Article: Top 5 Healthy (and Ecofriendly) Eating Habits

I was lucky enough to be sent this great article by the lovely folks over at FSB Media and I wanted to share it with you all. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I strive to be healthy and green. The tips in this article are excellent and I have been working toward incorporating them into my daily life for a while now. Check it out:

Top 5 Eating Habits to Keep the Planet (And Your Body) Healthy
By Adria Vasil,
Author of Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services

Maybe it's the half-Greek in me, but there's nothing that makes me giddier then the sight of a table full of food (well, other than actually eating the food). Trouble is most of what we stack onto our plates isn't just weighing on our hips, hearts and cells, it's also bloating the planet with packaging, pesticides and climate-changing gases. How can you get your fill without, er, tipping the ecological scales? Just follow Ecoholic's 5 earth- and body-friendly tips.

1. Eat Close To Home: And by that I don't mean ordering takeout from your local pizza joint! Search for produce grown in your own county/state. If you can't find homegrown garlic/greens/grapes at the grocery store, don't be shy, ask the produce manager for more local options and trove farmers' markets for freshly picked goodies. Not only does buying locally translate into fewer dirty fossil fuels trucking or shipping that food to you, it also means you're helping to preserve nearby farmlands and valuable green spaces. Plus, betchya didn't know that the vitamin content of a just-picked tomato is higher than in one plucked before it was ripe then carted 2500 miles. It tastes a hell of a lot better, too. To track down the greenest local food sources near you, punch in your zip code at localharvest.org.

2. Try Tofu Tuesdays. Eating fewer meaty meals isn't just good for your cholesterol count, your waistline and your pocketbook -- it's also one of the top moves you can make for the planet. Gassy livestock literally burp and, um, expel more of the world's greenhouse gases than cars, trains and planes combined! In fact, one University of Chicago study found that eating 20% fewer animal products every week reduces your greenhouse gas footprint as much as switching from a sedan to an ultra efficient Prius! And since, despite what your mom told you, there won't always be more fish in the sea, pick your seafood choices wisely with the help of a pocket-size guide from seafoodwatch.org. Smaller fish like sardines aren't only more sustainable than big daddies like tuna, they're also way lighter in pollutants like mercury.

3. Get It Fair and Square: Quick, pick three things that get you through the day and I'll bet you twenty bucks that coffee, chocolate and sugar make the list. Since none of the above grow on U.S. soil (well other than beet sugar), you want to be sure you buy the kind with a Fair Trade Certified label on the package. Why? Well, the workers that pick those ingredients are generally paid so poorly they'd have to work 3 days just to afford a Starbucks grande latte! Fair trade certified farms, on the other hand, pay farmhands in developing countries a decent wage, give their families access to health care and education and forbid the use of ultra toxic pesticides (which makes them better for your health, too). Bonus: your sugar-/caffeine-/chocolate-rush blissfully guilt-free.

4. Pass on packaging (especially the plastic kind): What goes into a Ding Dong is one thing; what's wrapped around it is a whole other ball of plastic. Just stop emptying your kitchen's trash bin for a week and you'll find yourself knee deep in the food packaging (think milk cartons, cereal boxes, frozen food trays and all the double to triple layers of wrap around cookies, crackers, you name it). No wonder nearly a third of all the garbage we toss every year is packaging! Avoid the whole landfill bound mess by buying in bulk and bringing your own storage sacs shopping (you'll find some at reusablebags.com). Choose loose lettuce instead of the boxed stuff. Buy concentrated ingredients like broth in dry form instead of bulkier watered-down cartons. And when you have a choice, pick the jam/juice/soup that comes in glass (it doesn't leach dodgy toxins like tin cans and some plastics can).

5. Fork out for the right organics: In my dream Ecoholicland, everything in the grocery stores would be deliciously organic and we could all afford to eat chemical-free 365 days a year. But in the real world, most of us have to budget our pesticide-free picks. If you have young children, look at what they eat the most of (like milk or grapes) and switch those items to organic first. And though, yes, 73% of the fruits and veg checked by the FDA tested positive for pesticide residues, to be fair, some are worse then others. Spend your money on certified organic peaches, peppers and spinach before buying, say, organic broccoli (since conventional broccoli is quite low in residues). For a guide to the 12 worst and best produce items you can print or download to your phone, head to foodnews.org. Of course the cheapest (and tastiest) organics are the ones you grow yourself in your backyard. Okay, fine, so it's a little late to start tomatoes, but you're right on time to plant spinach, kale, lettuce and more. Money can't buy greener greens.

©2009 Adria Vasil, author of Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services

Author Bio
Adria Vasil, author of Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products & Services, is a best-selling author and journalist for Canada's NOW, where she has been writing the "Ecoholic" column for five years. She lives in Toronto.

For more information please visit www.ecoholicnation.com

The great folks over at FSB Media have also offered to send me a copy of Ecoholic to review. I am looking forward to reading the book and posting my review soon!

Book Review: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Great Gatsby is a classic literary masterpiece narrated by a young man, Nick Carraway, as he leaves the sleepy west to try to make a name and a living for himself in New York in the roaring 1920's. Along the way, Nick tells a web of a tale involving his cousin, Daisy, her brute of a husband, Tom, and a mysterious wealthy man who is known as Jay Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby offers a very vivid glimpse into New York society at a very wild time in America's history. The story of Gatsby and Daisy and Tom and their friends and lovers is at once fascinating and saddening. The Great Gatsby also does a phenomenal job illustrating the old adage "money cannot buy happiness."

The Great Gatsby is a very quick read by a brilliant writer. I recommend it to everyone!

View all my reviews.

Book Review: The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Kite Runner is a story of two boys who grow up together in Afghanistan in the days before war tears the country apart. Amir is the son of a wealthy and respected business man. Hassan is the son of a servant in Amir's home. The boys grow up together and are close friends, although Amir has a hard time admitting to being Hassan's "friend" because of the religious and cultural differences that divide them. One day, Amir witnesses a terrible thing happen to Hassan and instead of trying to help, Amir runs away in fear. This one event will drastically change both Amir's and Hassan's life forever.

This book is one of the best books I have read in a very long time. Not only is it a wonderful story, it also sheds light on a culture and a country that few Americans know very much about. While difficult to read at times because of the graphic nature of some of the terrible things that happen to the characters, I never felt that any of the gritty details were written purely for shock value. They were necessary and pivotal and, unfortunately, more than likely based on true atrocities.

This is a book that will help you to remember how lucky you are if you have grown up in the United States. This is a book that will remind you that childhood pranks and mistakes can change a life forever. This is a book that will encourage you to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. This is a book that illustrates that while past regrets may cause present grief, there is peace in forgiveness and redemption.

I recommend this book to everyone.

View all my reviews.

Banned Books Week

September 26 through October 3 is the American Library Association sponsored Banned Books Week. The purpose of Banned Books Week is to celebrate our Freedom to Read and to remind Americans not to take their democratic freedoms for granted. As stated by the ALA:

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where the freedom to express oneself and the freedom to choose what opinions and viewpoints to consume are both met.

Some of my all time favorite books have been challenged, such as The Great Gatsby and To Kill A Mockingbird.  Several of my current favorites have also been challenged, like the Twilight series and The Kite Runner.

Most of the challenges attempt to have these books removed from the shelves of school and public libraries. Most of the challenges have been by parents because of the sexual content (even as little as one paragraph) of the book in question. And here's where I go off...

Dear Parents Who Challenge Books,

What makes you think you have the authority to try to silence someone's right to speak freely? What gives you the right to challenge a gifted writer's vision of his or her own story? A story that was probably created with blood, sweat and tears because that author had the calling to share a part of him or herself with the rest of the world? If you are concerned about your child reading literature of which you do not approve then do your duty as a parent and discuss it with your child or your child's teacher. Furthermore, if you do not want your child to learn about sex from the pages of a book then do your duty as a parent and talk with your child about sex! This is YOUR responsibility, not a teacher's or an author's or a librarian's. Your duty to protect your child in a way that you see fit does not trump the rest of the literate world's RIGHT to read freely. Shame on you.

Sincerely,
A Passionate Reader, Writer and Freedom Fighter

Okay, I'm done ranting. To celebrate MY Freedom to Read I will be choosing to re-read one of my favorite books, The Great Gatsby. I encourage all of you, especially those of you that are doing my Busy Bookworm Challenge, to add a book that has been challenged to your list of books to read before the year ends.

You can download a copy of the 2008-2009 Books Challenged & Banned List here. You can also find previous years' lists of challenged and banned books, as well as buttons and banners for your blog, here.

Read on, friends!

Busy Bookworm Challenge Button Now Available!

Woo! I've made my very first blog button! It's the new "official" Busy Bookworm Challenge button and you can get your very own.  If you'll look to the column on your right you will see how you can copy and paste the code below the button and add it to your own blog! How fun is that?

Speaking of the Busy Bookworm Challenge, how's everyone progressing? I've been seeing a lot of book reviews on many of your blogs lately! I'm steadily making my way through my list. Right now I'm starting on The Kite Runner. I've heard so many good things about the book that I just couldn't wait any longer.

Can't wait to read more of your reviews! And don't forget to grab my new button and pass it along to all of your book loving friends!

Happy reading!

Book Review: The Ghost Orchid

The Ghost Orchid: A Novel by Carol Goodman


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was very entertaining and easy to read. The book was about a wanna-be author, Ellis, who had been accepted into a writer's retreat program at the notorious Bosco Estate where many famous authors go to be inspired. While there, Ellis uncovers a tangled web of terrible things that happened at the estate and awakens many restless spirits in the process.

The story was a cleverly woven mystery alternately set in the present day and 100-or-so years ago detailing events that happened at one very creepy estate. The story was a bit too campfire ghost story for me, but it was good enough to scare me during a stormy evening. I think it was also a bit too predictable for me but it didn't keep me from getting lost in the story. While it was not my favorite book, it was highly entertaining so I gave it three stars.

View all my reviews.

Book Review: The Book Thief

The Book Thief is a story of a little German girl, Leisel, who suffers many hardships during the years of WWII in Hitler's homeland. The story is narrated by Death, who is not scary or sinister or morbid as you might expect. He is simply Death and he tells a tale of human loss, heartbreak, triumph and strength. I very much enjoyed seeing WWII from a German perspective. As naive as it sounds, I never really thought about the suffering of the German people. I always thought of them as the evil-doers who deserved no sympathy. What a silly thought.

I enjoyed this book but for whatever reason I could not get into it like I have been able to do with other books. Let's just say I was not counting down the minutes until my lunch break to go read it. One thing I did not like about the book was that it used a lot of strange metaphors and symbolism, which I don't particularly enjoy. I was also a bit distracted by little sections throughout the book that were sort of separated from the rest of the story and in bold print (such as a random thought by Death or a fact he wanted the reader to know). Maybe I'm a boring reader. Or an old-fashioned reader. But I'd rather the author just tell me the story and stop trying to be so clever.

I thought the beginning, while interesting, was slow. It wasn't until the last 100 pages or so that I actually got into it. But, I loved Leisel's character. I also loved Papa and I even grew to love Mama. I loved Max. In fact, I think the characters were all very well developed. But the story just seemed to drag on for me. So, it was good, but it wasn't great...for me.