foodscout blog

Quite by accident, we’ve discovered a great natural remedy for the awful itch of mosquito bites. As soon as a bug bite starts to appear and itch, scratch it with a dry brush that you’d use for body exfoliation. The immediate benefit is that it will be the most satisfying itch you ever scratched.

Secondly, you will notice that your bite does not continue to itch. If it does, scratch it with the brush again. At most, I’ve had to do this three times before it stopped itching permanently, but usually once or twice does it.

And finally, unlike scratching your itches the traditional way, the dry brush will not break the skin or leave any redness or scabs whatsoever.

We’ve been getting eaten up by mosquitoes pretty good this summer and the dry brush has worked like a charm for us. It also works great for rashes.

Give it a try and let us know if it works for you too!

After mowing the back yard for the first time in over a year, I discovered a baby bunny. He was cornered by the fence and too terrified to run. I managed to fight off the urge to pick him up and play with him, but I did run inside to grab my camera and get John to come outside and see him.

“Should we feed him?” John asked quite sincerely.

“He’s a bunny. His world is made of food.” John immediately felt silly for asking such a question. As though us humans would do a better job of feeding a bunny than he could do for himself. Humans don’t even know the difference between actual food and the boxes full of chemical-laden junk they sell in grocery stores.

But it got me thinking. The world isn’t only made of bunny food. It’s made of food. For everyone.

If there was a food shortage for a few months, most of us would starve to death while edible plants were growing all around us. Or worse, we would have already killed them off with weed killer. They now sell dandelion greens in natural food stores. People pay $3 for a bunch, while mowing over the dandelions growing in their own yards.

Don’t have a green thumb for a vegetable garden? You can still include some garden fresh foods in your diet. Find out what grows in your area. Dandelion, lambsquarters, plantain (not the banana), and lots more are probably growing all around your neighborhood right now. Let a portion of your yard grow wild. See what shows up.

There is nothing more nutritious than wild plants. Just make sure you pick them from areas free of car exhaust, pesticides, and passing dogs.

For the sake of the planet and for the sake of our health, we’ve been eating as much organic produce as possible for several years, regardless of any cost difference. A few years ago, we began hearing about the “Buy Local” trend, felt that made a lot of sense, and now we do our best to buy produce that’s at least from a nearby state, if not from a local farmer’s market. But never being satisfied with “good enough” we’ve decided to do even better.

After dabbling unsuccessfully with planting a vegetable garden over the last year or so, we finally got serious, got professional help, and are creating a beautiful backyard garden. Linda over at Mountain Rainwater helped us by building 2 raised beds to get us started, bringing in some rich organic soil, and telling us what to plant. If you happen to live in the Asheville, NC area and are looking for help getting your garden started, we highly recommend Mountain Rainwater*.

We planted a little later in the summer than is ideal but we found a few items that should still grow well in our Southern mountain climate. From seed, we planted cucumbers, summer squash, a few okras, chard, and cilantro. Presumably, if nurseries are selling any vegetable starts this time of year, it should be OK to plant these already started vegetables as well. We found some peppers, tomatoes, and a tomatillo plant that Linda gave to us.

It’s now our job to keep the cats out of our garden beds, and our soil watered if there has not been enough rain. Currently, we are using city water from the hose which has tons of chlorine and who-knows-what-else in it. In a future project, we will be adding rain barrels, a solar water pump, and some soaker hoses so that our freshest produce possible will be watered with the cleanest water possible. Stay tuned for that!

It’s been 10 days since we planted and already all of our seeds are sprouting up and our pepper plants are starting to produce little peppers. We can’t wait to be able to eat the absolute freshest produce possible on a regular basis. As we learn about what to plant when, and how to keep our garden thriving, we’ll post that information here to share it with you. And if you have any tips to share, we’d love to hear ‘em!

*We receive absolutely no compensation in any form for recommending Mountain Rainwater. We are just truly happy with the service we received.

There has been a lot of concern these last several days over Swine Flu, a severe flu thought to have started its most recent round in Mexico. The government’s advice? Wash your hands often, cover your mouth when you cough, and most of all don’t panic.

We concur with all of that advice, most of all the last one. And we offer one more piece of advice not likely to come from officials: eat well and consume plenty of anti-viral foods.

When your body is healthy, and your immune system is at its best, you are able to combat viruses more effectively. Here are some tips on staying healthy during a flu outbreak (or any outbreak for that matter):

• Don’t eat sugar! There are few things more important than this when battling illness. Sugar paralyzes your immune system for as much as 2 hours after eating it, giving viruses the opportunity to take hold of your health. So avoid it at all costs. If you’re a sugar junky, just remind yourself that this ban on sugar is not permanent and you can have it again soon. Also, there are plenty of naturally sweetened treats out there that don’t use sugar. Indulge in those. Ideally, you would avoid all processed food, especially starches. But do the best you can.
• Eat anti-viral foods. Coconut oil, cranberries, dandelion leaves, garlic, and mango are all believed to fight viruses. Coconut oil, garlic, and cranberries have scientific studies to back up the claim. Eating these foods won’t guarantee perfect health, but they will definitely help. And don’t forget your Vitamin C and Zinc!
• Enjoy a cup of Pau D’Arco tea. Experts have isolated over 20 active chemicals in pau d’arco and it has been shown to effectively combat bacterial and viral infections. Pau d’arco increases the supply of oxygen to cells, helping to destroy bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses.

If you are planning to travel by plane or know you will be in tight quarters with many others, take special care to follow the above guidelines before and during your travels.

One year ago today, we launched foodscout.org. We built the site and collected the data for it as a labor of love after our frustration at not being able to easily find and organize basic information about natural foods, their nutrients, and their health benefits.

Over the last year, we have watched our traffic steadily quadruple! We have received appreciative emails from other health seekers who were looking for a place to start on their health journeys and found it at foodscout.

To all of you who have visited us regularly, passed our link on to your friends and family, and posted our site with an enthusiastic recommendation, we thank you!

We have many ideas and updates in the works that we can’t wait to share with you. Here’s to another year of increasingly good health!

What could be more important to our health than fresh, clean drinking water? Most municipal water is full of chemicals, such as chlorine, fluorine, and who knows what else. More people than ever are turning to expensive home water filtration systems or signing up for water delivery services.

Now, a new website, findaspring.com, is helping people find and share the location of fresh natural spring water, so that health seekers can get clean water straight from nature. They are just getting started, so if you know of a natural spring, submit it to their database.

As they say on their site, you’ll need to independently verify that the water is safe for drinking as findaspring does not test the validate water safety.

Visit findaspring.com and “Reclaim Your Water”

Every health and diet magazine these days is talking about flat stomach secrets. We’ve had some recent insights into this topic so we figured we’d join in the discussion. If you are close to your intended weight but you can’t quite figure out how to get rid of that little poochie belly, this article is for you.

As a healthy 33-year-old female and a healthy, let’s just say, “over 40″ male, we struggled for years with the question of how to get rid of that little gut. We were already eating a healthy diet – no sugar, very little processed foods, lots of fresh produce. We work at our computers all day so we don’t get a lot of exercise and probably won’t change those habits any time soon.

A combination of a couple of new lifestyle changes seems to have done the trick for both of us and the first one doesn’t cost a dime. The second is admittedly a little pricey.

1. Don’t eat past 6pm: You’ve heard this before, but now really do it. If you don’t get home from work until 6, make dinner right away and shoot for 7pm. We learned this trick from the book, Quantum Eating, by Tanya Zavasta. She actually suggests not eating past 2pm, but we aren’t ready for that. We started with a 7pm “curfew” and then moved it to 6pm after a few weeks. According to Zavasta, your body benefits from this nightly 14+ hour fast in numerous ways, not least of which is it gives your body a chance to finish digesting and move on to the important task of cleansing and detoxing. When you eat late at night, your body can’t burn all those calories and instead stores them as fat. Related to this change in eating habits, we eat our biggest meals for breakfast and lunch and have only a large green smoothie for dinner, making digestion in the evening even easier on our bodies.
2. Cellercise!: The Cellerciser is a small trampoline, sometimes called a “rebounder”. According to their website, exercising on the Cellerciser “applies weight and movement to every cell causing the entire body, it’s parts and functions to become stronger, more flexible and healthier.” It sounds a little cheesy, but it made enough sense that we decided to give it a try. We use it every morning for 12 minutes. It’s a fun way to wake up in the morning (much healthier than a cup of coffee) and it feels like a good workout when we’re done. After using the Cellerciser for a couple of weeks, we noticed more definition in our muscles. After a few more weeks, it translated into flat stomachs for both of us. The more we use it, the better our stomachs look, both in terms of flatness and muscle definition.

We are always changing aspects of our diet and habits to achieve better health and there may be other factors that have helped in our quest for a flat stomach. We mention these two specifically because we have directly observed that if we cheat on either one, there are clear consequences that show on our bellies. Once we get back to our good habits, that pooch melts away within a day or two.

These obviously aren’t scientific studies, but they work well for two of us. Give it a try and see if it works for you too!

We have no affiliation with the Cellerciser company and make absolutely no money from them. We just really like it!

This recent article on OrganicConsumers.org offers a highly compelling argument for eating natural whole foods and eliminating processed and genetically-modified foods from our diets.

The article, entitled Why Schools Should Remove Gene-Altered Foods from Their Cafeterias focuses on kids in school. But thousands of individuals have reported their own experiences of giving up processed foods and no longer needing medications for chronic illnesses or mood disorders. On foodscout, we have pages specifically about Mood and Learning and the foods and nutrients in natural foods that are beneficial for each.

At foodscout, we don’t just believe that food is a factor in our health and happiness. We believe it is the central factor. You are what you eat.

Although over 300 varieties of asparagus are known to exist, only about 20 are considered to be edible. With its origins in the Mediterranean, this vegetable has been used medicinally for about 2000 years.

Asparagus contains purines, which break down to form uric acid, so people prone to kidney stones, gout, or other uric acid-related problems, may want to avoid eating this vegetable. A more harmless side-effect of eating asparagus is the presence, soon after eating it, of a strong odor in the urine caused by the natural formation of various compounds.

Asparagus is especially high in Vitamin K, Folate, Vitamin A, and Iron, making it an excellent food to eat during pregnancy.

Get more information on the Asparagus page on foodscout!

Drinking filtered or bottled water is commonplace these days. Few health-conscious people will drink water straight from the tap if they don’t have to. But even if you avoid contaminated drinking water you could still be tremendously exposed to chlorine and chloramine in the shower. This exposure can be drying and irritating to eyes, skin, and hair. Chlorine also becomes airborne in a shower and is absorbed through the lungs and skin. Long, hot showers lead to the highest amount of exposure and absorption.

Many companies are now selling shower filters primarily aimed at removing chlorine and chloramine from your shower water. They vary greatly in price and all make impressive claims about their effectiveness. Unfortunately, shower filters do not have to follow the same government standards that drinking water filters require.

While there is a lot of great information online, it is difficult to find an answer to the simple question, “Which shower filter is the most effective at removing chlorine?” but if you dig around enough, you can find enough independent studies and user reviews to piece together a decent view of the pros and cons of each filter.

There are three types of filtration used in shower filters – activated carbon, KDF (Kinetic Degradation Fluxion) media, and vitamin C.

• Activated carbon filters, which are used in Brita and Pur pitcher filters, work well but only in cold water. They also tend to clog easily especially in more contaminated water.
• KDF media filters remove chlorine but not chloramine. However, these filters also do not function well at lower water pressures and quickly becomes ineffective in very contaminated water.
• Vitamin C filters remove all chlorine and chloramine. Vitamin C filters last a long time and are inexpensive and organic. However, they only remove chlorine and chloramines – nothing else. These filters last around 6 months, which is much longer than other filters.

For our household, getting rid of the chlorine and chloramine was a top priority so we decided on the Vitamin C shower filter. There are two vendors for these types of filters – VitaShower and Sonaki. VitaShower vitamin C filters list for around $40. The Sonaki is a showerhead unit that is available with different types of heads and takes a replaceable vitamin C cartridge. $99 will buy the initial setup and each additional cartridge is around $40.00.

We have been using the VitaShower filter for 3 months now and the difference in our hair and skin are noticeable. It immediately removed the overpowering chlorine smell, which has not returned.