Summertime is almost upon us again, and in my neck of the woods we’ve been having extremely hot days (mixed in with unseasonably chilly days) for months already.  What a weird year!  My two little ones are in love with water-play and so I’ve been on a search for a pool of some sort.  We’ve made do in the past with the sprinkler, but with a brand new walker, I thought that wet grass might lead to more split lips than I care to deal with.  So, go out and buy a little blow-up pool, right?  Not so fast.

Those affordable vinyl blow-up pools are…well, vinyl.  And Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) is something we try hard to avoid over here.  I won’t go into all the health hazards involved as a quick google will bring up more than you ever care to read on the subject.  But check out this site for starters:http://www.pvcfree.org/ Suffice it to say that it’s as bad for you as it is for the environment, and pouring water into it, setting it in the sun to stew and off-gas, and then letting my wee piglets soak in it (and drink from it)?  No thank you!

So what choices do we really have?  Well, a clean pond or stream is certainly going to be your most natural choice.  You still have environmental contaminates to be concerned about - but those have a good chance of being in your pool water as well.  I spent a long time looking into this, and the options that I found were either a livestock watering trough (that come in either galvanized metal or polyethylene), a birth pool, or a hard sided wading pool.  I went for the wading pool!  But I’m keeping the watering trough in mind for when a 12″x 54″ space isn’t quite enough.  Also, I already have a phthalate-free birth pool from my homebirth last year, but as I hope to use it again some day, I don’t want it to get holes in it from steady use all summer.  You can buy a hot tub sized blow-up birth pool for under $200.

Now, hard-sided wading pools are harder to find than you think.  I looked through all the major big box stores before finding one at K-Mart (though you won’t find them listed on their website).  Of course, there’s nothing on the product to indicate what it’s made from, so I called the manufacturer (Genfoam).  After a long time trying to get through, I finally talked to a live person, who was very surprised at my question.  Seems not too many people care what their wading pools are made out of!  After even more time, she found out that they are made from Polyethylene, a much safer form of plastic.  Will we find some nasty chemical lurking in this stuff in five years?  Quite possibly, but with limited options, it’s certainly the safest available that’s within my budget.

So, hours of research and $9.99 later, we have a pool for the summer! Oh, and don’t forget about the hose!  If you’re using a regular green yard/garden hose, you may want to run out to the hardware store.  Most hoses have LEAD in them.  Yep, lead.  That’s why they say on the packaging (that you didn’t even really look at and certainly didn’t keep because everyone knows how to use a hose already) not to use it for drinking water.  The biggest problem with this is when a hose has been sitting in the sun - the water that first comes out has been leaching lead from the hose since the last time you used it.  So, go get yourself a white hose - they will say “for drinking water” or “camp and RV.”  They are lead-free!

One of our mottos/mantras at Kaylala is “If you can’t eat it, you shouldn’t put it on your skin.” After all, the skin is the largest organ of the human body. Likewise, it should be no surprise that what you put IN your body is just as important for the health of your skin as what you put ON it. Our products can do some amazing things, but if you’re eating junk food all day, it will negate a lot of the benefits of using our formulas. Ideally, diet should work in conjunction with “clean” skin care as well as “greening up” your home/work environment to provide you with optimal health and glowing, radiant skin!

I’d like to touch on the basic premise behind how we eat over here at Kaylala - you’ll be hearing a good bit more from me on the subject…I think about food a lot! We try to keep in mind whether we “live to eat” or “eat to live.” Don’t get me wrong, I think food should be attractive to the eyes as well as the palate, and as I said, I love to eat! But so often we eat what is easy or what just looks good, and when huge companies are pouring millions of dollars into making their food product easy and yummy by utilizing untested chemicals (you know, the list of un-pronounceables as long as your arm in food that you probably thought only had four ingredients) - that’s just biting us in the rear. Honestly, I can’t say this enough, you just cannot trust the FDA to protect you. Companies do NOT have to prove that a chemical is safe before they put it in a food (or a skin care product). The FDA is not out there testing these substances; they rely on the company (that stands to profit) for test results - if they even request test results at all. Some of these food additives have (questionable) studies that show they aren’t harmful in small quantities, but have you ever thought of this: we shouldn’t be consuming food in the hopes that it won’t harm us, we should consume food to nourish our bodies!

I know for me, this now sounds like total common sense, but not so long ago, I only thought of food as doing two things: 1. making me feel full (or at least not hungry, when you’re dieting) and 2. making me fat. Living in Southern California, I was already into “healthy living” and thought I was way ahead of the game by considering my fat/carbs/proteins in each meal - as opposed to dieters that just take total caloric consumption into consideration. I thought that as long as I had those proportions under control, then I would lose weight. This is the same thinking behind “I could eat a big salad OR this candy bar and still be within my calories for the day.” I NEVER considered the actual nourishing value in the foods. I was just thinking, “when you’re hungry you have to eat, and if you eat the wrong things, you’ll get fat.” But really, we eat to fuel our bodies. What else is a body supposed to run on/heal with/grow from, if not food.

You would never run low on gas in your car and say, “oh, I’m on empty, better find SOMETHING to put in my tank.” You put gas in your tank, because that’s what cars need to run. You can fill it up with water or sand or root beer, and it will be full, but it won’t run. Maybe it will go a little more on “fumes” but it will break down if you don’t give it what it needs and was DESIGNED for. Similarly, if you give your body fake food (or Fewd as I like to call it) you will continue to crave more because, whether YOU know it or not, your BODY knows you still haven’t given it the nutritional building blocks that it needs.

This way of looking at food really makes sense of cravings, binging, and overeating. Not to mention craving unhealthy foods as they are often chemical-laden reproductions of REAL nourishing foods that your body needs. Now of course there are so many other issues involved here, and it’s not always as simple as that. But if you could remove one “fewd” from your weekly intake, that can be a huge step. This can mean anything from the obvious high fructose corn syrup arena to the less obvious low-fat bandwagon corrupting our dietary sensibilities.

And your skin will thank you for it.

-Heather

Thanks to my friend Megan for inspiring today’s post. Probably a lot of you saw the CNN article about ADHD being linked to pesticides. As my sister Ali said, yeah, shocking that something “designed to have toxic effects on the nervous system” might have negative effects on the brains of growing children. So many of us are doing our utmost to provide healthy foods and healthy environments for our kids, so it can be really disheartening to find out that it’s just not enough. To think that those whole fruits and veggies you’ve been feeding them may be giving them learning disabilities or worse, is just overwhelming!

What do you do now? Well, we can’t all afford 100% organic, and we’re not all in a position to grow our own food (although I’d encourage you to try - more about that another time). There’s a handy cheat sheet called the ‘Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen’. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re going to make your life a little easier! Turns out that not all crops are pesticided alike. Some need more chemicals to keep the bugs at bay, and some have thick inedible skins that are discarded before eating. Using these lists, you can choose which foods you always buy organic, and which ones you can let slide.

And while we’re on the subject of pesticides, not to freak you out more, BUT…there are places where pesticides are lurking in your food that you have probably never thought to look. Foods that are possibly WAY more contaminated than those non-organic strawberries you just wolfed down! Check the ingredient lists on any fried foods (chips, fish fingers, chicken strips) and even a lot of baked goods. You won’t have to look far - it will be the second or third ingredient: cottonseed and/or soybean and/or canola oil. Ooh, good, an unsaturated fat, you’re thinking. NO!!! Soybeans and canola are, first of all, genetically modified (don’t get me started) and highly pesticided. These crops are “Round Up Ready” meaning they can resist all the pesticides you throw at them (if only we were all so lucky) and these toxins are stored in the fat of living things. Cottonseed oil, well, cotton is probably at the top of the list for most pesticides used on a crop. They figure it’s not that big of a deal - cotton isn’t a food crop after all. By the time that fiber has been washed and combed and spun into fabric for your clothes, it can’t possibly still be contaminated, right? Unfortunately for us, the seeds come out first, and then they’re sold as a cheap by-product to the food industry. After they’re turned into oil (the perfect vehicle for the hazardous chemicals they’ve been exposed to from sprouting to harvesting), that oil is then added to all your favorite processed foods. Yum, right?

My point is, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Whole foods are still way healthier, and way safer than anything processed. I’d encourage everyone to buy as much organic produce as your budget allows, and do your best to buy locally and in season. But don’t lose perspective. If you’re giving your child an organic apple, but then handing them “fewd” like GoGurt, they’ve got bigger nutritional/chemical overload issues than the pesticides you’ve avoided with the apple.

- Heather

So we realize that we’ve been a little sluggish on the blog posts here. We’re working to remedy that as we begin to streamline our business in an effort to increase our productivity. Look for some more blog posts and website changes in the coming months… don’t worry, they’ll all be good changes. We’ve also just created a Twitter profile for ourselves @kaylala_organic. Of course, you can also still find us on Facebook if you prefer. Bunch of events coming up, so check out our calendar page in the site!

- Graham

I was at a meeting this afternoon planning this year’s Good Life Thursday Farmers Market at Boordy Vineyards and had a blast! It was refreshing to get back to planning for the growing season and working with other local producers. I was reminded of all the variety of fresh, traditionally raised, local produce and meats that are available so close to me! I can get everything from free-ranged pesticide-free eggs to raw milk gourmet cheese, black current wine vinegar to shiitake mushrooms, free ranged pork to organic, grass fed black Angus within a short drive from home. And there are getting to be so many ways to take advantage of this abundance! Just a few options in my area are to belong to a group that has drop off points each week for picking up fresh dairy and meat, going to a family farm and picking up fresh eggs, poultry and emu, belonging to a CSA and getting weekly deliveries of vegetables, local farmers market where you can get fruit, meat, veggies, flowers and baked goods direct from the producer, and frequenting restaurants that use primarily local ingredients. And those are just some choices I know about in my area! When I first started going out to local farms and picking up my food, it was a bit different from the weekly trip to the grocery store, but that was some of the appeal. Now it has become my norm, and it’s fun to be “in the know” about the new guy who’s raising such and such, or an old farmer who is starting to grow a new whatever. Call me crazy, but it gives me a sense of peace to be able to see where my carrot was grown or on what pasture the cow who’s milk I’m drinking has been grazing, especially when so many news articles are being written with horror stories about corporate agriculture and pollutents in our food. Not that I don’t still go to the grocery store, or eat at restaurants that may sell Monsanto meat, but I enjoy supporting my fellow small businessman and know that I am supporting a lifestyle that has long been out of fashion with each visit to the farmers market.
~Alison