I mentioned last week that I have set a new goal to buy organic as much as possible for the health and well-being of my family. I owe a lot of my new found insight to a wonderful book called The Conscious Kitchen: The New Way to Buy and Cook Food – to Protect the Earth, Improve Your Health, and Eat Deliciously by Alexandra Zissu.
Not only is the book a great read, but it is packed with helpful information on where our food comes from, how to buy healthier food, and be a conscious consumer. Thanks to My Blog Spark and Seventh Generation, I was able to interview the author, Alexandra Zissu. Here are some of my questions along with her responses:
1) How can we make the kitchen a safe, non-toxic environment for the whole family?
The Conscious Kitchen is a friendly and accessible guide (I hope!) to methodically working through the kitchen. Anyone can turn their kitchen into a safe, non-toxic environment for the whole family. Source the best, purest, most local produce, meat, seafood, and dairy products you can find. Cook in and store food in tried and true materials (cast iron, enamel coated cast iron, stainless steel, glass) that aren’t known to leach harmful chemical components into your food. Keep the kitchen well ventilated. Clean only with natural products. Filter your tap water if needed. Avoid plastic whenever you can. Repair, reduce, reuse, recycle, compost. If you can’t do all of this at once – and who can? — choose what you’re willing to do and add more as it makes sense. It’s a process, but a very worthwhile one. And it’s truly not complicated.
2) What’s the biggest hidden household danger all parents should be aware of?
It’s often the invisible that’s dangerous. Indoor air can be pretty scary stuff. Most of us know about things like carbon monoxide or even radon. But there are fumes in our homes from cleaning products, cosmetics, volatile chemicals from water heated up in the dishwasher and the shower, other chemicals outgassing from paint, furniture, mattresses, carpets, shower curtains, and even toys. All of these are potentially harmful in varying degrees, and most of us have our homes really well sealed to keep heat and cold in. Throw open your windows! Make sure there is ample ventilation in all rooms of the home. Studies have shown that outdoor air pollution – even in cities – is nowhere near as bad as indoor.
Also hidden, or at least not well understood: dust. Chemical fumes from all of the things I just mentioned basically land on, then ride piggyback on dust particles. Adults might not be crawling around on the floor and putting their fingers in their mouths, buts kids sure are. Wet dusting and vacuuming often with a vacuum containing a HEPA filter is good common sense.
3) What are some tips for people who want to go green their home but don’t know where to start?
There are so many changes people can make. And any step towards green makes a difference and gets the ball rolling in a greener direction.
*Buying organic — and preferably local – food at a farmers’ market is a great way to start off going green; ingestion is a direct route of exposure to so many different chemicals and potential hazards. And choosing organic is better for the earth and the farmers that grow your food.
*Reduce indoor air pollution. As mentioned in my answer to your first question, air is invisible so it’s kind of a hard concept to grasp. But there are many simple and inexpensive ways to drastically clean up the air you’re breathing. This is especially important if you have young children with developing systems at home. You can do this by switching your conventional cleaners to “green” versions, by instating a “no shoes” policy in the house, and by washing clothing instead of drycleaning it, or choosing a CO2 or a wet cleaner instead of a traditional drycleaner.
*I also urge people to avoid plastic when and where they can, and especially in the kitchen for health reasons (there are some hormone disrupting chemicals in plastic that have gotten a lot of media attention lately that can and do get into your food) as well as environmental ones (the manufacture of plastic is a pretty polluting and energy intensive endeavor and most municipalities don’t recycle all of it).
*Make it methodical. If you’re avoiding plastic in the kitchen, avoid it elsewhere, too: this means plastic shower curtains, toys, covers for mattresses, and more. If you’re giving up on synthetic fragrances in conventional kitchen cleaning products to avoid the hormone disruptors, give up synthetic fragrance elsewhere, too (air fresheners, perfume, cosmetics, candles). Ventilation is a great idea in the kitchen, and everywhere else as well. Open windows and let the air flow. The kitchen is a hub of the home. Every change you make here can usually be applied in some way in the rest of the house.
If you would like to know more, make sure you come back tomorrow for Win-It Wednesday. I have a fun giveaway with Seventh Generation products, and a copy of The Conscious Kitchen!
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