food, inc., etc.

I've gotten more interesting or more boring in the past few weeks, depending on how you want to look at it.

On the one hand, I feel like I haven't actually DONE very much--as far as, I haven't worked out that much, haven't gone to very many interesting places, haven't accomplished many things.

However, I have learned very much. The past maybe 10 days have been devoted to books and documentaries, such as The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler. Movies include Fathead and Food, Inc.

Each of those four have been changing how I eat and feel about food. I was going to write all about them, but now I'm tired, so here's the first one.

Food, Inc.

This documentary was totally eye-opening. It explores where our food is created, and it is... again, eye-opening. I need to watch it again. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Anyway. It was just shocking to see how little off the "food" we eat is actually food--and it was horrible to learn what things can go wrong when our "food" goes wrong. For example, one woman's child died from a rare form of e. coli the kid got from eating a hamburger at a regular fast food place. And the FDA wouldn't do anything about it and the infected meat didn't get recalled for almost a month AFTER the kid had died from the infection. Whack, right?

After we saw this documentary, Carl agreed that we could up our food budget in order to buy things that were actually real. One thing we learned was that "cheap" food is not actually cheap: not only do we pay for it in other ways, as I documented in my grocery store revelation post, but it's also not actually cheap because we subsidize most food. Corn subsidies are the only thing that make our cornflakes so cheap--take away subsidies, and the food would be more expensive again. Who's paying the subsidies? You are. I am. In the form of taxes we don't get to opt out of. In other words, the cheap food isn't actually cheap. The best food for you--the local stuff, the responsible stuff--is the cheapest food too, a lot of times: it just has a higher price tag up front.

This movie definitely committed us to being more mindful about our food purchases and what we choose to eat, and how to spend our money.

why I love my homemade toothpaste

I made homemade toothpaste for the first time a few weeks ago. I've been using it ever since and loving it.

Here's why.

1. It doesn't stain. At least, it doesn't immediately bleach your clothes on contact like regular toothpaste. I can't be the only person in the world who has accidentally gotten toothpaste foam on their shirt--and had the shirt bleach as a result. I HATE THAT. I have ruined way too many shirts that way. With my homemade toothpaste, it doesn't matter what it gets on--no shirts are going to be ruined. In fact, because of the baking soda in there, it might even help get stains out of shirts! Who knows. Maybe I'll test that eventually. Anyway. Coconut oil can leave behind oil marks, but you can get them out. I've never successfully treated a toothpaste stain, though (although that may say more about my own incompetence than about toothpaste stains--I don't know).

2. No fluoride. I started researching fluoride recently, and the results I found were terrifying. Go research it yourself, but let me just say, it is SUCH a relief now to brush my teeth and know that I'm not putting any fluoride into my body while I'm doing it.

3. I know exactly what's in it. Check out the list of ingredients from the back of my husband's tube of toothpaste (he has not converted to my homemade stuff):

sodium fluoride
triclosan
water
hydrated silica
glycerin
sorbitol
PVM/MA copolymer
sodium lauryl sulfate (the sudsing agent you also find in shampoo--it's not in homemade toothpaste so you don't get suds)
flavor
cellulose gym
sodium hydroxide
propylese glycol
carrageenan
sodium saccharin
titanium dioxide

Now, I don't know about you, but of the ingredients I recognize, minus water, I don't really want any of those on my teeth. Propylene glycol? SLS? Sorbitol? Fluoride? Not to mention--what the heck is carrageenan anyway? Sick. It is so nice to know exactly what is in my homemade stuff. Coconut oil, baking soda (or sodium hydrogen bicarbonate, as it is known chemically), and essential oil for that minty feeling.


4.. It still has a minty taste. Thanks to the peppermint and spearmint oil in it. The mintiness is not overpowering or tongue-numbing; rather, it's just enough to let you know you brushed your teeth. At first I didn't like that, but now I do. It's grown on me.

5. It's a breeze to make. See the recipe below.

1 part coconut oil
1 part baking soda
drops of spearmint oil and peppermint oil to taste

Downsides to homemade toothpaste? Well, using coconut oil as the medium does have a downside. Coconut oil is solid lower than 76 degrees Fahrenheit, but liquid above that. So some nights my toothpaste cannot be squeezed out of the bottle, and I have to kind of scoop it out. Other nights, it's as runny as water. I'm still mastering how to put the toothpaste on my actual toothbrush in the various scenarios.

Also, there's definitely not as much of a minty taste. But again, the softer minty feel has grown on me.

Some recipes for homemade toothpaste have you add in stevia; I didn't, because I don't have any. The first few times I used my toothpaste, it seemed kind of bitter, but now I don't mind that it isn't sweet. It just took using it a few times.

From my math, my exact batch of homemade toothpaste cost more than the Colgate version would, because I bought coconut oil at a higher price than I needed to (at the time I didn't know better). I think normally, the homemade stuff would be cheaper or at least on par with the storebought stuff.

Anyway. Homemade toothpaste was an experiment, but I'll count it as a successful one for me.

crunchiness and conservatism

Last night I had a dear friend come over, and we talked about our mutual crunchiness, and our mutual conservatism. I'd kind of felt alone in being both, but my friend had a really good point:

Conservatism is all about taking responsibility for yourself. So is crunchiness. Both of those philosophies are about taking responsibility for your body, your health.

Conservatism is also the philosophy that everything is best local--same as crunchiness.

Anyway. I thought that was a great point. I no longer feel quite as weird being a cloth-diapering, breastfeeding, bedsharing, babywearing, former-vegan conservative. All of those things go hand in hand with being responsible, staying local, and being a good steward of the earth.

crunchiness addendum

I almost forgot this extremely important story relating to crunchiness.

The other night I was telling my dad how I'd started reading lactivist blogs. He asked me what a lactivist was.

I told him a lactivist is a militant breastfeeder.

I think it's a reasonable description based on what I've read.

on crunchiness

So lately I've been getting into reading "crunchy" blogs. It took me a few days to realize that's what they were. And it took me resetting my Facebook newsfeed settings to realize the true extent of all things crunchy.

To be honest, I have very mixed feelings about the word "crunchy." But I feel like I'm in line with a lot of the so-called "crunchy" philosophy. I would do a homebirth if my family wouldn't just die at the very thought (my mom had extremely traumatizing birthing experiences, so out of kindness to her, I'm using midwives in an in-hospital birthing center). We plan to breastfeed and cloth diaper and co-sleep, at least to a point. I already have two baby slings to accomodate my future trendylicious babywearing. I love the idea of homeschooling and I've recently started researching unschooling--unbeknownst to all of us, my parents unschooled me and my little brother for a year while he and I lived in Vienna with my grandparents, and it was awesome and we learned WAY more that way than we ever did in school.

Anyway. Crunchiness. I was just thinking about it. I am probably the weirdest conservative ever, between those bouts of veganism and my stint with Students for International Development, and all my new age stuff that Carl thinks is so crazy.

I've been thinking a lot today about all the threats to my plans for future crunchiness. So sad. I hope things work out with it.

And in the meantime, I can't decide if I'll actually join that Facebook group.