How to choose safe body products!

Yesterday I talked to a lovely lady who's kids had a reaction to some supermarket bubble bath. It took her a few weeks to identify the product as the culprit to inflamed skin but once she had she threw what was left in the bin and hasn't looked back. She had deemed the brand no good and had stopped buying anything else in their range.

I was pretty happy with that. Not many people manage to pinpoint body products as the culprits to physical problems so she'd done well! BUT then I asked what she had as a replacement. "Oh, I just bought one from the chemist. I know things from the chemist are safe."


ARGH!!! 

If this is you, alarm bells should be sounding! Don't be deceived by WHERE you buy your products! There is nothing  to say buying from a chemist will mean higher quality or safer products than the supermarket.

Here's a quick checklist to keep in your head when you're buying body products that will almost guarantee what you're buying doesn't contain anything nasty:


Read the ingredients list and AVOID products that:
 

• Have more than 10 ingredients

Once you hit more than 10, you can guarantee there are ingredients which have been extracted and basardised beyond recognition from the original ingredient.

• Have any words you can't pronounce

 If you can't pronounce it, it ain't natural and you don't need it!

• Contain names ending in 'ate', 'ide', 'yl', 'eth', or a number

 These are guaranteed to be chemical compounds and most of them used in body products cause skin irritations at the very least!

• Contain a metal (e.g. aluminium in deodorant)

Metals are not safe to put on your skin! They are drawn into your blood stream and cause a multitude of problems, including some cancers.

• list colours as an ingredient. 

If it was naturally coloured the ingredient would be listed, not the word "colours". Colours are artifiial and unneccessary for you or our planet.




I hope this helps you select products that are better for you, your kids and our planet!

Bum cream miracle!

It's been a few weeks since my last update and I've been itching to report this fabulous product!

Bub number two is now 17 weeks old (where does the time go?!) and she has very long hair for a baby. When she was a newborn that's all I ever heard, "oh look at all that hair!" We even had a midwife in the hospital tell us she had the most hair she'd ever seen on a baby, now that's something!

When she was born her skin was perfect but over the first month she developed eczema on her body and thick yukky cradle cap all over her scalp and behind her ears. I had always thought that cradle cap developed when you didn't wash bub's hair properly but I can now assure you IT IS NOT!

Up until a week ago I had kept it relatively under control by rubbing olive oil and baby massage oil into her skin, giving her a baby acidophilus and taking lots of essential fatty acids myself (she is exclusively breast fed).
I still wasn't happy though. Last week while she was having tummy time I noticed behind her ears were very dry, flaky and almost cracked. I was worried about her cracking the skin just in the course of doing baby things so I smoothed over some of the bum cream I've been using on her. Literally within an hour, behind her ear looked and felt completely normal and every sign of the rash was gone!!! The next day I applied it again and it hasn't come back at all! I can't be any more impressed with the stuff!

Since that success I've started putting it around her neck. The poor little love had a very stressful and traumatic birth which has made her very tense. Up until we saw a chiropractor two weeks ago her head was always glued to one side and she couldn't turn it to look around--instead she would move her whole body. As a result of that, despite our best efforts, the baby folds on her neck were red, inflamed and smelly, simply because it wasn't getting enough air to it. Alas, with the bum cream-magic! The redness is gone now and it's no longer smelly or inflamed.

Just tonight I decided to smear the ointment all along her hairline, across her forehead, which is the only place with yellow flakiness left. I put it on her after her bath and by the time I put her in bed, although her skin looked a little greasy, there was no yellow flaky skin AT ALL. Can't believe it. I wish I'd have done it weeks ago instead of thinking it was a coincidence. I'm a sceptic and I need to SEE things to believe them and this has worked!

I originally bought this cream because it was organic and I'm trying my very hardest to be a hippie and keep chemicals away from my kids. I also bought it as it can be used with modern cloth nappies and we don't use disposables (another hippie initiative of mine).

Anyway, that's all I wanted to report. I'm not making any medical claims and if you're worried about anything on your precious little one take them to the doctor to get them checked before you ask Dr Google. If you want to treat the same kind of skin problems we experienced though--try the organic bum cream!

Nature's Child Bottom Balm. Available from www.green4me.net.au

Delicate skin and poor choices: Society gone mad!

As most of your know, I recently had my second baby. When I was preparing for the big arrival I did what every expecting parent does--get tiny clothes ready, buy nappies, bum cream, skin care and also stock up on gentle washing detergent to protect her skin against the nasty chemicals used in regular everyday washing detergents, you know, the kind "suitable" for everyone else.

With my first baby I basically did what my mum had told me to do insofar as things like that go. I have much younger sisters so I plodded along doing what Mum had done with them. With baby number one I used Lux Flakes, which the box told me is a perfect choice for delicate skin because it's gentle. It's also endorsed by the Australian Breastfeeding Association so how bad can it be?!

Being more confident and knowledgeable this time I decided to look into it. Is Lux Flakes were so gentle and perfect for delicate skin, why did the ingredients say "soap, perfume"? What kind of soap? Why does it need perfume?

At that point I tossed that idea in the bin and went with what I now use for everything in our house--soap nuts!

Yesterday though, after a "which detergent do you use" thread on the green4me Facebook page I was thinking about it again so thought I'd email the company and ask. This is the response I got:

Dear Lisa,

Thank you for contacting us.

Fragrance in Lux Flakes is supplied to us by another company and unfortunately they consider it is proprietary and do not give us an ingredient list; however their MSDS for the fragrance states that it is classed as an irritant.

Following is the list of ingredients for the Lux flakes.

Lux Flakes

Sodium Tallowate, Water, Sodium Cocoate, Glycerine, Sodium Chloride, Etidronic Acid, Tetrasodium EDTA, Fragrance.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

...

Isn't that comforting?!

Let me get this straight... the product I am encouraged to wash my baby's clothes in, and therefore have in contact with her bare skin 24 hours a day, is made of a secret "irritant" and a list of chemicals that I wouldn't put on my dog?!

Here's what I know about Lux Flakes:

Sodium Tallowate - is a derivative of fat, most likely beef fat as that's the easiest to obtain and render but it can also be made from palm oil (and we know that's not a good thing!), vegetable oil, coconut oil and a number of other things.

 
Sodium Cocoate - a fatty acid derived from coconuts and will dry out the skin. Often linked to skin conditions such as dermatitis and eczema. Just what you want on your baby.

Glycerine - glycerine is made from an alcohol and used in washing products to help dissolve the other ingredients. Glycerine or Glycerol is also used in pharmaceuticals, anti-freeze, fuel and lots of other industrial products and processes.

Sodium Chloride - also known as common table salt, this is in there to soften the water and make the other chemicals more effective at "cleaning" (though I'm tempted to use the word "contaminating") the clothes being washed.

Etidronic Acid - is a compound used in Osteoporosis drugs but also put into Lux Flakes to soften water. It is a pretty hard chemical and the manufacturer recommends thoroughly rinsing and not putting into contact with the skin. (What about baby skin? Does that count?)

Tetrasodium EDTA - THIS IS THE PROPER SCARY STUFF! - Tetrasodium EDTA is made from combining Formaldehyde and Sodium cyanide (that's right, I said cyanide!). This is used as a preservative and is a known carcinogen. Given its compound Tetrasodium EDTA breaks down quickly and enters the bloodstream. Tetrasodium EDTA is ban in many countries. In Australia we put it in our baby products.

What to do about it

As you all know I run a store with a green initiative. We only sell products that are tried and tested by myself and my family and that are as green as possible in terms of their impact on the environment and the body. Of  course I DO sell products which DO NOT contain any of these nasties and you can have a look at our chemical-free laundry alternatives on the green4me website.

As a quick run down:

Soap nuts - are a whole "nut" from a tree which contains a natural cleanser. The cleanser is released from the fruit when it's put in water. Soap nuts are hypoallergenic and very safe to use on any skin. 

Oxygen bleach - is made from 100% sodium percarbonate so is safe for use on stains. You can use it as a soaker or in wash.

Soap nut powder - this is made of the soap nuts but they are ground. You simply put the powder in the wash as you would a supermarket detergent and it rinses during the rinse cycle. They are simply an alternative for people who can't be bothered using the little bag and drying the nuts after use.

Ultimately, whether you choose to use soap nuts or not, just make sure what you ARE using is safe. Don't take what everyone says as truth--always read the label and do what's best for your family!

Recipe: Home made Garlic Aioli

In our continuing efforts to be more sustainable and healthy, in our house we make as much as we can instead of buying pre-prepared foods full of preservatives, such as bread. 

The most popular thing we make has to be our Garlic Aioli and every time we serve it we get asked which brand it is. Here is the recipe if you want to make a huge jar of it yourself for a fraction of the cost and without all the numbers in the ingredient list:

GARLIC AIOLI

What you need:
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (but any old vinegar will do)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups good quality olive oil
10 cloves garlic
A good squeeze of lemon juice (to your taste)


Step 1: Lay the unpeeled garlic cloves in a baking tray, spray them with olive oil cooking spray then roast then in a 180'c (conventional) 160'c (fan-forced) oven for 15 minutes. Once they're cool enough to touch squeeze the garlic from the skins and leave to cool completely. Compost the skins.

Step 2: Process the garlic, egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, salt and pepper until they froth.

Step 3: Once frothy, add the oil in a thin stream while the motor of your food processer or mixing beaters are still going. Mix until thick and creamy.

Step 4: TASTE! We always add a bit of lemon juice for a bit of ZING! You can also add a pinch or two of sugar if you wish.

Viola! It really is THAT easy. It will last for about a week in the fridge and you can put it on just about anything! Put it on sandwiches, meats, seafood, baked potatoes--you're only limited by your imagination! We've even been known to eat it on hot chips.

Note: we used our organic free range eggs so if yours doesn't turn out as "yellow" as ours did (see the photo) that is probably why? 

Soap Nuts + Oxygen Bleach v. dirty mould stains

Road test PART 1

I have to admit, nothing annoys me more than marketing ploys that attempt to get me to buy a product that is actually useless. Luckily, I’m not easily fooled. I’m the kind of person who would be bluntly uninvited to the home of anyone who watches A Current Affair or Today Tonight while it aired because my scoffing and outright disagreement would annoy anyone. I’m a self-confessed sceptic—through and through.

With that said, I’m finding it difficult to give anything that is on sale through green4me.net.au the plug I think it deserves without sounding like my worst enemy. I’ve worked in sales throughout my whole working life and I truly believe happy customers are what makes a business successful or otherwise, and to get happy customers I think the key ingredient is honesty.

In my old job I was lucky enough to have a boss who shared the same ethics. If a customer came in asking about something and I genuinely thought it was rubbish or would be no good for them, I’d tell them and I’d tell them why. Nine times out of 10 that lost a sale but I really believe that the next time that person wanted something on the same vein of what we sold they would have enough faith in our service to come back in knowing we weren’t in it for the money.

This leads me more specifically to the issue I’m having on green4me. So far I’ve had about 10-15 people ask me directly, “do soap nuts actually work?” and I’m finding myself sounding like a bit of an idiot.

To answer the question in a word, it would have to be “yes” but it really depends on your perspective and what your expectations and washing habits are. It’s a bit like asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’

This is why I decided to go with the road test idea. I realise that most of the people who read this don’t know me from a bar of soap (pardon the pun) so unfortunately there’s no other option but to take what I report in and mix it with a bit of your own good judgement. For what it’s worth though I’m going to report the findings as honestly and accurately as I possibly can. If you have any questions, issues or anything to do with what I did please contact me.

So… the story of these garments.

I currently have a three and a bit year old son and am currently 39 and a half weeks pregnant with number two. When I was pregnant with my little bloke we had people giving us hand-me-downs like it was going out of fashion. We knew he was a boy before I gave birth so by the time he arrived we had enough baby clothes to dress an army of little fellas.

This is the part where I shamefully admit there were several bags of clothes that I never even opened. They just got thrown on the storage pile in the top of his wardrobe to be sorted through ‘someday’.

Some day finally came with the impeding birth of number two. We decided not to find out the sex this time so given that everyone finds out these days we found it really difficult to find many gender neutral clothes. I though the perfect remedy for that would be to dress the new addition in what we already had and if need be buy more clothes when we know if it’s going to be a little pink or a little blue.

Alas, I opened the first bag and this was literally the first thing I pulled out. Oh my.

This is the first photo I took when I pulled it out of the bag. It's with a different camera so I don't think they were quite this yellow but the stains were definitely this bad!

Are the Oxygen Bleach and the Soap Nuts up to the CHALLENGE?!

I’ve since opened all the bags of clothes that were ours and I stored myself and they are all still in as-new condition so I can only assume these outfits were somewhat grubby when they went in the bag. I’m sure they couldn’t have been this bad (who would have given them to us if they were?!) but after three years of festering in the bag, let’s face it… they look foul. Up close it looks like mouldy dirt. The photos are pretty accurate, the stains are a deep brown.

I was going to just throw these straight in the bin but I put them in the ‘what can I do with these?’ pile while I decided if they could be repurposed in some way since I’m trying to take this “green” life seriously.

So there they sat for a further few weeks until all the emails started flooding in about Soap Nuts and OxygenBleach and I thought, “what the hell, can’t hurt!”

 

Below is exactly what I did with the outfits and for the record they’re original colour is white! You be the judge on the rest.

This is them in the condition in which they were pulled from the bag a couple of weeks ago.

Step 1 – Presoak

Straight after adding the suits

5 minutes later--work your magic foam!

As per instructions on the Oxygen Bleach I dissolved half a cup of powder in about 1/3 of a bucket of hot tap water. I gave it a stir then put the suits in, poked them under the water and walked away.

24 hours later

The foaming has gone and after a very chilly night the water is ice cold. I must say though, I’m pretty impressed at this point! Already MUCH whiter than I expected.

Foam's gone and the water is ice cold!

Step 2 – Washing

Wash, baby, wash!

40'c regular wash

I chucked them in the machine on their own with 4 x SoapNuts (on their third wash) and a tablespoon of dissolved Oxygen Bleach (as pictured). All that entails is a tablespoon of powder and just enough hot tap water to dissolve it. I just poured it all into this bottle, gave it a shake and tipped it directly on the suits when they were in the machine.

The in-wash warriors!

Step 3

There isn’t really a step three except the standing back in shock. The wow moment. This is the finished product. 

After the wash - still wet.

Now, as I said above you can be the judge of how well they worked but I must admit that for me personally I am very damn impressed. I know you can still see the stains on the worse of the two suits but given it was mouldy dirt (maybe baby food or milk???) that’s been festering in a plastic bag for three years and was going to be tossed straight up, I don’t get much more impressed! I would actually consider dressing my bub in these now.

After the wash - still wet.

I think this shows pretty accurately how white they've  are now

As I’ve said I’m going to do a more realistic road test on these two products as soon as I’ve given birth. Thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions on what to try them out on! I’ll do it ASAP. I’m just waiting until I’ve given birth (which is any day now) as I want to make the test as accurate as possible (and to me having the dirty clothes potentially sit in OxygenBleach for a week while I recover isn’t accurate). So stay tuned for part two and please let me know what you think of this one!

If you want any more info on the products I used you can also check out my website www.green4me.net.au

You can still see a bit of a stain on the suit on the left... but I'm still surprised and impressed with the outcome.

If you would like to try out soap nuts yourself, you can buy soap nuts on our website www.green4me.net.au

A plan for Eden

We're officially one step closer!!! We picked up the keys to our new house yesterday and the move is all set for this weekend (which is sure to coincide nicely with the onset of the torrrential rain). We then spent the afternoon in our new backyard, watching our very nearly three-year-old son run in and out of his new cubby house while hubby and I chatted about where to start with the yard (not to mention sneaking little looks over the fence to spy on the system our new neighbours have!).

Being in the planning stages again, it's all a bit overwhelming. Where do we begin?! We've been looking back over what we created at our current/old place. Obviously we want an improvement on it but at the same time it took two years to establish--what are we going to do with all this extra space?!

As I've said before, when we started at the old place with a clean slate we put in three beds then upgraded to four when we got the chooks and installed the fencing. About 12 months on it was looking like a bit of a dog's breakfast and I suppose this is the kind of thing we want to avoid this time around. It's not meant to be beautiful, but something practical while not being an eyesore would be great.

We got the basic concept of using the chickens to supplement the garden from a youtube clip. In the series of clips, the guy shows how to design, construct, then maintain a mandala (keyhole) style gardening system. We knew from the onset that his system was much larger than we would be able to construct in our little yard, but we loved the idea. It was also a bit too complicated than our caveman construction skills would allow. Anyway, for those who don't watch the clip, the system looks like a big bird aviary. His one is fully enclosed with wire (to keep birds and larger pests out and keep the chooks safe).

The basic idea is that there is a series of gardens arranged in a circle and each one is partitioned off to enclose the chooks. The girls then move every month to a new plot. This ensures a good rotation of plants (nothing stays long enough to get sick and attract nasties) and also, to ensure each plot is getting fertilised regularly so the soil is maintained and bursting with goodies! Best of all, keeping everything healthy makes staying organic easy. (With that said, we would watch everything get eaten by bugs before spraying poison onto our food or future food growing site).

So we're back to planning. This is a picture of our new yard from our son's room. It's bigger when you stand in it (obviously you can't see the right hand side of the yard which has a huge shed, a cubby house, and a lime tree). 

The first thing that will go is the rose garden. At this point the plan is to replace that with a simple retaining wall.

As you can see there are already two small beds up in the back lefthand corner of the yard. We're going to remove these as the previous owner dropped in while we were there and told us he had just poisoned all the weeds in them, not to mention the grass clippings that are filling them. We don't want to be fighting an uphill battle with weed killers and rogue grass control problems before we even start!

Anyway, share some thoughts and let the growing begin!

The meat I hate to love

The one element in our garden I've found by far the most enjoyable, is the chooks. We got our two Australorps last September so over the last five months we've been able to enjoy not just fresh eggs but also watching the hilarious creatures. They really are a delight to watch doing the "chicken thing". They cluck about the yard with their heads held high, peck in the grass, dig holes to sit in, eat anything they can get their beak on and hop around merrily all day.

The welfare of chickens that produce eggs is something we've all heard a lot about over the last several years and that was a big part of why we got our chooks; we eat lots of eggs. It's pretty general knowledge these days that egg-producing cage chickens live in very high density, are unable to go outside and are literally just stressed and unhappy egg making machines. We had nothing but good reasons to stop buying into that unneccessary cruelty and have our own birds. After a bit of research I'm disappointed to discover that Free Range Eggs actually only represent 11% of the Australian egg market. Even with that small figure, it is certainly an area that the consumer has led the market through their buying choices though--not long ago there were no Free Range options on our shelves at all. 

All that aside, that isn't what I've, yet again, become disillusioned to discover. The other night I recommended a book to a lady on the green4me facebook page called The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. It's about how food is produced. I have skimmed it many times before looking for specific info but never sat down to read it cover-to-cover. Anyway, I started it on Friday night and have found it to be unputdownable, similar to a Patricia Cornwell book of horrors.

I've finished the chapter on the farming of meat chickens--that's what people who produce chicken meat call what they do--farming. I'll refer to the unethical model I'm about to describe as production from here on, as my definition of a farm involves the sky, being able to wander around in the sun and grass.

Anyway, I read about it and was disgusted that meat animals are produced this way. At the time though, I honestly did think, 'it's an American book, we'd have better standards here.' This morning though, I've researched our own industry and, as yet, haven't managed to find a difference whatsoever.

So, where does our chicken meat come from?

Chicken's lives start in a hatchery where fertilised eggs are incubated and hatched (isn't this just the picture of nature and romance?). 




After they've hatched they are sexed and the weak birds are destroyed at under 24 hours old without leaving the hatchery. Their killing methods are a bit hush-hush but the chicks tend to have their heads chopped off.

After this, the chooks are shipped to the growers who put them in sheds like the one pictured. Here, they are grown as quickly as science will allow. They're pumped full of hormones, antibiotics and the lighting is closely monitored so the chooks can see what they're doing long enough to eat and drink but not long enough to fight with each other (meat birds are notoriously nasty).


 Back in the 1970s it took just under 70 days to produce a chicken big enough for slaughter. These days, with thanks to all the artificial crap we pump into them, they're ready to go in 32 days. Sadly, by the time the chooks are harvest size they're so overcrowded that they will always be touching another chicken. 

 
 I'm assuming this photo is meant to make us feel better about the way chicken meat is produced as it was released by the Australian Chicken Meat Federation Inc.. Granted I can't see any deformity in the chickens, but look at the size of the shed above... if nothing else these chooks are seriously overcrowded! 


This is what the Australian Chicken Meat Federation Inc. has to say about the issue of overcrowding: "Density is not the most critical issue in determining bird welfare.  Research has shown that it is the way that the environment in which the flock is managed, rather than the amount of space that each bird has, that is most critical."
Cop out much? 

Nearing harvest time chickens will also have put on so much weight on the breast they're vertebrae will often crack, leaving them in horrific pain and paralysed, unable to access food and water. These birds will ultimately starve to death in a frenzy of distressed chaos. Another sad fact is the poo. The sheds are only cleaned out after each harvest so the birds live their whole lives walking then lying in their own poop. As chook poo decomposes it releases amonia which causes painful blisters on the breast, respiratory problems and stings the eyes--often causing blindness. In their book, Singer and Mason suggest meat chickens spend at least 20% of their lives in severe and chronic pain.


After they leave the broiler (growing) sheds chooks are carted unceremoniously to the slaughter houses. The slaughter is too horrific to even fathom so I'm not going to go into it but I will recognise that we use the same slaughter methods as the US where they have machines do it all for them. These fallible machines though, are often responsible for failing the first two steps of the process--the stunning and killing--and so these poor defenseless bastards are plunged into vats of boiling water, alive and conscious, to boil and drown to death. American industry reports suggests this happens to about 3 million of their birds a year. Not surprisingly, Aussie info like this isn't easy to come by.


So, it turns out that being between gardens for me is not going well for the food producers of Australia. Instead of digging, composting, planting and harvesting I've had time on my hands to research the environmental and moral impacts of my consumer choices. In the space of a week I'm off dairy and vowing to NEVER buy chicken meat again unless it has at least been certified by FREPA (Free Range Egg & Poultry Australia Ltd).

Our girls.

I'm just happy that right now my girls are outside in their clean little house perched above fresh straw, with the door open, and free to eat and drink as much as they like and go where they choose in the yard.


 I've definitely got more to think about in terms of our own self-sufficiency and sustainability project... the meat chickens and the milking goat might have to wait until our next house upgrade though!