Taking Stock and Taking a Blog Break

When I my kids ate 3 raw beets and 4 purple carrots after school for their snack one day, I knew something major had changed in our family. Since then I've had writer's block. Maybe because this blog has served it's original purpose for me. It has made me follow through on things I might never have done otherwise - and now I'm hooked, I don't need the cyberspace motivation anymore. Our progress has been beyond my wildest expectations. Thank you to those who have read the blog, commented, emailed or debated with us for the last several months.

In the last 4 months, our changes have focused on food, chemicals, and consumerism. But the more I learn, the more I confirm that all of these components are interconnected. As I change my food patterns, I discover community. As I change my shopping habits, I contribute to a more fair, sustainable economy. It's been eye opening, and surprisingly easy. It turns out that an average, somewhat lazy, but socially conscious mother can actually drastically change her habits in just a matter of months.

If you're interested, here's my inventory of changes:

• purging all processed foods from our diets, with a few exceptions that allow us to function socially!
• switching from about 10% organics to about 90% when it comes to fruits, vegetables, wine, baking supplies, oils, nuts, cosmetics and pretty much everything else except clothing (one of these days...cotton uses an insane amount of pesticides). We aim to choose local products where possible.
• switching to organic meats, with particular attention to grass fed beef and dairy (avoids feedlot agriculture, and provides a more healthy balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids) and cooking meals with smaller meat portions.
  
• eating more vegetarian meals with beans and lentils to make up for our expensive meat
  
• phasing out new toys for birthday parties and baby gifts (unless they are very needed). We recently gave an "e-charity gift" from Plan Canada. Our choice was a "Birthing Kit" (to be used for a woman with no access to clean medical facilities) to honour the birth of a friend's child. For the new big sister, we chose the gift of a year's worth of school supplies for a girl who would otherwise have no access to school.
• vowing to avoid loot bags and dollar store toys that don't last. Vowing to have gift free (or recycled gift, or charity gift) parties for our own kids, at least until they're old enough to really fight it.
  
• making way more foods from whole grains, and from scratch (ie. bread once or twice a week, muffins and cookies occasionally). We love our Ontario grown and milled Grassroots Organics flours. When we're stuck, we buy Stonemill wholegrain breads - they even bake with 100% green power!
  
• phasing out refined sugar and replacing it with agave nectar when possible
• choosing Fair Trade certified products when possible. Ten Thousand Villages makes a good shopping adventure for this, and stores are carrying certified goods more frequently than they used to.
  
• working towards homegrown food, even on our deck (and shared garden at my parents' place) where we're hoping to grow our own huge tomato crop so we can make our own tomato sauce, diced and stewed tomatoes to get us through the winter. We're also growing herbs, peas, beans, carrots, cukes, melons, and squash, some of which we will can, pickle or freeze for winter.
  
• teaching our kids about healthy foods, and watching them start to get excited about heirloom tomatoes, atomic red carrots, stripey beets, and kale chips (and actually eat these things!)
• avoiding canned foods (because the linings leach phthalates -endocrine disruptors)
• getting rid of most of our plastic containers in favour of glass
• buying less packaging (including finding products in refillable containers like Harmony milk in glass bottles and "NatureClean" laundry soap)
• replacing all of our chemical filled soaps, shampoos, and detergents with more natural ones. We're particularly avoiding parabens and phthalates. While I'm still not crazy about my natural shampoo, I'm trying different brands until the right one works for me. We've also avoided all fragranced products to reduce our exposure to phthalates.
  
• chucking my aluminum based anti-perspirant in favour of a crystal...even though I still sometimes get panic attacks about my aroma.
• reading more non fiction books (for fun) than I have in my life about organic gardening, container gardening, whole foods cookbooks, food industry critiques, politics of food, and the eye opening Anti-Cancer book. I've learned some really compelling reasons to follow through with our changes so far.

The result? We're all working harder and spending more time in the kitchen and the garden...but it feels like an adventure instead of like a chore for a change. The kids are being great about this, more and more adventurous with new foods each day. I feel like I'm finally doing my best to keep my family healthy, safe and socially conscious instead of using my old excuse about not having enough time or money for these changes.

So what's next? More of the same. My next project is to build some homemade test models of the Earth Box to see if they can help me produce even more food. And to continue to find more options for foods like kale, chard, fresh herbs and other veggies. And to learn how to can and pickle stuff. And to switch to baking soda and vinegar for cleaning. And to compost in the backyard...the list is endless, but the focus remains the same. I think I will need my blogging time this spring to tend to the garden, bake bread and soak beans. I'll post updates as things come along, but for now, I think I need a break!

Thanks for reading!

Crystal Mystique

One of my failures in this endeavor has been deodorant. I abandoned the natural deodorant after about 3 weeks just like the other 5 times I've tried to quit antiperspirant. I felt slimy and stinky. I run, do yoga, walk alot...and each time I'd have to practically boil my clothes. Okay, maybe not that bad, but still, if you keep sniffing your armpits all day, you're going to be shunned whether you smell or not.
The good news is, I've found a new candidate. It's a crystal - which I have until recently associated mostly with new age music and windchimes. However, after three days of the new regime, I'm liking it. No sticky ickies like the other stuff. It's supposed to last for a year and it was only $4 to begin with. How "natural mineral salts" keep the stink at bay is a great mystery to me. Maybe if I listen to some pan-flute and light some incense the answer will come to me.

Food Inc. Fallout

Movie night madness again. We watched Food Inc. on Sunday. Then we purged our cupboards. We packed up almost everything that was packaged, prepared, or otherwise processed. Our cupboards look so neat and tidy now, though much less colourful. Now it's mostly nuts, beans, seeds, grains and other varying shades of beige and brown. So very granola of us. It makes me feel a bit extreme, but then I just ask myself, would my great-grandmother even recognize these purged items as food? She managed to feed 11 children every day without Fruit Roll-Ups and Lipton Sidekicks. I only have 2 kids to feed, surely I can do this and stay moderately sane, right?

If you're tempted to think that I've always been a processed food hater, think again. I love it. I can't resist it. But I want my kids to know real food. I want them to like it, and I want them to know how to cook it. How else to do this except rid my kitchen of temptation?

I had two successful days, then I got the stomach flu. Who feels like a well planned week of spinach, sprouts, and lentils when your stomach is a raging animal? So I dragged myself and the kids to the store and bought a supersize box of popsicles instead. Partly to keep them quiet so I could curl up in the fetal position, and partly so I could eat my favourite flu food. There is an exception to every rule. And to be honest, our current exceptions include: ketchup, pasta sauce, pasta, maple syrup, waffles, pancake mix, rice cakes, raisins, bread, mayo, dark chocolate, bbq sauce, and, and for bribery, jellybeans.

Tomorrow we'll get back on track with baked falafel made from actual chickpeas and fresh herbs, and homemade tzatziki. Yum.

Can you smell the burnout?

Ok, I’m losing steam already. I’m feeling a like a bit of a eco-freak at work. I’m also starting to feel a bit smelly since the renewed effort to break the anti-perspirant habit (it’s only been 3 days).

The last few weeks have made me realize how entrenched our dependence is on this chemical/plastic/consumer lifestyle. I’m starting to get the feeling that even if I lived like a hermit off the grid in the bush somewhere, I’d somehow end up exposed to chemical fallout. I watched a documentary yesterday about the environmental impacts of Alberta’s tar sands. Interviews with people from the remote community of Fort Chipewyan indicated alarmingly high rates of rare cancers and increasing numbers of deformities in fish. Studies support their anecdotal findings. Their waters are becoming increasingly polluted by contaminants in tailings ponds and emissions from the oil sands. So, this idea of “living off the land” as a safe alternative is probably just an illusion.

Normally, I’d just pack it all in right about now, switch back to anti-perspirant, give “normal” birthday gifts and indulge in some cheezies to make me feel better. At heart, I’m a quitter – but I hate doing it publicly. So, I’ll keep on smelling like patchouli and sweat, and serve my kids organic broccoli, chard and tamari with noodles instead of the frozen pizza I feel like throwing into the oven.

And tonight I’ll avoid any informative programming and watch a few episodes Modern Family because sometimes choosing ignorance is way more fun.

Little cupboard of horrors

It’s Friday night. I should have watched some dumb romantic comedy or at least a good thriller. But instead, I got sucked into a horror movie. It’s not what you think, it wasn’t a blood and guts horror. It was a documentary.

The information wasn’t new to me, it wasn’t really shocking, but it still cut to hear it all put together like this. “The Disappearing Male” chronicles the effects of chemicals like Phthalates and Bisphenol A on the future of our species. Both are endocrine disrupters which a growing body of evidence is finding to be responsible for skyrocketing male infertility, reduced proportion of male babies, higher rates of miscarriage and male genital birth defects.

BPA has been big in the news in the last couple of years. It makes clear plastics hard and shatterproof. It was the culprit in the big baby bottle recall a couple of years ago. Aside from mimicking estrogen and disrupting male sexual function and development, it is linked to breast and prostate cancer, thyroid disruption, and heart disease. It’s used in a lot more than baby bottles. It’s known to leach from the linings of cans and plastic bottles and it’s used in pretty much everything made of clear plastic. According to the doc, more than a staggering seven billion pounds of BPA are produced each year worldwide.

Phthalates are plasticizers. They make plastics flexible and soft. They are found in personal care products, toys, linings of tin cans, PVC shower curtains and medical supplies. It’s hard to know how to avoid phthalates because they are not labeled. In cosmetics and detergents they are usually contained in the generic term “fragrance”. They make our hair shiny, they bind to perfumes to make us smell good and clean. But I’m starting to wake up to the fact that they are actually very dirty.

What can I do? Well, I’ve already pretty much stopped buying anything that contains fragrance, I got rid of our PVC shower curtain, I’m more careful about soap. But I’ve got to wonder if what is in my mattress, my drinking water, my laminate floors? This requires more research. Added to list. Today my step is to make a conscious effort is to use fewer cans (gotta learn how to soak beans) and to remove the waterproof mattress covers from my kids’ beds.

This doc had me feeling ill, and on the edge of my plastic seat, trying not to breathe or touch anything. But knowing that more people are watching it, that the issue is becoming mainstream, gives me some hope. Check out “The Disappearing Male”. It airs on CBC on Valentine’s Day (it does give us reason to appreciate maleness I suppose). It can be viewed online at http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2008/disappearingmale/index.html.

WARNING: Not suitable for anyone wishing to continue living under IIB. (Ignorance is Bliss).

It's EVERYWHERE!

Labeling is important. Not just because people might forget to turn off the tap, but because it's really nice to be able to make informed decisions. I'm working on breaking out of my "ignorance is bliss" state. I've been washing my hands at work for about ten years now (minus mat leaves, travel leaves and summer holidays). In those years, all I noticed about the soap was its pinkness and its tendency to solidify at the bottom of the dispenser. Today I had a sinking feeling when I noticed the caretakers had left the big refill jug on the counter. "Uh oh, what's it going to say....do I really want to know?" As expected- triclosan (see Jan. 21 post).

Tomorrow, I'm bringing in my own soap. However, I'm pretty sure that if I wasn't already considered eccentric, I soon will be. But it's going to be fair trade, organic, sodium lauryl sulphate and triclosan free. The brand is Tashodi, it's Canadian and not even expensive, though I found it in a bin at HomeSense.

Maybe people will think, hmm, crazy lady but nice soap, and eventually be motivated to make the switch too. Maybe not, but at least I tried.

Triclosan

Bath and Body Antibacterial Hand Soap...ahhhh. It smells so good. I first came across it at my mom's house and was shocked to see anything other her regular bar of ivory soap. I thought "Hmmm, getting fancy around here". It had those little beady things in it like the tapioca balls in bubble tea, and it was called something luxurious like brown sugar and fig. Soon, I began seeing it in bathrooms at my more soap-savvy friends' places. At the time we were working through a giant vat of generic brand "moisturizing soap" that was making my hands look like October leaves - so I was pretty envious of the "fancy soap people". It was popping up in mouth watering varieties like citrus basil and mango mandarin everywhere I went. Mmmmm. Varieties that sound good enough to eat, but alas, not. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that it's not even close to being good enough to rub on my hands.
This soap, and many others, contains Triclosan as its antibacterial agent. Triclosan was news to me during my fateful encounter with Slow Death by Rubber Duck. It struck me that the authors had found so much of it in their own blood samples after just a short time of using antibacterial soaps. I did a bit of surfing around and found that CBC Marketplace did an in depth story about it which they called "The Dirt on Clean". The links to all the original studies can be found on their site. I'll sum it up for you:

-there is evidence that triclosan mixes with chlorine in tap water to create a "probable human carcinogen"
-triclosan is found in the breastmilk and blood of women who use products containing it
-it can get into surface water when washed down the drain. When exposed to sunlight it can break down to form dioxin. While there are many forms of dioxin, they are toxic and take a long time to break down or leave our bodies.
-The American Medical Association is recommending that we limit the use of antimicrobials to reduce the possibility of acquired resistance.

I could go on, but you get the idea. In addition to the plain ick factor of knowing that something is building up in my body, I hate the idea that it's persisting in the environment even longer to come back to me later. argh. It's in more places that you might think. Sometimes called by the brand name "Microban", you might have it in your cutting board, your garbage bags, heck, quite possibly in your mascara.

Some time ago, I made sure to check the ingredients on soaps. It's not just Bath and Body, but some product lines of SoftSoap, Dial, Clearasil, Right Guard, Old Spice...it goes on and on.

I've been making a conscious effort to avoid this ingredient. I gotta admit, I was feeling a little smug. Anyway, last week I was wasting time in the bathroom making sure my kids didn't drown in the tub and I started reading the label on my Colgate Total toothpaste. In tiny print I read...wait for it...0.3%triclosan. Is nothing sacred????

So, this leads me to today's small, expensive step. I bought some health food store toothpaste. No triclosan, no chemical whiteners. Good old fashioned baking soda and ginger concoction. Good news: it works pretty well, tastes good. Bad news: just today when I was double-checking my triclosan research, I read that sodium lauryl sulphate should be avoided (we'll get to that one later). Yes, of course my new $7.49 greener than Kermit toothpaste is the proud home to, yep, sodium lauryl sulphate. Sigh...well, I guess that's why I call them small steps.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck

I like to think I lead a simple life.
I'm not a shopoholic. I don't have an iPod (yet). My cell phone looks like it was made in 1995. I like to read books. I'm an anti-packrat. I can happily pass a morning on a ravine walk with my husband and kids. But that does not simplicity make.
I resort to using plastic shopping bags with an increasing frequency. I serve alot of frozen pizza, I still use antiperspirant, I have a car and a mortgage and a ridiculously large collection of half used shampoo bottles. And I find myself regularly freaking out about the state of the environment, chemicals in my home, media messages, consumerism, globalization, factory farming....arghhhhh...see, I'm FREAKIN' OUT!!!! Hence my need for small steps to simplicity.

If I was clever enough to come up with the title Slow Death by Rubber Duck before Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, I would have have used it to name this blog. But alas, I get my best ideas from listening to smart people interviewed on CBC Radio. I heard Smith and Lourie interviewed on CBC on June 12, 2009 in the car. The interview initiated a shift in my thinking in a way I wouldn't have expected. I imagine little pieces of awareness had been building for some time, awareness of the freaky things we were allowing, and even inviting, into our homes and bodies. A friend and cancer survivor had tried to lead me by example to chemical free living, but I just wasn't ready. Somehow, as I listened to the story of Slow Death by Rubber Duck something clicked. I couldn't ignore those little pieces of awareness anymore. As a result, one of my first goals in my simplicity quest is to take little steps reduce my chemical dependence. So far, I'm discovering a new world of good (and bad) alternatives. It's actually kind of fun...but then again, my fun-o-meter has been a bit off lately. I have a two year old and a four year old, so things like dropping pebbles down the sewer or playing "monster's coming" while hiding under the duvet are also considered major fun.