Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts

Sunday, May 27, 2012

What Is The Healthiest Bottled Water? (It's A Trick Question)


The first thing I learned when researching what is the healthiest bottled water was: drink tap water.

According to the Environmental Working Group's 2011 Bottled Water Scorecard, nine out of the ten best-selling brands of bottled water could not answer at least one of the following key questions:

Key Health Questions Regarding Bottled Water:
1. Where does the water come from?
2. Is it purified; and if so, how?
3. Have tests found any contaminants?

How is it possible that mega-popular brands like Aquafina and Dasani can't answer a simple question like where their water comes from? How can we be sold a product so essential for life -- and so intimately connected to our health -- like water and not be informed about these basic things? And why don't we care more?

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

7 Easy Steps For Better Health

Photo by Darwin Bell on Flickr
I was going to add the sub-head "That I Often Don't Do Because It Seems Too Easy" -- because that's the  truth! What follows is a list of dead-simple additions to one's routine that are hard to do because they're too simple to do. "Drinking more water will make me much healthier? Drinking any water will make me healthier? Lies, lies, and crazy-talk!"

7. Eat Vegetables. 
Seriously, eat some damn vegetables. Not just veggies that have been boiled or fried within an inch of their lives...but add some fresh vegetables in there. I've gone long periods of my life barely eating any vegetables, unless you consider potato chips a valid veggie portion. My skin was literally grey from unhealthiness. And yet as crazy as it may seem that someone would go through life without getting plants in their diet, I've known plenty of people like this. The worst are the ones who insist they are getting enough nutrients from heavy meat-eating so that they don't need vegetables; those must be some really unhappy intestines.

6. Get Fresh Air and Sunlight.
This is particularly aimed at those who work in the Cubicle Nation, though some artists and writers tend to become unhealthily housebound as well. Many of us are blessed to work in progressive offices where every amenity is provided to you, including a wonderful cafeteria filled with countless (and healthy!) food choices. One may be tempted to never leave the building during the 9 to 5. But that's really, really bad -- not only because of the relatively stale air and lack of vitamin D-producing sun rays, but because such a practice seriously reduces your perspective on life. Think about it: you have this wonderful hour to yourself that you could spend doing non-worklike things, and you choose to stay in the Work Zone. That's 5 hours a week you could have used going to the library or eating at a new restaurant or meeting up with friends or dancing in the grass in your bare feet.