Organic Foods

After the success of Food Inc. and Food Revolution, more celebrities are turning to organic foods and products as part of a healthier lifestyle.

Courtney Cox, star of Scream 4 and CougarTown, and her husband David Arquette, are buying organic, especially for their 6-year-old daughter Coco.

“I try to always be as green as possible,” the actress, 46, told US Magazine. ”For Coco, I got her Organic Matters [products] which Jen Meyer told me about.”

Organic Matters sells everything from bedding to beauty products and offers a wide assortment of organic, natural and recycled alternatives to many commercially manufactured goods. Meyer who is a jewelry designer who is married to Spiderman’s Tobey Maguire, inspired Courteney to switch to more eco-friendly beauty products.

“She told me about this one called Weleda,” Courteney says. “It’s this shampoo and body wash. It’s natural and great – I use it on Coco!”

Courteney is just one of the many celebrities that have jumped on the organic wagon.

HBO’s Entourage bombshell Emmanuelle Chriqui is very dedicated to the environment and organics. She serves as an ambassador to the Environmental Media Association, is involved with the Yes To Carrot Seed Fund, and Los Angeles Unified School District to support organic gardens in Los Angeles urban schools. Other celebs involved include Olivia Wilde, Rosario Dawson, Amy Smart, and Lance Bass.
Remember Jessica Simpson’s infamous “chicken or fish” moment? Recently Jessica has been on a vegan diet. She wrote on Twitter about her first experiences with tofu (which she dipped in ketchup), drinking Pu-erh tea, and natural healing through cupping with a teacher named Master Wang.

She also made clear that “this has NOTHING to do with weight! It is about understanding my body through hydration and alkalinity,” she wrote.

Kelly Osbourne is refusing to eat meat unless it is organic after hearing the shocking stories about the American meat industry and the terrible conditions facing some farm animals. The singer-turned-reality-TV-star went “fully green” by giving up bottled water and building a compost heap in her garden.

Kelly is also being more careful about what she eats. In her column for Britain’s Closer magazine, she wrote: “I’ve become increasingly aware of how disgusting the American meat industry can be – and it’s seriously put me off eating meat. I’ve heard that cows are fed through a hole in their stomach to make them get fatter quicker and I can’t believe some chicken producers inject them with water first so they’re heavier! “I don’t have a problem with people eating meat, but I am careful to only buy organic now.”

Convinced that you should switch to organic too? This Organic Food Buying Guide is a great place to start your journey to better health.

Photo: Lory Ayala/BuzzFoto/FilmMagic

To read the original article on Babble.com click HERE

Dr. Suess books aren’t the only place you’d expect to find funny-colored foods.  We get these purple carrots from our home-delivered Organic Grocer service. I juice them, and slice them up for salads.  have you tried them?  What do recipes do YOU use them in?  Let us know in the comment section below.

by Kelsey Munro

THEY may sound like something out of Alice in Wonderland but purple carrots are not only real, they’re being positioned as the next superfood.

A new Australian study has shown the ancient carrot variety is high in anti-inflammatory properties and antioxidants.

”They’re the original carrots, from ancient Persia,” explained the study author Lindsay Brown, professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Southern Queensland.

Like heirloom tomato varieties, purple carrots are one of a huge range of fruit and vegetables almost lost in the age of single supermarket varieties. Claims have long been made about purple carrots’ health benefits, but until recently these remained untested.

Professor Brown ran a pre-clinical trial on rats, using purple carrots grown in Queensland. For 16 weeks, the rats were fed a high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet designed to mimic the effects of an unhealthy western diet.

The rats quickly grew fat, developed high blood pressure, became glucose intolerant (or pre-diabetic) and incurred liver and heart damage. Then, for the second eight weeks, the scientists added purple carrot juice to the rats’ food. The results, to be published tomorrow in the British Journal of Nutrition, surprised even the researchers.

”Everything went back to normal,” Professor Brown said. ”The blood pressure went down, the collagen in the heart was back to normal, the liver histology was back to normal, the liver enzymes, the glucose tolerance, the fat pads were all back to normal, despite continuing this … terrible diet.”

Professor Brown cautions that purple carrots should be consumed in combination with a moderate diet and exercise.

There are up to 28 times more anthocyanins – the antioxidant that creates the purple-red pigment in blueberries and raspberries – in purple carrots than there are in orange ones.

To read the original article at TheAge.com click HERE