Dangerous Baby Shampoo

My parents immigrated to the US many years ago, and from the beginning my mom has been leery of artificial colorings, going to McDonald's, yellow colored Kraft Mac & Cheese, fruit punch made with food dyes.  She was even against usual personal care products that most Americans accepted and used on a daily basis (I remember trying to convince her how great Herbal Essences by P&G was).  Her shampoo choice was: Johnson & Johnson's Baby Shampoo and she has been using it for decades now.  In my mind, I just accepted how safe it was since it is made for babies. I mean, wouldn't you assume that what people sell specifically for babies should be safe?!

One would have thought.

It took me so long until now to look at this shampoo label, because in my mind this product is safe and has been accepted as safe for so long.  Now looking at the label, it is the farthest from natural. It is made from chemicals, one after another, except for Water.

NOT NATURAL.

Scary Toothpaste

I have been doing some way overdue cleaning.  Feels great to get rid of so much stuff and really start to organize my surroundings, room, space, office in a new and more productive way.

I used to travel quite a bit for work and pleasure many years ago, and not sure if you do this, but when I travel, I like to collect toiletries, shampoos, toothbrush kits for those just in case times.  These toothbrush kits are great when you find yourself on a majorly delayed flight, lost luggage or get stranded at an airport.

I found one toothbrush kit that has been sitting around for probably 7 years.  And, I found many of these - probably 3-4 kits from various different airlines.  Since I am more and more into healthy and natural, I read the ingredient labels of those who had them, and their ingredients were about the same.  I couldn't believe what I saw - major white rock-like corrosion around the toothpaste tubes.  You can't see it too well in this picture, but literally it looks like a rock formation out of the cap of the tube.  It looks like it had an implosion and the toothpaste was foaming out at one point, and now it has hardened into a rock formation.

The ingredients are chemicals as you can see from the label, and the more I think about this - these chemicals from this toothpaste are not stable over long periods of time, they start to react and cause what looks like corrosion.

Is this what we use to put in our mouths and in our bodies to brush our teeth??  I think it's time to re-evaluate what is in the bathroom!

Get to the Source

The lesson learned is to be curious about what is in your food, where it came from, how it was grown or raised, and ask whether your source is reputable and trustworthy.

Not the first time that anyone has heard about food contamination, but there was an article today about the high levels of contamination in imported seafood from precarious places including Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia.  In certain cases 40-50% of seafood testing comes out positive for drugs like chloramphenicol, nitrofurans and malachite green,which are banned from all food (I can't even pronounce them!).  Seafood with the worst records of contamination: shrimp, catfish, crabmeat and tilapia.

I believe this goes back to the whole problem of fish/seafood farming.  Yes, the demand for these foods have dramatically increased, there is high risk of overfishing the wild, but to farm them in sewage water or even the same water of the wild that shows ecosystem imbalance should not persist.  The result time and time again is sick fish.  Antibiotics is not an answer; the detrimental impact of drugs, antibiotics, hormone injections on humans defeats the purpose of food.  Food is suppose to build your body up, not get more sick as a result.

And, by the way, I met three people over the weekend who don't know each other, and all of them had food poisoning of some sort.  And, one was from calamari in Iowa. 
 

Here's the article: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40198123