Inspiring Documentaries

1. Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days

This is one of the most inspiring and educational independent food documentaries. Every time I watch it I find myself recommending it to someone else the next day. The film chronicles 6 people with "incurable" diabetes who were invited to the The Tree Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona. The documentary captures their stay at the health center and their remarkable journey. While there they were not allowed to have: meat, dairy, caffeine, sugar, refined or processed foods. I love that Wood Harrelson is in this!

2. The Future of Food

This film is about GMO seeds and the farmers who work with them everyday. It offers an in depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled our grocery store shelves for the past decade.

3. Food, Inc.

A great film for everyone in your family. It's about our scary food industry and how far away we've gotten from our roots. You'll never look at dinner the same way!

4. Running the Sahara

This is a story of 3 ultra runners who set out on a quest to run through the vast and mysterious wilderness of the Sahara Desert. Fighting injury and extreme fatigue, Charlie, Ray and Kevin's journey took them across 6 countries: Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger Libya and Egypt as they logged 50 miles/day. According to their GPS record, they traveled by foot over 4,3000 miles. Talk about a journey of epic proportions!

5. Fresh!

Fresh is an inspiring and hopeful film about our aim to help grow and eat more fresh food from our Earth. The film forces the audience to take a serious look at where we are and, as a result, is a useful primer of how we got here. Fresh! is a film of positive ideas and solutions. It's different from Food Inc., which focuses more on the overwhelming power of industrial agriculture and it's problems and challenges.

Please go and see one of these films or maybe plan a movie night with some friends or family. They're sure to inspire anyone and everyone!

♥♥ Cheers to your health

The dirty and clean list...

Yesterdays post was all about how buying 100% organic is sometimes too pricey and just flat out unrealistic. As a simple solution, I recommended focusing on which foods have the highest level of pesticide residue, additives and hormones and buying organic exclusively for this list.

The Environmental Working Group published a helpful list of produce, creatively dubbed the dirty dozen, that's comprised of fruits and veggies containing the highest level of pesticides. When shopping for these easily contaminated foods, it's healthier for you, your family, the farmer workers and the environment to stick to organic.

The newly updated Dirty Dozen for 2010:

• celery
• peaches
• strawberries
• apples
• blueberries
• nectarines
• peppers
• spinach, kale and other leafy greens
• cherries
• grapes
• carrots
• pears
• ***tomatoes (although they were on the Clean 15 list in 2009

**I also highly recommend spending more to buy organic dairy, meat and coffee.

What are the cleanest foods? Below is the counter list of the foods that have the least amount of pesticides detected on the parts you eat, after a typical washing, even if they're not certified organic:

• onions
• avocados
• corn
• pineapple
• mango
• asparagus
• sweet peas
• kiwi
• cabbage
• eggplant
• papaya
• watermelon
• sweet potatoes
• broccoli

Tip: Copy and paste these lists into a word document (in a small font). Print your lists out and store in your wallet as a "cheat sheet" for whenever you go shopping.

♥♥ Cheers to your health

Buying organic on a budget

Most of us know that choosing organic food is ideal for our health. But we also realize that organic can be much more expensive compared to it's conventional counterparts. Does it mean you have to go "organic or nothing" when you're food shopping? Absolutely not.

Next time you're at the green market or grocery store, it's smart to select organic produce when it matters the most. For example, choose organic varieties when it comes to fruits and vegetables where you eat the fruit or vegetable entirely (think: grapes, apples, spinach and strawberries). This is because the pseticides can accumulate on the surface of produce's skin and therefore are easily ingested into our bodies once we eat it. Whereas fruits like lemons, bananas, oranges and avocados have thicker skins that get peeled away, so it's not as harmful to opt for conventionally grown in order to pinch pennies. No matter what, wash your produce really well before enyoying it!

For truly affordable organics, check out places like Costco and Trader Joe's.