March 25, 2009
Food and Water Watch
Myths and Facts
H.R. 875 – The Food Safety Modernization Act
- MYTH: H.R. 875 “makes it illegal to grow your own garden” and would result in the “criminalization of the backyard gardner.”
- FACT: There is no language in the bill that would regulate, penalize, or shut down backyard gardens. This bill is focused on ensuring the safety of foods sold in supermarkets.
- MYTH: H.R. 875 would mean a “goodbye to farmers markets” because the bill would “require such a burdensome complexity of rules, inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes to sell locally – a fruit stand, at a farmers market.”
- FACT: There is no language in the bill that would result in farmers markets being regulated, penalized any fines, or shut down. Farmers markets would be able to continue to flourish under the bill. In fact, the bill would insist that imported foods meet strict safety standards to ensure that unsafe imported foods are not competing with locally-grown foods.
- MYTH: H.R. 875 would result in the “death of organic farming.”
- FACT: There is no language in the bill that would stop organic farming. The National Organic Program (NOP) is under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Food Safety Modernization Act only addresses food safety issues under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
- MYTH: The bill would implement a national animal ID system.
- FACT: There is no language in the bill that would implement a national animal ID system. Animal identification issues are under the jurisdiction of the USDA. The Food Safety Modernization Act addresses issues under the jurisdiction of the FDA.
- MYTH: The bill is supported by the large agribusiness industry.
- FACT: No large agribusiness companies have expressed support for this bill. This bill is being supported by several Members of Congress who have strong progressive records on issues involving farmers markets, organic farming, and locally-grown foods. Also, H.R. 875 is the only food safety legislation that has been supported by all the major consumer and food safety groups, including:
- Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention
- Center for Science in the Public Interest
- Consumer Federation of America
- Consumers Union
- Food & Water Watch
- The Pew Charitable Trusts
- Safe Tables Our Priority
- Trust for America’s Health
- MYTH: The bill will pass the Congress next week without amendments or debate.
- FACT: Food safety legislation has yet to be considered by any Congressional committee.
This information was found at http://www.ccof.org
Please check out the website for more information.
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Posted by downtoearthwellness
March 6, 2009
How are you doing with your new years resolutions? We are almost half-way through the third month of 2009 and many of the idealistic commitments many of us made to ourselves have fallen by the wayside. Most us us still want to be more fit, eat healithier, lose weight, spend more time with family, get our budget in control and take better care of ourselves, so why aren’t we living our resolutions? With stress from work and home, constant talk of economic crisis and financial worries, who has the time or energy to spend on self-improvement? It can seem so hard to make real, lasting changes in our lives. Most people give up long before reaching their goals.
When we all want so badly to change our lives for the better, why is it so easy to become discouraged and give up on these dreams? I think part of our problem is a failure to be realistic – both with our present situation and when setting our goals. Who wouldn’t want to lose 20lbs in a week or become a triathlete in a month, but really, is that going to happen? Especially if the only exercise you’ve done lately is walking from the fridge to the couch! We also tend to think of these resolutions as short term plans… a diet or work-out routine to get us into shape so we can go back to living our old lives with a great new body, or some massages and chiropractic treatments to fix up those tight muscles so we can continue to work 10-12 hour days. The problem with quick fixes are they don’t last. Our lifestyles have created our present situation and only a change to our lifestyle can really change the outcome.
The last two biggest reasons why I think we can’t stick with our goals has to do with habits and choices. Whatever routine we are used to is what we tend to revert back to. I heard recently that it takes 21 days to change your habits. Maybe this is why the first 2-3 weeks of a new workout routine seem the hardest. Once you’ve done something for 3 weeks it has become a natural part of your routine. It is not so hard to get up early to workout or to snack on fruits and veggies once it is a normal part of your day. There will always be temptation to spend hours in the office instead of getting home for a family dinner, but once you decide to change your life it seems there are more chances for failure. More demands on your time, stress, exhaustion, hunger all trip you up and try and lure you back into your old ways beause it seems easier. This is where choice is everything. If you blow your diet on a doughnut this morning, your day ISN’T ruined! Your diet ISN’T ruined! Each time you choose what to eat you have a new opportunity to make a better choice. I am notorious for choosing to eat ice cream instead of fruit or yogurt. But, if I stop and think each time I have a craving, I may only choose ice cream 10% of the time. This means that if you eat a few bites of a doughnut one morning, the rest of the day is not shot! Don’t think “well, I already screwed up so I might as well eat whatever i want”. If you skip a workout, tomorrow is a new day and a new chance to do better. If most days, you choose to do better than you did yesterday, you will end up improving your life by small degrees everyday! Making lifestyle changes should be seen as a marathon, not a sprint. When we make a mad dash to the finish line, we are quick to revert back to our old behaviors. When we take our time incorporating changes into our life and learn to forgive ourselves for our imperfections and our ups and downs, we are likely to make the finish line and be able to keep going.
The quick tips to remember when changeing our lives:
- Be Realistic - with your goals and your present situation.
- Add/ Omit - Pick one or a few things each week to add and to omit from your life. Example- add 2 servings of fruits and veggies per day and 10 minutes of exercise. Omit fast food and 1 hour in front of the tv. Over time you will be amazed at how much you have changed and how eay it was. Remember to add the healthy things first, unhealthy things will gradually fall out of your life as you incorporate more beneficial items.
- Be patient - Set a long term plan – Don’t try and change overnight. Remember it takes 21 days to change your habits. If you change slowly, you may not reach your goals as quickly, but you are more likely to stick with the changes you have made.
- Honor Your Choices - each day, each moment is an opportunity for a better choice! Some days you make great choices for your health and for your life, and other days, you are glad to get through the day. Remember if you improve only 1% each day, in 100 days you have had 100% improvement! It’s the babysteps that will get you where you want to be!
The choice is yours!
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Posted by downtoearthwellness
February 8, 2009
First off, kettlebells have nothing to do with cows or any other type of farm animals. If you are looking around your gym and you see a cannonball with a handle on it, you are looking at a kettlebell.
Invented in Russia and used for decades by strongmen, kettlebells offer users a wider range of motion than dumbbells that sit in the palm of the hand, and they also better simulate the tasks we perform in our daily lives, from swinging grocery bags to lifting babies from the floor to pulling ourselves up after a fall. Kettlebell workouts are catching on because they work the whole body at once without stressing the joints and provide both cardio and strength training at the same time unlike your typical gym workout where you work single muscles at a time without strengthening the supporting muscle groups and you usually are not raising your heart rate to the cardiovascular workout range.
Kettlebells range in weight from the 4-pounders to over 100 pounds for serious competitors. Women usually start with a 15 – 25 lb. kettlebell and men usually start with a 25 – 35 lb. kettlebell. 35 lbs. may seem like a lot of weight but often you will be using both hands which allows you to use this kind of weight. Another thing is that much of the time, you are using not just your biceps or or your deltiods to move this weight around, you are using your whole body which is what Kettlebell training is all about, functional movement. Functional movement we define as the kinds of movements that we make everyday. Examples of some of these everyday movements are lifting a jug of milk and reaching to put it back in the refrigerator, helping your child out of a high chair at the table, placing tools in the back of a pickup… the list goes on and on! These kinds of movements put stress on all the supporting muscles that you simply do not strengthen as part of a normal weight routine at the gym.
Have you ever noticed that when you move wrong or try to lift something wrong and you pull a muscle, you don’t usually feel the pain in your your quads, hamstrings, biceps or any of the larger muscles that we usually work out at the gym? It always seems to be a tiny muscle in your shoulder or in your back or maybe in your leg somewhere and this is because, in most people, those muscles are usually weak and are easily hurt because they are not strong enough and are not worked enough to keep them strong and able to deal with the stresses we put on them. The movements used in Kettlebell training work these small muscles along with the large muscle groups, giving you tone and functional strength.
Kettlebells can also melt the extra pounds off of your body and tone your muscles like no other program out there. Here’s a simple recipe to melt the pounds off: Take a well planned Kettlebell exercise routine, add in the determination to follow it 3 – 5 days a week, and finally throw in healthy, properly preportioned meals and you have yourself a simple plan to lose weight.
Check out our website where soon we will have information about our Kettlebell training. If you are interested now, you may call Rob at (719) 313-7802 or email rob@downtoearthwellness.com
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Posted by downtoearthwellness
February 8, 2009
Just a quick note to everyone… we are finished moving! It was hard, it was painful, it was tiring but it is over!
Our new location is up and running and we are so excited. We can’t wait to see all of you soon!
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Posted by downtoearthwellness
