Good Growing Bad Food
GOOD GROWING, BAD FOOD, LOST FARMS, TALKING COMPUTER TRASH, TIGER TRACKS, OUR ENERGY FUTURE, SCIENTISTS TAKE A STAND, FINDING THE STARS
Green Clicks
Originally associated with disgruntled teens, blogs have grown into a legitimate form of online news and entertainment, covering an array of subjects from fashion and politics to the environment. And now the "eco-blog" is gaining in popularity.
Tools For Green Giving
SUPER POOPERS, eco-friendly products; A CLEANER, GREENER BEER (OR TWO),New Belgium’s new organic beer; ALT-SHOPPING, a little Brooklyn shop that specializes in handcrafted arts from around the U.S. and abroad; YOUR DARK MASTER
THE COCOA BEAN!, an array of chocolate products from Veré; FAIR TRADE TEAS, The Republic of Tea, an all-natural tea company; SMOOTH OPERATORS, super-smooth skin razors
Stewardship and Recreation
Ogden, Utah is poised to become a popular year-round tourist destination for outdoorsy types who seek an alternative to Colorado’s saturated ski resorts and sky-high tourist towns. It features miles of hiking and mountain biking trails and two ski resorts, tucked into the valley of the Wasatch Mountains. But Ogden faces the same challenge as many nature-centered towns—how to best enjoy the natural world without exploiting it.
Behind the Label
Even at the green grocery store, harmful food additives lurk behind innocent-looking labels. Hundreds of shoppers who reached for "Quorn" veggie burgers, for example, became ill with severe vomiting and diarrhea. Others developed hives and had trouble breathing. Government regulators protect the public from harmful food additives much of the time, but there are obvious holes in the system.
It’s Alive!
“Cow’s milk yogurt is packed with calcium, protein and Vitamin D,” says Althea Zincowski, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. People who are allergic to milk products, or very lactose intolerant, can try a non-milk soy-based yogurt. Most, but not all of the lactose (natural milk sugar) in yogurt is digested by beneficial bacteria, so the majority of lactose-intolerant people can eat yogurt unless they are very sensitive. For a more exotic flavor or animal alternative to cow’s milk, there are also goat’s milk and sheep’s milk yogurts.
Spic and Span
There’s nothing like a cleanser that actually works as advertised, bulldozing through dirt and leaving a surface sparkling clean. But conventional cleaning products can actually leave indoor air polluted with a toxic smog of petrochemical volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and the synthetic fragrances used to mask them. Here are some ingredients to avoid in cleaning products, and safer, simpler alternatives.
Oils Well?
Henry Ford had the right idea when he designed the Model T—it was a flex-fuel vehicle that could run on gasoline or ethanol. Today, biofuels are not a simple substitute for fossil energy—we don’t have enough farm land, for one thing—but they can certainly be combined with other fuels in a diverse energy portfolio.
COMMENTARY: Indoor Smoking Bans
Cigarette litter has been a problem for as long as people have smoked, and especially since filtered cigarettes became popular in the mid-20th century. Estimates from the World Health Organization suggest that close to 1.1 billion people—or one third of all people above the age of 15—smoke. When each of these smokers consumes an average of several cigarettes a day, one can only begin to picture the number of cigarette butts disposed of in streets, parks and other public places.
What is the status of horse slaughter in the U.S., which is done primarily to export the meat to Europe?
Much to the delight of horse lovers everywhere, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 503) in September 2006 outlawing the sale and transport of horses for slaughter for human consumption.