Making the decision to go vegan is a different path for everyone. The reasons behind the choice may range from healthy living to animal rights. Whatever they are, making the decision to be vegan is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself, animals and the planet.
I was chatting with Be Genki‘s Sam Sample last week and she mentioned she’d recently made the transition to veganism, after years of flirting with it. I asked if she would be happy to share her journey in the hope of inspiring others who are thinking about becoming cruelty-free. Here is her story…
There’s a high chance that you may be toying with the idea of choosing to be vegan. The reason for writing this particular article is that you may find that it touches a part of you, just as living it has touched all parts of me, and that it may help inspire you to take the final step. ~ Sam Sample
Last month I finally chose to walk the vegan road. I use the word ‘finally’ because I feel it has been a slow and gradual progression over the last 15 years.
In 1995 I read the book Fit for Life
Over the next five years my taste for meat declined. Correction, not so much the taste of it, but more so the flesh component. Have you ever bitten in to a piece of meat and visualized biting in to the arm, leg or torso of an animal, and that the chewy bits of meat is too closely associated with chewing your way through the flesh of that animal? Those type of visualizations also grossed me out and ended my meat eating days, with exception to mince meat in lasagna, spaghetti bolognese and carpaccio (the paper thin raw beef), as these styles of meat required no tough chewing and melted in my mouth.
My fascination for food, health and wellbeing led me to study a 3 year Diploma of Nutrition and it was during those classes that I was exposed to the horrifying documentaries about chickens in battery farms, their ghastly diet, abnormally unhealthy living conditions and outrageous cruelty and suffering. Add to that, the accounts of negative health effects that the consumption of these chickens and eggs were having on the human population. I was so appalled by this information that I have never eaten a piece of chicken since, but somehow I remained an egg eater, as long as they were the biodynamic organic free-range variety.
As time went by and my love of food and good nutrition grew, so did my love and respect for mother earth. Each day I was inspired to learn a little more about the “truth” of the type of world we live in, how my choices can have an effect on the future of the world based on the simple fact that every time I buy a product I am saying to that company, ‘keep on doing what you are doing.’ I am supporting everything that company does: every source of raw material, every packaging solution, every environmental standard that they are undertaking, every form of employee relations and every marketing choice.
When creating Be Genki, the range of bath, body and home care products, I was adamant that the brand had to be certifiably “animal cruelty free”, not containing any animal derived ingredients and certainly not allowing any of the products or ingredients to be tested on animals. Yet, I still was consuming eggs, cheese and a portion of meat once every few months. Hmmm… I wasn’t wanting to use animal products in my skincare products but was happy to eat them. Interesting inconsistency don’t you think?!
Being an advocate for holistic health and wellbeing, and possessing the inclination to think about what consequence my choices are having on my life, my loved ones’ lives, the community, the planet, and future beliefs, standards and ideals, choosing vegan seemed like the natural thing to do that would honor everything that I believe in, (that is, to help improve my awareness, consciousness and communion with mother earth.)
The tipping point for making the choice, however, was watching the short clip VEGAN For the People. For the Planet. For the Animals. (see below). Quite simply, the short film clip makes sense. Choosing to be vegan not only nurtures myself, but my loved ones, future generations and the world in which we share. Oh… and I look and feel so much healthier since making the change. Love those extra perks!
Photo courtesy JelleS
I’m extremely picky when it comes to what I put on my skin, and even more picky when it comes to suggesting brands to use, whether they’re vegan or not. Just because a product is vegan doesn’t mean it’s good idea to put it on your skin. Enter beauty buff and holistic entrepreneur Sam Sample and her 100% vegan and natural skincare line Be Genki. This is one range I’m happy to give some blog love to.
Sam follows a simple philosophy when it comes to beauty and believes you can ‘be’ it, rather than ‘achieve’ it.
“Beauty comes from within,” she says. “Being happy and healthy on the physical, emotional and spiritual level is what I believe makes a woman truly beautiful.”
With her natural approach and holistic know-how, Sydney-based Sam (pictured left) developed her beauty range, Be Genki. The collection brings together her deep interest in aromatherapy, well-being, meditation, and beauty care into a holistic synthesis to “promote optimum inner health and harmony amidst the fast pace of contemporary life”.
Each element of Be Genki, she says, has been carefully and thoughtfully selected for its excellence in design, quality, healing benefits, and ability to capture the senses.
“Be Genki is the only bath and body care brand to offer a complete 360 degree approach to holistic well-being, identifying four key areas that contribute to an individual’s well-being and providing products that help create balance with a lifestyle approach,” Sam says.
The product line includes bath and shower oils, body oils, body creams, hand creams, face mists, oil blends, herbal teas and candles.
Sam studied make-up artistry and image training, nutrition, physical education, access energy transformation, aromatherapy, and skin care, and is also an avid proponent of Vipassana meditation. She says the peace and tranquility she found in meditation greatly influenced her products and their simplicity of use in daily life.
I caught up with Sam to get an overview of the ranges — Vitality, Tranquility, Serenity and Sensuality — each attracting a huge following in Australia and abroad.
SHANNON: What’s the Be Genki story?
SAM SAMPLE: For the past 10 years I have been studying various disciplines of health and wellbeing – make-up artistry and image training, nutrition, fitness, meditation, access energy transformation, skin care, and aromatherapy.
Whilst I was finishing up my Diploma of Nutrition and experimenting with aromatherapy one of my girlfriends was suffering from anxiety and depression and was taking anti-depressants. It upset me that a young woman in her mid-20s could be prescribed pharmaceutical drugs without her lifestyle being taken in to consideration first. No-one sat down with her to address what she was doing on a daily basis.
So I made her a blend of essential oils (the Serenity blend) and we chatted about taking time out at the end of each day to have a bath with the essential oil blend, shutting the bathroom door, turning the mobile phone off and creating a spa like experience in the comfort of her own home. We also spoke about nutrition, exercise and lifestyle choices.
Two months passed and she came to me one day to tell me how much better she was feeling within herself and that she was thinking of going off her medication. Whether it was the act of running a bath and watching the water flow, having that half-hour by herself to relax and inhale the oil blend, or exercising, or eliminating processed foods from her diet it didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that she was feeling more confident and happy. I believe it was a combination of all the new wellbeing rituals that she had started to implement in to her daily life. You can only imagine how happy this made me feel. Whatever it was that gave her the confidence to take control of her anxiety and depression and ultimately her life, was enough to inspire me to think of other areas of our lives that we need help with improving in today’s fast paced world.
Whether it’s reaching for that third cup of coffee during the day to get a burst of energy, tossing and turning in bed at night or relying on sleeping tablets to get to sleep, suffering from anxiety and depression, freaking out at the “little things” or losing your temper at those that you love most because you haven’t dealt with the issue appropriately, or simply “beating yourself up” and criticising yourself over something that really isn’t that big a deal in the scheme of things; that is not what life is all about! So, I developed Be Genki – to help inspire and bring about holistic happiness by focusing on four key areas of wellbeing:
- Vitality to help improve our energy levels.
- Tranquility to help prepare for a peaceful night’s sleep.
- Serenity to help us cope with everyday stress (the blend that I gave to my girlfriend).
- Sensuality to help nurture the loving relationships that we have with our partner, and more importantly our Self.
In my opinion, these are the four key areas that bring about holistic happiness.
The Japanese word “genki” means to be happy, healthy, and in harmony with oneself. It suggests wellbeing is achieved by balancing physical, emotional and spiritual elements equally to create an integrated and tranquil Self.
SD: What are the core ingredients?
SS: There are four Be Genki ranges – Vitality, Tranquility, Serenity and Sensuality – each contain a blend of 100% pure essential oils to specifically target four key areas that contribute to your well-being.
Vitality: Lemon, Peppermint, Eucalyptus and Rosemary, renowned for their uplifting properties.
Tranquility: Lavender, Roman Chamomile, Sweet Orange and Sandalwood, renowned for their sleep-inducing properties.
Serenity: Neroli, Rose Otto, Rosewood, Palmarosa and Bergamot, renowned for their calming properties.
Sensuality: Rose Otto, Ylang Ylang, Jasmine, Lavender, Bergamot and Melissa, renowned for their nurturing properties.
I’ve always loved old Hollywood. There was always certain glamorous innocence that appealed to me, even as a child.
I still love the music, the actors and the acting. I’m all for stars bursting out in song or dance mid sentence. Girls with perfectly set hair, men treating women like ladies.
As I thought about watching one of my favourite oldies today, I wondered if there were any old Hollywood stars who used their star power back then to actively promote not eating animals. An olden day Alicia Silverstone. A Casey Affleck in black and white.
My never-fail Google search lead me to 1920s glamour girl Gloria Swanson, who became vegetarian in 1928. She was known as an early advocate of healthy eating—to the extent she even brought her own meals to functions in a paper bag. She had also recommended a macrobiotic diet to actor Dirk Benedict, after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Benedict had refused conventional therapies and later said his recovery was due to his healthy diet.
Swanson also used her Hollywood connections and her natural health know-how to help promote the classic health book, Sugar Blues, written by her husband William Dufty.
She only bought organically grown food and tap water wasn’t acceptable. In 1976, she told People magazine: “If you looked at it (water) under a microscope, you’d be horrified.” Instead of refined sugar, Swanson recommended natural sugar boiled off from organically grown raisins.
Read More Post a comment (2)Each time I visit the supermarket, especially the big chains, I remind myself that every product I buy is an endorsement for that particular brand, the company’s values (or lack thereof) and the quality of food inside the packaging.
I’m often amazed that much of the produce on the shelves (in NZ) is shipped in from China, the US and beyond. Most of these are gassed or treated in some way to stop vegetables from sprouting, fruit from spoiling etc. So customers are not only buying pesticides with their “food”, but also other chemicals used to preserve the produce for the boat ride across the big blue. Of these chemical-laden loads, one only then has to wonder which ones were born in a laboratory … nutrient-deficient genetically modified imposters. Wannabe apples, if you will.
But the great news is, the more people who buy organic, locally-grown produce, the more supply there will be. Additionally, the more people who choose to eat this way, the less dis-ease there will be. Whether we consumers want to believe it or not, we can turn things around, every time we line up at the register. Every beep of the scanner is a vote.
Buying food as nature intended may hurt the hip pocket more than the mutant kinds that currently fill many supermarket shelves, but the vibrant health that can result from eating healthily means fewer doctors appointments and hospital visits in the long run. It’s also a beautiful way to contribute to the restoration of the planet. It’s a win-win for all.
Before I became vegan, I didn’t really give much thought as to what was organic and what wasn’t. Fast forward a couple of years and I won’t eat anything else. I know it’s the best thing for my own health and the health of the planet (not to mention the farmers who aren’t spraying toxic chemicals).
Since leaving the US, I’ve been astounded at how tricky it is to buy organics. Big chain supermarkets in New Zealand only offer a very limited selection — hardly enough to fill a dinner plate. I won’t even talk about how astronomically expensive they are.
So the question remains, how do we bring real, affordable organics to the masses while keeping the big corporations honest? It’s the big businesses that threaten the future of organics, because they come at it from a money-making point of view—not from what’s best for the consumer. Get it out quick at as little cost as possible to them. If it looks like an apple, it’ll sell as an apple. Who cares what the nutrient content is.
Science has helped these corporations meddle with nature, with genetically modified produce on supermarket shelves just about everywhere. Studies have shown such meddling is at a huge cost to human health. Big corp organics could be mutant potatoes that resist anything nature throws at it. It may have grown without pesticides and without a scratch, but it won’t mean it’s healthy to eat.
Organic Nation TV caught up with The Environmental Working Group‘s President Ken Cook (see video below) to chat about the potential issue of big corporations hijacking organics, threatening its quality and the current standards.
Host Dorothee Royal-Hedinger asked Ken to talk about the anxiety some consumers and activists feel about the trend of big corporations taking over organic brands as well as the tension between making organic food affordable and maintaining the standards on which organics were founded.
He was interviewed at Kickapoo Country Fair held by Organic Valley, a farmer-owned cooperative of more than 1,300 organic family farmers nationwide, in LaFarge, Wisconsin.
Courtesy of organic.org, I’ve included a top 10 list of reasons to grow and buy organics, as well as why we all can benefit from supporting the organic industry, regardless of where you live in the world.
1. Reduce The Toxic Load: Keep Chemicals Out of the Air, Water, Soil and our Bodies
Buying organic food promotes a less toxic environment for all living things. With only 0.5 percent of crop and pasture land in organic, according to USDA that leaves 99.5 percent of farm acres in the U.S. at risk of exposure to noxious agricultural chemicals. Our bodies are the environment so supporting organic agriculture doesn’t just benefit your family, it helps all families live less toxically.
2. Reduce if Not Eliminate Off Farm Pollution
Industrial agriculture doesn’t singularly pollute farmland and farm workers; it also wreaks havoc on the environment downstream. Pesticide drift affects non-farm communities with odorless and invisible poisons. Synthetic fertilizer drifting downstream is the main culprit for dead zones in delicate ocean environments, such as the Gulf of Mexico, where its dead zone is now larger than 22,000 square kilometers, an area larger than New Jersey, according to Science magazine, August, 2002.
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Eating out of a can has never appealed to me. Besides the fact that the food inside is dead, it has always seemed just not quite right on some level. Perhaps great if you’re stranded in the desert (hopefully with a can opener in your pocket), but for every day living I just don’t do it.
I know there has been some talk over the years of aluminium leaching into the foods inside the cans. Whether that’s true, I can’t say. However, new research is suggesting it’s the plastic that lines cans these days that’s doing the harm.
Dr Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, who is an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri, specialises in studying the effects of bisphenol-A (BPA), the toxic chemical that comes from plastics that wrap just about everything we buy in supermarkets. He says the number one canned food to steer clear of is tomatoes. The following info may well make you re-think your mother’s famous spaghetti sauce.
Dr vom Saal says bisphenol-A is a synthetic estrogen that is linked to all sorts of dis-eases from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes and obesity. It’s the acidity in the tomatoes that reacts with the BPA that causes the chemical to leach into the food. Appetising huh?
What’s the solution? Learning to live like your great grandmother perhaps, and only eating organic food that looks how it’s supposed to. Freshly picked. Oh and speak to your local grocer about supplying more organic, non-packaged foods. The greater demand, the more supply.
While I’m on the subject of stuff to avoid, here are some other foods, as published in a story on Shine.com, that you may want to re-think.
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Christopher Drummond is a make-up artist to the stars (and ex-model) who actually cares about what’s in the products we gloop all over ourselves.
My rules of thumb when it comes to beauty are 1) if it’s not vegan, don’t touch it and 2) if you can’t eat it, don’t wear it. I was oh-so happy to hear Christopher feels exactly the same. His cosmetics line, Christopher Drummond Beauty is 100% natural, vegan and organic.
Here are Christopher’s hot tips on how to transition your beauty cupboard from chemical-laden to naturally wonderful (and check out the video below):
1. Pick five ingredients that you will not compromise on: You need to do your research on “bad” cosmetic ingredients, first (start with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and the Cosmetic Safety Database, these are great starting points).
2. Be diligent: Do not use the ingredients that you have promised yourself you will not use. No matter what, stay away from those five ingredients. Christopher’s are parabens, artificial colours, artificial fragrance, phthalates, and petroleum.
3. Educate yourself: Take the cosmetics you already own, read the ingredient list, and make a small list of ingredients that you don’t know. Then, research these ingredients to see what these ingredients are, and what they do. You’ll be surprised.
4. Talk to people: Spread your new found knowledge to friends and family.
5. Continue Your Education: Some cosmetic companies thrive on keeping consumers in the dark about what they are doing with ingredients. Don’t let them succeed! Empower yourself.
I just signed up to Alicia Silverstone’s website, The Kind Life. If you thought being vegan meant never eating cheese again, think again. Check out her blog about delicious gourmet vegan cheese from Dr Cow!
This non-dairy, organic cheese is made from 100% raw, organic nuts, with home-made acidophilus and a pinch of royal pink Himalayan salt. There are also zero preservatives, stabilisers, artificial ingredients or additives of any kind. Now that’s my kinda cheese. Oh how I wish it were available outside the States…
With companies such as Adidas exploiting animals for fashion, whatever is a vegan fashionista to do? Get her (and his) sneakers from companies with a conscience, sure. But where to find them?
In light of what I learned about Adidas yesterday—and other footwear manufacturers who make their wares from slaughtered animals—I went on a mission to find some cool casual shoes that were made without harming any cow, or kangaroo, in the process.
Here’s what I dug up:
• Blackspot Shoes (V1 style below) are marketed as the world’s most ethical. What makes them so? Well, the V2 hightop style features a sole made from recycled tyres, while the upper on every style is made from hemp. They’re also made in a union shop in Europe, so no humans exploited either. You can order your very own pair, for around $US75, from the super hip site Adbusters.
• Komodo’s Free Tibet sneakers (below) are ethically made, and are also shoes that keep on giving. Twenty percent from the sale of each pair goes toward the campaign that calls for an end to Chinese occupation of Tibet, and for improved human rights in the troubled region. Get them online from Hippyshopper.com for around 40 (UK pounds).
• Ethletic high top sneakers (below) are made from 100 percent fair trade certified organic cotton canvas upper and durable rubber sole. The sole is produced with natural latex, which they say is tapped from a tree in a well managed and growing forest. All dyes are PCP and AZO free, which I guess means no icky chemicals. Relive your inner Grease for around $US56.
• While I prefer to steer clear of companies who use animal parts in any of their products, it’s still nice to see mainstream companies such as Saucony producing a shoes for us animal-free folks. This shoe is the Vegan Jazz Sneaker, a running shoe for him or her. Check out your local Saucony supplier.
Know of any other ethical footwear companies doing their bit for a greener world? Feel free to share below!
Not that long ago, I used to work as a magazine beauty editor. A seemingly glam job to the outside world (particularly to 20-something girls who have a love affair with make-up and mascara). But for me, it was one of the most toxic gigs I could have signed up for.
A lot of these beauty products are loaded with chemicals, and some, perhaps most (depending on whether it’s listed on the label or not), are tested on animals. So it’s a no-win situation for beauty addict or animal.
When I went vegan, I stopped putting chemicals into my body and onto my body. Buh-bye beauty products. So long moisturiser, ta-ta deodorant (regarding the latter, if you’re eating a raw, organic wholefood diet and drinking fresh spring water, the need for covering up smelly pits isn’t needed, because you simply don’t smell anymore. Who knew!).
Besides the fact that what you put into your body reflects on the outside, there are some great beauty tips and tricks that I use, sourced from my very own kitchen cupboard. No animals or beauty buffs harmed in the process. Here’s just a few:
Moisturiser: Mix two parts water, one part olive oil in a spray pump. Shake and spray all over after a bath or shower for a moisture infusion.
Facial scrub: Mix a small amount of baking soda and water together to make a smooth paste. Lightly rub over the face and rinse.
Toner: Add half vinegar, half water to make a pore-tightening toner.
Bath salts: For a great detox, sprinkle a cup of epsom salts in your bath water.
Smoothing dry heels: Cut a lemon in half and apply.
The golden rule I live by? Never put anything on your body that you can’t eat.
Pic courtesy martinhoward, Flickr Creative Commons.
One of my big lessons over the past few years is never believe what you read in the mainstream media. Why? Because more often than not there’s an underlying reason why these outlets promote certain stories over others — and that reason usually boils down to cold hard cash. Give love to a particular industry or product and watch those advertising dollars flood in. Just check out any mainstream magazine and count how many big brand products appear in the editorial pages. Then count the ads from said company.
And what about those big old media conglomerates that feed us mere mortal readers with “facts” and “expert” opinions across newspapers, television and the Internet? Why do they get to decide what’s news or not? And why is 99 percent of it downright negative?
Case in point: this morning I woke to read an article from one of my favourite real news sites Natural News about how Amercia’s Associated Press have waged a war against alternative medicine in a series of stories, stating that “10 years and $2.5 billion of research have found no cures from alternative medicine”. Say what? I really don’t know where to begin with you, AP.
Here’s an excerpt from the Natural News story:
The AP, it seems, has decided to ally itself with pharmaceutical medicine and spend its time and money hiring writers who promote drugs and discredit anything natural. A recent story by Marchione, for example, claims that statin drugs help prevent swine flu! It’s quite clear that AP is following a specific agenda to destroy the reputation of natural medicine while boosting public perception of pharmaceuticals. And yet, in reality, it is Big Pharma that has delivered no cures. But the sick-care industry has delivered America into financial bankruptcy and helped our nation become the most diseased population in the history of human civilization. AP feels no need to report on that inconvenient truth. Rather, it sees its job as encouraging yet more pharmaceutical use in America while destroying the credibility of far safer and more effective natural therapies that could help turn around America’s health. The Associated Press is sadly misinformed about natural medicine, and yet their stories are syndicated across thousands of newspapers and millions of web pages each day.
What’s sad about this situation is that millions of people take the voice of mainstream media as gospel, without a second thought. I used to be one of them. Then I woke up. So, in light of mainstream media’s latest antics, I’ve compiled a list of top 5 tips to help stay mentally healthy, no newspaper subscription required.
Top 5 Tips for Staying Mentally Healthy
1. Turn off the evening news and cut off the daily newspaper subscription. If you must get your daily dose of mainstream news, look at it from an entertainment point of view. You’re the only one who can decide what’s news and what’s not;
2. Question any information you’re given. Just because someone is labelled as an expert, guru or has the word professor in front of their name, doesn’t mean what they say is true or right for you;
3. Put aside 20 minutes or so each day for meditation or quiet time. Clearing out mental clutter is a sure fire way to add clarity and greater purpose to your life;
4. Transition from a diet of animal flesh and animal-based products to a plant-based wholefood diet. Meat, dairy and anything else animal-derived not only pumps pesticides, parasites and disease into your body, it also creates a breeding ground for negative, foggy thinking. Raw organic wholefoods are packed with life-giving enzymes and all the nutrients a body needs (that includes protein);
5. Mainstream media may tell you to load up on the sunscreen and hide from the sun, but this is a recipe for a health disaster. Many sunblocks are laden with cancer-causing chemicals that bake right into the bloodstream through the body’s largest organ, the skin. Getting at least half an hour of sunshine every day is vital to good health and healthy thinking. The sun has been revered by cultures worldwide as a life-giver and isn’t the cancer-causer mainstream media has dubbed it to be.
“What happens almost universally when one stops eating flesh foods is that one drops excess weight. The loss of superfluous, unneeded weight continues when one stops eating dairy products. One’s true, ideal weight is often easily discovered after one adopts a live-food diet. A body built on high-quality, whole, organic, nature-developed foods is also of higher quality than body weight built on poor-quality commercial foods.” — Dr Gabriel Cousens, Conscious Eating
The best time to do a cleanse, according to many holistic health experts, is between the full and new moons. So this month, that’s exactly what I’m doing — cleaning house.
Armed with Andreas Moritz‘s The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush, I’m on day two of drinking the required six litres of organic apple juice. That’s one litre a day before the seventh day of the actual flush. According to Moritz, cleansing the liver and gallbladder from gallstones is one of the most “important and powerful approaches to improve your health”.
Thanks to toxins and cholesterol from animal foods, pesticide and chemical-laden water, and deadly pharmaceuticals, the gallbladder can be packed with stones of all sizes, colours and shapes. Some, says Andreas, are even as big as 3cm wide and are literally as hard as rocks. It’s not uncommon for some people to release hundreds of stones with one cleanse—and that usually means there are more where they came from (which means keep on cleansing).
While I’ve been vegan for a couple of years, and have done juice cleanses and undergone colonic hydrotherapy, I have 30-odd years of bad eating and lifestyle habits to clean up after. The liver and gallbladder flush is just the next step in my natural health journey.
So what does the prescribed six litres of apple juice do? The malic acid in the juice softens the stones to enable them to pass easily through the bile ducts. It also has a strong cleansing effect.
Speaking of the apple, this amazing fruit that I’ve often taken for granted is really one of nature’s superfoods (as all wholefoods are in my opinion). Cut an apple in half to reveal a star, which is a mirror of the body’s star formation (think Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man – see below). This wholefood signature suggests that the humble apple benefits every part of the human body. Hence the saying, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”.
Some of the known benefits from eating (raw) apples include: improved lung capacity, blocking diarrhea, prevention of constipation, cushioning the body’s joints and even slowing the aging process. Bite that, botox!
So this week, to prepare for the actual day of flushing (which will fall on the day of the new moon), I’m not eating any foods or drinks that are cold or chilled because they chill the liver and stop the cleanse from being effective. Andreas also suggests giving animal products the ol’ heave ho. No problem there. Also no overeating.
Rather than bore you all with a day-by-day account of drinking truckloads of apple juice, if you’re curious, check back later in the month to get the lowdown on how the cleanse went.
One of nature's incredible superfoods, the humble apple
So a quick trip to the supermarket to pick up some vegetable stock, turned into a marathon label-reading jaunt. I was shocked to see 99 percent of the vege stock included animal products — namely milk. What gives? Call me daft, but I can’t see any good reason for marrying these two products to make stock: I mean, come on, vegetables and milk?
A little investigating below eye level turned up just the gem I needed. Rapunzel’s vegan vegetable bouillon with sea salt (see below) boasts organic ingredients with no animals involved in the making.
This little trip affirmed to me why it’s so important to read labels with an eagle eye, even on products I wouldn’t have dreamed contained animal ingredients.
