Category:

Organic

More on Drinking Water

by jughandle March 19, 2020

written by jughandle

Are you like millions of people and have just realized that you need to drink more water? Are you one of those walking around with a bottle of water to keep hydrated? Sorry to inform you, but you are behind the times, and are now part of the problem and not the solution you may have believed.

Our Body

I posted the first version of this article 7 years ago. It seems that nothing has changed.

Our bodies are 2/3 water. Drinking water is critical to the function of all our organs, yet we don’t seem to care where our water comes from. The Natural Resources Defense Council tested 1000 bottles of water. Surprise, they discovered that 1/5 or around 22% of the brands tested contained contaminates above the legal, state of California, and public health levels. Arsenic was in all of them.

Plastic that most bottled water is stored in can break down under temperatures as low as those found in the storage warehouses. Even your own garage can be too hot to store plastic. When water bottle plastic reaches 158 deg F, it will leach chemicals into your water. You don’t warm your food in the microwave in plastic or plastic wrap any more, right? So why drink from the plastic stuff? It has the same result. Picture chemicals dripping into your food and water.

Both, Dasani, bottled by Coke and Pepsi’s Aquafina are just filtered municipal tap water with added minerals for flavor. Considering that tap water is then subsequently bottled in plastic, you’d be much better off drinking straight tap water, and much, much better off drinking filtered tap water.

Plastic Bottles

The plastic our water bottles are made from is called polyethylene terephthalate or PET for short. First of all, PET is produced from crude oil, and it takes a bunch of oil to make it. Roughly 17 million barrels to produce just water bottles, last year alone. Now you now why water is more expensive than gasoline. Secondly, over 90 percent of those 30 Billion water bottles end up in the land fill. YES, ninety percent!

This next statement isn’t radical, or even liberal, tree hugging maybe a little, but certainly logical.

STOP USING AND BUYING PLASTIC – NOW!!! IF YOU CAN’T FIND AN ALTERNATIVE AT LEAST RECYCLE – PLEASE -jughandle

March 19, 2020 0 comment

All About Blog Topics Informational Blog meal plans Nutrition Organic

Meals To Your Door

by jughandle April 17, 2019

written by jughandle

How Do Meal Plans Work?

Get meals direct to your door. Everyone loves delicious, healthy home-cooked meals. Usually, most of us don’t enjoy the hassle of grocery shopping, planning unique meals then following complicated recipes. If you have other important things to deal with in you life, you may yearn for an easier way. Time, or lack thereof, can leave you no other choice than to head for your local drive-thru for another fast food dinner. Lately there is another choice.

Meal Plans

One choice is to sign up with a meal sit. Find one that has an app that will save you the hassle and time of planning the meals and creating a shopping list.

For a fee, they will provide you with an app that lets you input a few of the parameters that you need in your meal(s). A team of dietitians will then devise a meal plan for a week, complete with a shopping list. You can use the list to shop yourself or you can skip the grocery store. Send your shopping list directly to Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, Instacart, Shipt and others to have your items collected for you.

Once you get the ingredients you follow a simple recipe to complete your meal.

Pickup And Delivery

Pickup orders for Kroger® Pickup or Walmart Grocery. You order through the app or online and pick up at the store.

Alternatively you can have your food delivered to your door with Kroger’s Instacart, Amazon Prime Now or Aldi’s Instacart. These pickup and delivery services are in selected areas. Click on their links, input your zip code or address, to see if it’s available to you.

There are many other ways to get your groceries if you don’t want to shop yourself.

Meal Kits

Meal kit delivery services send pre-packaged meals that include all of the major individual ingredients and come with easy to follow recipes.

Do hate to cook? Are you a complete novice? You can cook great meals that will have you forgetting about the stack of take-out menus in your junk drawer.

What Types of Meal Plan Services Are There To Get Meals Direct To Your Door?

It’s hard to imagine that you have needs that can’t be met by one of these services.

Vegetarian?-

Sure, not a problem. Meal kits combine fresh, organic, and even locally-sourced produce sent directly to your door. Saving you the trouble of trying to find a store with the premium produce you need.

Most meal kit delivery companies offer extensive vegetarian meal options. The cost is usually the same or less than the meat meal plans. The added advantage is you will be provided with new and interesting ways to make good, health vegetarian meals.

Some companies have more extensive options than others, for example, HelloFresh has a veggie plan as one of their 3 meal plans offered.

Vegan?-

When ordering from a meal kit company, check if it specifically has vegan meal plans. If not, read the fine print and see if you can get what you need from the vegetarian options.

Vegans can have an exceptionally hard time finding new recipes to stretch their animal-free diet. The right meal kits can help.

Gluten-free?-

Gluten-free menu options are very important to many people today and these companies know it. Most meal kit companies know there are many customers that have special needs, including those with celiac disease or sensitivity to gluten. A number of companies also specially-wrap their products in order to prevent gluten cross-contamination.

Again, kit companies are a great way to find new recipe ideas that can keep meals interesting.

Organic?-

The meal kit delivery industry was established in part to provide quality, question-free ingredients especially when it comes to organic food. Most companies highlight their investment in time and money, finding sustainable, organic food. This has become a major selling point for these companies.

Sun Basket, is a USDA-certified organic handler with over 99% organic produce. They deliver meal kits to you ready to cook and assemble in under 30 minutes.

Blue Apron- “Following our step-by-step instructions you’ll experience the magic of cooking recipes that our chefs create with your family’s tastes in mind.” Just one of a number of companies that have partnered with Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch to make sure their seafood offerings are sustainable.

Reheat And Eat?-

You can also find companies that cook your meal for you. All you do is heat it and eat it. Freshly is one of those.

Freshly – Chef-Cooked, “Healthy Meals Delivered To You“, has a list of 85 banned ingredients (like corn syrup and preservatives).

Weight loss?-

To lose weight you need healthy high quality food that gives you the nutrition you need without the calories.

Meal kits help you plan out meals ahead of time with interesting, healthy ingredients.

One of the great benefits of using a pre-designed meal plan is that you will learn new recipes and cooking techniques that you can then integrate into your daily life.

This can help you eat healthy at home more often, which can be a great way to lose weight, even without a rigid diet.

Stricker?-

If you’re looking for a strict diet meal plan, companies like NutriSystem or BistroMD can provide you with dietitian planned meals sent to your door which are designed specifically to help you eat healthier and lose weight.

Paleo?-

Generally, the paleo diet focuses on meat, fruits and vegetables, cutting out breads, dairy and sugars.

A number of meal delivery companies offer menu items which are suited to the paleo diet.

SunBasket takes it further, offering more than 120 Paleo meals that feature high-quality lean meats.

Even if a recipe doesn’t specifically say it’s paleo, all you have to do is look at the ingredients. Judge for yourself, to see how it matches up to your requirements.

Youngsters In The Family?

With Martha & Marley Spoon,(yes, that is Martha Stewart) you can order 2-person or 4-person “family boxes.” Just filter the menu options specifically for ones that are “kid-friendly.”

SunBasket says “Our Family Menu makes things simple. Choose from 6 delicious kid-friendly recipes each week with Chef’s Choice and Vegetarian Meal Plan options. All recipes are portioned for 4 adults with leftovers for families with younger children.”

April 17, 2019 0 comment

Additives All About Blog Topics Food Safety Nutrition Organic

Organic Shopping is catching on!

by jughandle April 15, 2019

written by jughandle

It’s working, organic shopping is catching on. You and yours are spending over $30 billion per year to avoid toxins in your food and over half of that spending is for organic food.

Other things to look for

In addition to the organic vegetable isle, you should be also looking for organic food in places you wouldn’t necessarily think of.

Hormone-Free Desserts

Normal ice-cream is produced from cows that are fed antibiotics, hormones, genetically engineered corn and soy.

Look for ice-cream labeled organic. The cows will have to been fed a natural diet of grass and hay. Their fat will contain heart-protecting and cancer preventing fat called CLA or conjugated linoleic acid.

Cage free chicken eggs

Most eggs found in your store are from chickens that are crammed into a small cage and fed hormones and antibiotics to make them grow quickly. To prevent disease they are sprayed with insect spray to keep bugs off of them.

The sales of organic eggs have doubled in the last few years. Cage free and organically fed chickens are happier and produce healthier more nutritious eggs.

Not Just Food

Shampoo and skin care

It seems like just yesterday, the local news was informing us that women apply over 80 different chemicals to their bodies daily. Men only 30.

I won’t list them all here but the most shocking to me was that lipstick contains lead.

Yes, lead!

You are putting lead in your mouth, or at least on your mouth.

Shampoo is just as bad. Look for organic products with skin care too.

NATURAL or ALL NATURAL means absolutely NOTHING!

Toxic Ingredients In Our Skin And Hair Care Products

Here is just a taste of what you are getting:

Isopropyl Alcohol– inhalation or ingestion of the vapor may cause headaches, flushing, dizziness, mental depression, nausea, vomiting, narcosis and coma.

Mineral oil-

Baby oil is 100% mineral oil. This commonly used petroleum ingredient coats the skin just like plastic wrap.

The skin’s natural immune barrier is disrupted as this plastic coating inhibits its ability to breathe and absorb the natural Moisture Factor (moisture and nutrition). The skin’s ability to release toxins is impeded by this “plastic wrap”, which can promote acne and other disorders.

Skin function is slowed down and normal cell development hampered, causing the skin to prematurely age.

This is an abbreviation for poly-ethylene glycol that is used in making cleansers to dissolve oil and grease as well as thicken products.

PEG –

Because of their effectiveness, PEG’s are often used in caustic spray-on oven cleaners and yet are found in many personal care products.

PEG’s contribute to stripping the natural moisture factor, leaving the immune system vulnerable. They are also potentially carcinogenic.

Propylene Glycol –

Basically antifreeze. There is no difference between the PG used in industry and the PG used in personal care products.

Used in industry to break down protein and cellular structure (what the skin is made of) yet it is found in most forms of make-up, hair products, lotions, after shave- deodorants, mouthwashes and toothpaste.

also used in our food

It is also used in food processing. Because of its ability to quickly penetrate the skin, the EPA requires workers to wear protective gloves, clothing and goggles when working with this toxic substance.

The Material Safety Data Sheets warn against skin contact, as PG has systemic consequences such as brain, liver, and kidney abnormalities. Consumers are not protected. There a warning label on products such as stick deodorants, where the concentration is greater than that in most industrial applications.

safer?

Even though PG is a safer replacement for Ethylene Glycol, which causes kidney and liver damage if consumed by humans or animals. It is far from safe.

in our pets food

Propylene glycol is a controversial additive now used to help preserve the moisture content in some commercial dog foods.

You may already recognize this chemical for its more everyday use — as the key component in newer automotive antifreeze

dangerous for cats yet still in dog food?

Because it has been proven to cause,
Heinz body anemia, a serious type of blood disease in some animals propylene glycol has been banned by the FDA for use in cat food.

But unfortunately, it can still be used to make dog food.

It is probably safe — in small, infrequent doses.

Yet unlike most humans who are inclined to vary their diets with each meal, dogs are typically fed the same food on a perpetual basis — meal-after-meal, every day for a lifetime.

And it’s that continuous exposure to a synthetic substance like propylene glycol that tends to cause problems.

Sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) –

Used as detergents and surfactants, these closely related compounds are found in car wash soaps, garage floor cleaners and engine degreasers.

Yet both sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) are used more widely as one of the major ingredients in cosmetics, toothpaste, hair conditioner and about 90% of all shampoos and products that foam.

According to the American College of Toxicology both SLS and SLES can cause malformation in children’s eyes.

Other research has indicated SLS may be damaging to the immune system, especially within the skin. Skin layers may separate and inflame due to its protein denaturing properties.

It is possibly the most dangerous of all ingredients in personal care products.

Research has shown that SLS when combined with other chemicals can be transformed into nitrosamines, a potent class of carcinogens, which causes the body to absorb nitrates at higher levels that eating nitrate-contaminated food.

” According to the American College of Toxicity report, “SLS stays in the body for up to five days…” Other studies have indicated that SLS easily penetrates through the skin and enters and maintains residual levels in the heart, the liver, the lungs and the brain.

Chlorine –

Doris J. Rapp, M.D., author of Is This Your Child’s World?, says that exposure to chlorine in tap water, showers, pool, laundry products, cleaning agents, food processing, sewage systems and many others, can affect our health.

Chlorine contributes to the development of asthma, hay fever, anemia, bronchitis, circulatory collapse, confusion, delirium, diabetes, dizziness, irritation of the eye, mouth, nose, throat, lung, skin and stomach, heart disease, high blood pressure and nausea.

It is also a possible cause of cancer. Even though you will not see Chlorine on personal care product labels, it is important for you to be aware of the need to protect your skin when bathing and washing your hair.

and it goes on and on – jughandle

April 15, 2019 0 comment

Additives All About Blog Topics Food Safety Informational Blog Kid Safe Food Nutrition Organic

What Constitutes Organic food

by jughandle January 11, 2018

written by jughandle

What Constitutes Organic food and what foods are best eaten that way

Yesterday I posted more reasons to buy and eat organic, but I didn’t explain what organic is and which foods benefit us most to be eaten that way.

Simply, organic farmers don’t use synthetic chemicals to fertilize or synthetic pesticides to control weeds or bugs. They use mulch as a weed barrier and natural methods to stop pests. But of course its never that simple.

The department of agriculture says that only products can be labeled 100 per cent organic if they are completely organic or made of all organic ingredients. If the tag says only “organic” it must be at least 95 percent organic. To confuse us more “Made with organic ingredients” are products containing at least 70 percent organic ingredients, but the official organic seal can’t be used on those products. The USDA not only has strict standards for organic farming, it also inspects organic farms to assure their standards are being met.

The following are the 5 steps to Organic certification.- click here

Characteristics of Organic Farms:

Organic vegetable farms minimize the kind and amount of fertilizers and pesticides used to produce a crop as their overall goal. Emphasis is placed on long term planning based on information regarding crop pest life cycles, soil conditioning, extensive evaluation of ecological relationships, field conditions, and, options for management of these variables in a given field or on a given farm. According to the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, there are three basic characteristics that define an organic farm:

1. – Soil conditioning is maintained through the heavy use of composted and naturally occurring plant and animal material incorporated into the soil profile; green manure and cover crops, and, crop rotation.

2. – Soil fertility is depended upon the continuing activity of minor organisms such as earthworms and bacteria to digest organic matter and convert it to compounds available to plants.

3. – Pest control is advanced by “healthy” soil, plant resistance, selective and limited use of pesticides that poise little or no adverse effect to the soil, crop, environment and human health.

Beware of the top 10 foods most likely to retain the most pesticides- always buy organic

Strawberries
Bell peppers
Spinach
Cherries
Peaches
Foreign-grown cantaloupe
Celery
Apples
Apricots
Green Beans

The following are safer because they don’t absorb much pesticide or are normally peeled before eating. These aren’t necessary to be bought organic yet.

Asparagus
Avocados
Bananas
Broccoli
Cabbage
Kiwi
Mango
Onions
Papaya
Pineapple

Organic Beef

To raise cattle organically the farmer must meet the health conditions and natural behavior of the animal in nature. What the heck does that mean. I call BS on that. Many of these animals have been domestically raised for hundreds of years. So this is a fine line but….

Organic livestock must be given access to the outdoors, frest air, water, sunshine, grass and pasture and must be fed 100 percent organic feed. Any shelter provided must be designed to allow the animal comfort and the opportunity to exercise. Darn, I’d like to live organically too. Organic practices prohibit feeding animal parts of any kind to animals that by nature eat a vegetarian diet. Yes, that is done in feed lots to increase the protein to the animal. In fact that is what is believed to have caused “mad cow disease”.

To top that “national organic standards require oversight of production and handling systems. Production and handling operations must undergo onsite inspections and have farm or operating plans in place in order to be certified organic. The standards also specify feed requirements, including what is and is not allowed.

Organic production requires that livestock cannot be fed plastic pellets for roughage, or formulas containing urea or manure. They cannot be given antibiotics or growth hormones. For an animal to be raised for organic beef its mother must have been fed organic feed for at least the last third of gestation.”

If you’d like specific information go to http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NOP/standards/prodhandreg.html

Conclusions and recommendations

When I started this blog I was extremely open minded about “normal” eating practices. Knowledge is sometimes dangerous or at least expensive. I can’t help but to completely recommend eating organic vegetables and beef. Actually it seems that we’d be stupid not to. – jughandle

January 11, 2018 0 comment

All About Blog Topics Food Safety Informational Blog Organic

Organic foods – The 20 Best Organic Foods

by jughandle January 11, 2018

written by jughandle

Why Organic Matters

Organic foods. Walk into an average grocery store and you face a choice—47,000 choices of products, actually. And their labels advertise terms such as low fat, high fiber, free range, and organic. Some matter, some don’t. But those labels aren’t even the most confusing part:

Many scientists say organic is more nutritious than conventionally grown food, while others say it’s not. The back and forth is enough to make us “eat what’s available when we’re hungry and try not to think too much about it because it’s all so disheartening and confusing,” writes Maria Rodale in her book, Organic Manifesto.

Sadly, not buying organic food is a mistake that you can no longer afford to make. According to more and more studies, eating organic foods can help you build more muscle and burn more fat, not to mention protect the environment from harmful pesticides and increase your chances of siring healthy offspring (sons in particular). Here are 20 top organic foods to get you started. Add them to your grocery list to upgrade your diet, strengthen your body, and help heal the planet.

via organic foods | The 20 Best Organic Foods | MensHealth.com.

January 11, 2018 0 comment

All About Blog Topics Gardens for Vegetables How To Informational Blog Organic

Soil and the Organic Garden

by jughandle January 7, 2018

written by jughandle

According to Wikipedia:

Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control. Organic farming uses fertilizers and pesticides but excludes or strictly limits the use of manufactured (synthetic) fertilizers, pesticides (which include herbicides, insecticides and fungicides), plant growth regulators such as hormones, livestock antibiotics, food additives, genetically modified organisms,^[1] human sewage sludge, and nanomaterials.^[2]

Organic agricultural methods are internationally regulated and legally enforced by many nations, based in large part on the standards set by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), an international umbrella organization for organic farming organizations established in 1972.^[3] IFOAM defines the overarching goal of organic farming as:

“Organic agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved…”

—International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements^[4]

Soil

Apparently the soil in an organic farm or garden MUST be turned and amended and the crops MUST be rotated to insure problem free growth.

From www.bigblogofgardening.com

Crop rotation is one of the oldest and most effective strategies for organic pest control and healthy soil culture in your organic garden. Specifically, it means the planned order of vegetables or fruits in garden beds; avoiding planting the same crop in the same space for a two or three year period; and knowing what family your edibles belong to.

Where the same vegetables or fruits are grown in the same patch of soil successively, soil depletion and pest infestation may follow. As organic gardeners don’t use insecticides, preventing pest infestations must be controlled by other means.

Many soil dwelling insects are fairly immobile. Take wireworms for instance. They love to feast on sweet potatoes and carrots. If you plant those edibles in the sameraised bed every year, wireworms will build up in the soil and in a few seasons you’ll have a terrible infestation on your hands. But if you follow carrots or sweet potatoes the following season with a non-root vegetable like lettuce or spinach, the wireworms will lose their food source and will be incapable of multiplying.

The same idea holds true for diseases such as tomato blight. If your tomatoes were infected with blight last year, fungal spores from the blight may overwinter in your soil. Planting tomatoes the following year in the farthest garden bed from the blight infested bed will minimize the chances that your tomatoes will pick up the diseaseagain.

Crop rotation also spares depletion of your garden soil. Every plant requires unique amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium (N-P-K) and other trace minerals. When the same plant makes repeated demands of the same patch of soil, the elements it requires are quickly depleted and may take years to replace. For this reason, heavy composting in between crops is recommended for soil health and using a soil test kit formonitoring levels of N-P-K.

Rotating your vegetables and fruit also greatly reduces the need for fertilizers and pesticides. In my organic garden, I have no need for pesticides at all – there simply are no infestations – and I only use a small amount of organic fertilizer, but large amounts of compost.

For more information on crop rotation and identifying which families your vegetables are in, check out this explanation on crop rotation from OrganicLife.

crop rotation potatoes Don’s follow potatoes with potatoes in your garden.

What to use in your soil?

January 7, 2018 1 comment

Just Recipes Kid Safe Food Organic Vegan Vegetarian

Meat substitutes

by jughandle January 3, 2018

written by jughandle

Meat substitutes. Check out this page on One Green Planet titled “10 Vegetables That Can Substitute for Meat“.

Not your hippie friend’s meat substitute

Not too long ago vegan friendly substitutes for meat were like eating cardboard. Not to mention they were highly processed and contained a lot of chemicals. Not so much today. There are quite a few products that are very good and can even stand on their own without being called a “substitute”.

Cutting down on meat?

If you aren’t, you really should be. I have been on a vegan experiment for the last 6 months or so with interesting results. That is a story for another day, but suffice it to say if you are pushing 65 as I am or even 45 for that matter, it’s time to consider your long term diet, in order to have a “long term” at all. I’m not saying to stop meat completely, in fact I’ve started back on a limited protein serving a couple of times per week. I’ll explain that another time.

The products and the companies producing meat substitutes that I’m going to list below are a great way to expand your eating options and improve your health at the same. Back off on the red, white and fowl meats. Don’t stop by any means, but just imagine how much better they’ll taste when you aren’t eating them as often.

5 Options

Veggie Patch Products – This is a large line of veggie and meatless products that might interest even the pickiest carnivore. No artificial flavors, preservative and no trans fat. These products include Meatless meatballs, chick’n Nuggets and Ultimate Meatless Burgers and many more. Click on the link to find who carries them in your area.

Trader Joe’s Meatless Corn Dogs and Morningstar Farms Veggie Corn Dogs – If you or your kids like corn dogs, try one of these substitutes and see if any one even can tell the difference. Trader Joe provide excellent products throughout their store and Morningstar is a leader in the vegan market.

Quorn – While I’m not personally familiar with this brand, it is highly recommended. Click on the link and check out the products for yourself. They have meat and meatless products.

Quorn

Turtle Island Foods – I recently had my first Tempeh…. wait for it… wait for it… and I loved it. Great texture, good flavor and cooks well with out falling apart. Turtle Island carried Tofurky, tofurky pizza, tempeh and tempeh bacon. I can’t yet vouch for all of these products, but the tempeh is great.

Gardein Seven – the article says about Gardein

“Gardein’s ad campaign advises consumers to “cheat on meat,” and their products make it easy to do just that. To boot, these breaded tenders contain heart healthy grains like quinoa, millet, amaranth and Kamut and have 8 grams of protein per serving”

Conclusions

I have concluded for myself that I am cutting down on meat and I will eat more of the products I’ve list above. I recommend you come to the same conclusion, as I need to keep all the readers I have. – jughandle

January 3, 2018 1 comment

Food Safety Gardens for Vegetables Organic

Bee Deaths Affect Our Crops

by jughandle May 14, 2013

written by jughandle

Our Bees are dying at an alarming rate. Actually dying is the wrong word to use. The Bees are vanishing, like something out of a science fiction movie. If you haven’t heard about this problem yet, please let me bring you up to date.

Colony Collapse Disorder

The phenomena is known as “Colony Collapse Disorder”. Bees have vanished in huge numbers to the point that crops such as almonds, avocados, blueberries, pears, plums and apple crops may fail THIS YEAR, as a result of nothing more than not being pollinated. That’s right, no blight, pests or weather problems, just a lack of Bees. The photo above is an unusual occurrence of a colony of dead bees. Most of the time the colony just disappears. It seems that bees are so smart that if they know or sense something is wrong with them they will basically commit suicide so not to infect the colony.

Experts Don’t Have A Clue

Oh sure, there are people who have good educated guesses at what might be causing the problem, but nobody knows for sure. Could be pesticides, GMOs, a bacteria or a virus or a combination of all of those things.

Bee Keepers

When you think of bee keepers, most people envision a person in a funny white outfit harvesting honey from hives. Bee keeping has made it to the “big business” scale. There are bee keepers who travel the country in multiple tractor trailer rigs full of bees. They hire out to large farmers for specific periods of time to let their bees loose on the farm to pollinate the crops at just the right time.

Crops

Hass avocados ripening

Almond Tree in Bloom

Blueberry Bush

Imagine no more blueberries, almonds or avocados this year

So, how can we save the bees?

The following is from an article in the Food Renegad written by KristenM

1. We should err on the side of the environment, rather than on the side of economic profits for the pesticide industry, and immediately ban neonicotinoids.

2. We should encourage and support local beekeepers feeding their bees honey rather than HFCS. Heck, why not start keeping your own bees?

3. We should plant bee-friendly flowers and allow the pollinators free reign in our lawns and gardens instead of immediately trying to kill any nearby hives.

4. We can encourage and support the work of researchers trying to breed sturdier bees.

The report recommends stepping up efforts to identify genetic traits in particular bees that make them resistant to suspected causes of CCD. Some honey bees, it turns out, take “suicidal risks” when infected with disease to prevent spreading the contagion to the colony.

The report also suggests importing Russian honey bees and other “Old World” bees to diversify bee breeding stock and build up CCD resistance. Scientists already have begun to stockpile bee semen and germplasm in case the worst comes to pass.
(source)

All of this together may not be enough. There are still too many unknown variables — like GMO crops where the plant itself is registered as an insecticide with the EPA.

Who can say what the long-term effect of these crops is on the honey bee population? Perhaps they are like neonicotinoids — initially appearing safe, but ultimately weakening the bees across generations.

Conclusion

As always let logic be your guide. If you’ve never gotten behind a “cause” before, this might just bee the one to start with. Call your local and state representatives and tell them you are worried. They all have phone numbers with answering machines to record your concerns. Heck, sometimes a real person will answer. Call your extension service and ask what you can do to help. Write me and tell me you are concerned and I’ll pass it along – jughandle

May 14, 2013 0 comment

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