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Better Choices

Another Reason to Eat Organic – Decrease Pesticide Exposure by 90%

Here are a few things that we know.

1) In its pioneering testing several years ago, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) identified up to 493 chemicals in Americans of all ages, including 287 industrial chemical pollutants found in the cord blood of 10 babies born in 2004.

So, from the time we are in the womb of our mother, our body is flooded with synthetic toxins.

2) Even though this EWG data was collected a decade ago, not much has changed since then, in terms of our exposure to chemicals.

This is largely because consumers remain completely unprotected when chemical companies bring a new product to market.

The nation’s toxic chemical regulatory law, The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, allows chemicals on the market without meaningful safety assessments and gives the Environmental Protection Agency almost no authority to protect the public health.

NEW RESEARCH

Given that our government deems the profits of chemical companies to be more important than the health of its citizens, is it any surprise that 41% of Americans will get cancer and 21% of Americans will die from cancer?

Not to the President’s Cancer Panel.

In its annual report called “Reducing our Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now”, the President’s Cancer Panel, among other things, recommends that in order to decrease exposure to pesticides, individuals should choose “food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers”.

Previous studies have shown that children who switch to an organic diet will reduce their pesticide load, but no similar study has been completed with adults.

Until now.

In a report published in Environmental Research, Dr. Liza Oates and her team at RMIT University in Australia found that people who adopted an organic diet for one week saw an incredible 90% reduction in pesticide exposure.

The randomly selected 13 adults were fed both an organic diet and a non-organic diet, and urine samples were taken to determine the presence of dialkylphosphates, a class of chemicals that are produced as the body tries to break down organophosphate pesticides.

In case you are not familiar with organophosphate pesticides, they are some of the most widely used chemicals sprayed on food today.

What harm do they cause?

According to the Pesticide Action Network, long-term exposure to organophosphates has been linked to cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and serious reproductive and developmental problems.

WHAT TO DO?

Clearly, switching to an organic diet will greatly help to decrease pesticide exposure. (Make sure you read this post – Should You ALWAYS Eat Organic? – to help guide you and answer any questions that you may have.)

While food plays a big role in reducing pesticide loads in your body, it is not the only thing that we need to be paying attention to.

Other areas of chemical exposure are household cleaning products and body care products.

One great resource for body care products is EWG’s Skin Deep Database, which provides safety and other information on nearly 70,000 personal care products.

In terms of household cleaning products, I LOVE the Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds.

IN CONCLUSION

While our bodies will never be 100% chemical-free, it is important that we take the necessary precautions to reduce our pesticide exposure as much as possible.

And this study out of Australia is just more evidence that adopting an organic food diet is an essential way to accomplish this.

A message from Tradin Organic

How Tradin Organic is Helping Coconut Farmers in The Philippines

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.

Learn more.

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Living Maxwell

Better Choices

How Do Your Favorite ‘Organic’ and ‘Made with Organic’ Snack Bars Rate? Take a Look at Cornucopia’s Scorecard

When you are in the checkout line at the supermarket and looking for a nutritious snack to satiate your hunger, take caution when selecting an energy bar.

The energy or snack bar market is big business — a $9 billion industry — and many people are easily fooled by the slick marketing that food companies employ to get you to purchase their products.

The absolute first thing to look for is a certified organic snack bar — one that has the green and white USDA organic seal on it.

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A message from E3Live

"My Everyday, Must-Have Green Organic Aquabotanical"

The best testimonial that I can give is that I drink this every single day, as it impacts my mood in an incredibly positive way.

E3Live + BrainON is certified organic, fresh-frozen AFA (Aphanizomenon flos-aquae) with a concentrated, aqueous, organic extract of Phenylethylamine and Phycocyanin.

Learn more.

Living Maxwell

Better Choices

Pure Rooms are a MUST for Wellness-Minded Travelers

Having recently returned from Natural Products Expo West, a very intense and long five days visiting hundreds of trade show booths and meeting with dozens and dozens of people, one thing is very clear — I felt incredibly fortunate to have stayed in a Pure Room.

Launched by a company called Pure Wellness, a Pure Room is an extremely unique hotel offering that is addressing the needs of wellness-minded travelers in a way that I have never seen before. For people who place a serious priority on health, such as myself and many Living Maxwell readers, it is reassuring to know that this lifestyle can be maintained when on the road.

And now that I have stayed in a Pure Room on three separate occasions — most recently at two different hotels in the Los Angeles area for Natural Products Expo West — these hotel rooms have completely changed the way that I think about travel and how I book my accommodations.

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Living Maxwell

Better Choices

Local vs. Organic: I Choose Organic – Here’s Why

For several years, the local food movement has been gaining some serious momentum. Supermarkets are pushing locally-grown food and restaurants insert “local” into their menus as often as possible.

I have a good friend of mine who proudly and constantly tells me that he is eating local food all of the time. When I hear this, I just kind of shake my head. Why do I have this reaction?

While this issue is very complicated and the circumstances of every single piece food is vastly different, there is a lot more to this than many people realize and “local” isn’t necessarily better.

Yes, local food means that it has traveled a lot less (within 150 miles seems to be the accepted range) than something that has been shipped across the country.

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livingmaxwell: a guide to organic food & drink