Michael Pollan “In Defense of Food” (and older stuff, too)

I was lucky enough while commuting to catch an interview with Michael Pollan on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Science Friday (highly recommended) discussing his new book, In Defense of Food. The 35 minute interview can be listened to here or here. This looks like another terrific offering from a wonderful author.

I first learned of Mr. Pollan and his food-based investigative journalism, during another interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air. He discussed the lengths he went to for a New York Times Sunday Magazine article entitled “Power Steer” on the life of meat cows. He set about to steward a cow through it’s short life-cycle in the meat industry and the results were, well, listen to that fascinating broadcast here (51 minutes).

The United Plant Savers

A blurb promoting the United Plant Savers non-profit organization was on a flap of the verbosely printed box of Golden Ginger tea I recently finished. These folks are doing a wonderful thing. Their mission is to “…preserve, conserve and restore native medicinal plants and their habitats in the U.S. and Canada.” Check out their site for media, articles and links to sources. Very cool.

Dig in del.icio.us for more native plants links: http://del.icio.us/tag/native+plants

(OT: I very highly recommend Traditional Medicinals’ ginger teas, esp. Ginger Aid. Get em at your locally owned health food store or websites such as VitaCost.com which I found through Google’s Product Search.)

Nontoxic Dry Cleaning – The Cool Kids Are Doing It

Years ago, I had a good friend who worked nearly full-time at a cleaners. She would arrive home from work each day with a nasty headache and a very limited ability to concentrate on anything at all for very long.

Around that time, I learned that “dry cleaning” doesn’t mean “dry.” It means “without water.” What is used as a substitute for water and soap (or detergent in this case, which often contains synthetic toxins itself) is a chemical commonly known as PERC. Its full chemical name is percholroethylene, and as its name implies, it’s a highly toxic petroleum distillate.

PERC has been banned in California and the United States is in the process of phasing it out through the rest of the country. It is absorbed both through inhalation and absorption through the skin and can build up in one’s system to contribute to a significantly increased risk of developing cancer.

There are alternatives to PERC (2nd source) and I found when I called cleaners within two miles of my home that there were indeed businesses that had already moved on to safer solutions. Unfortunately, PERC is very soluble in water and has been found in U.S. water supplies and not all water filtration systems are capable of filtering it out.

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(Are you interested in what real soap is like? Check out this article by my favorite soap maker, Dr. Bronner’s. And here is their dramatic demonstration of an unreliable GHB drug testing kit that turns out to be an effective test of real versus fake soaps.

For more information regarding toxins in general, take a look at these two pages of links I’ve created: http://del.icio.us/bobodod/toxins and http://del.icio.us/bobodod/nontoxic)