Living Maxwell
Company Stories
For as long as I have been covering the organic food industry and giving out Natural Products Expo West awards, it has always been a Top 5 list.
However, due to the incredible number of fantastic products that I saw at the 2024 show and at the urging of my good friend Liana Werner-Gray, I have expanded the list to a Top 10.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
For those of us who are fans of Dr. Bronner’s, the company’s products have a constant presence in our households, and we use them to clean our bodies and physical surroundings on a daily basis.
While this is unquestionably a critical component of our lives and imperative to maintain good health, cleaning transcends removing whatever is on our skin, on our clothes or on our kitchen countertops. It also affects our emotional well-being and directly impacts how we show up in the world.
And this is precisely why Lisa Bronner’s Soap & Soul: A Practical Guide to Minding Your Home, Your Body and Your Spirit with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps spoke to me so much, as it squarely touches on the importance of cleaning both the tangible and intangible — an essential formula for a meaningful life.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
For as long as I have been covering the organic food industry, I have attended Natural Products Expo East, with my first show in Boston in 2009.
So, it is very bittersweet to report that after last week’s show in Philadelphia, there will be no more Expo East moving forward. New Hope, the organizer of the event, has decided to launch something new in 2024 called Newtopia Now.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
When it comes to the organic textile business, serial entrepreneur Marci Zaroff is a true visionary — and I do not use this word lightly.
In 1995, Marci Zaroff coined and trademarked the termECOfashion® and launched Under the Canopy, which pioneered the market for organic and sustainable apparel and home textiles. Additionally, she helped create the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS).
Most recently, Marci Zaroff founded and is the CEO of MetaWear, the first “sustainable style” GOTS and Cradle to Cradle Certified cut and sew manufacturer in the world for organic and eco-friendly apparel. In addition to that, she is the founder of Farm to Home, producer of THREAD / Driving Fashion Forward, and co-founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, Good Catch Foods and BeyondsBrands.
This organic trailblazer just launched her first book called ECOrenaissance: A Lifestyle Guide for Cocreating a Stylish, Sexy and Sustainable World, and I caught up with my good friend to speak with her about it.
A message from Tradin Organic
For more than a decade, Tradin Organic has been working with local partners in The Philippines to bring a diversified range of organic products to the market, such as coconut oil, tropical fruits and even cocoa.
The company is helping to support local farmers by assisting them with technical support and organic certification, in addition to paying Fairtrade premium on top of the organic premium.
Organic Insider
Company Stories
Based on what we have seen from the current administration’s USDA — the scrapping of the organic animal welfare rules, allowing hydroponics in organic even though it is a complete violation of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, and turning a blind eye to ‘organic factory farms’ – should anyone be the least bit surprised that the recently released GMO-labeling rules completely fail the American consumer?
Living Maxwell
Better Choices
For someone who loves organic food so much and cooks so often, my refrigerator is surprisingly empty. How could this be?
Well, I go food shopping A LOT and pretty much only buy whatever I need for the next meal that I’ll be eating. I have the good fortune of being able to do this because an amazing organic market is literally less a one minute walk from my apartment.
Plus, I LOVE going food shopping and making multiple trips to the market in one day is not exactly a burden. Staring at all of the amazing fruits and vegetables in the produce section is one of my favorite things to do.
Even though I do tend to “buy on-demand”, you’ll pretty much always find these 10 organic foods in my kitchen:
COCONUT OIL I am a huge fan of coconut oil. Not only is it high in lauric acid and great to use after a workout but it is one of the few oils that you can safely heat and cook with. (Olive oil is not one of them.)
Aside from using organic coconut oil in my smoothies, I use it as a moisturizer as well.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
For the first time in three years, the Fancy Food Show returned to New York City, and as usual, it was a spectacular show.
While walking around the show on the first day, I was getting a bit concerned that I wasn’t going to find some stellar new organic products. But by the end of the show on the third day, I completely changed my mind.
Some of the new organic products that I discovered have the potential to be very large, well-known national brands, and the innovation that I saw was outstanding. Additionally, narrowing this list down to just five products was incredibly challenging. It easily could have been ten.
Here are my Top 5 Organic Products of Fancy Food Show 2022.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
On the last few days of my trip to Costa Rica, I was in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.
Populated by many European and American ex-pats, Puerto Viejo is a really cool surfing town on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
A message from Tradin Organic
At Tradin Organic, we believe that regenerative organic farming is key to growing healthy and nutritious food ingredients — for now and for future generations.
And in Sierra Leone, we have grown the world’s first Regenerative Organic Certified cacao.
Organic Insider
Company Stories
Last week, Naked Juice agreed to settle a very important class action lawsuit which accused the company of deceptive labeling.
The primary basis of the lawsuit stemmed from the company’s use of the words “All Natural” on products that contained Archer Daniels Midland’s Fibersol-2 (“a soluble corn fiber that acts as a low-calorie bulking agent”), fructooligosaccharides (an alternative sweetener), other artificial ingredients, such as calcium pantothenate (synthetically produced from formaldehyde), and genetically-modified soy.
Since these ingredients are either genetically-engineered or synthetically produced and do not exist in nature, it is completely misleading to consumers for these juices to claim to be “All Natural.”
As part of the settlement, Naked Juice, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, has agreed to remove the label “All Natural” from all of its juices and to pay a $9 million settlement to the class action group.
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
Last week in Costa Rica, I visited with some women entrepreneurs who are receiving microloans from the Whole Planet Foundation, a non-profit organization of Whole Foods.
I have written about the Whole Planet Foundation before and the amazing job that it is doing around the world but meeting the loan recipients in-person gave me a much greater appreciation for the impact that this program is having.
Women entrepreneurs from impoverished communities receive loans, starting at a few hundred dollars, to start businesses – baking, sewing, buying animals, running a small store, etc. With a 98% success rate (only 2% of the loans default), this incremental revenue plays an essential role in improving the well-being and welfare of thousands of families.
