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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.

And it’s very important not to fall into the trap of thinking that certified organic bars and ones that say “made with organic ingredients” are the same thing. They are categorically not the same.

Because of a loophole in organic regulations, many “made with organic ingredients” bars contain protein isolates which have been processed with the neurotoxic solvent hexane — a byproduct of the gasoline refinement industry.

In order to help you figure out which snack bars are the best, among both organic and conventional, The Cornucopia Institute has just released a brand new report called Raising the Bar: Choosing Healthy Snack Bars versus Gimmicky Junk Food.

Raising the Bar exposes misleading marketing practices by food industry giants and calls out leading natural/organic brands for using cheap, conventional ingredients instead of creating nutritive products that qualify for the USDA organic label.

As it turns out, the highest rated brands in this report are Simple Squares, Bearded Brothers, and Larabar Organic with Superfoods. These three are all USDA certified organic and use only organic fruits, nuts, and seeds without any added sugars, gums, flours, protein isolates, or preservatives.

To read Raising the Bar – Executive Summary, click HERE.

To read Raising the Bar – Full Report, click HERE.

To see how your favorite snack bars rate, check out the Snack Bars Scorecard, which is mobile-friendly.

This scorecard is just another extremely valuable piece of research from Cornucopia, one of the organic industry’s most important watchdog organizations. These people are doing the very hard work to keep us both safe and informed.

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.

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Living Maxwell

Better Choices

Organic Black Sesame Seeds — Something You’ll Always See in My Kitchen

When it comes to eating, I like clean and light food.

My body seems to reject heavy sauces, fried foods, and sautées, even if they are 100% organic.

I like simplicity in a meal and as a result, I tend to cook a decent amount for myself. Why?

Not only is cooking at home the most inexpensive way to eat organic but I can have exactly what I want.

Whenever I make quinoa, millet or a big salad, one of my favorite things to put on these dishes are black sesame seeds.

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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.

Living Maxwell

Better Choices

Organic Milk – The Most Important Product a Family Can Buy

For people who are new to organic or have very limited financial means to buy organic, the one thing that I always say is the following:

The absolute number one priority in your household should be organic milk for your kids.

Even if a family thinks that organic food is out of their budget, organic milk cannot be compromised under any condition.

Organic milk is about the health of the kids, and that comes before everything else.

THE SERIOUS HEALTH RISKS OF HORMONAL MILK

Approximately 20% of the milk in the U.S. is hormonal milk. But what exactly is hormonal milk?

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Living Maxwell

Better Choices

10 Organic Foods You’ll Always Find in My Kitchen

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.

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livingmaxwell: a guide to organic food & drink