Living Maxwell
Company Stories
Last week, I was in New York City to attend two fantastic trade shows — 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show and Good Food Mercantile.
Whenever I go to these shows, I always come across some outstanding organic products, and this year was no exception.
Here are my Top 10 Organic Products of the 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show and Good Food Mercantile.
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
Must-Read
In the latest President’s Cancer Panel report, it was found that 41% of Americans are going to get cancer and 21% of Americans are going to die from cancer.
What makes these numbers even more sobering is that this data was from a decade ago, and I have heard doctors say that they now believe a minimum of 50% of the population will get cancer at some point in their lives.
Given how deeply cancer has permeated our society, it would seem to make sense that people should be doing whatever they can to avoid contracting this deadly disease.
And according to a recent study out of France, as reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, eating as much organic food as possible is an important strategy to accomplish this.
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Living Maxwell
Company Stories
When I was at EARTH University in Costa Rica, I got a chance to learn everything about sustainable banana production – from how they are grown in the fields to how they are shipped to the U.S.
In this video, I’ll take you onto the banana plantation of EARTH University and show you the issues that they have to deal with when growing bananas in such humid conditions.
What’s important to note is that it took EARTH University many, many years for its sustainable bananas to reach profitability and the school was told by consultants that the program wasn´t going to work.
EARTH University’s president refused to give up because he knew that this was the right way to do business – for the environment, for the farm workers, for consumers – even though his bananas were more expensive than conventionally-grown ones.
Whole Foods recognized the importance of what EARTH University was doing and the values that it stood for, and decided to distribute the school’s bananas throughout the U.S. Not only has this partnership been critical for the long-viability of EARTH University’s banana program, but the strong demand for the school’s bananas has proven that sustainability is good business.
Without question, EARTH University’s bananas are the best that I have ever eaten. If you have the chance to buy them, definitely do so.
You’ll be eating a fantastic product and also be supporting an incredibly important endeavor for sustainability.
Also, being such a huge fan of bananas, I can’t tell you how interesting this day was for me. Enjoy!
Organic Insider
Must-Read
As Beyond Meat’s very successful IPO is bringing a lot of attention to the alt-protein category, it is important to take a look at what exactly are in these food products.
One popular name in this space is the Impossible Burger, a product we first wrote about in 2017 when Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents uncovered that the FDA disagreed with the company’s safety assessments of the burger’s main ingredient — soy leghemoglobin. However, the company continued selling it to the public anyhow without informing consumers about the FDA’s very serious concerns.
The issue this time around with the Impossible Burger is the amount of glyphosate that it contains.
Organic Insider
Company Stories
David Bronner, the Cosmic Engagement Officer (CEO) of Dr. Bronner’s, saw this coming years ago.
With California having legalized cannabis in 2016, he knew that this plant was headed down the path of other agricultural crops — mass industrialization, genetic engineering, enormous energy consumption through fossil fuels, and the displacement of small-scale family farmers.
Where cannabis differs from other agricultural commodities, however, is that there can be no such thing as “organic cannabis” until the federal government stops classifying it as an illegal drug.
Living Maxwell
Must-Read
* Impossible Foods is “misleading consumers” about the key ingredient in the Impossible Burger.
* The Company told the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) that its soy leghemoglobin was “substantially similar” to proteins consumed daily by the global population, in the form of meat and other vegetables.
However, on the Impossible Foods website, it claims that the heme in the Impossible Burger is “identical” to the heme humans have been consuming for hundreds of thousands of years in meat and other foods.
* The FDA told Impossible Foods that its arguments “do not establish safety of SLH (soy leghemoglobin) for consumption.” The company decided to sell the Impossible Burger to the public anyway.
* Impossible Foods relied on the expert testimony of scientists who have worked for or have links to Monsanto, the Gates Foundation, Philip Morris and all of the major biotechnology companies.
* 20 minutes after eating an Impossible Burger for the first time, a man Tweeted “went into anaphylactic shock & taken to ER.”
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One of the biggest stories in the food world over the past few years has been the Impossible Burger, the plant-based burger that bleeds when you bite into it.
The goal of the Impossible Burger is to help make a dent in climate change by offering a plant-based burger that does not come from an animal. Animals require a tremendous amount of water and feed, and also produce greenhouse gases. Because the burger is made from plants, the other thing that the Impossible Burger would do is to help alleviate the killing of animals.
Living Maxwell
Personal
I put up a post last week about a date I had recently and it generated a good number of responses. During this date, the woman asked if it bothers me to be with someone who drinks.
In that post, one of the things that I said was that I would “deal with it” if all of the other aspects of the relationship were good and that the drinking was kept to a minimum. This response of saying that I would “deal with it” brought an interesting comment from Tancie, and I thought it was worth addressing in its own blog post here.
Tancie stated that the phrase “dealing with it” would bring up resentment and that I should avoid all women who drink if it makes me that uncomfortable.
For me, drinking is a very complicated issue and is not so cut and dry, especially given the fact that I feel so strongly about other things as well — organic food being one of them.
Living Maxwell
Better Choices
For many of us who understand the importance of organic, we eat and buy organic food without thinking about it.
We know that we don’t want to consume food that contains artificial growth hormones, synthetic pesticides or genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).
We know that it is essential for us to purchase the highest quality food possible.
We know that food is medicine.
Yet, there are too many people out there who are just not that concerned about the food that goes into their bodies. They largely assume that since our government allows it on the shelf, it is safe.
