The mind body and soul connection isn't as unattainable as one might think. With a little consideration towards what you put in and on your body, you can feel and look better inside and out!
I kicked off New York FashionWEEK last night at Moo Shoes, who hosted a great event with great vegan food and fashion. By 7pm the boutique was packed, it felt like a Christmas party with good cheer! Sorry to be chiche but everyone was so nice and no one was elitest in the slightest. Everyone was just excited to be meeting new people, sharing work, and supporting the designers.
I met the designer and brains behind Love Is Mighty. Every ballet flat and heel is made by hand in India from waste materials like candy wrappers. The workers are paid fair wages and the materials are sourced form a school program in which the children bring them to school, as a sort of educational experience. of course all workers are paid fair wages. The designers hopes are to preserve the tribes' crafts before the people are all sourced for jobs, like construction which is a more stable income in their modern economy.
After my sample of raw thai from Rawlicious I had to the mini raw cupcakes from Sherry's Short Cakes which were so yummy and pretty. I mean who doesn't like gold flakes in their chocolate! Their was also bits of Rescue Chocolate from Brooklyn, one of the vendors on forAnima !! I love Resue Chocolate! The founder and dog lover, is adorable and a portion of the profits go to various foundations.
I also met the designer, Joshua behind Brave GentleMan. He had his loafers, boots, bowties and ties for men on display. All men's shoes are men under fair wages in the European Union. They were so handsome. I wished that I had a brother or boyfriend to buy them for! But alas, I could "pet" them in awe and when you see then shoes up close, you will want to as well. I hope that one day forAnima can work closer with Brave GentleMan and Novocas.
I needed someplace to work other than my balcony in Ditmars Stienway and since I really don't like commuting to Manhattan for work ("only when I have to" is my moto these days), I really needed to find a place to work. I wasn't holding my breath for the type of organic, fair-trade, quiet, coffee shop (that has gluten free or vegan options for my tummy) that I normally check in to. Really anything was fine. But, I was beginning to think that these types of places didn't exist here in Queens. Astoria doesn't have a Brooklyn or Astor Place demographic so any cafe around here is usually a standing/foam cup of coffee/Greek/loto/convenience store, where the donuts... are kept in a warmer... and if its not that, then cafe most likely stands for Greek diner.
But I found one!
And not that I found one that I liked among many cafes. I mean, I only found one cafe type of coffee shop that I was hoping for.
It's called Waltz.Astoria and run by the cutest mother-daughter duo. The walls are covered with decorations (just about every holiday is represented), antiques, books, and nicknacks. No the food is not guaranteed organic and there is usually only one type of muffin for the day and two types of cookies. There is, however, a menu with one or two vegetarian options! But they are small and don't get crowed that a college town coffee shop would, so I think they do alright with the 6 or 7 regulars that work there and the others that stop in for their coffe.
The first day I went in, I decided to get coffee out of sleep depravation. I don't normally have caffeine and don't crave coffee but once in a blue moon I will have some. Out of curiosity I ordered the Greek Iced Coffee. It was unbelievable. No words to describe it. I asked how it was made but couldn't understand the grandmother.
Smile and nod.
The next day I reverted back to tea and ordered the Greek Iced Tea. Even more impressive! AND it had foam!! I don't know how it's made either but everyday when I come to work here I order the same thing because it's just that yummy.
http://www.waltz-astoria.com/ 23-14 Ditmars Boulevard Astoria, NY 11105 (718) 956-8742
I first read about carrageenan when looking through Dr. Andrew Weil's website. There are number of places on his website where you are gently warned of it's side-effects, and I say gently because (as Dr. Weil and many other experts for that matter explain) when tested the agent has proven not to be as safe as they thought it to be when organic dairy and soy producers started using it as a filler and thickener in their products. Dr. Weil has messages at the bottom of articles such as:
Avoid carageenan. This commonfood additive is used
as a thickener and emulsifier in ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese and
other processed food products, including soy milk.
It has been linked to intestinal ulcerations in animal studies.
(Read labels on soy products carefully.)
Diagram Credit: The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry
Carrageenan is a red seaweed extract found in Atlantic Ocean near Britain, continental Europe, and North America. After being processed can be classified into one of the following to categories. Carrageenan has a low molecular weight, “degraded” carrageenan, or
high molecular weight, or “undegraded” carrageenan. The gum form is not as healthy as it looks and is one of the non-organic ingredients that is lurking in your organic food. "Organic foods" that are produced (or processed still have to be made, packaged shipped, and be "shelf stable" (as companies like to say) just like all other processed foods so "organic" mass-produced foods tend to use a few chemicals additives as well.
Here is an article from The Daily Green about the 38 Non-Organic Ingredients Found in 'USDA Organic' Foods. There is also a paper from the Cornucopia Institute on The Organic Watergate, which discusses, among other things, the bias and inadequacy of previous technical review on carrageenan. The paper is very enlightening for those who want to brush up on the hidden politics of the National Organic Standards Board created by congress and the board's shortcomings. Anyway, I could talk about the USDA and FDA for hours... refocusing,
The Organic Watergate's at the institute open their discussion of Carrageenan by revealing:
"Carrageenan was reviewedin 1995 by three scientists with professional relationships to corporate agribusiness, and only one pointed out the potential human health impacts of degraded carrageenan. This is especially outrageous since the scientific community had known for decades, based on an abundance of peerreviewed published literature, that degraded carrageenan is an inflammatory agent and carcinogenic in lab animals. Degraded carrageenan was listed as a “possible human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1983 – more than a decade before the 1995 TAP review." They go on to explain that the International Agency for Research on Cancer identifies degraded carrageenan as an inflammatory and carcinogen given the low molecular weight of the agent. And here is why there is a debate among boards because even though "this inflammatory property of degraded carrageenan is not in dispute, especially since the medical research community has used degraded carrageenan for decades to induce acute inflammation in experimental trials conducted with lab animals, to test antiinflammation drugs, Carrageenan processors tend to portray the difference between degraded and undegraded carrageenan as a simple, black-and-white distinction. They claim that food-grade carrageenan sold to food processors falls entirely in the undegraded category."
The Cornucopia Institute also created an amazing timeline of the development of use and debate of carrageenan from 1969-2012. I found the paragraph on events in March 2003 to be interesting:
"March 2003: The European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food reviews
Tobacman’s 2001 article, and reviews recent safety data on carrageenan. The
Committee suggests that the amount of degraded carrageenan in food-grade
carrageenan be kept to levels below 5%, 'in order to ensure that the presence of any
degraded carrageenan is kept to a minimum.' The Commission also reaffirms its earlier
position that it remains inadvisable to use carrageenan as an ingredient in infant formula."
Then in 2005:
"Marinalg, the industry trade group, convenes a working group to determine the levels of
degraded carrageenan in its products. The working group tests 12 samples of food-grade
carrageenan from a variety of suppliers in six different laboratories, to measure the presence
of degraded carrageenan and determine if the 5% limit is feasible. The results from the
industry’s own test results are cause for serious concern...."
Finally, in recent development:
"February 2012: Despite human health and environmental concerns raised in the technical
review, the Handling Committee unanimously votes to relist carrageenan on the
National List of Approved Substances."
"May 2012: The National Organic Standards Board will again review carrageenan during the
sunset process, and will decide whether to continue allowing carrageenan in certified organic foods. "
But this becomes a problem because then those who have not "connected the dots" between the FDA, the corporations and the government, reassure people that carrageenan is a safe ingredient and should not be confused with poligeenan. This is a chemically degraded derivative of carrageenan, which is used for industrial (non-food) purposes. Claiming that it was improperly named "degraded carrageenan" for a while which gave the true carrageenan a bad name... They are then allowed to say that research indicates that poligeenan creates unfavorable health effects, but food-grade carrageenan has no known toxicity or carcinogenicity, and is recognized as safe by the FDA!!
Do with this what you may. I know conventional thought has a hard time grasping the need for all organic products much less a vegan diet and some may even say... But, like they say, knowledge is power and every little bit will help to steer our industry in plant-strong direction. Nutrition labels on mean nothing these days. These days carrageenan is not only in soy and milk products (cheese, almond milk, ice cream etc.) but companies but it in your meats and pet food! I'd rather eat a whole avocado rich in "good for you" fats, then sit down with a plastic bag of "fruit" gummies, that are marketed as fruity and healthy but have 5 to 8 ingredients. Fresh produce, local and home-made food is vital to nutritional health and the more you do it, the less time consuming it is.
A cute video by film-maker Johnny Kelly and music by Coldplay performed by Willie Nelson, commissioned by Chipotle in support of a sustainable farming future and to raise awareness about factory farming. The video depicts the growth and development of a farmer, until he ultimately "realizes the error of ways".
I was doing research today for the vegan e-commerce marketplace, forAnima, that I work for here in New York and found Brooklyn Brine's pickles while browsing the vegan artisan foods on the Green Grocer's site (based in Washington D.C.). The grocer’s website is great! They provide company history, information and video for most almost all their artisans, which is how I happened upon this video interviewing the owner of Brooklyn Brine Pickles.
Jones' story is really inspring. When he started out he was working 27hr days in a shared restaurant space. Now even with national exposure and his own space he promises that everything is still handcut, labeled and packaged! The executive director of the New York Industrial Retention Network, Adam Friedman, also speaks on the struggles of start-ups in New York in terms of finding space and investors in a price competitive industry and high cost environment. Take a look see ! :)
