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
Company Stories
For the second year in a row, Natural Products Expo East returned to Philadelphia, and I enjoyed my time in the city much more than I ever anticipated.
Not only was it great to see all of my friends again in the industry, but I ate incredibly well at two phenomenal restaurants — P.S. & Co. and Vedge.
I also saw some fantastic and innovative products at the show, with a few of them in the condiment category.
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Living Maxwell
Must-Read
Organic beet kvass isn’t exactly a household name, similar to a coconut water or even kombucha.
And I don’t believe that it will ever come close to having the same name recognition as these other two drinks.
Yet, its health benefits and utility may surpass them both.
A lacto-fermented beverage of Russian origin, beet kvass provides the body with beneficial bacteria and aids in digestion.
It is also touted as a blood purifier and an excellent way to cleanse the liver.
Living Maxwell
Better Choices
Whether you’re new to organic or have been eating it for decades, here is a very likely scenario when you go to buy eggs.
You stand in the refrigerated section of the market, look at all of options, check out the prices and make a decision largely based on the packaging of each brand.
Some have attractive pictures of rolling farmland, others show actual farmers, some have photos of the animals. Most certainly, the brands are using buzz words such as “cage-free”, “sunlit porches”, “omega 3-s” or “heritage breed”.
Are these brands being falsely deceptive?
Living Maxwell
Company Stories
Natural Products Expo West, the largest organic trade show in the U.S., was held last week in Anaheim and attracted more than 65,000 visitors.
I came across some fantastic innovation at the show — a handful of products that I had never seen before and others that brought me back to my childhood.
Here are my Top 5 Organic Products of Expo West 2023:
Living Maxwell
Better Choices
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.
Living Maxwell
Personal
Last week, I was asked by a friend of mine if I ever cheat.
No, she was not asking if I ever cheat on women but rather wanted to know if I ever cheat on my diet.
While I was taken aback by the question and didn’t have an immediate answer, she followed up with “Don’t you ever eat a doughnut?”
“No, I never eat doughnuts,” I quickly responded. That was an easy one to figure out. The thought of putting a Krispy Kreme into my body never ever enters my mind.
The larger question about cheating, however, really got me thinking and this is what I came up with.
Living Maxwell
Personal
Last night, I went to go see the documentary Farmageddon, a movie that I had been hearing about for the last few months.
Farmageddon highlights the USDA’s brutal crackdown on farmers selling raw milk and how the agency’s heavy-handed, corrupt and politically-motivated ways have destroyed the lives of small, organic farmers trying to do the right thing.
The objective of the movie is not to promote raw milk, however. The objective of the movie is to get people to wake up and to start demanding change.
