Featured News: UN Says Eat Less Meat to Curb Global Warming

Green Living

Everyone seems to have green (environmentally-friendly) living on their minds. Dr. Ragendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recently stated that people should make an effort to eat less meat to help reduce global warming. He suggets that people should avoid consuming meat for one day each week.

Meat production can harm the environment in several ways. The activities involved with rearing animals are responsible for almost one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions (according to the UN) and also leads to global warming and habitat destruction.

What do you girls think about this topic? Do you think that there are ways for farmers to reduce their environmental impact, such as using free-range and organic farming techniques? What do you do to decrease your personal impact on the environment?

Be sure to check out the "I'm The Change" message board at newmoongirls.com, where girls are currently discussing what they can do to help the environment!

The Best Foods To Buy Organically!

Hey Girls!

I’ve noticed a lot of you have voiced concern about the environment in some of your blog posts and comments. One great thing to do for the environment and your health is to eat organically. Organic foods are produced with no pesticides, chemicals, or hormones and they often taste a lot better too! However organic grocery shopping is expensive and it’s hard for most families to afford to buy all organic food. So if you have to decide on just a few items to buy, here are the top foods that should be bought organically whenever possible because they are more chemically treated than other foods:

1.) Meat: Animals are often raised with tons of antibiotics to fight disease and hormones to speed up the animal’s growth, so they can be butchered and sold quickly. Buying certified organic meat (when food is certified organic it has the sticker pictured above on the right!) it means that farmers have met USDA standards where animals aren’t injected with anything and only consume organic feed.
2.) Milk: Did you know that pesticides and other chemicals have been found in women’s breast milk? This is proof that foods you consume that are sprayed with chemicals remain in your body! When milk is produced organically cows do not eat grain with pesticides and are never injected with hormones like rGBH or rbST.
3.) Coffee: Probably most of you girls don’t drink coffee yet (I don’t even drink it!) but if you do someday it’s another thing that’s important to buy organically. Buying Fair Trade Certified Organic coffee not only guarantees that chemicals were not used on the plants, but it also means that fair prices were paid to the farmers and that farmers were treated fairly!
4.) Peaches, Apples, and Strawberries: These three fruits have more pesticides than other fruits and are often imported from countries that have less strict regulations for pesticide use.
5.) Sweet Bell Peppers, Grapes, and Tomatoes: All these food have really thin skins that are often heavily sprayed with pesticides more so than other vegetables because they are so prone to insects. So because of the thin skin the pesticides leak through and contaminate all of the food making it impossible to wash off.

6.) Celery: Celery is even worse because it has no skin at all on it, so it's almost impossible to wash off the chemicals sprayed on it.
7.) Lettuce: Believe it or not lettuce is often sprayed with the most powerful combination of pesticides. If you can’t buy it organically, it’s really easy to grow it in a garden.
8.) Potatoes: This vegetable often gets sprayed with a huge amount of pesticides plus lots of fungicides which are added into the soil.

I don't want to scare you girls and tell you not to eat these foods if they're not organic! It's just that it's been proven to be better for you to eat organically because there are no chemicals and often more vitamins and minerals in the food! But even if you can't eat these foods organically, you should still eat them and enjoy them because they're good for you and contain important nutrients. What are your thoughts on organic food versus conventionally grown foods? Do you think organic tastes better?