Natural Life Magazine

People begin to examine their food choices for many different reasons. Among our concerns are economics, personal health – including food security after recalls for contamination by listeria and e-coli, environmental degradation due to pesticide use or pollution caused by long distance transport, and abuse of farm workers. But eventually, many of us realize that food is power and that our food choices can help change the world – for better or for worse. Hence, the growing organic, locavore, and Fair Trade movements.

But these are not simple problems and the solutions aren’t simple either. For instance, the WorldWatch Institute estimates that in the United States food typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate, as much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. For some people, this modern long-distance food system offers unparalleled choice. But it often runs roughshod over local cuisines, varieties, and agriculture, while consuming staggering amounts of fuel, generating greenhouse gases, eroding the pleasures of face-to-face interactions around food, and compromising food security. And that sometimes has us trying to choose between imported organic food and food that is locally grown food with the use of pesticides. In fact, in the UK, researchers found local food (grown within a 12-mile/20-km radius) to be more “green” than even organic food.

Then there’s the issue of seafood. It’s a terrific source of omega-3 fatty acids,  which we are told are very important to the health of our eyes, brain and heart. On the other hand, seafood is often polluted with mercury, PCBs, and other toxins, and fish stocks around the world are being decimated and sometimes fished to extinction. The debate about veganism/vegetarianism versus meat eating has, of course, been going on for many years…but now there’s a sub-debate related to the source of meat, as seen in the recent popularity of grass-fed beef.

Much of our food is imported from countries that don’t have fair labor laws, and where farmers are exploited financially and harmed by farm chemicals that are no longer legal here. Fair Trade certification organizations have attempted to address those issues. In 2008, Fair Trade certified sales amounted to approximately US$4.08 billion, according to the international association of Fair Trade groups. But Fair Trade as a concept has critics on both ends of the political spectrum.

Helping you navigate these sometimes complicated issues has been the purpose of many Natural Life Magazine articles over the past 34 years. You can find some of them listed in our Healthy Living Index and our Organic Gardening Index. And, of course, each issue back to 2003 is available in full online to subscribers to the digital edition of Natural Life.

Mothers have been carrying their babies in slings for millennia. It is safe, and highly beneficial to both babies and moms. But now, based on a few deaths resulting from the use of one style of baby carrier, the US government is apparently preparing to issue a warning about the use of baby slings in general. The head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Inez Tenenbaum, told a meeting of the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association earlier this week that her agency is getting ready to issue a general warning about the slings.

Tenenbaum did not mention any specific baby slings but Consumer Reports magazine has singled out the Infantino “SlingRider.” This bag-style carrier wraps around the parent’s neck like a purse and is supposed to cradle the child in a curved position. However, that curved position can cause the baby to flop her head forward, restricting her ability to breathe. And it allows the baby to turn his face toward the wearer’s body and smother in the parent’s clothing.

Unfortunately, Tenenbaum’s non-specific pre-warning statement has been picked up by the media without much background information. And it prompted Consumer Reports to issue another statement yesterday. Much of the resulting media coverage suggests that babywearing is dangerous and all slings should be banned. One poorly designed product – which is available through big box stores and isn’t even really a sling – that is often used without thought should not condemn an entire category of products and practices.

There is a lot of information on the Internet about babywearing (such as The Baby Wearer), and many wonderful, small, mom-run companies that specialize in helping you find and use a sling or wrap safely. We published an article in Natural Life Magazine in 2008 about babywearing. It includes the history of slings, some how-to that will help parents develop the skill of babywearing (as one commenter noted on the Consumer Reports site, you can’t just put your infant in a purse and take off), and some safety tips.

Can we do enough to reverse global warming to preserve the wonders of the wild for our children? That’s the question our Natural Family columnist Andrea asks in her latest column The Smell of Ice. She and her husband met on beautiful Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic. And now, she writes, “Instead of standing on that Arctic beach, telling Kieran about our connection to the clean silence of that land, we’ll have to tell him we’re sorry. We’re sorry that we let it get to this point. We’re sorry that we let such beauty be destroyed in our pursuit of stuff. And this is a pursuit in which we, his parents, have partaken. We’re trying, but we need to do more.” We all need to do more.

Although most of us recycle these days and almost three-quarters of us pay our bills online, almost half of Americans have done nothing else to green their lives, according to a new Harris Poll on green living.

In spite of all the information out there about green living, many people (34 percent) told the pollsters that they don’t know don’t know how to go green, and many others don’t believe their greening their lifestyle will make any significant difference on the environment.

Others might not want to change their lifestyles in any major way. For instance, only five percent of survey respondents said they are driving less by combining errands, walking more, etc. and just four percent have reduced their utility use.

Others may not want or be able to spend money to go green (only three percent have replaced incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones and the same number has purchased hybrid cars).

The irony, of course, is that some extra upfront costs can save money down the road. And small actions can make a huge difference. The US Environmental Protection Agency says that if every American household replaced just one incandescent light bulb with a CFL, the United States would save enough energy to light more than three million homes for an entire year.

Other poll results:

• 49 percent are trying to buy locally-produced food and/or goods.
• 47 percent are buying green household products.
• 39 percent are bringing their own reusable bags to stores instead of using paper or plastic.
• 16 percent are carpooling.

In contrast to the Harris Poll, Natural Life Magazine’s latest survey of our readers found that 90 percent are purchasing green products like CFLs, and 91 percent regularly compost and recycle. Here are more Natural Life results.

As we’ve written before in Natural Life Magazine, advertising directed at children is estimated at over $15 billion annually in the U.S. and over $2 billion in Canada. And, unfortunately it works well.

A new study just published in the journal Psychology & Marketing reports that three-year-olds recognize product brands and what they symbolize. Researcher Bettina Cornwell, a professor of marketing in sport management at the University of Michigan, found that kids between the ages of three and five show an “emerging ability” to use ads to judge which products will be the most “fun” and make them popular, even though they are unable to read. “Not only do they understand what the brand is, they understand that this is something they can use in their day-to-day lives.” says Cornwell.

The researchers showed 38 children logos for 50 brands like Coca-Cola, Looney Toons and Band-Aid and asked, “Have you seen this before?” and “What types of things do they make?” as well as other questions about the products’ value. The average recognition rate was 39 per cent, and the most commonly recognized brand was McDonald’s (93 per cent), followed closely by toys such as Lego (75 per cent) and soda products. Fast food was described by the three to five-year-olds as “fun, exciting and tasty.” Cola brands were fun because “the bubbles are fun” and “lots of people like them.”

The researchers also showed another 42 children a board featuring brand logos, including McDonald’s, and asked them to pick out images associated with the company – a French fry box, “drive thru” sign and the character Hamburglar. Many of the children were able to match the logos with products.

This is good news for marketers, but not such good news for kids and their parents. Other researchers have suggested that marketing is a factor in the childhood obesity epidemic and encourages eating disorders, precocious sexuality, youth violence and family stress.

A study of materialistic values among children by psychology professor and author Tim Kasser found that materialistic children are less happy, have lower self-esteem and report more symptoms of anxiety and less generosity. The study also found that more materialistic children report engaging in fewer positive environmental behaviors such as reusing paper and using less water while showering.

Another study, reported by sociology professor and author Juliet Schor, found that for children, “High consumer involvement is a significant cause of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and psychosomatic complaints. Psychologically healthy children will be made worse off if they become more enmeshed in the culture of getting and spending. Children with emotional problems will be helped if they disengage from the worlds that corporations are constructing for them.”

Cornwell and her co-authors want lawmakers to take a closer look at fast food branding aimed at young children, and to consider regulating it. But there is much that parents can do to help kids avoid or withstand the effect of corporate advertising. Two good places to learn more are the Ottawa-based Media Awareness Network and the Maryland-based organization New American Dream.

In addition to being Natural Life Magazine’s Founder and Publisher, Rolf Priesnitz has over 40 years of experience in the construction industry. And he writes a regular column in Natural Life called “Buying or Building Your Sustainable Home.” He is currently examining the wide and growing variety of green building certification programs that are building on LEED, which we featured all last year. 

One of the problems with some of these certification programs and most of the green building demonstration projects is their reliance on technology, to the degree that they often ignore the more obvious low-tech solutions. Those include awnings, natural ventilation, minimal windows facing away from the sun, buffering landscaping, clotheslines and so on. The initiative that Rolf describes in his column in Natural Life’s January/February 2010 issue addresses that issue. The Passivhaus movement is an exciting European building design program that offers tremendous energy savings – as much as ninety percent – due to reliance on passive heating systems and good sustainable design. The claim is that houses built to Passivhaus standards can be heated or cooled with the energy it takes to operate a hand-held hair dryer. The entire article is now available in the website for a limited time.

I am hoping that this new decade will become known as the Era of Enough. As I predicted just two years ago, the recession has taught many people to say, “Thanks, but I’ve already got enough stuff and I wouldn’t enjoy having any more.” Many of us – certainly Natural Life Magazine readers – have reached the state that British author John Naish calls “enoughism” in his book Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More (Hodder & Stoughton, 2008). Naish says humans are hardwired to want more and urges us to fight the acquisition urge in favor of liberating enough time, energy, and space to be healthier, happier, and more fulfilled. As we do in every issue of Natural Life Magazine, we’ve provided some tools in the new March/April 2010 issue  to help you strengthen those “enoughism” muscles, starting with an article about Give Your Stuff Away Day, which founder Mike Morone hopes you’ll bring to your community this Spring. My “Ask Natural Life” column examines ethical consumerism techniques such as buycotting and concludes that the most ethical consumption is less consumption.

Learning to want and have less stuff is a great start on the Era of Enough. But it’s not enough. As writer Gene Sager notes in his article in the March/April issue, living more simply needs to be accompanied by engagement in civil society, whether in the cause of reversing the damage created by our earlier excesses, fixing our democracies, or any of the other important changes that need to be made. So as we say, “Enough, already!” in regards to personal consumption, we may also be ready to admit that we have had enough of other kinds of excesses by corporations, financial institutions, politicians, and the like. And as we get our own consumption habits in control, we feel strong enough to begin taking back control from these self-serving entities.

Just in the past few months, tens of thousands of parents in England have said no to an arrogant government that insults them while planning to remove their right to parent and educate autonomously; tens of thousands of Canadians have rallied against the undemocratic actions of a dictatorial Prime Minister who thinks he can deconstruct society and remake it in his image, in spite of being elected by a minority of voters; and progressive Americans have watched with horror as a proper health care system slips through their fingers once again and their courts give free range to corporate campaign financing.

In short, we appear to be learning the difficult lesson that excess is never good for individuals, families, communities, countries, or the planet. We may finally be evolving an instinct that says, “Enough.” Enough stuff. Enough debt. Enough anger with greedy corporations that destroy our communities. Enough frustration with self-serving politicians who can’t see beyond the next election to put policies in place that protect our families, our environment, our food supply, our health, our jobs, and our democracies.

Once we’ve said, “Enough,” there is much work to be done. We need to model the alternatives, create the mechanisms for mainstreaming those models, work together in our communities to create lasting change from the ground up. We’re honored to have a growing number of readers who trust Natural Life Magazine to help filter through the excess of information in this Wild West of the Wired Age, and to guide and inspire the creation of the Era of Enough.

In the March/April issue, Natural Life Magazine’s green crafting columnist Robyn Coburn writes about using recycled boxes and various buttons, beads and other findings to create exquisite miniature dioramas.  These are little “stages” set inside boxes; you peer through the “window” at the front to see a collection of figures and pictures that tell a story. Creating your own dioramas can be an enjoyable craft project for the whole family. They make great gifts and are a way to preserve little treasures or tell a story about a family outing or other occasion.

After providing some ideas and inspiration, along with examples of dioramas that she and her young daughter Jayn have created, Robyn announces the first-ever Natural Life Magazine Crafting for a Greener World Contest. She invites readers to create some dioramas of their own, photograph them, and submit them to her. We’ll host the photos on our website and randomly selected winners will win some nifty prizes created by Robyn and Jayn. Details are the bottom of the article.

It could be just another orgy of excess packaging and unhealthy eating that benefits mostly greeting card and candy manufacturers. Or you could take some simple steps to green your Valentine’s Day. All it takes is a bit of thought and some careful choices and you don’t have to give up any of the traditional ways to tell someone they’re special this Valentine’s Day…and you don’t have to compromise your green living principles either. In fact, green can be the new red this year!

This article includes other celebrations too, like Easter (which isn’t too far away!), birthdays, Halloween and Christmas. So bookmark it and check back whenever you need inspiration for green celebrations.

You might think that yoga is only for stressed-out adults. But even very young children can benefit from the body awareness, stress relief and and fitness of yoga. Natural Life contributor Indra Singh is a yoga teacher and a single mom to two girls, based in the UK. A number of years ago, she decided to begin teaching yoga classes for children, since, as with most things, the younger you begin yoga practice the easier it becomes.

Here is her introductory article from last May, in which she provides some basic information about the benefits of yoga for children, and some breathing and meditation exercises for kids.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth follow-up article in the upcoming March/April issue, in which Indra provides instructions for three poses and their variations. Her five-year-old daughter is a wonderful collaborator, posing for helpful photos of the poses.