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Must-Read

Just as The Environmental Working Group recently put out its bottled water rankings, The Cornucopia Institute has done something similar but with eggs.

While many people may assume that all organic eggs are very similar, this does not appear to be the case. Cornucopia rated all brands of eggs based on 22 criteria that are important to consumers, and the results — not to mention the accompanying video — were quite telling.

Living Maxwell

Must-Read

Last year, I put up a post about how arsenic was temporarily banned for use in conventional chickens.

Whether conventional chicken growers actually paid attention to the ban is anyone’s guess, but a column I read yesterday in the New York Times just made me shake my head even further.

In his column, Nicholas Kristof talked about recently released studies that suggest that poultry on factory farms are routinely fed caffeine, active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, banned antibiotics and arsenic.

Organic Insider

Better Choices

Nestled in the heart of the mountains in the Andean Paramos region of Peru, there are 182 families who entirely depend on coffee cultivation for their livelihood.

Unfortunately, coffee rust – a fungus also known as “La Roya” — has devastated the coffee trees of 64 of these families, leading to catastrophic economic losses for hundreds of people.

With coffee production their only way to make a living and provide for their families, they have had no choice but to search for nearby land which has not been infected by coffee rust. While this is giving these families a financial lifeline, it has also resulted in the destruction of forests in the region, a territory that cannot that cannot afford this type of displacement.

Living Maxwell

Better Choices

If anyone you know is still feeding their children conventional cereal, maybe this piece of news will get them to change their habits.

GMO Free USA, a non-profit that educates consumers and other stakeholders about the potential hazards of GMOs, just published its results of independent lab tests (verified by DNA analysis) done on Kellogg’s Froot Loops cereal.

Here’s what they found:

1) 100% of the corn in the Froot Loops was genetically-modified, containing DNA sequences known to be present in insecticide-producing Bt and Roundup Ready corn. This corn produces insecticides inside of the plant’s cells and cannot be washed off.

Living Maxwell

Better Choices

While many of us are familiar with the Dirty Dozen, the toxic fruits and vegetables to avoid as compiled by the Environmental Working Group, there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion as to what fish are healthy to eat.

One of my favorite non-profits, Food & Water Watch, has addressed this problem and come out with their own Dirty Dozen but for fish. These are the 12fish that they give a big thumbs down to.

Living Maxwell

Personal

As I wrote about the other day, it was during college when I went on antidepressants. Each day was getting harder than the next. The sky was growing darker and darker. It was a major struggle just to survive.

I was overwhelmed with a variety of responsibilities — school work, in which I seemed to be drowning; the tennis team, which occupied several hours of my time per day, not including constant traveling to other schools for matches and tournaments; and my fraternity, something in which I was very actively involved.

With my voice becoming more heavy during each phone conversation, my parents suggested that I go visit a local psychiatrist to see if he could help. More specifically, they thought that antidepressants were the answer. After a brief chat with the doctor, he diagnosed me with a mild case of depression and believed that Prozac would indeed improve my situation.

Organic Insider

Company Stories

Let me say right up front that I support the USDA’s national organic certification program. Why?

Because it is the only nationally recognized and accepted system we have in place for organic standards.

I firmly believe that the more people we have participating and engaged in the system, the stronger it will become. Conversely, the more people who opt out of the system, the weaker it will become.