Tag: health
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Saturated animal fats as dietary sources of toxic chemicals
Advice recommending the consumption of saturated fat, including from beef tallow, has been in the news lately.1,2 I won’t go into the health issues associated with eating this, as I’m not a medical doctor. My concern focuses more on beef and other animal fats as delivery devices for fat-soluble, toxic chemicals like dioxins, organochlorine pesticides, and…
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“Conventional” farming as a source of toxic chemicals to food
Conventional, a.k.a. chemically-intensive farming can be a source of toxic chemicals to our food. Pesticides, such as insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, may be directly sprayed, leftover from a prior crop, or drift in from an adjacent field. Growth regulators and sprouting inhibitors may also be applied after harvest. Why be concerned about pesticides in your…
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Monthly food hacks for fewer toxins in 2025
In addition to providing sustenance and enjoyment, the food we eat can be contaminated with hundreds of toxic chemicals, including pesticides, plastic components, and cancer-causing molecules formed during cooking. While you can’t avoid everything, there’s a lot you can do to reduce your exposure in the first place, in other words, to pre-detox. To figure out…
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Safe foraging
It’s blackberry season in my area, one of my favorite times of the year. There’s nothing like fresh-picked berries over store bought for flavor. In addition to what we grow in our yards, it’s nice to go collecting in the wild. However, there are a few guidelines to follow to make sure you avoid fruits,…
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“One word: plastics.” Health concerns and tips to reduce exposure in your diet.
In the nearly sixty years since that line was uttered by Dustin Hoffman in the movie The Graduate, plastics have spread far and wide across the surface of the earth. They, or their breakdown products, are present in samples collected from the deepest oceans, on mountain tops, in air and clouds, our homes, our food, and…
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Plant-based eating made easy: cookbooks and resources
As I mentioned in a prior post, animals accumulate fat-soluble chemicals such as PCBs, dioxins, and some pesticides at much higher levels than plants, up to millions of times higher. Because it can take years or decades to clear these chemicals from your body, it’s best to reduce your exposure to them in the first…
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Why Gas Stoves are in “Hot” Water
Ordinarily I write about how toxic chemicals get into your food. How you cook also matters— your greatest potential exposure to toxic fumes occurs when cooking on a gas stove…
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Avoiding Toxic Chemicals in Our Diet
I am currently writing a book about where toxic chemicals in our diet come from and how you can reduce your exposure to them. Join me over the next couple of years as I blog about this subject.
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Water Filter Longevity and Peak Gunk
I know these are tough financial times for many people and you might be looking for areas where you can cut back on costs. There is one item you shouldn’t ignore – water filters. Using a filter past its expiration date can be dangerous for your health. All the toxic gunk that’s been adsorbing to…
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The Perils of Poisons and Pesticides
The recent poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny1 brings to mind the parallel histories of neurotoxic chemicals used in chemical warfare and as insecticides on crops. Just before World War II, German scientists tasked with developing insecticides to protect crops wound up creating a chemical so toxic that it was repurposed and weaponized for…
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Acidic Water Versus Your Teeth…
Inspired by a friend’s question about the damage carbonated waters might do to teeth, which can be demineralized by acidic solutions, I did a Sunday-morning experiment to test the acidity (low pH) of various sources of water, including (from left to right): a mineral water (Perrier), two seltzer waters (LeCroix & Arrowhead), lemon water, and…
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Nice Cream on a Sunny, Spring Day
Earlier this month, I posted about how processed foods can become contaminated by things like plasticizers from packaging and other sources. Not only are those chemicals bad for your health, a new study (1) shows that participants who ate the heavily processed diet gained weight, whereas those given un- or minimally-processed foods actually lost weight.…
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Recipe Hacks to Reduce Phthalates
With plastics, and the chemicals associated with them, so prevalent in our world, it’s not surprising that much of our food is contaminated by plasticizers (see previous post). So what do you do to reduce these chemicals in your diet? The best approach is to eliminate all processed food. But that’s not always possible. A…
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“One word: plastics.”
Oh, that prophetic line from the movie The Graduate. There’ve been a lot of stories lately about plastic in our environment, thanks to the hundreds of millions of tons produced globally each year.1 Because it’s so convenient, plastic is a tough habit to break. So why bother? Plastics and their additives cause problems at all…
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Got Organic: Cereal & Beer?
When you’re looking to avoid pesticides in your diet, it’s important to go beyond organic produce. A good place to start is grains, such as cereal, bread, pasta, etc. These crops are also treated with pesticides, especially grains engineered (GMOs) to be resistant to herbicides like glyphosate, which is now considered a probable carcinogen to…
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A Toxic-free New Year
Join me in 2019 for tips on creating a cleaner diet, free of many of the toxic chemicals that come from the use of pesticides, processing, packaging, and environmental contamination. There are numerous sources of problematic chemicals in our diets and many ways that they find their way into our food and water. It can…
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Vegan or Seagan? How To Choose Foods with the Most Nutrients and Least Toxins
There are many reasons to follow a vegan, or the newest trend, “seagan” diet, which includes fish. Many studies have shown significantly lower rates of cancer and heart disease in vegans and pescatarians (vegetarians who eat fish) than in people eating a meat-based diet. And for vegans, it is a choice to avoid harm to…
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What’s that in my food?
Participating in #OctoberUnprocessed this year gives me another opportunity to take a closer look at what’s really in the food I eat. Thousands of ingredients are added to foods for sale in the U.S. and can include chemicals that act as preservatives, change texture or appearance, or add flavor. These must be listed on ingredient…
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Join me for the #OctoberUnprocessed Challenge! Starting tomorrow and for the entire month of October, I’ll be choosing to eat minimally processed, whole foods . And I will be posting at DocLaurel (Facebook) and @Laurel_Standley (Twitter) on ways that eating a less processed diet can reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals. This is the 7th…
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Join #OctoberUnprocessed!
During the month of October, I’ll be tweeting (@Laurel_Standley) on the benefits of an unprocessed diet on reducing exposures to toxic chemicals. This was inspired by Andrew Wilder’s annual event called October Unprocessed (follow @eatingrules). I highly recommend visiting his site (https://eatingrules.com/october-unprocessed-2014/) and signing up for the month as a way to reconnect to ‘real’ food and good…
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Environmental Toxins and Pets: Suggestions for Reducing Their Exposure
Over the last couple of decades we have learned much about the wide range of toxic chemicals that people are exposed to at home and elsewhere. These exposures are associated with illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, and disruption of reproductive and other hormonal systems. Our companion animals are also exposed to many of these…
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The Twelve NonToxic Days of Christmas
Wishing you a safe and joyous holiday season with those you love. Day 1. A real holiday tree (organic if you can find it) and its organic soil sop up carbon from the atmosphere (http://bit.ly/127ztlt) and reduce exposure to plasticizers from fake trees. Day 2. Looking for great ideas for nontoxic presents? Check out www.GoodGuide.org…
Dr. Laurel Standley 