To eat or not to eat?

Got a new schampoo,  conditioner and deep condioner from John Masters Organics. Needed to try something new after years of using ABBA. My scalp was getting dry again.

The schampoo is with zinc and sage and has the most delicious smell of hot fudge. Made me want to eat it instead of use it in my hair. Have only been using it for a few days so I don't know exactly how I feel about it yet, but my hair feels very clean. The conditioner is with citrus and neroli and that's also a lovely smell.

I read about the deep-conditioner in several fashion magazines and they were right! It left my hair feeling all silky and smooth.

As usual I got it from eleven.se. If you live in the U.S you can order directly from the website, and they have distributors all over the world.

Most of their products are vegan, and none of them are tested on animals. They have a lot of information about their ingredients and their eco-certification on the website if you want to find out more.

Fun fact: They even make schampoo and conditioner four your furry friends...

It is a bit pricey, but I've tried going back to cheaper, (organic and non organic) shampoos and skincare, and they made my skin itch and I had a breakout in my face. So Ill stick to the good stuff.

Playing games

Being the gadget freak that I am I found a great game (unfortunately only for iPhone/iPad so far) called Rescue Reef. Not only is it a fun game to play, I think it's great for kids (and adults) to have fun and learn about the ocean at the same time.

Basically you start with a dead gray reef. You build a rescue and start bringing animals in to feed, heal and clean them. After breeding them or playing with them to make them happy they are released out into the ocean again. For each level there are new species to rescue, and for each species you rescue you get information about that species, like where they live and what they eat and more fun easy to grasp facts. You have "celebrities" sponsoring animals, and you get extra points for picking up bottles, plastic and other rubbish from the bottom.

For each level the surrounding reef gets more color and life.

Try it! It's fun!

Strawberries

In Sweden strawberries are the biggest sign that summer has finally arrived. Ask any Swede and he/she will tell you that there is absolutely no strawberries anywhere in the world as good as the Swedish ones. We eat them for breakfast, lunch and dessert and we put them in salads for dinner together with grilled meat. We eat them as snacks, as appetizers together with feta-cheese, or in smoothies. The best thing ever is to go to your local farmer and pick them yourself. You spend hours in the fields eating as many as you're picking and leave sunburnt with red fingertips and many, many liters of bright red berries. Those get in the freezer to enjoy wintertime or they are turned into jam or cordials.

Pesticides used when growing strawberries in Sweden are Betanal SC/Kemifam SC. The company that sells these products in Sweden (Bayer CropScience) writes on their own website that whatever is left of the pesticide after spraying the fields shall be kept away from children and animals and separated from food. I really don't see how that goes together since we serve those sprayed strawberries to our children later....

In a test carried out in 2009, 94% of the conventionally grown strawberries (Swedish and others) contained traces of pesticides. Several of the pesticides discovered are suspected to cause cancer.

The good news is that the industry is working to find solutions that allow less harmful farming, so I hope it will soon be easier to find organic ones. Strawberries grown organically will meet challenges like weed, fungus and different pests, so you need to grow tough species and to put in more work to keep your plants free. It's definitely worth doing so though since studies have shown that organic strawberries can actually prevent cancer. Makes the choice quite easy... You can read more about this at krav.se. 

According to a recent study made at Lunds University in Sweden, bees really like organic strawberries. They pollinated 45% of the strawberry-flowers on the organic farms and only 17% on the conventional farms. So you can basically turn one wrong into two rights and have bee-hives next to your strawberry-farm.

Cosmonova

Today I watched a preview of the movie To the Arctic at Sweden's only IMAX-cinema. IMAX uses the largest existing format for film and in Cosmonova it is shown on a dome-shaped screen that's 760m². It gives you a completely different movie-experience, like you're a part of the movie somehow. The tickets are the same price as in regular cinemas, and it's well worth a visit to see any of the different movies shown.






The movie To the Arctic is hopefully going to air in september, and it's a movie that speaks to all of us. It shows how the animals of the Artic is struggling to survive in this cold, pristine and inhospitable area of the world. Some of them, like the polar bear, will never be able to live anywhere else but here. For them this is paradise and they thrive far out on the ice. Unfortunately, if the temperature continues to rise these amazingly beautiful creatures will die. It's an important film to show, and I hope many schools will go see it. We were joined by a nine year old, and he really liked it. Even though it wasn't translated to Swedish yet just the pictures of polar bears, walrusses and seals were exciting. I hope those wonderful creatures will still be around when he's old enough to travel and see them in the wild. It was a great movie narrated by Meryl Streep with music by Paul McCartney.

Most important to choose organic

Food is the main source of human exposure to environmental toxins. You can't find everything in an organic version (yet), but if you just change the below things towards organic ones, both you and the environment will benefit hugely from that. The largest amount of pesticides are used on;

Coffee
I've written about this before and it's easy to find organic coffee in most shops.

Bananas
40-50 tons of pesticides are used in every 10.000 square kilometers (around 4000 square miles) each year. One of the pesticides used is chloropyrifos. Chloropyrifos is a neurotoxin used in the plastic bags that surrounds the banana stem. Because of this, the people harvesting our bananas may suffer from loss of apetite, insomnia, concentration difficulties, higher risks of lungcancer and even be suicidal. Getting close to this chemical is especially dangerous to the nervous system of children up to the age of 6 and there has been studies made that suggests a link between exposure to this kind of pesticide (and other organophosphates) and ADHD. Scientists even take it as far as to compare to the exposure to lead which 40 years ago proved to be very harmful. In Sweden it's easy to find organic bananas. Almost every food store has them.

Grapes
Grapes is the most commonly grown fruit in the world (about 45 percent). Grapes are sensitive to pests, a lot of times they are sprayed with pesticides even before any breakouts have been noticed, and grapes shows traces of pesticides more often than any other food. There are also several different chemicals used and how those chemicals interact is still not known. Even though each chemical in itself may not be harmful in a very small dose, they may cause damage together. Don't forget that the pesticides used on grapes also affects raisins, wine and champagne. About 85 procent of all grapes are used in producing wine. Organic grapes can be hard to find in Sweden, but organic raisins and organic wines are easy.

Potatoes
In Sweden this is the crop where the most pesticides are being used, and among those the King Edward and Bintje are the most sprayed ones. A Swedish potato is on average sprayed with pesticides 7 (some as much as 13!) times before they're harvested. If all Swedes would choose only Swedish, organic potatoes we would stop 95 tons of chemicals each year from harming ourselves and our environment. The most common pesticides used are Shirlan and Ranman. They are highly toxic towards aquatic organisms and also harmful to pollinating insects like bees.

Dairy products
Organic dairy means that the cows are fed organic food only, and most of it has to be grown on the farmers own farm. The animals should be allowed to move freely and to eat grass outside for at least eight hours a day during the warm season. The calves are allowed to suckle and to stay with their mothers for a longer period. Antibiotics are not allowed as a precaution. Happy, healthy animals, less chemicals and less antibiotics in our food. Luckily it's very easy in Sweden to find organic dairy. Milk, cream, butter, cheese, yoghurt etc can all be found in organic versions at the local supermarket.

Read more at Naturskyddsforeningen

Happy Cows

Springtime in Sweden means it's time to let the cows out of the barn for the summer.

It's a big happening on many farms around the country. Approximately 120 000 people will be watching on one of the arranging farms this year.

If you're nearby, don't miss this funny moment.

Watch the preview on YouTube.

More information about this can be found here.

Ladybirds

Ladybirds are a good way to keep your garden organic and at the same time free from pests. Both larvae and adults eat different types of pests such as aphids and scale, and one type of ladybird feeds on fungus.

A ladybird which lives for one year can eat more than 5,000 aphids, so by not using pesticides you are actully feeding your ladybirds. Even if a plant is infested with aphids, when the ladybirds find the plant they will eat them quickly and the plant should recover just as fast as if you’d sprayed it.

If a ladybird gets plenty of aphids to eat, they can lay up to 2,000 eggs in a year which will improve your garden even more. Most people know what adult ladybirds look like but ladybird larvae are strange looking and many confuse them with pests. As a result many of them are killed by pesticides, including organic sprays, and a when there are fewer ladybirds there will usually be a pest outbreak. Learn what they look like before you spray so don't kill your garden protectors.

A garden full of ladybirds is a happy garden.

Whole Foods - Whole People - Whole Planet

Whole Foods Market started their first store in 1980 in Texas. Today, there are 310 stores in North America and the U.K and WFM are the world leading retailer when it comes to natural and organic food.

Apart from the actual stores they also contribute in spreading the message of a sustainable future. Among other things, they work together with farmers to get meat free from antibiotics and to reduce the use of pesticides in the fields.
WFM take great pride in not only caring for the animals and the planet but also to educate their customers in ways to reduce their impact on the environment. That includes discussions about animal cruelty, sustainable agriculture and why we should use environmentally-friendly cleaning materials etc. There is an extensive program designed to educate children, teachers and parents about healthy eating and to give children access to nutritious food.

They have also started a foundation, Whole Planet, that deals with micro-lending operations and sponsoring af neighborhood events to support organic farmers and expand the market for organic produce.

Whole Foods Market's vision is a sustainable and holistic future where we all work together with an in-depth knowledge of the environment and that we all are connected to each other. A future where everybody accepts resonsibility.

They see this vision as something that's going to seep through every company, organisation and individual and they lead by example through sustainable and ethical business practices.

It's a grand vision, and one for all of us to believe in to make it happen.

Read more; Wholefoodsmarket