What is your definition of “green?” There is a persistent definition of “green” that was reinforced in last week’s Fortune Brainstorm: Green 2010 conference and their April issue, 80 percent of which only looked through a lens that considered a product or activity’s impact on resources, waste, and emissions.

Yet the negative toll of toxic chemicals and pollution on our bodies is probably as dramatic as emissions are for the planet, or plastics are for the oceans, the direct link is just harder to make. Read the rest on HuffingtonPost>

True Food - 8 Simple Steps to a Healthier You

You may have heard the phrase “out of true.” It means not in correct alignment. During the last 40 years or so, most of us have been eating a diet that is wildly out of true compared to what our bodies need, and equally out of true considering what is best for the health of the planet.

There are many people and groups today working to get the food system back in true alignment, working to preserve and sustain “true food,” but we — the food shoppers and eaters–are the most important. This is why we –Melissa Breyer, Wendy Gordon, and I–wrote True Food (National Geographic, 2010). More>>>>

It is very fun to float in the Dead Sea because it has so much salt –it has almost 34 percent salinity and one of the saltiest bodies of water on the planet–it is incredibly buoyant.
People have also been flocking to the dead sea for its curative properties, including for the skin, since the beginning of time, or at least forever.

Dr. Zvi Even-Paz studied the effect of Dead Sea Bath Salts on patients with psoriasis, and found that 47 of the 50 patients tested had significant relief. The best results are found when soaking in Dead Sea salts three times a week for six weeks.

One wonders why. The Dead Sea, situated between Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan, is the lowest point on the surface of the Earth, and the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.

Its mineral content is very different from ocean water; only 12-18 percent of Dead Sea salt is sodium chloride, whereas the ocean’s water is 97 percent sodium chloride. It is also very high in bromide ions.

Dead Sea Soak for Psoriasis
While two pounds of Dead Sea salts may seem like a lot, compare it to those half-gallon size Epsom Salts boxes, which hold four pounds.

Ingredients
2 pounds Dead Sea salts

Add the Dead Sea salt to the hot bath as the tub is filling. Soak for 45 minutes. Repeat 3x a week for six weeks.

I’ve found some very inexpensive sources for Dead Sea salts online. You can buy it in bulk for only $2.99 a pound with free shipping from Cleopatras Choice, for example.

Annie B. Bond is the author of four books on green living, incluidng Home Enlightenment (Rodale, 2005), and Better Basics for the Home (Three Rivers Press, 1999).

Dear Annie,
I see my local farms starting to tap their maple trees. I have a couple big maples in the back yard. Is this something I can do at home?–Susan, NH

Dear Susan,
A true (if guilty) pleasure of my childhood was going for a cross country ski on logging roads around my house in NH, and when thirsty, raiding a neighbor’s sap bucket to drink some sap. What sweetness! However, I haven’t tapped myself, so to answer this I asked Joe McHale, who started tapping maple trees at home as a way to teach his children about nature and the origin of food, and has a cool website about it called Tap My Trees.

Here is what he said:
Tapping maple trees is not limited to farms and commercial operations. If you live in the Northeast and have a mature maple tree (at least 12 inches in diameter) in your yard, you can enjoy this experience. The sap flows in maple trees during late winter / early spring (generally late February into April).

When days are warm (above freezing) and nights are below freezing, the sap will flow. The process involves drilling a hole into the tree, inserting a spile, and attaching a bucket and lid.

When the sap is flowing strong, you can collect a couple gallons of sap per tap per day. Other days you will not get any sap. Collecting the sap is the easy part - boiling it into maple syrup is where most of the work lies.

Sap is boiled into syrup based on a 40 to 1 ratio (40 gallons of sap will produce approximately 1 gallon of syrup). Any significant amount of sap should be boiled outdoors, as it will generate a considerable amount of steam.

It’s a fair amount of work, but your pancakes will never taste better than with home made maple syrup. For more details on the process, take a look at www.TapMyTrees.com which provides a detailed explanation of the process.

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