Share & Voice: Green Halloween

For this weeks Share & Voice, I decided to find some ways to be Green on Halloween. I found this website called Green Halloween and decided I would share it with you. This website was created by Corey Colwell-Lipson, a martial and family therapist as well as a mother of two children ages seven and four. Green Halloween was developed to help "inspire fun, healthy, affordable, not-too-time consuming ideas that will support your goal of creating a Halloween that is happy and healthy for your kids and the planet we all share."

This month they are promoting a contest called: The Green Halloween Pledge.

Here is a description of the contest directly from their website:

Green Halloween wants to “help people commit to reducing the environmental impact of their Halloween celebration” by holding a contest called the Green Halloween Pledge! All they ask is for people who are planning to commit to the Green Halloween Pledge to do at least 5 actions from the following list:

•Swap costumes with someone rather than buying a new costume. This is a great idea and one of our favorite Green Halloween Tips.
•Purchase your costume, or its components from your local thrift shop.
•Use LED Halloween lights to decorate instead of incandescents.
•Collect candy in a reusable container rather than a disposable bag. Or better yet, make a fun project for your kids by having them make their own Halloween bag out of reusable or recyclable items you have around the house.
•When trick-or-treating, walk, instead of driving door to door.
•Carry a shakable or hand-crank LED flash light instead of one that is battery powered.
•Make your own Halloween face paints.
•Give away one piece of candy instead of handfuls.
•Purchase an organic pumpkin.
•Buy your pumpkin from a local farmer.
•Purchase an edible variety of pumpkin and paint, instead of carving the pumpkin. Then bake and eat the pumpkin when Halloween is done.
•Roast & eat your pumpkin seeds instead of tossing them.
•Use 100% beeswax or soy candles in your jack-o-lantern instead of paraffin candles.
•Give away healthier alternatives to conventional candy.
•Compost your leftover candy.
•Donate your leftover candy to troops overseas.
•Compost your pumpkin.
•Make crafts out of candy wrappers.
•Pack décor away carefully so that it can be reused next year.
•Text “Boo 5” to 27138 to donate $5 to support the Green Halloween® initiative.

"Participants of the Green Halloween Pledge will be entered in a random drawing. One participant will win a $150 gift certificate redeemable at HolidayLEDs."

"So what are you waiting for? If you haven’t taken the Green Halloween Pledge yet, do so now! Visit HolidayLEDs’ Green Halloween Pledge page for details and step-by-step instructions for entering the drawing! "

Hope Everyone has a Happy "Green" Halloween!

Read 'n' Seed: Fourth Quarter and Final Review of Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America

In the fourth and final quarter of "Don't Eat This Book" I am now finished and have read a total of 16 chapters. The summaries of these chapters include health care and dieting, his experiment wrap up, and how we can make a difference in the future generation of food.

In chapter 13, Morgan starts the debate on "dieting, America's favorite pastime". According to statistics in this book, Americans spend more than $40 billion a year on dieting and diet-related products. This happens to be twice as much as we spend on fitness and health-related products. What ever happened to losing weight the old fashioned way, exercising? Americans today are so worried about the latest "fad diets" when in reality 95% of all fad-diet followers regain their lost weight. The thing that sucks us in about these "miracle" products is the promise of immediate magical results. Well guess what, that just doesn't happen! We only see short term results because the weight that we do lose is strictly water weight and lean muscle mass, not fat.

Another interesting topic he brought up was the lack of "nutritionally literate" physicians. "Physicians in Western medicine (America) aren't taught wellness and preventative medicine; they're set up only to react to illness. In our medical schools, newly trained doctors aren't getting the essential nutritional training, therefore they tend to shy away from problems related to it (obesity). This lack of nutritional expertise is what leads to the overprescription of medication in our country.

Chapter 14 comes the final day of Morgan Spurlocks 30-day McDonald's experiment. When running through the final rounds of blood tests and check ups, his doctor reveals some astounding results. First his weight was up to 210 lbs from a beginning weight of 185.5 lbs, meaning that he gained a total of 24.5lbs...in one month. Yikes. Next, he went on to describe that during this "McDiet" he was averaging nearly double the calories, about 180% of carbs, 1 1/2 times the protein and twice the fat of the daily recommendations for his body. He was ingesting 450 grams of sugar everyday (one pound a day) and topping his fat total by over 200% in averaging 184 grams of fat (60 grams of saturated fat) daily. In addition to processing all of this sugar and fat, his cholesterol soared from 165 to a whopping 230 points. The average level is around 180. His blood tests revealed that he was suffering from early signs of liver disease, hyperuricemia and hypoglycemia. All of these conditions were non-existent in the beginning of his experiment. Scary to think what one month of fast food eating can do to your long term health! After 5 months of eating nutritionally and slowly incorporating exercise back into his daily routine, Morgan Spurlock had lost 20lbs. His last 4.5lbs, however, took him an extra 9 months to burn off, due to the increase of fat cells in his body. He hasn't been in a McDonald's since the experiment. "Not even to pee".

Chapter 15 and 16 discuss how we can make a difference to our future generations. First he states that the UK is moving in the right direction in making their customers more aware by introducing the "traffic light" system. This is a system that would mark fatty, sugary foods with a red label and nutritious foods with a green label. I think this would be a good way to wake up consumers in America. It would spark the government, who are just waking up to the health-care burdens of obesity-related illnesses that racks up $117 billion annually. And we wonder where all of our money goes?!

"Every time you eat, you vote with your fork", quoted from Marion Nestle, is a powerful statement that implies you make a stand about what kinds of food you put into your mouth. You are stating what you stand for, what you believe in and what you want to display as an example for those who look up to you (your family, kids, siblings, friends). "You are what you eat and if you continue to eat bad food, you will suffer from bad health. If you want things to change, remember that change starts with you. So get aware and get active". Be prepared to influence a healthy change in your life and advocate the same in others around you.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about this book, because it was a real eye opener for me. I never realized the impact that the fast-food chains had on our country and how they were disintegrating our lives. The 3 most important things I learned and my challenge to you: advocate for health and well being, don't support the "power" companies and start packing your own lunch, and be a good role model for those around you. This is important because I believe that you alone can make a difference. I highly recommend this book because it really opened my eyes to the fast-food industry and how it's destroying our world. I think that everyone should be aware of what they are consuming and how it affects their overall health.

Eye Opener: Environmental Working Group

At the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database website, I looked up a cosmetic product that I use daily. I chose to look up Physicians Formula Mineral Face Powder. I was suprised to find that this product was rated a 6 out of 10 on the Hazardous Scale. This would be classified as a Moderate Hazard, and there are 81% more of facial powders that have lower concerns available to me.
The products used to make this powder are known to cause cancer, developmental/reproctive toxicity, allergier/immunotoxicity, and other contamination concerns. This suprised me because I always thought this product was more of a natural product. When the ingredients were broken down there was an equal range of green (low-level) and yellow (moderate) ingredients. There was one high-level ingredient and that was silica. With this came concerns for cancer, allergies, organ system toxicity and biochemical or cellular level changes. In addition to the ranking of this product, there was a 81% data gap, which is the measure of how much is unknown about an ingredient. This basically helps to determine the difference between the ingredients and similar products that may have been studied.

Overall, I thought this was a cool website to check out. It made me aware that the products that I once thought were safe to use, may not be healthy for me afterall! I will have to do more research on this site to determine what is the best possible cosmetic product that I can use.