Better Healthy Choices

This topic is near and dear to me because if you would have asked me how I felt about gardening 10 years ago, I would have told you if you saw me gardening, call a psychiatrist, I've cracked. That's not a lie. I had absolutely zero interest in gardening back then. And I mean NONE.  But then something happened a few years back. My wife, as I have mentioned many times in my blogs, was diagnosed with breast cancer. We were both devastated with the news. And both our worlds were turned upside down for very different reasons.  Some backstory. We are both the types of people who love nature. We love to go hiking or just walking in all sorts of settings. We love animals. We tend to visit places like the mountains or the beaches. We love the smell of salt air. Being in Lake Tahoe where you can literally just inhale the pine trees (and now you can smell them too). We've been on hiking trips in Hawaii just to see the many Waterfalls they have to offer. We've done so many things o...

When I first began to research this topic, it horrified me. I knew they sprayed our non organic fruits and vegetables with chemicals to kill pests. But I didn't know how many they used or how often they used them. If you look up the chemicals in non organic fruits & vegetables, you'd never eat any of these foods again. Or you would at least pause and ask yourself, "is this apple worth it?" In fact, after writing about the additives in our candy, I can confirm you'd be better off eating a chocolate bar than most of the non organic fruits and vegetables they sell in our grocery stores.  I recently saw an article about a particular company in California (most of you know who I'm talking about and if not just Google it because they have the strawberry market cornered) who grows more strawberries than anywhere else in the country. In fact, did you know CA is responsible for 90% of the entire US Strawberry supply? Did you all also know, that for example, a non o...

Before I begin my rant and lose a ton of friends over this next topic, let me just repeat a popular phrase; DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER! Because I'm about to touch on a sacred topic. Candy Now, in all honestly, my sacred food is Coffee. I mean seriously, touch my coffee and die. But at least with coffee, I know many people who don't drink it. But, candy? I don't think I know anyone who hates candy. They might be allergic to some of it. They may prefer a darker chocolate over a lighter, milkier chocolate. They may like softer, gummier types of over hard candy. But candy has become a universal staple in our lives. And most people love it.  When I started researching candy production, I went back 50 years because that was right around the time, the make up of most candy started to change.  In the mid 1970's, the average chocolate candy was made with cane sugar, beet sugar and molasses. And man those times were filled with many good candy memories. I remember every year g...

This blog took me days to write because there is just too much information on this topic to share. Half the chemicals in our skin care products I can't even pronounce. And the fact that many of them are toxic, is just abhorrent to me. Our skin is the largest organ in our body. It does so many cool functions from protecting us from physical injury and pathogens, to temperature regulation, to the synthesis of Vitamin D. Our skin is vital to our well-being. And we all have a terrible habit of not treating it with respect.  I've written a few blogs lately about the chemicals in some of our foods and what it does to our bodies. But I haven't yet touched on the chemicals we put on the outside of our bodies and their cumulative effects. If you think about some of the things, that we don't think about, that we do to our skin such as: 1. Using alcohol to stop the spread of germs 2. Swim in a pool of chlorine 3. Sit out in the sun until we burn our skin 4. Cause physical injury t...

Did anyone ever stop to wonder why some breads can sit on our shelves for weeks? If not, I'm one of those weirdos who questioned it. And then I started looking up the most popular brands; Wonder Bread, Sara Lee, Pepperidge Farms, Rustic Oven, Kirkland Signature, Dave's Killer Bread....you name it, I looked into most of it. And here's what I found. Most commercial bread is a cumulation of additives. How it becomes bread, when they are all done making it, has become a mystery to me. Our country has become so big on processed foods, that an item as simple as bread is now no better than that Twinkie you experimented with, by leaving it on your shelf for a few weeks to see if it would decay, when you were 10 years old.  And if you don't know what a Twinkie is, oh boy, I'll share all the fun ingredients of that bad boy another day.  Bread is a common staple all over the world. For over 14,000 years, humans have relied on bread as a source of food. It's cheap, easy to ...