How Local Can You Go? | How You Can Improve Air Quality–Inside and Out | May is Bike Month | Great Books About Where Our Food Comes From | Another Reason to Buy Organic: No Cloned Animals, Period | Make up for your emissions with carbon offsets | Save the Sierra | Alternative and Natural Health Remedies are in Danger of Over-Regulation | Support the Health Freedom Protection Act | Protect Our Coast
Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op is dedicated to providing information to our community about important food, farming, health and environmental issues and encourages movement toward an ecologically sound, economically fair and peaceful world.
We encourage you to stay informed and take action on these important issues for your health and the health of the planet.
How Local Can You Go?
Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op Conducts Community-Wide Challenge to Eat Local in August
Want to eat more local foods, but curious just how local you can go?
Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op is hosting an “Eat Local America” challenge this summer, inviting area individuals to try to consume 80 percent of their diets (or four out of every five meals) from food grown or produced locally.
The challenge will begin August 1 and continue through the end of the month. Visit the Co-op’s website in July for more details on Buy Local store events.
We define local food as food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius of Sacramento. During the Eat Local America Challenge and throughout the year, we call attention to local food on our shelves by placing “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” shelf tags on specific items in each department throughout the store.
Why Eat Local?
There are many benefits to eating local food. It’s good for the economy, because money from each transaction stays in the region. It connects community members to the people who produce their food, while helping to support endangered family farms.
Plus, since food doesn’t travel far from where it’s produced, eating local also helps protect the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Local food is more nutritious and simply tastes better, because it's often harvested or processed the same day it arrives at the co-op.
Although "local" is a buzzword used by many retailers, Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op has for years cultivated truly reciprocal, long-term relationships with local growers and producers, offering its shoppers a convenient connection to fresh and delicious food of the highest quality. Eat Local America celebrates our dedication and commitment to local food for consumers and our suppliers.
National Challenge Underway
The Co-op is joining nearly 70 other natural food co-ops coast-to-coast in Eat Local America. All are members of National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) – a business services cooperative representing nearly 110 retail food co-ops nationwide.
Beginning June 1, food lovers can learn about all participating Eat Local America initiatives at www.eatlocalamerica.coop.
Eat Local America is not your typical challenge. Because it is framed around each region’s peak harvest times, length and timing varies for each co-op, as does the definition of “local.” The Eat Local America challenge celebrates the uniqueness of our regional food supplies, as well as a collective and emerging passion for eating more local, organic foods.
More about Eating Local
Although we’re holding this challenge during peak season for fresh produce, we hope to educate our shoppers that it’s possible – and not too difficult – to eat local food year-round. Fruit and vegetables can be preserved until the next harvest season, via canning, freezing and dehydrating. But don’t think local is limited to produce. SNFC is the go-to source for local dairy products, including milk and artisan cheese, as well as eggs, meat, poultry, health and wellness products, and baked goods, like artisan breads.
For more information on Eat Local America, contact. Alicia at 916.736.6800 ex. 142
Improve Air Quality - inside and out
Submitted by Julia Thomas, SNFC Assistant Marketing Manager–Education
Indoor
Choose Organic Cut Flowers
Problem: Conventional cut flowers come with a lot of environmental baggage. Most flowers sold in the United States are imported from South America, so they travel great distances and might be treated with pesticides that have been banned here. What we consider to be things of beauty expose workers and the environment to nasty poisons. These poisons travel to your home where you smell them, touch them and live with them for a week or two until you throw them away.
Solution: Choose organic flowers. Organically-grown flowers from local farms are available at the Co-op. These flowers will beautify your home with none of the baggage that commercial flowers carry with them.
Houseplants help clean the air
Problem: Our indoor air is sometimes as polluted as the outside.
Solution: We all know that plants recycle oxygen, so it makes sense that they can clean the air in our homes, but they are also able to break down pollutants. A NASA study found that certain plants are especially efficient at filtering out toxins.
Top 10 air-filtering plants:
• Bamboo palm
• Chinese evergreen
• English ivy
• Gerbera daisy
• Janet Craig dracaena
• Red-edged dracaena
• Cornstalk dracaena
• Mother-in-law’s tongue
• Pot mum
• Peace lily
Source: Raising Baby Green,
by Dr. Alan Greene
Avoid toxic cleaning products
Problem: Keeping your house clean can actually contribute to air and water pollution, and can make you or your family sick, depending on what kind of products you use.
Solution: Create a clean and healthy home environment by using natural vegetable-based products, and avoiding products that contain ammonia, lye and chlorine bleach. Also avoid anything that says “hazardous to your health” on the label.
The Co-op carries lots of cleaners that are great at cleaning tough dirt and grease without chlorine, ammonia, harsh acids, caustics or petroleum-based ingredients. These cleaners are non-toxic, biodegradable and safe to use throughout your home.
Outdoor
Drive less, bike more
Problem: Almost one third of the carbon dioxide produced in the United States comes from our cars, trucks and airplanes.
Solution: Drive less. Walk or bike to work or school or to run errands. You’ll get exercise and save a pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don’t drive! www.cimatecrisis.net. May is bike month, so it’s a great time to get started, and there are lots of events all month long to help you get riding! See page 25 for more information.
Switch to green power
Problem: Most emissions from homes are from the fossil fuels burned to generate electricity and heat.
Solution: Support Green Power. Join SMUD’s Greenergy program, and for an extra $3 or $6 a month, SMUD will use that money to replace non-green power with energy from renewable sources. When you enroll in the program, you’ll also get a $10 gift certificate to the Co-op! For more information, visit www.smud.org.
Reduce your carbon footprint with organic agriculture
Problem: Conventional agriculture uses chemical fertilizers and pesticides that are made from fossil fuels. Conventional corn (now being touted as our road to energy independence through ethanol) is the most fossil fuel-dependent crop of all, using more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to produce a calorie of corn. (Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma,
p. 45-46.)
Solution: Choose organic to help conserve fossil fuels. Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms, and they don’t use fossil fuel-based inputs. If we grew all of our corn and soybeans organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere! (www.climatecrisis.net).
May is Bike Month
Time to get out and ride your bicycle for your health, to save money, to help clean the air and to have fun!
Visit www.mayisbikemonth.com to register and log your miles, get Bike Month T-shirts, win colorful bike socks and learn details about events going on in the region. In 2007 Million Mile May, the third year of this campaign, 926,638 miles were logged! The goal this year is to go well over a million miles.
Calendar of events for Bike Month:
May 1: Press Conference to kick off Bike Month at noon on the west steps of the Capitol. A ride around downtown organized by the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates follows. Start logging miles for Million Mile May today!
May 3: Informal community rides and some energizer stations on the American River Bike Trail. Check Web site for details.
May 15: Co-op Bike to Work Energizer Station from 7–9 a.m., near the entrance to the Co-op. Stop by for a snack and enter to win a free bike on your ride to work.
May 15: Capitol BikeFest from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on the west side of the Capitol. Support bicycling and other clean air transportation.
May 16: Folsom ride, luncheon and event sponsored by the 50 Corridor TMA. Editor’s note: Visit 50corridor.com for more information about this Transportation Management Association.
Great Books About Where Our Food Comes From
We love Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. It is a beautifully written account of eating locally, including stories connecting food, family and place, seasonal recipes and simple menu plans.
And if you haven’t yet read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, it’s now available in paperback. This book will forever change the way you think about what’s on your plate and how it got there-–and that’s a good thing.
Both books are available at the Co-op–and they’ll make great gifts.
Another Reason to Buy Organic: No Cloned Animals, Period
The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), an expert advisory panel to the USDA’s National Organic Program, voted to exclude cloned animals, their offspring, and any food products from cloned animals from the organic sector.
The 12-0 vote (with one abstention) occurred after the NOSB heard public comments from numerous representatives of farm, consumer, retail and non-profit groups calling for the cloning ban in organics.
For more information, visit www.cornucopia.org
Traveling in 2008? Make up for your emissions with carbon offsets
When asked what the number one thing an individual can do to help alleviate global warming, Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, said “stop flying.” Of course, conservation is always best, but what if you can’t avoid flying? One way to ease your environmental conscience is to buy carbon offsets. Buying carbon offsets is an investment in environmental work that would otherwise not have funding. Some of the projects include reforestation, renewable energy and transportation efficiency.
To calculate your next trip’s emissions and buy offsets, visit www.my-climate.com.
Save the Sierra
The Sierra Nevada Mountain Range is one of the United States’ most breathtaking landscapes – and one of its most precious resources. The Sierra supplies California with 60% its drinking water and provides a vital line of defense against global warming. The Sierra is in danger, however. The rich forests are heavily logged by Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), and the area is marked by clearcuts. SPI is the largest private landowner in California. They’ve already clearcut hundreds of thousand of acres in the Sierra, and they have plans to clearcut over a million more.
Forest Ethics has launched a new campaign to pressure SPI to stop the destruction of our ecological treasure, with over 70 actions nationwide. Everyday consumers can make a stand against the destruction of the Sierra. Learn more at www.forestethics.org.
Alternative and Natural Health Remedies are in Danger of Over-Regulation
In the near future, buying vitamin C directly from your local co-op or health food store could be illegal.
The FDA’s recent Draft Guidance titled “Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration'' (2006D-0480) has increased concern about the intent to “harmonize” US food laws with the United Nations’ international food codes, known as Codex Alimentarius. If implemented, these codes could result in the reclassification of vitamins, dietary supplements, vegetable juices and herbs as “untested drugs,” making them subject to FDA approval and requiring medical prescriptions. The FDA Revitalization Act (S1082) passed the Senate in May and has been introduced to the House as HR 1561.
SNFC has been distributing information about Codex in the store and on our Web site, and we will continue to provide the most up to date information as we learn it.
To learn more about Codex, visit www.healthfreedomusa.org.
Support the Health Freedom Protection Act
Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-TX) has introduced The Health Freedom Protection Act, HR 2117 to the House of Representatives. This bill is of monumental importance to your health and health freedom.
According to this bill, health claims such as “Omega-3 Fatty Acids may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease” will be authorized for use on labels and in the labeling of all foods and dietary supplements containing such nutrients. Natural remedies will be able to advertise their health claims, as long as they are scientifically justified.
Protect Our Coast
Despite their beauty and importance, our beaches and bays are severely polluted with toxic run-off, plastic trash, industrial discharges and hazardous materials accidents. Lax enforcement, scant resources and irresponsible action by polluters have allowed this to continue.
The November, 2007 oil spill in San Francisco shows that our coasts need more protection. Environment California is working to close the loopholes for shipping dangerous materials to protect our coast for future generations.
Learn more by visiting the Environment California webpage. Just click here.
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