That’s right — Barney’s New York’s gone cheapo — at least this weekend — bringing eco-fashions to the masses. More deets in my Emerald City post here, but really, all you have to do is stop by Barney’s New York in Beverly Hills this weekend to get first dibs on Rogan’s new collection (Rogan’s the designer for EDUN and Loomstate).

To the right’s the shirt I got. Like most designer fashions that flatter you into buying stuff, sizes run a tad bigger — That shirt’s an XS.

Also, Summer makes a great mannequin, yes? She’s not actually wearing Rogan for Target though, but a one-of-a-kind eco-friendly dress. Want your own one-of-a-kind eco fashion? Check out Summer’s eco-boutique BTC Elements, where everything’s not only eco-friendly but also fairly made.

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We’ve all read about the Okinawa and Mediterranean diets, usually promoted as weight-loss remedies. But in addition to their slim figures, Okinawans have a very low rate of breast and prostate cancer, while Cretans enjoy a low rate of heart disease. What in the diets prevents these diseases? Could we adopt these diets as our own to live healthier lives?

That’s what Daphne Miller, a doctor in San Francisco, set out to investigate in her book, “The Jungle Effect.” Miller travels to the “cold spots” — places with a low incidence of a certain disease — all over the world to figure out what in that region’s diet serves to protect its residents from common ailments in the U.S.

Got a family history of diabetes? Then read the chapter on Copper Canyon, Mexico. Depression? See what the Icelandic people eat; they’re a happy bunch, despite the fact that their country’s cold and dark for big chunks of the year.

In each chapter devoted to one of six “cold spots,” Miller combines the story of a patient of hers suffering from a common disease with the story of her own foodie travel to the cold spot for that disease. The end of each chapter has instructions — organized into basic, intermediate, and advanced levels — for mimicking the diet of that cold spot. Plus, lots of recipes are included in the back.

Some very clear commonalities emerge in the diets of all six of these cold spots. For example, meat is rarely the main dish in any of these places. Animal products are generally used very sparingly, much like a condiment. And all use primarily unprocessed organic, local ingredients that are grown or raised sustainably. Turns out, a disease-free diet’s also an earth-friendly diet that sounds quite similar to Michael Pollan’s haiku-esque advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Adopting any of these diets by the letter, however, will take some serious lifestyle changes for many people. In addition to just eating different food, would-be cold-spot dieters will need to hunt down unfamiliar ingredients — like nopales or horta — as well as cook them according to precise instructions. After all, it’s not just the individual ingredients that make up a cold-spot diet, according to Miller. It’s the food “synergy” — or the combinations of these ingredients — that works the magic.

But you don’t have to change your entire to benefit from reading “The Jungle Effect.” In fact, Miller offers lots of easy-to-implement, practical tips in her sidebars, with titles like “How to choose a slow release corn tortilla,” or “How to buy olive oil.” As both foodies and dietitians know, not all tortillas are made equal.

Herein lies the difference between, say, the burrito I get at a typical restaurant in L.A. and an authentic burrito as made in Copper Canyon, Mexico. The former’s usually humongous, cooked with a lot of lard and oil, stuffed with factory farmed meats and cheeses, then wrapped up in a pizza-sized white flour tortilla. In contrast, Miller discribes the Copper Canyon burrito as “no larger than a big cigar,” stuffed with black beans, red chili sauce, and a little shredded meat and wrapped in a handmade corn tortilla.

Whether or not you decide any of the specific cold spot diets are for you, “The Jungle Effect” will likely inspire you to cook more often, using fresh, in-season, local ingredients. And you’ll likely start paying attention to product ingredient lists, which’ll help you avoid unhealthy fats and colorings and preservatives. It’s no secret at this point that that what passes as food at many grocery stores isn’t really food at all. Kraft even got sued for its “guacamole” which contains just 2% avocado. What’s the other 98%? Partially hydrogenated soybean and coconut oils, corn syrup, whey and food starch. Yummy….

[crossposted on BlogHer]

Tags: thejungleeffect, daphnemiller, diet

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So it got warm in L.A., then semi-cold again — and I’ve been drinking fair trade, organic hot chocolate, courtesy of fair trade company Equal Exchange.

Equal Exchange’s Spicy Hot Cocoa’s got a kick of chili and cinnamon. Those spices, along with the cocoa powder, sugar cane juice, and vanilla powder, are all organic! And the cocoa and sugar are fair trade certified.

Which made me wonder: Why isn’t the vanilla fair trade certified?

Of course, TransFair USA — the nonprofit that awards fair trade certification for U.S. products, allows many products with just one fair trade ingredient to get fair trade certified. For example, some of Ben & Jerry’s coffee-flavored ice creams are fair trade certified because they incorporate fair trade coffee — despite the fact that the sugar, which makes up a larger part of the ice cream than the coffee, is not fair trade certified.

Considering that, Equal Exchange is already going the extra mile by using both fair trade sugar AND fair trade cocoa in its hot chocolate. Still, here’s what I heard back about the vanilla, thanks to Dary Goodrich, Chocolate Products Manager at Equal Exchange:

At this point, we have not been able to find a FTC vanilla suitable to our needs (e.g. organic, the correct format to work in our hot cocoa, and price accessible). This is something we will continue to look into as FTC vanilla becomes more readily available in the market. As you know we made the switch for our bars, which just requires ground vanilla beans and not vanilla powder. Also, vanilla is less than 1% of the product, which means we don’t buy much of it.

This answer satisfies me — but at the same time makes me a little sad that even a fair trade committed company like Equal Exchange can’t use fair trade vanilla in all its products….

That said, Equal Exchange’s come out with four different hot choco products, and to please the purists, some are all fair trade. The Drinking Chocolate and Baking Cocoa are made entirely of fair trade ingredients.

After trying out Equal Exchange’s cocoa, I was surprised to find that fair trade cocoa’s actually become a rather competitive market! I stopped by my neighborhood Whole Foods and Co-opportunity to find three different fair trade cocoas readily available on the shelves:

>> Dagoba offers a spicy Xocolatl Hot Chocolateas well as an unsweetened hot chocolate

>> Lake Champlain offers a hot chocolate
as well as unsweetened vegan cocoa.

>> Green & Black’s website only shows one fair trade cocoa powder, but I could swear I also saw a fair trade Maya Gold hot cocoa at Whole Foods the other day.

>> Trader Joe’s offers its own fair trade certified cocoa powder.

All of these products are both fair trade and organic certified — though the former comes with caveats. The unsweetened cocoas for all companies are basically made of organic, fair trade cocoa powder, so those are pretty much 100% fair trade products. As for the multi-ingredient hot cocoas, however, I couldn’t find out from these companies websites if the sugar and other ingredients were fair trade certified.
‘
I’ll keep looking into that — but I appreciate the fact that Equal Exchange lists both its full ingredient lists — including organic and fair trade information — on its website.

[crossposted on BlogHer]

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The FDA still hasn’t stepped up to make sure chemicals used in our personal care products are safe — but yet another new independent “certification system” seems to pop up every day. How’s an enviro girl to navigate through them all?

An optimist might hope these systems could fill the void the FDA’s left. After all, many of these new certifications claim high organic requirements! First, there’s the Organic And Sustainable Industry Standards (OASIS), self-dubbed the first organic standard for the U.S. beauty and personal-care market, which requires 85% organic content. Then there’s Ecocert, the current prevailing European standard and certification, which requires a minimum of 10% organic content for all products and 100% organic content for products with organic in the label. Doesn’t 85-100% sound pretty high?

Unfortunately, getting to a seemingly-high percentage doesn’t actually mean a high standard — because water content can be counted in this percentage. For some EcoCert products, “up to 80% of the organic content is just regular tap water,” according to Organic Consumers Association.

Besides, the fact that 85% of a product is organic doesn’t mean that that last 15% is safe — and really, it’s these smaller percentages that contain all the gross stuff in conventional as well as some of these “certified” products. Would you eat a dessert that’s 85% organic fruit and 15% mercury? Didn’t think so….

Organic Consumers Association has already pointed out that both OASIS and EcoCert allow questionable ingredients to be used in their products.. OASIS, for example, will certify products that include synthetic petrochemical preservatives like Phenoxyethanol. EcoCert, for its part, will give its certification to products containing petrochemicals such as Cocamdiopropyl Betaine. Worse, some EcoCert certified products with organic in the name actually aren’t actually 100% organic, because EcoCert bends its own rules.

That said — sometimes, OCA’s warnings are rather alarmist. For example, some of the ingredients that the OCA warns about actually aren’t really dangerous, according to Environmental Working Group’s database Skin Deep. The fact that an ingredient isn’t (or can’t be) certified organic doesn’t automatically mean that the stuff is poison!

OCA’s more concerned with consumer confusion surrounding the word “organic,” than with whether or not the products are actually safe for your use. Thus the OCA will sometimes yell and scream about how a product with “organic” in its name includes a non-organic ingredient, and make the product sound really bad — when the product is actually quite safe (though not organic). I can see OCA’s point about consumer confusion surrounding the organic label– and the reason behind why they’re taking the tactics that they do — but their actions also sometimes create additional confusion on the part of the consumer who might then “give up” trying to find good products and go back to using unhealthy, chemicalized stuff.

Healthy personal care products really do make a difference; all sorts of skin and health problems you’ve learned to live with may simply be caused by your less-than-green shampoo or makeup. Kelly Leahy at Green Daily report that her two-year-old had a patch of cradle cap on the crown of her head that wouldn’t disappear — and then her five-month-old developed the same. So she ditched the dandruff shampoo brought on the eco-friendly Dr. Bronner’s Baby Mild: “only days after switching shampoos, the cradle cap is disappearing from both heads.”

My advice: If you must have 100% organic certified products, then stick to the stuff that has the USDA organic seal. Otherwise, the certification systems might help steer you in a better direction if you’re in a pinch, but if you can, plug in the product you’re buying into EWG’s Skin Deep cosmetic safety database to see if the ingredients in it are safe. One word of caution: Double check to make sure the ingredient lists on the product label and EWG’s review match up to make sure you’re getting the correct safety rating. Yes, the research effort is a bit of a pain, but once you find a safe product you like, you can just stick to it for years to come –

Tags: organic, oca, oasis, cosmetics, ecocert

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I guess I must like Valentine’s Day, because I’ve written quite a few posts about it! Or maybe I just like chocolates and the color red. A roundup to a socio-environmentally conscious Valentine’s Day:

Flowers: Pick from 4 green options — local, organic, fair trade, or VeriFlora certified. For the curious, here are the main differences between VeriFlora and fair trade certification.

Chocolate: Try some of these new organic, fair trade SLO Chai Chocolates, or pick from one of these reasonably-priced organic, fair trade chocolate gifts. Always opt for fair trade chocolates: Here’s a two-parter (one, two) on why you should.

Gifts: Whether you’re flush with cash or low on funds, greening your Valentine’s Day’s easy to do. Here’s a green Valentine’s Day guide for both big spenders and cheapskates.

Wine: Biodynamic and organic wine tasting 2/6. Celebrate Valentine’s Day early with a Pre-Valentine’s Day Biodynamic and Organic Wine Tasting. Boule and Wine Expo have put together a six-course tasting, pairing biodynamic/organic sparkling wines and dessert wines with Boule’s sweet treats, handmade with local sustainable ingredients.

Activism: Make Valentine’s Day a fair trade day of action.

Tags: fairtrade, chocolate, flowers, valentinesday, veriflora, wine, biodynamic

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I know the Valentine’s Day question keeping you up at night. Should I opt for VeriFlora certified flowers? Or for fair trade certified flowers?

Okay — maybe not. But now that we finally have fair trade certified flowers on the market, the question’s gotta come up sooner or later. What are the differences, and which certification is “better”? After all, both certifications claim high social and environmental benefits — as well as high-quality flowers:

• Veriflora’s soundbyte: “The ‘VeriFlora™ Certified Sustainably Grown’ label is your guarantee that flowers and potted plants have been produced in an environmentally and socially responsible manner and meet the highest standards for freshness and quality.”
• Fair trade’s soundbyte: “Fair Trade certification on flowers guarantees that growers meet strict social and environmental standards and that workers receive a premium to invest in community development.”

To find out the real differences, you have to delve deeper. For starters, who’s running these certification programs? Fair trade certification’s done by the nonprofit TransFair USA. While TransFair often gets critiqued — from corporations for being too tough, and from fair trade activists for being too lenient — the org’s been quite successful of late at both introducing big corporations into fair trade certification and retaining — and in Dean’s Bean’s case, bringing back — die-hard fair trade companies.

In contrast, VeriFlora certification’s done by a company called Scientific Certification Systems — which has the unfortunate distinction of also running Starbucks’ CAFE practices program, which has standards that are lower than, but often marketed as superior to, fair trade certification. In fact, the Sacramento Bee found that SCS didn’t even visit a farm that it had given CAFE certification to; an Africa-based company was hired to do the job — and apparently didn’t do it very well, because when SacBee started investigating, the inspector person got fired for doing a bad job.

That said, VeriFlora standards are different from CAFE standards. So: How do the VeriFlora and fair trade certifications stack up? That answer’s rather time-consuming to come by. While the Fair trade certification standards for flowers is available in a modest 12-page document (PDF), VeriFlora’s standards come in a whopping 127-pager (PDF). Turns out, the reason the VeriFlora document’s so long’s because it contains all manner voluntary and non-mandatory criteria….

The main difference between VeriFlora and fair trade certifications: While VeriFlora generally falls back on the laws set by the local government, fair trade generally sets its own baseline standards — which are likely to be a tougher standards than the labor laws (or lack there of) in many countries. For example, fair trade certification REQUIRES a minimum of 3 weeks of paid annual leave, and REQUIRES that all workers receive medical examinations at the employer’s expense. VeriFlora, in contrast, requires only that full-time workers receive “a vacation plan that meets national or local law”; employers aren’t required to provide medical services at their own expense, although they must make sure that workers be given time and transportation to access medical care.

The other difference between the certification programs: While VeriFlora simply requires that workers be ALLOWED to organize, fair trade certification REQUIRES workers to organize into a “joint body.” Why? With fair trade certification, workers receive a fair trade premium — over and above regular wages — based on a percentage of the sales price of the flowers. (The amount of the fair trade premium is between 8 to 12% of value of the flowers at the customs front of the exporting country; more details on page 12 of this PDF) That premium has to be spent on community development initiatives, and the joint body — with leaders democratically elected by the workers — decides what initiatives those will be. VeriFlora too encourages community development, but basically leaves the issue at the discretion — and purse strings — of the employer.

So fair trade certification appears to be the tougher standard. However, new complications arise here: Some VeriFlora certified flowers are also organic certified, while no organic AND fair trade certified flowers exist — which can seem odd, since both VeriFlora and fair trade certifications agree that flower farms should try to go organic. However, fair trade certified flowers just came onto the US market last fall — and the farms producing them haven’t yet gotten organic certification. VeriFlora, on the other hand, has been around much longer, giving their farms time to move toward certification. In addition, VeriFlora certifies farms in the US and Canada, which often are more readily able to pursue organic certification, financially or otherwise. Fair trade certification, in contrast, only applies to products originating from “third world” countries.

We also have to keep in mind that, at this point, even the VeriFlora AND fair trade certified flowers combined add up to a very small percentage of the flower market. And outside a few pockets communities, fair trade flowers are only available online via 1-800 Flowers and samsclub.com. Comparatively, VeriFlora certified flowers are much more widely available; Trader Joe’s sometimes carries some, for example. And VeriFlora certified flowers still smell much sweeter than conventional flowers.

So if you’re buying flowers locally, try to look for organic or VeriFlora certified flowers. If you’re buying online anyway, however, go for flowers that are fair trade certified, or VeriFlora AND organic certified.

Wouldn’t it be great if we just had one pretty flower certification that incorporated all these details into a nice tidy rosy bunch, instead of what seems like an endless proliferation of certification programs? After all, it can get costly for flower producers to worry about — and pay for — all these different certifications, as Amy Stewart, author of Flower Confidential (which I reviewed here) points out…

[crossposted on ViroPop]

Tags: fairtrade, flowers, veriflora, organic

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The PSFK panel I was on ended up being an unprepared fizzle — but luckily, right after the conference we went around the corner to The Abbey Food and Bar.

And along with wine I had a Hawaiian Ahi Salad (left). All of The Abbey’s salads are made with organic greens! Meat eaters can also get a grilled organic chicken breast. Check out the menu here. (PDF)

The Abbey seems to’ve gotten a lot bigger since the last time I dropped in about 5 years ago. Apparently it’s now about 16,000 square feet — and still quite busy and popular with the West Hollywood crowd.

We sat in the spacious outdoor area as the bar got more and more crowded. People kept ordering mojitos, which came in big glasses decorated with sugar cane sticks –

The Abbey Food and Bar. 692 N. Robertson Blvd., West Hollywood. 310.289.8410.

Tags: theabbey, westhollywood

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Moo on wheels –

To the right’s me in a CertainTees Cow T-shirt.

Summer got the “travel light” firefly.

I wrote about this eco-friendly T-shirt company before, but CertainTees has changed things up a bit.

New designs, new colors — and the prices’ve gone down to $44 a T-shirt. Plus free shipping until 2008 –

The Ts are a comfy 70% bamboo, 30% organic cotton blend, printed with low impact dyes and made sweatshop-free from harvest to finish. Plus, CertainTees carbon-offsets, and donates $5 per T-shirt sold via the website to 6 different nonprofits.

I think my fave design’s still Relic –

Tags: certaintees, bamboo, tshirt

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Of course the salmon at Juliano’s Raw isn’t actually salmon. At this raw vegan restaurant, salmon’s made of a walnut-based concoction — and I actually really liked it!

My taste buds may’ve been affected a bit by organic chardonnay. Juliano’s is the only raw restaurant I know with a wine list, which pretty much makes Juliano’s my fave raw restaurant.

I’ve wanted to try this place since I found out its strawberries come from Tutti Frutti Farms, which has a booth at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers’ Market. Fresh local organic strawberries!

Somewhat oddly — at least to me — it seems Juliano’s shuns a buncha other fruits, even if they can be eaten raw. The menu notes that dishes don’t contain any seedless fruits — or carrots, bananas, dates, pineapple, etc. Why not?

On the other hand, Juliano’s will honor all manner of dietary restrictions. The soup page notes that anything can be further blended for liquitarians. So if you’re really, really a food prude….

The web menu’s not as detailed as the menu at the restaurant; the salmon rolls, for ex, are unlisted on the web menu but are a part of an entire list of sushi rolls on the restaurant menu. I also tried the appetizer sampler with White Thai soup, all of which was just okay — and rather chewier and sweeter than I’d have liked. It was a little too much fruit leather type stuff for me.

But I’d go back for the salmon rolls and chardonnay –

Juliano’s Raw. 609 Broadway. Santa Monica. 310.587.1552. M - Th 11 am - 10 pm; Fri - Sat 11 am - 11 pm; Sun 10 am - 10 pm.

Tags: julianosraw, restaurant, santamonica, raw, vegan

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Goji berry addicts: a new Organic Superfood Buyers Club’s at your service.

Essential Living Foods — purveyors of raw and organic foods — threw a launch party for its Buyers Club on Saturday in its new Santa Monica location.

Self-dubbed a “revolutionary hybrid of farmer’s market and outlet store, spiced with an eco-fabulous twist,” the store offers organic, bulk-sized selections of goji berries, blue agave nectar, cacao nibs, dried tropical fruit slices, and more.

Partygoers were encouraged to become members; for $25, you get an annual membership that allows you to shop at near-wholesale prices in the store when it’s open, currently only Saturdays from 9 am - 2 pm.

The prices’ll be the same as on the ELF website, but of course, if you shop in store, you won’t pay shipping and you’ll get instant goji berry satisfaction.

That said, I don’t think I’ll be signing up. While I enjoyed nibbling samples, I’m not sure I can handle such vast quantities of “superfoods.” Looking at a bulk bag of cacao nibs scares me a little –

But if you could eat handfuls of Black Botija Olives with Aji or Purple Corn Kernels or choco-covered goji berries in a sitting, head on over on a sunny Saturday and sign up –

Essential Living Foods. 920 Colorado Ave. Santa Monica. 310.319.1555. Sat. 9 am - 2 pm.

Tags: elf, essentiallivingfoods, organic, gojiberries, cacaonibs

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