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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.

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Living Maxwell

Better Choices

Another Reason to Eat Organic — The Water Supply in the Midwest is Becoming a Serious Health Risk

I got a comment from someone the other day who said “Why should we care about GMOs (genetically-modified organisms)? Let them grow what they want. It doesn’t impact the people who eat organic.”

Unfortunately, this individual could not have been more wrong.

GMOs impact everyone, including people who eat 100% organic, and a recent study from the Pesticide Action Network confirms this.

Water sampling results from communities across four Midwestern states — Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota — indicate Atrazine is present in drinking water at levels well above those linked to birth defects and low birth weight.

WHAT IS ATRAZINE AND WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IT

Present in 94% of our water supply, Atrazine is a toxic weed killer and 76 million pounds of it is dumped onto our farms each year, mostly for corn.

And the health effects of Atrazine?

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Living Maxwell

Better Choices

The Risk of Buying Conventional Honey

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.

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Living Maxwell

Better Choices

New to Organic? – Start with This Inexpensive Breakfast

One question that I get a lot is “How should a person get started with organic food?” One complaint I hear a lot is that organic food costs too much.

Let me both answer this question and address this complaint with a story.

Last week, Brian, a new friend of mine, came to me for some food-related advice. He wanted to know what he could be doing to eat healthier, as he was “crashing” in the middle of the afternoon. Brian was very concerned that his eating habits were negatively impacting his ability to perform at work, which would impact his ability to make money.

He did not know much about organic and was very concerned about the price. When I started talking about organic food, the first words out of his mouth were “Hey, I don’t make $20,000 per month.”

Brian went on to tell me about the fast-food breakfasts that he had been eating and he didn’t think it was the cause of his problem.

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livingmaxwell: a guide to organic food & drink