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A published, award-winning poet, Farrah Sarafa recently earned a second masters degree in comparative literature from Columbia University. She continues to write about culture, art, film, women’s health, race and politics. Her best friends owned the first Whole Foods in Detroit, where she began to do yoga compulsively (before it became cool). She has worked in vitamin stores, learned macrobiotics, and written about health, diet, nutrition and the environment. Her column aims to show that wholesome eating and the use of chemical free products may ward off cancer and ensure harmony.
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The United States consumes 19 million barrels of oil a day, 25 percent of the global supply, but we have less than 2 percent of the world’s proved oil reserves. That means no amount of domestic drilling will reduce gas prices or provide enough to meet America’s daily demand for oil.
Not everyone can have a living roof, but most people can have a “green” roof fairly easily. And the great news is that improving the energy efficiency of your roof doesn’t have to be costly. Small improvements can deliver a big difference, not only to your home’s energy usage, but also to the size of your energy bill.
As a “pescatarian,” a vegetarian who eats fish, for more than a decade, I’ve had to learn about the health value of different kinds of fish. Healthier, lighter, and better for the heart than artery-congestive red meats known to cause Alzheimer’s disease, heart diseases and colon cancer, it is important to know where the fish we eat comes from and how it was caught.
It wasn’t until meeting Rakan, marketing distributor of Chartreuse tea, an herbal tea company that specializes in combining USA grown herbs into healing, medicinally effective concoctions, that I came to discover the true historical relevance of plant leaves, seeds, flowers and extracts.
The olive tree is a regenerative and wild food staple that is a source of Mediterranean fertility, strength, and power. It produces an oil hailed as a golden liquid by Homer; it is the symbol of Athena.
“Multi-grain” refers to breads, cereal, or cookies that contain two or more kinds of grains. While multigrain products are healthier than white flour products, they’re composed of the weakest, least nutritious part of the grain: the endosperm.
The words on ingredient labels can be misleading. The word fragrance, a misleading term, is too often overlooked, as it might really indicate a combination of 100 or more different chemicals. Many of them may be toxic or harmful like phthalates, petroleum based ingredients, or flowers sprayed with chemicals or fertilizer.
Oceans, rain, cascading waterfalls: countless poems derive their inspiration from the important liquid on which our emotional, physical and spiritual operations depend. Controlled addition of fluorides to the public water supply helps to keep the enamel of our teeth from wearing down. It prevents gum disease and tooth decay, the latter of which is extremely expensive to treat.
Raw, vegan, or South Beach Diet? None of these methods really caught my attention like macrobiotics did. Macro means big and biotic means life, so the term, “big view of life,” refers to a balanced, wholesome system of eating first coined by George Ohsawa in 1959. A Japanese philosopher, Ohsawa claimed to cure his own tuberculosis by applying Chinese and Japanese folkloric techniques.
