The Living Clean Guide to Avoiding Glyphosate & Other Bad Stuff in Foods (Part 11) – Restaurants, Stores, Supplements & Supplies
Restaurants
Increasingly, restaurants that specialize in offering the exact kind of food that I want to eat are opening up and turning into chains. I list the restaurants fitting into this category that I have visited and enjoyed below, and am especially happy to see that Flower Child and Tender Greens have opened a bunch of new locations recently. (The photo above is the downstairs dining room of the Flower Child in Del Mar, CA.)
If this trend continues, eating out is going to be a lot easier and more enjoyable for those who really care about what’s on our plates. I suggest checking to see if any such restaurants are available in your local area or in the places you visit before giving up and going somewhere else. (The Eat Well Guide is a good place to start an information search.)
If no such restaurants are available, then a compromise may be required. Following is a brief rundown on some of the national chain restaurants that may be have the potential of providing at least a few options worth considering in situations where dining in a restaurant is necessary.
Chipotle has made a commitment to be GMO-free and to serve a minimalist menu made from whole ingredients. Meats served in the restaurants still may receive some GMO feed, however, and their drink selection (mostly soft drinks full of glyphosate-contaminated corn syrup) is not even close to being acceptable. Still, I ate a meal at a Chipotle recently and was surprised at how relatively okay it felt – not just compared to other fast-food restaurants but to mainstream restaurants as well.
Panera has phased in a program where all food additives have been removed from all items on its menu. While nothing in the restaurants is guaranteed to be GMO-free, much less organic, I can generally find something to eat there and it also is a nice place to work on the computer.
Noodles & Company has removed artificial food additives from all the items on its menu and cooks with a variety of fresh foods (including an organic tofu option).
PF Chang’s discusses on its website the pride it takes in sourcing whole foods and preparing them in clean ways. It also was one of the first restaurant chains to offer a full gluten-free menu. I have generally done pretty well eating there and also at its subsidiary Chinese diner chain, Pei Wei.
California Pizza Kitchen and Cheesecake Factory both have numerous fresh salad and vegetable options that may provide a reasonable dining experience.
A few more restaurant chains where I have managed to find food that I was willing to eat in recent years: Au Bon Pain, Corner Bakery, Cracker Barrel and Panda Express.
Finally, as a general rule, I usually do fairly well eating in Japanese restaurants and very often choose them when dining out. I think it’s a good idea to bring along organic soy sauce – such as these convenient San-J tamari travel packets – to use instead of the glyphosate-contaminated stuff that the restaurant will undoubtedly provide though.
Another good option when eating in Japanese restaurants could be to follow Dave Asprey’s lead and mix the wasabi into Bulletproof Brain Octane Oil for sushi- or maki-dipping purposes. It’s actually pretty good that way! (Note that sushi and maki are available with many different ingredients, including with cooked salmon or just vegetables, and that my bringing them up here is not suggesting that I think it is a good idea to start eating raw, high-mercury fish on a regular basis.)
Salads tend to be a comparatively acceptable choice at many restaurants, especially if better dressing than the choices likely to be offered is brought along. Bringing along good butter or ghee to use on plain steamed vegetables is another option to consider when dining in certain restaurants.
Bulletproof Coffee (California)
Farmhouse Restaurant & Cafe (Taos, NM)
Flower Child (Arizona/California/Texas)
Happy Girl Kitchen Cafe (Pacific Grove, CA)
Palm Greens (Palm Springs, CA)
The Butcher & The Baker Cafe (Telluride, CO)
The North End Barbecue & Moonshine (Indianapolis, IN)
Trumpet Blossom Cafe (Iowa City, IA)
Vinaigrette (New Mexico/Texas)
Retailers
Whole Foods has done a remarkable job over the past two decades of bringing more healthful food to much of the U.S., but that does not mean that shopping there is necessarily the best choice in many or most circumstances.
Of the many local healthful food stores I have visited over the past five years, the most impressive is likely Bi-Rite. This is a teeny-tiny grocery store in San Francisco that considers supporting local growers and producers of extraordinarily high-quality organic food products to be a critical part of its core mission. It offers variety of prepared food (including some great ice cream) made in-house; operates a local farm (in part so that leftover food can be fed to pigs rather than thrown out); and wrote a book providing consumers with instructions on how to shop and eat better. Shelf space is extremely limited, but the quality of every single item is so good that buying anything there is a treat. In a TEDx talk a few years ago, founder Sam Mogannam talked about his conception of using the store as a way to unite consumers and producers in a community focused on the love of great food.
Some other local food retailers that have really impressed me include Cid’s Food Market in Taos, NM; Staff of Life Market in Santa Cruz, CA; the New Pioneer Food Co-op in Iowa City, IA; Choices Natural Market in Rockford, IL; Lazy Acres Market in Santa Barbara, CA; and the Community Food Co-Op in Bozeman, MT.
Another couple of food retailers that I heard really good things about when I was living in California were Berkeley Bowl Marketplace (in Berkeley) and BriarPatch Food Co-op (in Grass Valley), but I have not had a chance to visit them yet.
Of course, these are just a few of the outstanding local food stores out there. I would like to compile a comprehensive list, and so please mention others in the comments.
For mail order of packaged-goods products, I have been really impressed with Vitacost. Their selection is really good, providing easy access to many excellent products that I have rarely seen in most local retailers. They currently offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more, and everything arrives beautifully packaged in environmentally friendly materials. Pricing and inventory are both really good as well.
I also have purchased a whole lot of groceries via Amazon (which is often convenient since I am an Amazon Prime member but likely not the best choice from a cost perspective much of the time).
I’ve had a couple of positive experiences ordering from Tropical Traditions, which sells a variety of its own products as well as some other companies’ products through its website.
An online retailer with even deeper discounts than Vitacost on natural-type packaged goods (but that also has a membership fee of $60 per year) is Thrive Market. Dave Asprey did a podcast interview with founder Gunnar Lovelace about the concept last year. I have yet to order from them but probably at some point I will try them out (since the first order does not require the membership fee).
I also have yet to try ordering from iHerb. The company focuses mostly on supplements but sells some groceries as well.
Wilderness Family Naturals, which I also have yet to try, sells a very wide variety of its own products via its website.
Nuts.com sells a wide variety of nuts and many other products (most of them organic) on its mail-order site. I bought some nut milk from them and might consider ordering more from them in the future.
Essential Oils
I have used essential oils pretty intensively over the past year or so, both internally and for massage. Almost invariably, they feel nourishing to me in the way that foods are nourishing, rather than as if they are acting as medicines.
The brand of essential oils that I really like and have used most often has been Florihana. This is a French line of organic or pesticide-free oils that feel really clean and good to me. Presumably because they are selling direct to the consumer and thus do not have the extra marketing costs associated with Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) companies, they seem reasonably priced to me compared to certain other oils of the same quality.
Federal Express shipping is free from France with a $100 order from the Florihana, and so I have tended to choose quite a few different oils that sounded good to me and then just played with them a bit. Some of the oils also are available on the Tropical Traditions website.
I personally feel that it is very important to dilute essential oils with a carrier oil or with alcohol before taking them internally. (If instead an attempt is made just to dilute essential oils by putting them in a glass of water, they oil and the water will not mix and the potential exists for the esophagus to be burned by the oil.)
When I was treating gut issues with essential oils, I would mix up to 20 drops of oil (including wild oregano, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, black pepper, coriander, lemon, orange, mandarin, grapefruit, bergamot, spearmint and peppermint) in a teaspoon or two of Bulletproof Brain Octane oil. Usually I would add a bit of honey or maple syrup, and then was able to eat the mixture off a spoon.
A brand of organic essential oil that I like even better than the Florihana for wild oregano oil is ReThink Oil. That company sells several other essential oils as well, and I would like to give those a try.
Florihana oils are a little expensive to use regular for diffusing. For oils that are slightly less expensive and still good quality (and that I can order one at a time from Amazon rather than feeling obliged to place a large order), I have liked Healing Solutions.
In general, of all the health treatments I have tried, the essential oils have been by far the most enjoyable and quite possibly one of the most helpful. I just wish I had given them a try sooner.
Protein Powder
Although I do not use protein powders very often, the grass-fed whey protein and collagen protein products from Bulletproof seem much cleaner and more healthful than virtually all the other protein powders that I have tried (including other grass-fed ones).
I also once tried the plain version of the grassfed whey protein product from Tera’s Whey and thought it was pretty good.
Bulletproof Bread is made with just eggs and whey protein. It seems an interesting option, especially for those avoiding grains, but I will need to go buy an electric egg beater before I can give it a try.
Supplements
Kitchenware
Personal Care
Products that come into contact with the skin on a regular basis are absorbed into the body in significant amounts, and so I try to be as careful about those products as the ones that I ingest.
Although it is challenging to recommend products to others because preferences as well as reactivities vary quite a lot across individuals, here is a list of some of the brands that I have done well with and that might be worth a try for those seeking products that are relatively free of toxic chemicals.
I really like the Just So line of natural soaps from mold survivor Andrea Fabry of the It Takes Time and momsAWARE websites. Andrea is at least as concerned about toxicity issues as I am, and everything that I have bought from her has seemed really clean and good to me. The soaps are available in a wide variety of formulations, including Skin Deep (with activated charcoal, zeolite, bentonite clay and Rhassoul clay); Natural Sea (with Aalgo seaweed); Sunrise (with red palm oil and mandarin essential oil); and Song of Solomon (with goat milk, manuka honey, dried cedar and frankincense essential oil).
Dr. Bronner’s makes a fairly widely available line of liquid soaps and bar soaps that use only natural ingredients and essential oils. The liquid is especially useful for camping since it is biodegradable and can be used for everything from bathing to shampooing to washing dishes to heavy-duty cleaning. (Dr. Bronner’s also makes a product made just for cleaning called Sal Suds, which I have not tried.)
For natural-type shampoos and conditioners, I have liked products from Acure; from Alaffia; from Suzanne Somers; and from Kiss My Face. (Those interested in trying new natural hair-care products may want to take a look at the results of a recent poll of the ones liked by Mold Avoiders group members.)
Styling gels that I have liked include Suzanne Somers and Aveda.
Fatco makes a line of clean moisturizing products based on beef tallow that have impressed me quite a bit. Their Fat Stick – which can be used as a lip balm or general moisturizer – is especially nice.
Just So also makes some very good natural face creams and lip glosses.
Both of these companies – Fatco and Just So – also make natural deodorants that I have heard good reports on even from people who say most natural deodorants have not worked for them.
The toothpaste brands that I like are Nature’s Gate, Dr. Bronner’s and Redmond Earth Paste.
I’ve tried a variety of makeup brands, including some natural ones, and seem to have done best with Aveda.
For laundry, for a long time I was only using a homemade mixture of washing soda, borax and castille soap (either Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap or grated bar soap).
The Just So line includes a Old-Fashioned Laundry Soap (consisting of pastured pork lard; coconut oil; effective microbes; and orange/lemon essential oils) is a good choice to use in homemade laundry detergent. They will grate the soap before sending it out upon request.
Although I like using the homemade laundry detergent, I also feel like sometimes my clothes get a lot cleaner with Tide Free & Gentle (especially when I am using a washing machine). That detergent feels okay to me at this point, but many people may not be able to tolerate it or want to use it.
A natural laundry product that I have yet to try but that gets great reviews on Amazon is Molly’s Suds. (I’m also interested in their wool dryer balls.)
For dishes, I always have thought that Dawn Dishwashing Liquid has been much more effective for washing dishes than natural products, and it has felt okay to me even when I was very reactive. I prefer Dawn Free & Gentle, but the Original Scent is not too bad either.
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