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
Better Choices
For many people, organic milk is the first organic food product that they will buy.
This is largely because milk serves as an important source of nutrition for kids. It, therefore, begs the question “what exactly is my child drinking?”
Not all milk is created equal
Hormonal milk contains a genetically engineered hormone called Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST), which is produced by companies such as Monsanto and Elanco.
rBST is injected into approximately 20% of all U.S. dairy cows in order to increase milk production, and industry studies by consultants report that this hormone is safe for both the cows and consumers.
A message from E3Live
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.
Living Maxwell
Must-Read
Whenever I think about a lot of the food that I ate growing up, it isn’t overly pleasant. It was the standard American diet with all of the processed, fast food that most of the country still consumes today.
Fortunately, my childhood took place before the emergence of GMOs (mid-90s) and growth hormone milk (late 80s), so I escaped some of the really bad things when my body was in its crucial stage of development.
One food that I fondly remember eating, and loving, at family dinners was potatoes. And it wasn’t just the insides of the potatoes. I particularly loved eating the skins. Yet, little did I or my parents know just how toxic they were.
When many people think of the most important foods to be eating organic, potatoes do not immediately come to mind as quickly as apples, grapes, or spinach do. But they should and here’s why.
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
One of the reasons that many of us purchase organic is because we don’t want to put food into our bodies that contains synthetic chemicals.
Yet even though we may not eat conventionally-grown food ourselves, we still need to be very aware (and concerned) about what is going on in the non-organic world. Why?
Because the toxic chemicals that are sprayed on conventionally-grown food end up in the water supply.
And the EPA is not doing its job when it comes to protecting the integrity of our water.
Organic Insider
Company Stories
On late Friday afternoon, President Obama signed the sham Stabenow-Roberts GMO-Labeling bill (S. 764) which will allow, among many other things, companies to use QR codes instead of clear GMO labels on a food product’s packaging.
This bill is so discriminatory and so poorly written that it potentially violates several amendments of the Constitution. Additionally, it puts the integrity of the organic seal in real jeopardy.
What is arguably the most troubling aspect of this bill is that while almost every single organic consumer organization fought this bill, the organic industry’s leading trade organization praised the bill and lobbied for it to pass.
Here are the key points to understand, in terms of analyzing the bill, what this means for the organic industry, and where we go from here.
Organic Insider
Must-Read
This post originally appeared in Organic Insider. If you would like to receive Organic Insider every other Wednesday, you can sign up for it HERE.
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If consumers are seeking fair and balanced information about GMOs, they certainly will not find it on the new FDA/USDA/EPA website called Feed Your Mind.
This site is part of the Agricultural Biotechnology Education and Outreach Initiative, which was funded by Congress, and is intended “to share science-based information that educates, informs and broadens understanding about agricultural biotechnology for consumers.”
Not surprisingly, it presents a very one-sided view of GMOs.
Living Maxwell
Better Choices
For many people, switching to an all-organic diet is simply not practical or possible. And I completely understand this.
So, if a person can’t keep an entirely organic household, what organic foods should they buy?
My Top 3 Most Important Foods to Eat Organic
1) MILK If you have kids, organic milk should be the absolute number one priority for the entire household. Do whatever you need to do to make sure that the children are drinking organic milk.
