Refreshing strawberry lemonade

I don't want to brag, and maybe I should knock on some hard wood, but the weather in my part of the country has been oh so lovely recently. Today, after running some errands and doing a few chores, I was a bit of a sweaty mess and ready for some hydration!

I wanted to incorporate some beautiful and yummy strawberries that were lurking in my refrigerator and nothing is better than lemonade on a hot day!

I give you my strawberry lemonade. It makes two servings, so share with a friend! Or do what I did, and just have two glasses!

Ingredients:

• Juice of one lemon
• 3/4 cup of hulled strawberries
• 1 to 2 tbsp coconut syrup or other sweetener of choice (to taste)
• 2 cups of sparkling water or non-carbonated filtered water

Instructions:

• Place lemon juice, strawberries and coconut syrup into blender and blend strawberries are pureed.
• Add water to blender and pulse a few times to combine.
• Pour into glasses and enjoy!

This drink is HIGHLY enjoyable accompanied by a good book and a patio... just sayin'.

On a somewhat related note, please read what this Coke executive had to say about Coca-Cola. And then hopefully you will ask yourself, "is she freaking serious!?!?". Feel free to discuss below!

Before you take your doctor's advice, read the ingredients!

Source

Recently my mother had some dental surgery. Prior to the procedure, I was talking to her on the phone and she told me she had just been out grocery shopping to get some things to eat following the surgery. She mentioned the dentist told her to get some "Boost" – a meal replacement drink.

I was appalled. I asked her on the phone to read me the ingredients.

I ask you now, what in this list of crap is nutritional?

Water, corn syrup solids, sugar, modified milk ingredients, canola oil, high oleic sunflower oil, corn oil, artificial flavour, salt, soy lecithin, carrageenan, artificial colour, soy oil, (may contain potassium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid), minerals (calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate tribasic, chromic chloride, cupric sulfate, ferric pyrophosphate, magnesium phosphate dibasic, manganese sulfate, potassium chloride, potassium citrate, potassium iodide, sodium citrate, sodium molybdate, sodium selenite and zinc sulfate), vitamins (biotin, calcium d-pantothenate, dl-α-tocopheryl acetate, folic acid, niacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, sodium ascorbate, thiamine hydrochloride, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin B₁₂ and vitamin D₃). 

From what I can tell, you've got the following:

• water
• sugar
• sugar
• modified milk ingredients, as defined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency: any of the following in liquid, concentrated, dry, frozen or reconstituted form, namely, calcium-reduced skim milk (obtained by the ion-exchange process), casein, caseinates, cultured milk products, milk serum proteins, ultrafiltered milk, whey, whey butter, whey cream and any other component of milk the chemical state of which has been altered from that in which it is found in milk (Source)
• a bunch of oils, from most likely genetically-modified sources
• artificial flavour, as defined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency: one or more substances prepared for their flavouring properties and derived in whole or in part from components obtained by chemical synthesis (Source)
• some very processed thickening agents
• artificial colour, this shouldn't be news to anyone... they are chemicals 
• a bunch of added mineral and vitamins that are poor sources and often a type that our body cannot readily absorb (calcium carbonate, for instance is a poor calcium supplement choice, we absorb very little calcium from this source)

Feel free to help a nutritionista-in-training and point out the REAL FOOD, and therefore nutrition...

Still looking... thought you might.

Instead of Boost, here's my suggestion: easy, fresh, cheap, and is full of REAL nutrition.

• 2 cups water
• 2 tbsp hemp hearts
• large handful of greens (spinach, kale, chard)
• 1 cup of mixed berries
• 1 frozen banana
• BLEND this goodness up and then DRINK this goodness up

Feel free to take it to the next level and add more nutritious superfoods using my two go-to smoothie recipes here and here.

Enjoy and be well!

"You made your own WHAT?"

I made my own body wash. Yes you heard me right. Is your next question "why"? Thought so. Well, I'll tell you why.

The stuff you do in the bathroom, including showering, brushing your teeth, putting on your makeup, washing your face can lead to putting an enormous amount of poison into your body each and everyday -- sometimes twice or more per day. To combat this, I'm trying to make small changes here and there to lessen my toxic load. In doing so, I consulted the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetics Database to check some of the products I use. And, well, I was somewhat shocked. What I thought was a more "natural" body wash, turned out to be just average for the money I was spending and had more bad things in it that I thought. I should have known better, but we all get fooled once in a while.

And so I began a search for a cleaner product. And by the magic of Pinterest, I found what I was looking for!

 

Source: proverbs2six.blogspot.com via Raeanne on Pinterest

I only needed three things: a "clean" bar of soap, vegetable glycerine and an essential oil (optional). I headed to Rainbow Natural Foods to find my loot and found it!

This soap, Kiss My Face's Pure Olive Oil Soap, gets a "0" from the Skin Deep database, because it's just that, pure olive oil. I also picked up some pure vegetable glycerine and some pure, organic tea tree oil.

The instructions are pretty simple: grate the soap, which made four cups of soap, and put it in 16 cups of water, over a low to medium heat and stir until all the soap melts. Add 4 tablespoons of the glycerine and at the end 20-30 drops of the essential oil.

This gave me four litres of body wash. I washed out my old body wash bottle to use in the shower and the rest got poured into large 1-litre mason jars (the colour is that green/yellow because again I used olive oil soap and therefore it's the colour of olive oil!)

Easy-peasy! And the verdict? It's a very different soap, but that's mostly because of my choice to use an oil-based soap. It's more liquid than a cream or a gel and like all soaps without sulfates, it won't lather that much. But that doesn't mean it doesn't feel lovely on my skin and makes me squeeky-clean.

So now the cost... well the soap was about $4, the vegetable glycerine was about $6 and the oil was $11. I used all the soap, half the glycerine and not much of the oil. I used to pay $10/litre. This one cost me about $9+tax for 4 litres. Yup, that's a bargain!

Healthwashing - Have you heard of it?

Lately, I've been reading a lot of food labels. I've always been a food label reader, but I used to focus on the nutrition fact chart, you know this one, that's on everything. 

Source

But more and more at the grocery store, I've started looking at that ingredient list first, and the nutrition facts chart second, if at all. Marketing can be a mean game and more and more company's are trying to sell their products based on their "low-fat" or "low-calorie" or now more and more "gluten-free" or "organic" labels. These companies are trying to brainhealthwash you!

The very best example I have of this, comes from a fabulous nutrition blog I read daily, written by Meghan Telpner, a Toronto-area holistic nutritionist. In this post, she writes about guessing what the food is based on the ingredient list. You'll never guess. And furthermore, you'll never guess that this is being marketed to consumers as healthy! 

More and more we need to stop looking at the number of calories and pay a million times more time reading the ingredient list. If you find things on there that you don't know what they are, it's likely some sort of chemical that you really don't need in your body, let alone your child's. Just because something is "organic" or "gluten-free" doesn't equal healthy. Organic sugar is still sugar, for example, and hydrogenated oil of any kind is a trans-fat and should be avoided like the plague.

So all of this was brought on today, by a little visit into Shopper's Drug Mart. I was killing time out for a walk at lunch time and just popped in to see how much they charged for a particular item. While in the "Live well. Be well. Vitamins and Nutrition" section, I happened upon this:

 

 

What do you see? I see energy drinks and flavoured liquid marketed as water. Down in the corner just out of the frame are a few bottles of flax oil and 3 tubs of coconut oil – the only thing of value in the whole display.

Shameful... 

There are so many more examples of this everywhere. Got any good ones to share?