foodscout blog

Drinking filtered or bottled water is commonplace these days. Few health-conscious people will drink water straight from the tap if they don’t have to. But even if you avoid contaminated drinking water you could still be tremendously exposed to chlorine and chloramine in the shower. This exposure can be drying and irritating to eyes, skin, and hair. Chlorine also becomes airborne in a shower and is absorbed through the lungs and skin. Long, hot showers lead to the highest amount of exposure and absorption.

Many companies are now selling shower filters primarily aimed at removing chlorine and chloramine from your shower water. They vary greatly in price and all make impressive claims about their effectiveness. Unfortunately, shower filters do not have to follow the same government standards that drinking water filters require.

While there is a lot of great information online, it is difficult to find an answer to the simple question, “Which shower filter is the most effective at removing chlorine?” but if you dig around enough, you can find enough independent studies and user reviews to piece together a decent view of the pros and cons of each filter.

There are three types of filtration used in shower filters – activated carbon, KDF (Kinetic Degradation Fluxion) media, and vitamin C.

• Activated carbon filters, which are used in Brita and Pur pitcher filters, work well but only in cold water. They also tend to clog easily especially in more contaminated water.
• KDF media filters remove chlorine but not chloramine. However, these filters also do not function well at lower water pressures and quickly becomes ineffective in very contaminated water.
• Vitamin C filters remove all chlorine and chloramine. Vitamin C filters last a long time and are inexpensive and organic. However, they only remove chlorine and chloramines – nothing else. These filters last around 6 months, which is much longer than other filters.

For our household, getting rid of the chlorine and chloramine was a top priority so we decided on the Vitamin C shower filter. There are two vendors for these types of filters – VitaShower and Sonaki. VitaShower vitamin C filters list for around $40. The Sonaki is a showerhead unit that is available with different types of heads and takes a replaceable vitamin C cartridge. $99 will buy the initial setup and each additional cartridge is around $40.00.

We have been using the VitaShower filter for 3 months now and the difference in our hair and skin are noticeable. It immediately removed the overpowering chlorine smell, which has not returned.

Time.com reported on an important Canadian study, which looked into hundreds of products marketed to children, many of which make nutritional claims on the packaging.

“Most parents already know that sugary sodas and greasy potato chips are not the healthiest food choices for children. But what about the hundreds of other widely available and kid-friendly packaged foods — pastas, frozen dinners, granola bars — that at least appear to be more wholesome?

“A new Canadian study suggests that even these foods — most of which make nutritional claims on the packaging — aren’t all they profess to be.”

Read the full story on Time.com here

At foodscout, we believe the only real health food is the food that nature provides. Very few people can eat a perfect diet all of the time and it isn’t necessary to do so. But when you buy processed and packaged foods, do so consciously. Acknowledge that it isn’t the ideal choice. This awareness will encourage you to buy healthier foods going forward.

We like to follow what we light-heartedly call the “foodscout diet” - eating the foods that we list on our site. But we also sometimes like to give into our cravings and have a little treat. At this point, even our binges are relatively healthy, so this might take the form of BBQ tofu, Greens+ Chocolate Bars, or a vegan gluten-free pizza. For us, this is a deviation from what we know we should be eating, so we acknowledge that fact and enjoy these treats with this awareness. Over time, we have decreased the frequency of such deviations.

Don’t blindly assume that something is healthy just because the package says it is. Marketing companies know that health is a big seller and they have no problem labeling high fat, high salt, nutritionally deficient foods as “health food.” Decide for yourself what your diet standards are and stick with them.

We’ve made a couple of changes to foodscout this week!

Our home page now features a “food of the day.” Each day, one of our many nutritious foods will be featured on foodscout with a picture and summary of its health benefits and abundant nutrients. Our most recent blog posts will also be featured on the home page.

We’re also featuring “books we love” on the food, nutrient, and health benefits pages. A book will only be featured here if we have read it and it has changed our life in a positive way. We will never promote a book simply in order to make a buck. If it’s listed on our site, then we truly believe it will help you to improve your health and happiness. That’s a promise.

For those of us who are doing our best to improve our health, it’s difficult to know how healthy we really are. There are hundreds of tests to check for disease when you are showing symptoms, but not much guidance for relatively healthy people.

Dark field microscopy is a technology that allows you to look directly at your living blood through a microscope that is hooked up to a TV monitor. As a patient, you view your blood while the doctor explains to you what you are seeing. Yeast, toxins, and undigested food are detectable on the monitor. Protein, iron, or B-12 deficiencies cause the blood cells to take on a distinctive look. You can see just how closely your blood resembles the healthy ideal and what health issues need to be addressed.

My blood cells were teardrop shaped, indicating a protein deficiency. I also had undigested food, due to “leaky gut syndrome.” My girlfriend was able to see that she had yeast in her blood, no doubt because of her sweet tooth. Cells with the wrong color in the center indicated that she also needed more iron. Only a few weeks earlier, traditional medical doctors had concluded that she was in perfect health. We both showed quite a bit of toxins in our system.

The doctor recommended a variety of supplements (that his clinic sells) to fix our health issues. We opted to do our own research and address them on our own, through dietary changes. When we returned for another test 8 months later, most of our issues had disappeared or improved considerably.

According to the doctor, virtually everyone has toxins or deficiencies that are viewable in their blood - even infants. Whether you are struggling with serious health issues or well on your way to optimal health, dark field microscopy is a useful indicator for your current state of heath. Check with alternative health professionals in your area.

A few years ago I was suffering from Temporomandibular Joint and Muscle Disorder, or TMJ. TMJ refers to acute or chronic inflammation of the joint that connects the lower jaw to the skull and typically results from habitual clenching and grinding of the teeth. My case had not yet progressed to the level that many people sufferer from, but still, the pain was enough to keep me up at night and it seemed to be getting worse over time.

To prevent my TMJ from worsening, my dentist fitted me with a mouth guard that was designed to prevent me from clenching and grinding my teeth at night. The night guard didn’t seem to work well for me and it caused me to drool buckets while I tried to fall asleep. I still had escalating tension in my jaw. Upon rising, my jaw felt like it didn’t line up correctly after wearing the night guard. With no other options except surgery, I tried to ignore the problem and push on through.

Then I found out about FSMT - Frequency Specific Microcurrent Therapy. I found a local natural health doctor who offered this service.

According to this doctor, my TMJ pain was caused by inflammation brought about over time by stress. While the jaw is inflamed it can’t heal. Further stress caused me to continue to grind my teeth and hold more tension in my jaw. The body needs the inflammation to go down before it can heal. That is exactly what FSMT does – it reduces inflammation very quickly.

Lance Armstrong, champion cyclist and 7-time winner of the Tour de France, used this same technology after each training session. FSMT greatly reduces inflammation of muscles and joints, which enabled Lance to train longer, without injury. Injury is the limiting factor for athletes. The longer you can train without injury the more you will be at your peak.

The doctor claimed she could cure TMJ with only a few treatments of FSMT. Such claims are all too common among natural health practitioners and western doctors alike, so I was skeptical. But the price was reasonable and I was out of options, so I decided to give it a try.

The treatment is totally painless. The current is applied for a short amount of time and the healing starts immediately. In my case, I had a total of three treatments for my TMJ.

That was 3 years ago and it has not returned since. Obviously, each person is different. It may take longer for some. But this was one of the few times in my life that a healing modality worked this quickly and permanently. If you suffer from TMJ, try Frequency Specific Microcurrent Therapy rather than living with the pain or resorting to surgery.

We have added one more food recently. Buckwheat, the fruit seed that behaves like a tasty, gluten-free grain, is abundant in too many nutrients to list. Studies have also shown it to be beneficial for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, stabilizing blood sugar, and helping with weight-loss. Check out the new buckwheat page to find out all that it can do for you!

As I mentioned in a recent post, we have joined a Community Supported Agriculture program through which we receive a box full of produce every week. We have no control over what comes in the box. They just give us whatever the farm is growing.

This has been absolutely fantastic. The box is always jam packed full of leafy greens, which accounts for most of the produce that we eat normally. We’ve also found some very fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions in there. But we also get certain items that we don’t eat normally buy, such as beets, radishes, and cabbage.

Since my dad drilled it into my head that wasting food was not an option, I feel compelled each week to finish each and every vegetable in that box. This has forced me to create some dishes that I might never have thought of otherwise.

This week, I created something that I will generously call a raw spring roll. The mix of vegetables tasted so good together that I didn’t feel the need to add sauce or seasonings.

2 cups cabbage, shredded
3 small beets, shredded
2 red radishes, shredded
1/4 yellow onion, shredded
1 cup dried seaweed (I used wakame)
1 tomato, chopped

Combine all ingredients and let sit until the seaweed is rehydrated. Wrap inside of whole cabbage leaves and eat.  Serves 4.

In the previous article, we looked at reasons why fluoridated water, which is very common throughout the United States, is a public health problem.  In this post, we will find out how to get water that is free or nearly free of fluoride.

Information about water purification systems is everywhere, but is surrounded by a considerable amount of hype and misinformation. This makes it very difficult to determine which systems are best.

Independent research and comparisons are scarce and much of what exists is put out by the manufacturers of water filtration systems themselves. Many water purification websites offer no data about the effectiveness of their systems or how long these systems will last. You will see tables or materials that say things like “removes fluoride,” but this often means that only a fraction of the fluoride is removed.

There are only three ways to remove a substantial amount fluoride from your drinking water: reverse osmosis, special alumina fluoride removal filters, and distillation.

Reverse Osmosis uses pressure to force water through a membrane that removes pollutants. It does a good job of removing fluoride but it is expensive and not practical for a home system since it flushes water down the drain to purify the smaller amount. Reverse osmosis is used in many bottled water dispensaries at grocery stores.

Alumina fluoride removal filters are filled with treated alumina beads that filter out much of the fluoride. There is a range of effectiveness with these filters dependent upon the water pressure, age of the filter, and the level of fluoride of the water going in. The best systems implement a separate fluoride filter after the general filter.

Distillation purifies water by heating it and catching the steam. Anything that is not pure water, including fluoride, is left behind. Distillation creates the cleanest water available but systems can be expensive to buy and operate, and they generate a lot of heat. Buying distilled water by the bottle can be a fairly economical way to get clean water. Be careful when buying distilled water marketed for babies – some companies actually put the fluoride back in.

A standard Brita or Pur water filter is definitely better than nothing at all. But keep in mind that the vast majority of available water filters remove little or no fluoride. No system is perfect, but limiting your intake of toxins will help your body to handle the rest.

Like most people in the United States, I was raised to believe that adding fluoride to the water supply was a critical part of combating tooth decay. Fluoride is added to virtually all of the public water supply in the U.S. but a growing number of organizations are now demanding that this practice be stopped.

There is no shortage of credible information about why fluoridation of drinking water is bad, but here are a few highlights to get your started:

• Fluoride is not a necessary nutrient. There are no symptoms of fluoride deficiency.
• The type of fluoride in our water supply is sodium fluoride, a toxic waste by-product from the Aluminum industry. Calcium fluoride is the type which is found in nature.
• The amount of fluoride put into the water supply is 1 part per million. This is 100-200 times the amount of fluoride in mother’s milk (0.005 – 0.01 parts per million).
• Fluoride has been linked to cancer and Alzheimer’s.
• Ingestion of fluoride has been shown to lower IQ in children by as much as 15 points.
• Fluoride toxicity in children can cause dental fluorosis – an irreversible cosmetic condition caused by orally consuming fluoride during the tooth forming years.
• Most of Europe never fluoridated or stopped fluoridating their water due to health and ethics concerns.

There is still debate over whether or not rinsing your mouth with fluoride is beneficial for dental health. Drinking fluoride, however, has been shown to have absolutely no benefit. Fluoride is a highly toxic substance that, when ingested, creates havoc with our bodies. Like any toxin, it affects some people worse than others.

It turns out that fluoride isn’t easy to get rid of in water. Most water filtration systems do not remove fluoride. In my next article, I will lay out the options I have discovered for truly clean, fluoride-free water.

Buying local is relatively new positive trend, particularly for produce. Buying local helps support small farms, reduces your carbon footprint, and delivers fresher produce. Many natural food stores now label their local produce, but unfortunately, it isn’t always readily available, especially if you buy organic.

Now is a great time to look into Community Supported Agriculture programs, or CSAs. Many of them are just getting started up for the year around the U.S. They all work a little differently, so you’ll have to search online for one near you to get the details.

The basic idea is that you buy a “share” in a local farm. Most of them ask you to pay up front to have a box of produce reserved for you every week for a certain amount of time. Every week, you will either pick up your box, or have it delivered, depending on the farm.

Here in Asheville, we bought a share in Jake’s Farm. For $650, we will receive produce for a minimum of 20 weeks. If the farm has a good year and the weather cooperates, they may extend it beyond that for no additional charge. So for $32.50 per week, we get enough farm fresh, organic produce to probably last us (we eat A LOT of produce) half the week. Of course, a lot what we buy isn’t grown at Jake’s Farm so we still need to do some shopping at the grocery store for things like bananas, avocados, and oranges.

The produce is boxed and ready for us every Tuesday at the farm. Jake’s Farm does not offer delivery, but it is a gorgeous drive in the country and not much farther of a drive than to the grocery store.

You don’t get to pick and choose what you buy through most CSAs. Whatever they are growing is what you get. Our CSA does make some substitutions for food allergies, but that’s about it. If you’re the least bit adventurous, this is a great way to branch out and try some new types of vegetables that you may not have bought before.

Keep in mind though, investing in a CSA is a little like investing in a stock. If the farm has a great year, you receive a bountiful selection of fruits and vegetables. If, on the other hand, catastrophe strikes, you don’t get your money back. You are literally investing in your community farm.

Find out about CSAs or other local farm programs in your area. Call them up and ask for a tour. Most likely, they will be thrilled to show you around. Local organic farms take great pride in their land and the food they grow. Seeing a farm full of beautiful, fresh, fruits and vegetables is a much more inspiring experience than walking through a grocery store produce aisle. Continue Reading »