful and big is industrial, and that's not necessarily the case," he said. Whole Foods could not keep growing without supplies from large international farms, which is one reason the organic-vs.-local debate is a delicate issue for Mackey.

At least at my Whole Foods--the one in Manhattan's Union Square, where I shop once or twice a month--most of the available produce comes from California or some other distant land, even during the local growing season. Like all other Whole Foods locations, the store began to push local products more aggressively last summer. A placard was posted above the escalator exhorting customers to BUY LOCAL, and all the cash registers were changed to show photos of area farmers.

These days, in the final weeks of winter, it would be unfair to ask Whole Foods to sell predominantly local produce at my store, because so little can be grown in the Northeast right now. But even during verdant summertime, the vast majority of products sold at my Whole Foods (fresh or otherwise) aren't from the Northeast. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the packages in which most Whole Foods groceries are sold say nothing about the food's origin. For instance, in the freezer section you can find Whole Foods' Whole Kitchen brand Breaded Eggplant Slices with Italian Herbs. The box tells you a wealth of information about the eggplant slices--that they contain wheat, dextrose and annatto (a dye); that they can be fried, baked or microwaved; that they have no trans fat; that they are "flavorful" and "versatile." But you don't learn where the eggplant comes from.

A Whole Foods spokeswoman told me the eggplant was grown in Florida, which is too bad because eggplant grows easily in the Northeast. But in the company's defense, very few customers care whether their food is local. Most who do, shop at farmers' markets. Also, there's not even a standard definition of what local means. To Nabhan, who inspired many local activists with Coming Home to Eat, it means eating within a 250-mile radius of his Arizona home. Many who blog at a site called eatlocalchallenge.com aim for a stricter "100-mile diet."

My favorite definition of local comes from Columbia's Gussow, a reporter for Time in the 1950s who went on to become a local-eating pioneer. For 25 years, Gussow has lectured on the environmental (and culinary) disadvantages of relying on a global food supply. Her most oft-quoted statistic is that shipping a strawberry from California to New York requires 435 calories of fossil fuel but provides the eater with only 5 calories of nutrition. In her memoir, Gussow offers this rather poetic meaning of local: "Within a day's leisurely drive of our homes. [This] distance is entirely arbitrary. But then, so was the decision made by others long ago that we ought to have produce from all around the world."

On his blog, Whole Foods' Mackey has used a radius of 200 miles to mean local. Measuring from my home, that includes not only much of New York State, New Jersey and Connecticut but also parts of seven other Northeastern states. Such a large food shed produces a great variety of fruits and vegetables, and Whole Foods has said it wants to increase its percentage of local produce. (Of the roughly $1 billion in produce the company sold last year, 16.4% came from local sources, up from 14.9% in 2005.) Last year Mackey announced a $10 million loan program for local farmers.

But Mackey also knows that most Americans will never eat a purely local diet. "One of the challenges of being a retailer is you don't want to offend people," Mackey told me. "Some customers want to eat apples year-round, and they're willing to pay more for a New Zealand apple." Finally, he offered a defense of the global food economy: "When I was a little boy--I'm 53 years old--being able to get oranges from Florida or produce from another state was a very big deal because the local-produce availability where I lived in Houston wasn't great. People back then didn't have nearly as diverse a diet as we do now, and you might also point out their life spans weren't as long."

That made me wonder if purely local eating was even possible--or healthy. Could I get everything I needed from the Northeast? What would I have to give up? For gustatory reasons, I long ago stopped eating out of season--I have no interest in those hard Canadian tomatoes my Whole Foods was selling in February. But would I have to forgo coffee? What would replace my breakfast cereal? How much would all this cost? I wasn't sure. So like everyone else, I went to Google.

I mean, I literally went to Google, to the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus.

I had read that one of Google's new cafeterias, Café 150, served only food originating within a 150-mile radius of Mountain View. I knew this radius included a glorious fund of farms, ranches and fisheries, the Salinas Valley food shed that Steinbeck made famous in East of Eden. I also knew that as one of the most successful companies of the era, Google could afford not only to pursue such a whimsical culinary ideal as total locality but also to do so in the form of a fine-dining restaurant. (Café 150 is one of 11 employee eateries on the Google campus, all of which famously charge nothing.)

Still, I wanted to see how Café 150's founding chef, Nate Keller, managed to serve more than 400 purely local meals a day. Most chefs simply place orders with suppliers. Good cooks understand that quality and origin are related because of the toll extracted by transportation, but in the end, if Emeril Lagasse wants to serve wild salmon one night, he can just order it from Alaska. Keller, who recently became the chef at another Google restaurant, couldn't do that. Although just a freckly 30-year-old, he had to plan his menus the way preindustrial cooks did, according to whatever local vendors offered that day.

"These guys have to be so flexible with their menus, it's unreal," said Café 150's fishmonger, Tim Zamborelli of Today's Catch in San Jose, Calif. "We have to find out what's coming in on that particular day and let them know so they can change." Café 150, which opened a year ago, can serve no shrimp or scallops, since they can't be found in the area, and tuna was available only from August through October, when currents brought bluefins into the radius. The day I visited, Keller hadn't learned what vegetable he would be serving until the night before. (He got baby red chard.)

It's a radically new way of thinking about cooking because it's so very old. But I was surprised to learn that Café 150 was the brainchild not of some anticorporate artisan but of John Dickman, 51, Google's food-service manager. Dickman not only worked for 14 years at the food giant Marriott--he even trained flight attendants to cook plane food. I was curious how he had created such a radical restaurant.

Dickman says he was inspired by chef Ann Cooper, whose 2000 book, Bitter Harvest, is well described by its subtitle: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It. Cooper, who now runs the acclaimed meal program of the Berkeley, Calif., public schools, writes passionately against industrialized farms that "inhabit a flattened landscape dotted not with trees, farmhouses [and] animals ... but with huge motorized vehicles." After meeting her, Dickman began to go to farmers' markets.

When Dickman arrived at Google in 2004, he says, "organic was the cool thing," and the company's chefs were buying organic whenever they could--even if that meant flying in Chilean nectarines. Dickman worked with the team to write new standards that place local before organic for all Google eateries. "You're using X amount of jet fuel to get it here, and that doesn't make sense," he says. "So forget the nectarines. Buy something local. Get some plums." Of course, this doesn't work in, say, Dublin, where Dickman also helped set up a Google café. ("Everything is flown in there," he said.) When I asked if he thought a restaurant as strictly local as Café 150 would be possible anywhere outside central California, he answered, glumly, "Probably not."

But others are trying. Restaurants from Cinque Terre in Portland, Maine, to Mozza in Los Angeles are run by cooks who strive always to find local products first. Some chefs are not only buying locally but actually growing the food. The two Blue Hill restaurants in New York--one in Manhattan and the other in Pocantico Hills--buy less than 20% of their ingredients from outside the New York region, according to chef Dan Barber. Much of both restaurants' food (including all the chicken and pork) is raised on about 20 acres next to the Pocantico Hills location. In the 31/2 years since the farm was launched, Barber has become one of the nation's most eloquent pro-local spokesmen, not least because he makes local eating profitable (and delicious--his restaurants win raves). But his commitment to locality means that Barber can't always serve beef, since the quality and availability of steers in the Northeast are uneven.

Café 150 has access to local beef from Bassian Farms in San Jose, Calif., but the restaurant can't obtain everything it needs from the valley. Take salt. "There are salt flats a quarter-mile that way," said Keller, pointing to the horizon, "but they're for industrial purposes." So he buys salt "off the truck," from a food-service deliverer.

Still, apart from such staples, Café 150 is living up to its name. It never serves tropical fruits, and it has planted lemon and lime trees just outside to ensure local citrus. The restaurant grows many of its own herbs and makes its own ketchup. And last fall Café 150 jarred tomatoes and fruit so that even though it's March, Googlers can get a taste of the local harvest every day. Imagine that: a company as ostentatiously hip as Google canning fruit in its kitchens.

Could I do this? Could I operate my own "kitchen 150"?

Following Café 150's lead, I decided to keep basic dry goods like coffee, chocolate and spices. But since I have no interest in gardening (and no yard, for that matter--I live in an apartment), I needed a source of produce. I find farmers' markets inconvenient, if only because you have to pay each farmer separately for items, which can mean a lot of waiting in the cold. Then I heard about the farm shares run by Community Supported Agriculture (csa) programs.

They sounded a little lefty to me at first, but it turns out csas are a wonderfully market-driven idea: you join with others in your community to invest in a local farm. At the beginning of the season, members pay the farmer a lump sum. Each week, or perhaps once a month in the winter, the farm delivers fresh vegetables (and, for more money, items like fruit, eggs and flowers) to a central location. Prices vary widely depending on where you live. The csa in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx costs just $220 for five months for those with a low income (food stamps accepted). The csa run by Angelic Organics in Caledonia, Ill., starts at $600 for 20 weeks of vegetables and goes north of $1,000 when you add fruit.

There are some lefty aspects: You don't choose what the farmer grows. He does. You might get lettuce one week and then--if, say, a hailstorm hits the lettuce patch--none for several weeks after. Also, you're locked into a fixed amount of food each week, so if you don't feel like cooking for a couple nights in a row, you feel guilty. A farmer sweated over these beautiful ears of corn, and I'm going to throw them out so I can pick up riblets at Applebee's?

The benefit is that the food is affordable--for $40 a month at my csa, I get (to take February as an example) four bunches of winter greens, a head of red cabbage, 5 lbs. of apples, and about 2 lbs. each of beets, onions, carrots, turnips and Yukon Gold potatoes. The stuff is phenomenally fresh. I once discovered a nine-day-old head of lettuce from my CSA farm at the back of the refrigerator. Because it had come to me just 24 hours after being picked, it was still crisp.

But how local was my CSA farm? And was it organic?

Windflower Farm is in Valley Falls, N.Y., 185 miles northeast of my apartment. Mapquest calls it a 3 1/2-hr. drive, but if you leave on a weekday at 5:30 p.m., as Windflower's Ted Blomgren and I did, it can take closer to five hours. That meets Gussow's definition of local--"within a day's leisurely drive"--although our drive through Manhattan wasn't leisurely.

Blomgren runs Windflower with his wife Jan. He is 46, and on the day we rode to the farm, he wore sandals and glasses. Ted, who has a degree from Cornell, is balding and studious, and might pass for a professor if he didn't have so much dirt under his toenails. Ted and Jan--who has lovely bright blue eyes perpetually fixed in a startled expression--have operated Windflower for eight years with their sons Nathaniel, 14, and Jacob, 11. On the day I visited last summer, I watched a barefoot Nathaniel walk to the henhouse to collect eggs in an old white bucket, as he did every day. I had been eating those eggs most days--that's how I had replaced cereal. Seeing Nate carry that bucket into the smelly humidity of the chicken coop, I realized I had never before felt so connected to my food. I had not only seen the chickens that produced my eggs but had also met the person who gathered them.

That's a core goal of CSAS--to remind you that your food originates in some place other than a grocery store. There are now some 1,200 csa farms in the U.S., according to the Robyn Van En Center at Wilson College in Pennsylvania. Van En helped start the first American csa at her Massachusetts farm in 1985 after hearing about the idea of farm shares from a Swiss friend. (You can find a csa near you at sites like localharvest.org.

So I was finally eating local, and it tasted great. Ted's yellow wax beans last year were so crisp and oniony sweet you could eat them directly from the field. During the winter months, Ted has delivered sturdy vegetables from his cold storage that look as good as anything at Whole Foods and seem to taste better, if only because they remind me of a warm day on the farm. And yet I do worry that the Blomgrens aren't certified by the Federal Government as organic growers. They say they don't use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and Ted's policy is that any csa member can come to his farm to check his growing practices. "I couldn't show up at my local Agway and buy a jug of herbicide without it getting told to everybody," he said. Like many small farmers I met, Ted felt that organic certification would be too costly and time consuming.

Having met Ted, Jan and their sons--and having spent the night in their barn--I trust they don't use chemicals. But the Blomgrens don't grow fruit for the CSA. They buy it from other local growers, and most of them use sprays because of the humidity. Ted's hens were free-range--they strutted around eating the grass behind his house. But pastured chickens still require some grain feed, and the grain Ted bought was mostly conventionally grown, industrially processed corn.

I was deflated to hear that I had ingested chemicals with my fruit and eggs. But at this point I threw up my hands. If I wanted total purity, the only option was to grow my own food. Forget it. Farming is dirt-under-the-toenails hard work, and the Blomgrens are by no means making a vast fortune.

But I had arrived at an answer to my question: I prefer local to organic, even with the concessions local farmers must make. I realize there's something romantic about the desire to know exactly where your food is from. Among true agrarians, that desire carries a reactionary strain, a suspicion of modernity. "Instead of relying on the accumulated wisdom of a cuisine, or even on the wisdom of our senses, we rely on expert opinion," journalist Michael Pollan wrote in last year's acclaimed book The Omnivore's Dilemma. "We place our faith in science to sort out what culture once did." But science should trump culture on matters of nutrition. The problem is that science offers no clear guidelines yet on how beneficial organic food is.

When asked years ago whether she preferred butter or margarine, Gussow famously remarked, "I trust cows more than chemists." For my part, I do not. I will still go to Whole Foods to buy the mass-produced Organic Food Bars I eat for breakfast when I don't have time for eggs. I am happy that food scientists are finding ways to produce everyday products like cereal with organic ingredients. (How about organic Froot Loops? I have a weakness for Froot Loops late at night.) But when it comes to my basic ingredients--literally, my "whole" foods rather than my convenience foods--I would still rather know the person who collects my eggs or grows my lettuce or picks my apples than buy 100% organic eggs or lettuce or apples from an anonymous megafarm at the supermarket. Choosing local when I can makes me feel more rooted, and (in part because of that feeling, no doubt) local food tastes better.

Eating locally also seems safer. Ted's neighbors and customers can see how he farms. That transparency doesn't exist with, say, spinach bagged by a distant agribusiness. I help keep Ted in business, and he helps keep me fed--and the elegance and sustainability of that exchange make more sense to me than gambling on faceless producers who stamp organic on a package thousands of miles from my home. I'm not a purist about these choices--I ate a Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's on the way to Ted's farm. But in general, I have decided that you are where you eat.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1595245-1,00.html

My Pantry: Three Cereals I Recommend

leeluvfashion — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:09:22 -0700

Today I realized that I always mention my favorite cereals on Fit's blogs (when talking about healthy brands etc...) however I never shared them in a blog. I wanted to post this in case you haven't tried these or wanted to know the nutrional facts behind them. I always keep these three cerals in stock.

1. Uncle Sam Cereal, Original with Toasted Whole Grain Wheat Flakes & Flaxseed : My Everyday Favorite

- Nutritional Facts:

Serving Size: 3/4 Cup (55g)
Servings Per Container: About 5

Amount Per Seving / % Daily Value
Calories: 190
Calories From Fat: 40

Total Fat: 5g / 8%
Saturated Fat: 0.5g / 3%
Trans Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 0mg / 0%
Sodium: 135mg / 6%
Potassium: 235mg / 7%
Total Carbohydrate: 38g / 13%
Dietary Fiber: 10g / 40%
Soluble Fiber 2g
Insoluble Fiber 10g
Sugars less than 1g
Protein: 7g

Vitamin A 0%
Vitamin C 2%
Calcium 4%
Iron 10%
Thiamin 50%
Riboflavin 50%
Niacin 50%
Phosphorus 20%
Magnesium 25%

-Made With: Whole Wheat Kernels, Whole Flaxseed, Salt, Barley Malt, Niacin, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Thiamin Mononitrate (Vitamin B1.)

2. Kashi Seven Whole Grain Honey Puffs : When I want something sweeter than usual yet still natural.

- Nutrition Facts:

Serving Size: 1 cup (30g/1.1oz)
Servings Per Container: 10

Amount per Serving / %Daily Value
Calories 120
Calories from Fat 10

Total Fat : 1g / 2%
Saturated Fat : 0g / 0%
Trans Fat: 0g / 0%
Cholesterol: 0mg / 0%
Sodium: 6mg / 0%
Potassium: 80mg / 2%
Total Carbohydrate: 25g / 8%
Dietary Fiber: 2g / 8%
Soluble Fiber 0.6g
Insoluble Fiber 1.4g
Sugars 6g
Protein 3g

Vitamin A 0%
Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 0%
Iron 4%

- Made With: Whole Hard Red Winter Wheat, Whole Long Grain Brown Rice, Honey, Evaporated Cane Juice, Whole Oats, Whole Barley, Whole Triticale, Whole Rye, Whole Buckwheat, Sesame Seeds.

3. Kashi (Organic Promise) Autumn Wheat : Another Everyday Favorite.

- Nutrition Facts:
Serving Size: 1 cup (54g/1.9oz)
Servings Per Container: 9

Amount per Serving : %Daily Value
Calories 190
Calories from Fat 10

Total Fat: 1g / 2%
Saturated Fat: 0g / 0%
Trans Fat: 0g / 0%
Cholesterol: 0mg / 0%
Sodium: 0mg / 0%
Potassium: 180mg / 5%
Total Carbohydrate: 45g / 15%
Dietary Fiber: 6g / 24%
Soluble Fiber 1g
Insoluble Fiber 5g
Sugars 7g
Protein 5g

Vitamin A 0%
Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 0%
Iron 8%

- Made With: Organic Whole Wheat, Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Natural Flavor.

Octuplets: How come Pro-lifers don't Rally against Fertility Treatments?

mydiadem — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:41:37 -0800

msnbc.com news services
updated 4:13 a.m. ET, Fri., Jan. 30, 2009
WHITTIER, Calif. - The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week has six other children and never expected to have eight more when she took fertility treatment, her mother said.

Angela Suleman said her daughter expects a big challenge raising 14 children. The good news, she said, is all the babies appear healthy.

"I looked at those babies. They are so tiny and so beautiful," Suleman told The Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

Suleman's daughter gave birth to the octuplets Monday at a hospital in Bellflower but has requested that doctors keep her name confidential. Media knew little about the woman until a family acquaintance told CBS' "The Early Show" on Thursday that the mother is "fairly young" and lives with her parents and her six children, including twins.

Within hours, media had camped out at the family's home in Whittier, where the babies' grandfather pulled up in a minivan in the evening and briefly spoke to The Associated Press. Beside him were two children - a 7-year-old and 6-year-old - who said they were excited to have eight new siblings.

'We have a huge house'
But the grandfather warned that media may have a tougher time finding the family after the babies are released from the hospital.

"We have a huge house, not here," said the man, who would only identify himself as Ed. "You are never going to know where it is."

Suleman said her daughter had embryos implanted last year, and after finding out she was pregnant with multiple babies was given the option by doctors of selectively reducing the number of embryos. The woman declined.

"What do you suggest she should have done? She refused to have them killed," Suleman told the Times. "That is a very painful thing."

Worldwide attention
Dr. Harold Henry said the woman was already pregnant when she came to Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center, and she was counseled on the option of aborting some of the fetuses. Doctors had been expecting only seven babies, but an eighth was born in the cesarean delivery.

The six boys and two girls, the second octuplets born alive in the United States, have garnered worldwide attention as media have attempted to find out more about the mother and her family. Hours after media gathered outside the Whittier home, Kaiser issued a statement on behalf of the mother requesting privacy.

"Please know, in our own time, we will share additional details about this miraculous experience," the statement read. "The babies continue to grow strong everyday and make good progress. My family and I are ecstatic about all of their arrivals. Needless to say the eighth was a surprise to us all, but a blessing as well."

Dr. Mandhir Gupta said seven of the babies were breathing without assistance. One was still receiving oxygen through a tube in his nose.

Seven of the infants were being tube-fed donated breast milk. One of the boys was expected to begin feedings Friday.

All babies continued to receive an intravenous nutritional combination. They were expected to remain in the hospital for several more weeks.

The birth of the octuplets already has raised eyebrows, with fertility and reproductive experts saying that such high-risk pregnancies should be avoided.

"When we see something like this in the general fertility world, it gives us the heebie-jeebies," Michael Tucker, an Atlanta-based clinical embryologist and leading researcher in fertility treatments, told the Los Angeles Times.

"If a medical practitioner had anything to do with it, there's some degree of inappropriate medical therapy there," the Times quoted him as saying.

Ethical questions
Asked by a reporter whether medical ethics may have been breached and whether fertility assistance was provided to a mother who already had multiple children, Henry replied: "That's still a private, personal question."

"Our patient was counseled regarding her options for pregnancy. The options were to continue the pregnancy or selectively abort. The patient chose to continue the pregnancy," Henry said. "Our goal is to provide the best possible care for our patients, no matter what the situation or circumstances."

Some fertility specialists have said the children face increased health risks because they are octuplets and born nine weeks premature. At birth, they ranged between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces.

Doctors say they advise against higher-order births, but acknowledge the decision is not theirs to make.

"Who am I to say that six is the limit?" said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of Fertility Institutes, which has clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York City. "There are people who like to have big families."

Dr. James Grifo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the NYU School of Medicine, added: "I don't think it's our job to tell them how many babies they're allowed to have. I am not a policeman for reproduction in the United States. My role is to educate patients."

The last octuplets known to have survived birth in the United States, six girls and two boys, were born in Houston in 1998. One of the babies, a girl, died one week later.

Family: Octuplets' mom has 6 other kids

bellaressa — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:20:18 -0800

The Associated Press
updated 3:13 a.m. CT, Fri., Jan. 30, 2009

WHITTIER, Calif. - The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week has six other children and never expected to have eight more when she took fertility treatment, her mother said.