Earth Friendly Products: Dishmate - Free and Clear

  

The nice folks at Earth Friendly Products (www.ecos.com) have a full line of "earth friendly" cleaning products.  You feed your kids organic food, give them filtered water, protect them from the boogie man, why not protect them from the harmful chemicals in most household cleaners.  For starters try switching your dish detergent as it is one of the most used chemicals in any house and it just so happens to interact with the very things you put food on.  Earth Friendly's Dishmate is the best out there for a number of reasons; They disclose all ingredients (most companies do not), they do not use 1,4 Dioxane (click here for information on 1,4 Dioxine) and none of their ingredients are hazardous to your families health.  

The ingredients of all of their scented and unscented soaps include purified water, 100% natural...

 

Read more at the Organic Mom and Dad website

Know Your Food: Trans Fats

First and foremost, if you are purchasing certified Organic products then raising organic kids and avoiding trans fat is not going to be an issue.  There are minimal trace amounts of naturally occurring trans fat in beef, lamb and full-fat dairy products (webmd.com) but not enough to be of concern to even the most health conscious consumer.  Naturally occurring trans fat is not believed to have the same harmful effects as added trans fat.   There are tricks to avoiding trans fat in many non-organic products and as we all know finding organic products for all your needs is not always an option and makes raising organic kids difficult.

So, what is trans fat?

Trans fat or trans fatty acids are the product of “hydrogenating” oil by adding hydrogen to liquid oils.  This is done for a number of reasons including shelf life, low cost, texture, solidity and fry life.  Basically, it is a process that takes perfectly good oil and makes it more solid and bad for you and your organic kids.

What to avoid and look for in products?

First off, stay away from fast food and most fried foods in restaurants.  I have years of experience as a chef, a caterer and a sales manager for a major food service distributor, and more often than not, the deep fryer has a trans fat based oil in it.

Second, read labels.  This is the key to raising organic kids, READ THE LABELS!  The FDA is not on your side, they are not interested in guaranteeing food is safe (only “reasonably safe”).  Look for the words “hydrogenated”, “partially hydrogenated”, and “shortening” on the ingredients label.  This is the only way to guarantee you will be getting a trans fat free product (unless you are buying organic, which I recommend).

Labels can be deceiving…

“Zero grams trans fat per serving”, “no trans fat”, and ‘trans fat free” are a sampling of the deceiving and down right criminal practice of lying about trans fat.  According to the FDA, there is an allowable amount of trans fat in food, to be exact .5 grams per serving.  So, in the eyes of the FDA, a box of cereal could have 28 grams of trans fat but so long as the serving size only has .5 grams of trans fat it is considered trans fat free and can be labeled accordingly.  Apparently .5+.5=0.  Raising Organic Kids is not mathematically challenging.

Read the Labels and buy organic when available.

Organic Baby Formula

Organic formula for babies

 

There is nothing like getting the ball rolling young.  My wife and I have twin daughters and while we had hoped not to use formula, there was no avoiding it. They were little eating machines and my wife couldn’t keep up.  The phrase “I feel like a cow” was repeated numerous times.  When we did have to turn to formula as a supplement we looked high and low for an organic formula that was affordable.  We eventually found a similac product that was labelled USDA Organic and at a great price.  But just as the world turns, there is always a catch to natural and organic foods.

Have no fear, we are here to keep you on the right path.

Similac, Earth’s Best and Nature’s One are the top and most respected organic baby formulas but each has a dark little secret.  Each one of these companies adds DHA and ARA omega fatty acids to their formulas.  Hold on a minute, I thought those were good for baby.  THEY ARE but…… how they get the DHA and ARA is a little bit shady.  Apparently, they use the chemical hexane, acid and even bleach to extract the omega fatty acids from the sources.  similac and Earth’s Best openly acknowledge that they use the process (which is FDA approved:() but all stated that there are no trace of these chemicals in the finished product.  Nature’s One said they do not use chemicals to extract the fatty acids but rather a water based process.  One point for Nature’s One.

Then we began looking at the containers.  With all the BPA warnings with bottles and plastic food supplies, we were curious about the packaging that these formulas were kept.  Low and behold Similac and Earth’s Best have inner coatings with BPA while, as of May 2010, Nature’s One has BPA free containers.  Two points for Nature’s One.

Verdict:  It’s a no brainer.  If you are using formula in any way, you need to go organic and your safest bet is Natures One baby’s only Formula.  Visit http://www.naturesone.com/ for more information an coupons.

 

Visit Organic Mom and Dad

The quest for a GOOD organic food product can be daunting. Finding an organic version of an Oreo cookie seemed like a distant, impossible goal after 6 years of searching high and low for just such a cookie. This was really the beginning of my organic food journey. My wife was very resistant to making the switch to an all organic food diet and part of that challenge was the lack of comparable products to the conventional ones. While I think that most people just need to un-train their palates to thinking high fructose, hydrogenated oils, and other products of unknown origin taste good. The idea is that if you get used to eating organic fruity o’s long enough then fruit loops will eventually taste awful. This has been my experience and I know it has probably been the experience of many others but my wife was not one of us. It always takes her a great deal of adjusting and experimenting to find the right organic food product. Finding a good product without breaking the bank can be a task all its own. So, here is the first Organic Food Review. I hope it helps save you some time and some money.

Bask in the greatness that is Country Choice Chocolate Sandwich creams. USDA Organic. Delicious.

Pro’s: These cookies are as close as you will ever get to an organic Oreo cookie. The chocolate is flavorful, the cookie crunchy and the creamy center is spot on. Enjoy these cookies as you would an Oreo and you and your kids will never know the difference.

Con’s: The packaging tears easily and they will go stale if they are not kept in a plastic bag.

Get a 6 pack of Country Choice Organic Chocolate Sandwich Cremes for only $18.69 at amazon.

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