Smarter Living
Asparagus, radishes, and spinach are trending this week in my neck of the woods. These foods are in season and likely, at their tastiest and most nutritional. I often discuss the benefits of a locavore lifestyle, but keeping up with what’s “hot” and what’s rot can be hard work. Luckily, there’s an app for that.
The NRDC Eat Local app is ripe with the produce answers I need, when and wherever I need them. It even tells me where to go to find the freshest foods around.
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Mushrooms may be on the rise to replace the ubiquitous plastic foams found in packaging.
That’s the hope of two young environmental entrepreneurs, Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre. The idea for their new packaging material -- made from mycelium, the often hidden roots of mushrooms -- came from the fungi growing under their dorm room beds. (Their mothers must be proud.) While the shrooms were there on purpose, for a class assignment at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute, I still imagine the college boys pleading, "No, Ma, don't touch those smelly socks...
Fatty foods and lazy lifestyles might not be the only factors contributing to the obesity epidemic. A new study points a finger at air pollution.
The research, conducted by the Columbia University Center for Children's Environmental Health, pegs the obesity rate of New York City children at 25 percent (compared to a...
Costa Rican rainforests contain many wonders -- poisonous frogs, towering volcanoes, and miniature armies of leaf-cutter ants. But our tour guide mainly wanted to talk about laundry. Jim Damalas wasn’t just any tour guide. He’s the president of Villa Blanca Cloud Forest Hotel, a mountain inn that serves tourists a side of sustainability with their scenery.
The boutique resort, sitting upon 75 acres within the Los Angeles Biological Reserve, scored the Rainforest...
My husband and I tend a garden in the western Catskills. The late springs and early autumns common within our mountain valley have typically meant short but productive growing seasons. But the new norm in our garden is a growing period that is longer by a good month or more. The change has been gradual over the 30 years that we've been gardening -- that is, until this past year. We’ve experienced weather weirdness like never before -- the intense rains of last summer, the floods in the fall, a winter-less winter, and now a summer-like spring, with...
The book is as thin as a slice of Wonder bread, but The Prince's Speech: On the Future of Food is much more nourishing. In a foreword to this new pocket-sized Rodale-publication, author Wendell Berry writes that the speech His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, gave last spring in Washington, D.C. is "by any measure, remarkable." I couldn’t agree with Berry more...
Actress Meryl Streep’s Oscar-nominated performance in The Iron Lady "nails the former prime minister's look, sound, and spirit," according to a former co-worker of Margaret Thatcher’s. Streep is renowned for her ability to transform herself into a character. But few know about her real-life...
As we pass through the mild winter of 2012, things don't look good for the whitebark pine. The mountain pine beetle continues to feast on the tree species, whose canopy is often referred to as the roof of the northern Rockies. The beetle's infestation of the trees, the Colorado State Forest Service reports, will die down only after...
Consumers in California apparently don’t have the right to know if they are buying genetically engineered foods. The California Assembly recently voted down the Consumer Right To Know Act, or AB 88, which was introduced by Jared Huffman, a Democrat from San Rafael. This is too bad. The bill would have considered genetically engineered fish or fish products "misbranded" if they lacked labeling that conspicuously identifies them as such.
The timing of this measure was significant. The...
Wendy Gordon has been a leader in the green consumer movement for two decades. She founded Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet, a pioneering consumer outreach organization, and Green Guide, the go-to resource for the eco-conscious consumer, acquired in 2007 by
...Wendy Gordon has been a leader in the green consumer movement for two decades. She founded Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet, a pioneering consumer outreach organization, and Green Guide, the go-to resource for the eco-conscious consumer, acquired in 2007 by National Geographic. Mothers & Others was conceived at NRDC when Gordon was a senior project scientist in the health program. She is now a consulting editor for OnEarth and NRDC.
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