(DrFrankLipman – Frank Lipman) Not long ago, a seemingly radical idea arrived at the grocery store – the mandatory nutrition information label. Designed to help consumers get a clearer picture of what exactly was in their food, the idea essentially legislated food processors into being more transparent about their ingredients. Instead however, we got a lot of confusion as Big Food found ways to put questionable substances and suspected carcinogens in plain sight, right there on the nutrition label! Buried in the small print, with abbreviations and chemical chart names only a Stephen Hawking would understand, consumers were left little more enlightened than they were before mandatory labeling. To help unravel the label gibberish, here are the 7 ingredients you should always leave behind on the supermarket shelf:

1. Aspartame

If it says Equal or NutraSweet on the box, don’t put it in your cart. It’s a chemical sweetener that’s loaded with phenylalanine, which in high doses is a neurotoxin which many scientists believe can alter brain function, cause behavioral changes in adults and even mental retardation in growing fetuses when used by mothers-to-be. If that weren’t enough, side effects can also include headaches, seizures, menstrual problems and gastro-intestinal distress.

2. BHA and BHT

These two similar chemicals are used to prevent oil-containing foods from going rancid. A seemingly admirable enough use. However, they also come with some serious concerns – they’re known carcinogens, having caused cancer in lab rats, mice, and hamsters. Avoid BHA and BHT at all costs.

3. Food Coloring

Designed to make foods more attractive, food coloring has an ugly side: caramel coloring manufacturing involves the use of industrial solvents and carcinogens. Red dye number 3 is associated with tumor development. Red dye 40 and Yellow 6 are closely associated with aggressive behaviors and impulse control problems in children. I say, stay far away.

4. Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein

Hydrolyzed vegetable protein is a chemically created, flavor-enhancing protein substance that’s similar to MSG, but whitewashed a bit with a healthier sounding name. The problem with HVP is that it contains hidden MSG, so you can still wind up sickening yourself with headaches, migraines, heart irregularities and so on. Two more members of the MSG family to avoid: autolyzed yeast extract and hydrolyzed yeast extract – they too can make sensitive types feel awful.

5. Parabens

Parabens are chemical preservatives most commonly found in cosmetics and beauty products, but oddly enough, they’re also found in many baked goods, like breads, cakes, pies, pastries, cereals and some processed meats. Designed to inhibit mold growth, there’s evidence to suggest that parabens in food may play a contributing role in hormone-related problems in women, such as breast cancer, and reduced testosterone levels in men. My advice? Steer clear.

6. Partially Hydrogenated Oil

Partially hydrogenated oil and trans-fat are essentially one in the same; And most folks don’t realize that a product can claim “0g trans fat” as long as there is less than ½ gram per serving, so if you see it on the label, don’t buy it (even if it says trans fat free). Case closed. Sure the stuff makes your food less likely to spoil, but it clogs your arteries, raises bad cholesterol and lowers the good cholesterol and who needs that?

7. Nitrites

Left unadulterated, meat will start to spoil and look pretty unappetizing quickly. Add some refrigeration and a layer of nitrites, and the shelf life, not to mention the fresh-looking red color, lengthens significantly. But what happens to the nitrates when humans ingest it? Well, not only can nitrites trigger headaches and allergic reactions, research indicates that a daily habit of nitrate-laden cured meats can increase risk of cancerous tumors. While I don’t recommend eating foods with nitrites, if it’s unavoidable, then start you meal with antioxidants Vitamin C and E to protect your body. (Note: Naturally occurring nitrites, like those in some vegetables don’t cause health woes, so feel free to eat your veggies!)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT BONUS:

While carefully reading labels can help you make somewhat better choices, here’s a more radical and much simpler approach: stop buying foods with labels on them and make the switch to whole, natural, organic or local, grower-to-table foods. You’ll get exactly what your body needs and virtually none of the dangerous additives your body is better off without.

For more ideas on how to treat your body to additive-free foods, take a look at my top 9 Superfoods.

Recommended Reading:

• Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included
• Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases
• Hypothyroidism – Natural Remedies, Causes, and How To Heal the Thyroid
• Total Nutrition – Make ˚your own Homemade Multivitamin and Mineral Formula

(NaturalNews – S. D. Wells) Most milk does a body BAD, not good, but it’s the biggest lies that are more likely to be believed, and there are myths that refuse to die. So, in the name of good health, let’s try to rid ourselves of them now.

Food that is cooked dead is useless

Did you know that pasteurized milk is dead milk? The nutrients are lost, burned up at high heat, between 145°F and 160°F for about 30 seconds. Yep, that milk’s dead. Did you know that calcium alone does not build bones or bone density? Let’s start this off with those infamous words, pasteurized and homogenized. Homogenized and pasteurized are bad, bad words. Were you taught differently growing up? Did the school books brainwash you? Did the commercials say just the opposite, that milk helps build strong bones? Is your “dead” milk polluted with inflammatory carcinogens, medications, hormones, antibiotics, pus, pathogens, bacteria, viruses and artery-clogging animal fat?

Milk, cigarettes, diet soda and margarine for America!

The United States is in the midst of a public health epidemic due to poor diet. While much of the focus has been on obvious culprits such as sugary soft drinks and fast food, dairy foods often get a pass. The dairy industry, propped up by government, has convinced us of the health benefits of milk and other dairy products. But the context of how people consume dairy matters. …

[P]atterns of consumption [have shifted] away from plain milk toward dairy products laden with sugar, fat, and salt. …

Nearly half of the milk supply goes to make about 9 billion pounds of cheese and 1.5 billion gallons of frozen desserts–two-thirds of which is ice cream;

11 percent of all sugar goes into the production of dairy products.
(http://www.eatdrinkpolitics.com)

A few years ago, David Wolfe, nutritionist, best-selling author and world traveler, speaking via Natural News, said it best:

Okay, well the nations that consume the most calcium, the United States, Canada and the Scandinavian countries, have the worst osteoporosis and that’s because our theory of mineralization or our theory of nutrition is incorrect. The general theory is that a hundred years ago they started looking at people’s bones. They found out that, “oh my god; these bones are made out of calcium”. When people don’t have enough bone density the thought is, “oh they just have to eat more calcium because that’s what builds bones”. Calcium does not build bones and that is one of the biggest misconceptions ever and it actually goes to the real core of our problems with science. …

What increases bone density? Well, it turns out it’s two other minerals and that is silicon and magnesium.
(http://www.naturalnews.com)

Pasteurized milk – this is NOT good

The goal with pasteurization is to kill potentially bad bacteria, but at what cost? It kills all the beneficial bacteria and damages the minerals and vitamins. Plus, pasteurization denatures the proteins. This milk gets heated over 160°F for half a minute to “sterilize” what you’ll probably have trouble digesting. Even “low-temp” pasteurization stops at around 145°F, still killing most of the beneficial enzymes.

Homogenized milk – this is NOT good

Around the turn of the 20th century, homogenization became the “industry standard,” because people liked not having to shake up all the fat globules for consistency. This process rearranges the fat and protein molecules, which ALTERS how they act in the human body. Then you have “fortified” milk with vitamins A and D added back in so that the general population feels better about drinking milk past infancy.

The calcium myth – why millions of Americans are “doing it” wrong

The US is the most dairy-consuming nation in the world, yet we have the highest rate of osteoporosis. No animal on Earth drinks milk past infancy or from another animal, except humans.

Don’t get “white-washed” by the Dairy Industry! Get your calcium from organic leafy greens and raw nuts and seeds. Find organic silicon and magnesium and stay informed. (http://drbenkim.com)

Sources for this article include:
http://drbenkim.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://labs.naturalnews.com
http://ajcn.nutrition.org [PDF]
http://draxe.com
http://www.nomeatathlete.com
http://science.naturalnews.com

(DrFrankLipman – Frank Lipman) While it may seem like a modern invention, “aquaculture,” has been around for ages – man has been “farming” fish in net enclosures, ponds, vats, urns and even woven baskets for thousands of years. More recently though, say within the last few decades, worldwide demand has exploded and farming fish has grown just as rapidly, evolving into a multi-billion dollar industry. Its mission: to produce more fish quicker, faster, larger and cheaper to meet the insatiable demand for what once seemed a limitless and inexpensive source of protein and good fat.

Not surprisingly, the extraordinary growth of the fish farm business has brought with it a number of industrial farming problems that concern me enough to advise all my patients to avoid factory-farmed fish. While there are some fish farmers producing eco-friendly and healthy fish, they are the exception, not the rule, so unless you’re able to purchase fish from those types of purveyors (usually smaller-scale, artisanal or boutique-style fish farms), just say No Tanks…that is, no to farmed fish – and here are five simple reasons why:

1) There’s no such thing as a free-range, farmed fish

In fact, it’s quite the opposite, with fish farm enclosures packing the creatures in, well, like sardines, leaving little room for the fish to swim freely or to engage in their normal behavioral patterns. The result? Stressed fish, who like us, tend to get sick more easily when their defenses are down. With their immune systems compromised, the fish become more prone to illness, parasitic infections and diseases, which then can spread quickly through their over-populated aquatic quarters.

2) Farmed fish are like really into drugs, dude

Next, the sickened fish have to be made well again, with you guessed it, drugs.  To do this, farmed fish are fed antibiotics, antifungals and/or pesticides – which means so are you, with every fork-full. Hardly an appetizing thought. As if that weren’t enough, farmed fish are often injected with booster shots of sex hormones. Turns out, captive fish populations tend to produce fewer offspring, so fish farms often enhance Mother Nature with fertility treatments (i.e., hormone shots, special feed, etc.) to stimulate offspring production and pump up the yield. With this in mind the question becomes, what are those fish hormones doing to our bodies? And is it worth the risk? I don’t think so.

3) Their diet is simply revolting

As is the case with industrially farmed, land-based livestock, top quality, 5-star feed isn’t on the menu, so what does the average farmed fish eat? Mostly fishmeal. Sound innocuous enough, that is till you discover that fishmeal is made up mostly of smaller fish mixed with (presumably genetically-modified) soybeans, grains and corn. Possible GMO issues aside, the larger issue is that in order to make all that fishmeal, a tremendous amount of smaller fish are fished out of the sea – anywhere from 3-to-6 pounds of small fish are needed to produce just one pound of farmed fish. In addition to being an enormously wasteful process, it also leaves less food available for wild fish to feed on, which contributes to their population declines. Oh, and what else do farmed fish snack on? The carcasses of deceased neighbors floating in or lying at the bottom of their tanks. It’s not a pretty picture.

4) If you’re looking for nutrition, farmed fish falls short

Even if you could overlook the drugs, hormone shots and less-than-optimal diet, farmed fish still comes up short in terms of nutrition, one of the reasons so many of us turned to fish in the first place. Compared to wild fish, farmed versions can have as much as 20% less protein, twice as much inflammation-boosting omega 6 fatty acid, less usable omega 3’s and fewer nutrients overall. In short, wild is better.

5) Industrial fish farms pollute their surroundings

Numerous studies report that water quality suffers in areas where fish farms operate, creating something akin to the aquatic version of agricultural run-off. Decaying fishmeal, diseased and dying fish and their waste products combine to create conditions that enable bacteria to flourish, polluting not only the fish farm waters but seeping into and damaging neighboring wild fish habitats, marshes and wetlands either by accident, carelessness or poor fish farming methods. Isn’t all this damage and pollution is too high an ecological price to pay for farmed fish-on-demand? I believe it is.

So, with all this in mind, what’s the alternative to farmed fish? The answer is wild fish though the wild stuff is not without its own set of issues, including over-fishing, dwindling populations and mercury concerns. To help you make the best possible choices, when buying fish at the market or dining out, ask questions and find out where your fish is sourced, and if it’s fished sustainably. Before you buy, check your choices with the Blue Ocean Institute’s helpful Guide to Ocean Friendly Seafood or download printable lists of eco-friendly seafood recommendations from Seafoodwatch.org 

For more on how to make informed seafood choices, check out School Yourself the Smart Way to Eat Fish.

(NaturalNews – J. D. Heyes) If you are a fan of the 1990s hit comedy series Seinfeld, perhaps you remember the episode in which Jerry and his friends began to suspect that the frozen yogurt sold in a store that Kramer has invested money in was responsible for the comedian’s and Elaine’s sudden weight gain. Jerry and Elaine have a sample of the alleged “non-fat yogurt” tested, and sure enough, it’s loaded with calories. It’s a scandal that goes all the way to the office of the Mayor-elect, Rudy Giuliani.

Well, fast forward a couple of decades since that episode first aired in 1993, and it appears as though some brands of yogurt still are not the healthy breakfast or snack choice they are made out to be. In fact, new findings show that many of the brands have much more sugar in them than some junk foods that you’d never consider eating, The Huffington Post reports.

According to the news site, the American Heart Association recommends that men consume no more than 36 grams of sugar a day, and women no more than 20 grams. If you eat, say, just one Hostess Twinkie cake, that will make a huge dent in the recommended daily sugar max; the cakes pack in 19 grams of sugar each.

There are better options

“A Twinkie is not worth it, not just because of the caloric content–150 calories is adequate for a snack–but because it lacks fiber, which will provide satiety over a period of time and because it is loaded with sugar, which will cause you to crash and become tired 15 minutes after you eat a Twinkie,” Tracy Lockwood, a registered dietitian at F-Factor Nutrition, told Time. “You can choose so many other options, such as a handful of almonds or an apple and two table spoons of peanut butter, that will keep you full and will provide you with protein and fiber.”

Well, as it turns out, many of the top-selling yogurts have much more sugar content than a Twinkie.

Part of the reason for the high sugar content is because it occurs naturally in yogurt; however, the amount of naturally occurring sugar varies dramatically depending on the kind. In an interview with HuffPo, Monica Reinagel, MS, LDN, CNS, said that low-fat yogurt, for example, has a reputation for being notoriously high in sugar. Other experts agreed, and suggested alternatives:

The first 17 grams of sugar per serving, in lowfat varieties, is naturally occurring lactose. In original yogurt, it’s common to see anywhere between 12 and 15 grams of natural sugar, according to Heather Bauer, R.D., CDN. That’s why Bauer recommends going Greek. Greek yogurt, she said, has as little as 6 grams in plain flavors.

What really boosts sugar content, however, is what folks tend to put into plain yogurt. Fruit — and especially the high-syrupy kind that is put into store-bought yogurts — is one of the most common causes of increased sugar. Also, once you begin tossing in candied nuts or, say, sweetened granola, you will quickly find that your concoction contains far more sugar than that found in a Twinkie.

“If you’re going to add toppings, always stick to a plain flavor,” Bauer said.

Would-be yogurt eaters will say that one of the big reasons why they don’t care for plain yogurt is its bitter flavor. So, to make it more palatable to a wider group of people, just about all of the big brands — think Dannon and Yoplait — offer selections of yogurt containing fruits and sometimes even dessert-flavored choices.

And these sweet additions are usually what makes yogurts contain more sugar than a highly processed piece of yellow, creme-filled spongecake.

Some of the worst offenders:

— Yoplait Original Strawberry

— Dannon Fruit on the Bottom Blueberry

— Stoneyfield Smooth and Creamy Lowfat French Vanilla

— Brown Cow Nonfat Vanilla

— Activia Blueberry Probiotic Yogurt

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.imdb.com
http://healthland.time.com
http://science.naturalnews.com

(DrFrankLipman – Frank Lipman) Juice cleanses, juice bars, late night ads for juicing machines and the occasional celebrity endorsement all seem to be fueling a national juice-drinking craze. Fruit is healthy and fruit juice is a fast and convenient way to drink your nutrients, so what could possibly be wrong with a daily dose of orange, apple or cranberry juice or a trendy juice cleanse? More than you ever imagined! While I am a fan of green vegetable juices, most juices contain too much fruit and therefore sugar. Here are 5 thoughts on how fruit juice seriously undermines your health – and why you should quit the stuff:

1. Think of Your Morning O.J. as Soda – Minus the Bubbles

OK, so you swapped your favorite sugary soda for cranberry juice, thinking that it’s better for you. Though I applaud the effort to ditch the soda, replacing it with a fruit juice sugar-bomb is a lateral move. Unfortunately, most fruit juices – be they organic or otherwise — flood your body with just as much sugar as soda pop. For example, the average 12 oz. soda contains roughly 35 – 45 grams of sugar. The same amount of orange juice comes in at about 30 grams; apple delivers about 40 and pomegranate juice can top 45 grams. That is simply an insane amount of sugar to consume at one sitting, no matter what type of beverage it is. What’s an acceptable amount of sugar intake? Ideally, no more than 10 grams a day at the most, which certainly takes fruit juice off the table!

2. There’s Nothing to Chew On

Converting whole fruit into liquid requires a lot of processing. Along the way, the once healthy fruit gets pasteurized, pulverized, filtered, pureed and stored in massive vats for months at a time – all of which chips away at the nutrients, vitamins and belly-filling fiber the fruit started out with. Then, they pump the liquefied fruit full of sugar. All that added extra sugar spikes your blood sugar because there’s no fiber to slow its release into the blood stream. Next, you get the crash, followed by hunger and cravings, none of which you’d experience had you eaten the whole fruit instead. And be aware of clever marketing claims. No matter how they parse it, a glass of juice – with “pulp” or without, organic or otherwise – is not nutritionally equivalent to whole fruit, nor will it ever be. Remember, fruit juice consumption is not an acceptable short-cut on the road to good health – it’s more like the highway to health problems – so grab a real, whole, organic piece of fruit and start chewing!

3. How About a Tall Glass of Diabetes and Heart Disease?

Another problem with a diet that’s heavy on fruit juice? Recent studies have indicated that it’s linked with increased insulin resistance and diabetes risk, whereas whole fruit consumption appears not to have the same health-eroding effect. Fruit juices aren’t kind to your ticker either, according to one Harvard study. In it, researchers reported that daily doses of sugary drinks boosted heart disease risk in men. Fruit juices fall under the sugary drink umbrella, so my advice is to avoid all of them if you want to keep your heart, insulin levels, and waistline in check. 

4. Hope You Like Going to the Dentist

If sugar highs and lows, increased insulin resistance, heart disease and diabetes risk weren’t enough of a disincentive, then at least consider your teeth. The acids in fruit juices, not to mention the mounds of sugar, can take a big bite out our your tooth enamel, resulting in weak spots that can blossom into costly cavities, which will eventually need fixing. If the damage is significant enough, tooth bonding or crowns might also be needed to patch up the mess, so your wallet takes a hit as well. At that point you need to ask yourself if a fruit juice habit is really worth the damage, hassle and expense? Didn’t think so.

5. Did You Know 12 Oranges Died to Make Your Glass of Juice?

In other words, it takes a heck of a lot of raw fruit materials and resources to produce a bottle of juice. Considering the resources used to fuel industrial farming operations – the pesticides, the millions of gallons of water for irrigation and the trucking all that fruit and juice – your morning beverage gives the earth a black-eye as well. Once again, you have to ask, is it worth it to batter your external and internal environments just for a fix of bottled sugar water? 

BE WELL BONUS: 5 Tips to Help You Kick The Habit

For those of you with a serious juice jones, kicking can be easier said than done, so here are a few pointers on how taper off and kick the juice bottle for good:

1. Buy green juices with as little fruit and sugar as possible. The less sugar the better.
2. Cut your dose. In a tall glass, add lots of ice, plus 3 – 4 parts water or seltzer to 1 part fruit juice.
3. Make your own. Blend your (unpeeled) fruit and add water. Toss in spices like cinnamon and nutmeg and a drop of stevia if needed.
4. Try a shot glass of portion control. In the morning, drink your O.J out of a 1-ounce shot glass, and only one of them!
5. Grow up – and switch to tea. It’s time. Tea is where it’s at. It’s tastes great and its body benefits are legion.

For a few pointers on making the switch to tea, check out my Drink Your Way Healthy post.

(NaturalPapa – Derek Markham) Dirty laundry happens. And then washing clothes happens, usually quite wastefully, without a thought for the overall impact of this common chore. Whether you’re trying to transition to having a lower environmental footprint, attempting to rely less on the grid, or just want to go greener in the laundry room, there are a variety of simple and low-tech methods for washing clothes in a more sustainable manner.

When my family and I were experimenting with living in a tiny house, we spent six years learning how to do things in a simpler and more sustainable manner, sometimes out of choice, and sometimes out of necessity. And like most families, especially those that use cloth diapers for their baby, washing clothes seemed like a never-ending chore. Going to the laundromat every couple of days wasn’t really optimal for us, except in the middle of winter when it was too cold to wash clothes outside, so without our own washing machine, we had to get a little creative. Some of the ways we dealt with laundry weren’t so much about washing clothes, but about needing to wash clothes less often, and to use less energy and water to do so.

We’ve since moved on into a house with our own washing machine, but many of these eco-friendly laundry tactics have stuck with us over the years.

1. Wear clothes longer between washing: This is kind of a no-brainer, and probably doesn’t apply to socks and underwear (but your mileage may vary), but only washing the clothes that are noticeably dirty or smelly is a great way to cut down on the amount and frequency of laundry that needs to get done. Unless your job leaves your clothes dirty at the end of the day, chances are you can wear pants, shirts, sweaters, skirts, etc., at least twice (if not more) before washing them. Personally, I also try to buy pants in colors that don’t easily show dirt or wear, and I choose to purchase longer-wearing items instead of always going for the bargain clothes. For me, that means that I tend to go for the heavier weight pants, such as those made by Carhartt or another workwear brand, and to buy them in dark colors. Obviously this isn’t optimal if your job has a strict dress code or requires wearing white pants…

2. Wash by hand: We began washing clothes by hand out of necessity, as we didn’t have a washing machine, and while it takes more time and physical energy to get it done, it also had the benefit of making us very aware of how much laundry we were generating each week. There a number of low-tech tools for washing clothes by hand, but we found that a laundry plunger, such as this one from Lehman’s, was effective, affordable, and long-lasting. We used five-gallon plastic buckets (which I was able to get for free from the local college’s dining services) to wash and rinse in, and we were learned that if we started washing the least-dirty clothes first, we were able to wash multiple loads in the same water, and then do the same with the rinse water. After we were finished with one bucket of dirty water, we used it to water trees and to keep our compost sufficiently moist. If you’re looking for another human-powered laundry solution, this pedal-powered version looks intriguing.

3. Use a clothes line: The sun and wind are very effective at drying clothes throughout the year (it even works in the winter, unless we hit long periods of below-freezing temperatures or snow and rain), and when drying clothes outside wasn’t an option, we used clothes racks to dry them inside. We didn’t ever buy or build a clothes wringer, as we lived in a dry sunny region, but that could be an effective method of speeding up the drying process, especially in more humid locations. Depending on the climate where you live, using an outside clothes line may not always be the best choice, but either a homemade or a purpose-built clothes rack can do the trick.

4. Wash clothes while showering: This is an old backpacking and traveling trick which can enable you to get clean clothes while you clean your body. Either step into the shower fully clothed and get them wet under the showerhead, or remove them first and put them in the bottom of the shower with you. If you use a gentle all-purpose soap such as Dr. Bronner’s, there’s no need for a separate laundry soap, and the soap from your body, in combination with the scrubbing action of your feet on your clothes, can effectively wash your clothes in almost the same amount of water that a shower alone uses.

5. Use concentrated and biodegradable laundry soap: When we were washing clothes by hand and using the resulting greywater for plants, we chose to use a brand that was specifically designed for greywater systems (Oasis), but there are certainly other greywater-friendly options on the market. We still always buy a concentrated and eco-friendly laundry soap, even after getting a washing machine. And for those that want to get started with using greywater for the landscape, re-routing your washing machine discharge to a mulched greywater basin can be an appropriate project (check your local regulations, or proceed at your own risk, as many municipalities are very strict about greywater projects).

6. Avoid using chlorine bleach: We’ve managed to do without chlorine bleach for washing clothes for many years, and I believe there isn’t a strong case for using it (again, unless you are required to wear bright white clothes). There are options for avoiding the use of bleach in the laundry, including using non-chlorine laundry whiteners, but we’ve found that the sun is the most effective and eco-friendly bleaching method, and that drying clothes on the line was sufficient for our purposes (although we do live in a very sunny region of the southwest, and your location may not be optimal for that).

7. Only wash full loads: This is another simple tactic that should be second nature to use these days, but isn’t as common as it ought to be. Doing small loads of laundry on the same settings as a full load is just wasteful, and by waiting for a full load to accumulate before washing it, we can optimize our laundry habits. If we’ve only got one item to wash, then washing by hand may be a better choice.

8. Only use cold water: Even after getting a washing machine, I left the hot water supply unhooked, and we’ve only used cold water to wash our clothes for many years now. They get just as clean, and by not having to heat the wash water, our energy consumption (and energy costs) are much lower. In the event that we do use a laundromat (when traveling, for example), we still choose the cold water wash.

9. Use a laundromat’s commercial-sized washing machine: Using a laundromat’s large commercial washing machine may be more efficient in terms of water use, and can let you get away with one big load instead of multiple smaller loads of laundry. Obviously this depends on the age and efficiency of the washing machines at the laundromat, but many times the front-loading washers use a lot less water to get the same job done as the standard top-loaders in many homes.

10. Skip the dryer sheets: Dryer sheets are kind of a mystery to me, as I’m not sure why people still choose to buy and use them. Perhaps it’s a matter of marketing, or perhaps we may believe that unless something comes out of the laundry with a scent on it, it isn’t truly clean, but I feel fortunate to have not bought into that. Not only are dryer sheets an additional item that must be manufactured (and then disposed of), they may actually leave undesirable residues on our clothes, which are then in direct contact with our skin.

11. Purchase a more efficient front-loading washing machine: This item is on my list of essential home upgrades to save up for, and is a relatively simple method for more washing clothes more sustainably. Front-loading washers can get clothes just as clean, but use much less water to do so. And if we choose a model that is also rated higher in energy-efficiency, we can also reduce the amount of electricity we use for laundry.

The weekly chore of washing clothes can be done with a lower environmental impact, whether you own a washing machine or not, and greening our laundry process can be an effective piece of an overall personal sustainability initiative.

(DrFrankLipman – Frank Lipman) In 1946, there was a famous ad that read “more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” In 1976, Coke’s slogan was “Coke adds Life!” Fast forward a few decades, and we all know better. Both of those ads, however amusingly anachronistic they may now seem, fooled a lot of people and helped damage the bodies of millions of people, the only upside being that now at least, there’s a warning label on cigarettes. I think Coke should have one too. A few years back former Mayor Bloomberg got close by banning sales of super-sized sodas in NYC, a move applauded by all of us in the health community. Not surprisingly, soda manufacturers fought the measure, hoping to shout down health and safety concerns, but the word got out and finally, soda’s getting the bad rap it so richly deserves. With this in mind, just in time for summer, I want to remind you to eliminate soda and soft drinks, sugared or diet, from your life and your family’s. Here are 4 simple reasons to make your soda break-up a no-brainer:

1. They Do a Number on Your Body

There is no conceivable benefit to drinking soft drinks, and their health drawbacks are legion. For starters, they significantly increase diabetes risk and put you at higher risk for cancer, not to mention the added bonus of increased heart attack and stroke risk for daily diet soda drinkers. If that weren’t enough, the phospohoric acid in soft drinks contributes to tooth and bone weakening by facilitating calcium loss. Osteoporosis anyone? A “Coke and a smile?” I don’t think so.

2. There are Toxins in Every Sip

I get it. It’s hot. You’re thirsty and you’re thinking a Coke would taste good on a hot summer day. But would it be as appealing if you took a moment to consider the toxins floating around in that bubbling brown witches brew? Though the actual recipe is a closely guarded secret, there are several alarming ingredients whose damaging effects on your health should stop you in your tracks. Among them: benzene, a known carcinogen; the preservative sodium benzoate which can damage your DNA; high fructose corn syrup, which in addition to encouraging diabetes and obesity, can contain traces of mercury. Add to that the recent questions that have been raised about the presence of 4-methylimidazole (4-MeI) in Coke and Pepsi – which has been shown to cause cancer in lab rats – and perhaps your ice cold soft drink might be better described as a hot mess.

3. The Can isn’t Doing You any Favors Either

Would you like some gender-bending endocrine disruptors with your drink? Then you’ve come to the right place because perennial favorite bisphenol-A (BPA) comes free in every can! So what’s a little BPA between friends? Well, for the soda makers, it means continued profits. For you, however, it can mean ingestion of a chemical which interferes with your hormone function and has been linked to breast cancer, prostate cancer and neurological problems in lab animals. How’s that Coke tasting now?

4. Sodas are Unkind to the Earth

Soda production isn’t a very clean or green business. Between the chemical needed to produce this junk, the fuel needed to transport it, and the tons of plastic bottles created to contain it, one has to question if it’s worth it, just to get a hit of health-destroying, liquid sugar. Take it a step further and consider that even though you may be a rigorous recycler, your bottle may well wind up in the water and polluting the ocean. Bottom line: don’t be part of the problem – just let soda go.