Foodies Making Baby Food

One of our first batches of baby food!

An ominous shadow hangs over the baby food industry. For at least the last few years, strangely vague reports have been circulating that baby food is often very high in both lead and arsenic—not necessarily high enough to be illegal or immediately damaging, but high enough to be worrisome in the long run.

What I find most outrageous about these reports is that specific companies and products are never listed. I guess their corporate protections are more important than our health. These reports do give some clues, however. They say that the products with the highest levels are fruit juices, root vegetables (sweet potatoes and carrots are named) and sometimes apples and pears. They say that very often baby food is higher in lead than their adult food equivalents. However, lead amounts vary from company to company but we consumers are left in the dark about which ones are the offenders.

This warrants a lot of speculation. Does the high lead come from the extra machine processing in making the purees? From the added water? If so, do all foods that are mechanically chopped and pureed or with added water have high lead or just baby food?

Reports speculate that the issues with root vegetables could be soil contamination. If that is the case, then making baby food at home would not necessarily make a difference, unless you check the region and soil quality where the produce was grown. Sweet potatoes seem particularly high in lead. Is that because sweet potatoes do a good job of picking up lead in the soil or is it because sweet potatoes are more typically grown in areas with high lead (such as post-industrial areas of the U.S. South with poor industry regulations?) Before serving sweet potatoes, I call the stores to find out the state of origin--if it's Texas, Louisiana or Mississippi, I won't touch it.

Overall, you will likely reduce lead if you prepare homemade baby food, even if you don't eliminate all of it.

Commercial Baby Food

We started introducing solid foods to Lucy by buying mostly Beechnut Naturals. We were exhausted and busy, and making baby food seemed like an enormous task at the time. Beechnut seems to be a relatively reputable company (although that is definitely a crap shoot as I am basing this only on intuition after some emails with their customer service). We liked that they do not add water to most of their products. I would not be surprised to find out that the added water may be a source of the higher concentrations of lead, as municipal water containing lead is a problem all over the country (not just in Flint, MI). The water may also bring chlorine and fluoride, too, depending on the quality of filtration. It's best to limit as many variables as possible, I say. You can't ensure the quality of every spoonful that goes into your baby's mouth, but you can do your due diligence to give the best possible outcome and then hope for the best.

The deal breaker for me was discovering how they skimp out on quality ingredients. Several of Beechnut's products feature avocados. They even picture a big avocado on the jar. That's for good reason, as avocados are super nutritious, especially being a great source of fat. That's why I was surprised when the nutrition label on an avocado-containing product showed no discernable traces of fat. I went to the Beechnut website and to their credit they listed the proportion of ingredients. All of the avocado-containing products that I researched contained only 5% avocado! Seriously. No wonder it is not enough to move the dial on the nutrition label.

Between the reports of lead and arsenic, the lack of fresh/raw choices and the way companies cheap out on ingredients, it made all the more sense to simply make our own. Perhaps the best part of buying commercial baby food for a few weeks was accumulating a supply of glass jars to re-use.

Baby Bullet

We love using the Baby Bullet. Andrea and I are seasoned veterans in making NutriBullet smoothies ourselves, so that definitely helps. The main difficulty about the Baby Bullet is that it can be temperamental if the amount of food you want to blend is either too much or too little. You simply can't get a good blend if the amount is off. I've shed a few curse words fighting with the machine, having to add water or take out ingredients to get it to blend up in a good swirl. It definitely takes practice.

It is also difficult to make large batches of food. The machine will overheat and spontaneously konk out, and you'll be left wondering if it's going to re-start again or whether it's done for good. It can take a long time before it cools enough to work again.

Other than that, it is really quite easy to make baby food. The hard part of making baby food is all the cooking, peeling, washing and storing, but the blending itself is the easiest part of the process.

Storage - We find that the blended baby foods don't last very long in the fridge at all. Books will tell you that purees can last 3-5 days, but in our experience they often start to taste funky after 24 hours. It may still be edible but it can leave an aftertaste. That makes sense, as the bullet breaks down food at the cellular level, so any protections the food may have had against deterioration have been dismantled. Whatever we don't use immediately after blending we freeze. Also, once a frozen jar is thawed and used at a meal, we never save any of the leftovers. Andrea or I will eat it but we won't use it again for Lucy.
     When we're busy, we can't always make all the baby food we want in one sitting. We have to do it in stages. Blended purees may not last very long in the fridge, but steamed vegetables do. They also deteriorate but not nearly as quickly. We sometimes keep glass containers of steamed fruits and vegetables in the fridge and blend them up when we can. That buys a few days.

Silicone Food Steamer - The best item we bought was a silicone food steamer. It was less than $10 and well worth it. It does a marvelous job preserving taste and nutrition by gently steaming vegetables/fruits rather than depleting them in a boil. It is also very fast as it takes almost no time at all to get the small quantity of water to start doing its work.

Organic and Pasture-Raised - We try to give Lucy an almost completely organic diet. We want to give her the best possible start, and we figure that now is the time we'll have the most control over her diet. We hope she has a physical memory of what good food tastes and feels like that she can come back to later in life.
     We're not sticklers for the organic label but we follow closely the "dirty dozen" list from the Environmental Working Group. We stick to organic when it comes to their top 20 bad guys. We are flexible about the rest. Organic is still the best but sometimes finances and sheer availability make finding all organic options difficult.

Grains - The only grain Lucy has eaten so far is organic whole-grain steel cut oats. It does not make up a large portion of her diet. She eats 8-13 oz of solid food each day right now, and of that oats comprise only 2-3 oz. We are holding off on high gluten-containing grains until she gets older, per standard pediatrician recommendations.
     Many people give their children rice cereal as a first food. We haven't done that for a couple of reasons. First, Lucy is never far from constipation, so rice is not likely to help. Second, it is very hard to find rice that is low in lead and arsenic. Rice is grown in flooded, low-lying areas, and it absorbs considerable water during its growing process. As result, it does a marvelous job picking up contaminants. Even worse, it is often grown in areas of high contamination to begin with, such as East Asia or in Gulf coast states in the U.S. There are lots of refineries from the leaded-gas days (in "red" states with poor regulatory oversight) and much of the nearby land is now used to grow rice, sweet potatoes and cotton. However, tests show that the California-grown Lundberg brand of rice is consistently very low in lead and arsenic. If/when we do start to use rice, we'll stick to this brand exclusively.
     This is a lot of needless worry, because the world is full of all sorts of gluten-free grains without all the potential toxic baggage of rice. Quinoa and sorghum are a few such examples. If you want to bulk up your baby's foods with some carb additions, try these! Bob's Red Mill is a great company to start with, especially their Grains of Discovery line (they are not the only game around, there are so many other great companies, but Bob's is a good one stop shop for a lot of things). It offers most of these grains and their products are readily available all over. NOTE:  Millet is controversial and potentially dangerous and I recommend doing research before serving (I'm not serving it)! In fact, I'd recommend researching all of them. Many grains are used all over the world but some do not have a long history in the U.S., so their idiosyncrasies are not well known. Quinoa is probably fine to consume, but I try to avoid large quantities only because the quinoa market has been so destructive of indigenous cultures in Peru.

Fats & Oils - We know how important it is to give high-quality fats and oils to a baby. It is necessary for processing fat-soluble nutrients as well as for proper brain and central nervous system development. Human breast milk is even higher in fat than cow's milk. Unfortunately, many Americans are still operating out of the anti-fat hysteria movement. That movement is dying but it will take some time to re-tool and re-train the whole population.  In any case, we generally make sure that most meals have a healthy fat component. Lucy likes extra virgin olive oil, unrefined coconut oil, avocado or meats. We tried unsalted grass fed butter once and she didn't seem to like it, but we just haven't gotten around to trying again.
     We add coconut oil and olive oil to most meals, unless they contain avocado or meat. We always add it in when the food is being served. We never blend it in, freeze it or re-heat it.
     Sometimes for dinner we offer just a meal of fruit--no fats or proteins. It's good to have balanced meals, but sometimes it's also good to just not be so strict about it. Fruit especially is good to serve by itself.

Meats - Experts are saying that it's not only good but advisable to offer meats at an early stage. Lucy has so far had chicken, beef and pork. She seems to do well with them. She's less enthusiastic about beef, it seems, but it's hard to tell.  She gets meat about 5 times each week. Some foodies will recommend a lot more meat.
     Grass Fed Liver - If I want my foodie credentials, then that means offering the ultimate: Beef liver from grass fed cows. Lucy has had it a couple of times. Honestly, I think it is a very intense food and I feel it is best to offer it sparingly. She had a couple servings and then had trouble sleeping the next few days. Coincidence?  Perhaps, but I know that beef liver can make it hard for me to sleep if I have too much. It makes me feel permanently awake and energetic—which can be a great thing in the right amounts and during the appropriate times and a terrible choice at other times.

Made in Nature - I searched high and low for prunes that were organic, had no added water and no added preservatives. This turned out to be a difficult task, especially with plums not in season. I finally found the Made in Nature brand. I love this stuff. We keep bags of their plums (i.e. prunes), apricots and mission figs on hand at all times. They are great to throw into a blend for added fiber, sweetness or as a thickening agent. They are super nutritious, delicious and easy to use. They can add richness to an otherwise bland meal. The only caveat is that you may have to blend for longer periods to break up the rather thick textures. I discovered them at Fresh Thyme Farmers Market but they are far cheaper ordering direct from the manufacturer online.

Sweetening the Pot - It may sound unhealthy at first, but we try to blend up Lucy's foods in a medium that brings sweetness and flavor. We learned a long time ago that some foods need a little extra help. I mean, who wants a meal of nothing but broccoli? We have found that meals go down easier if they are blended with pears, apples, peas or butternut squash. Apple-broccoli may sound weird to an adult, but it works just fine as baby food.
     I am not worried about offering foods that are "too sweet." We are not adding any sweeteners or fruit juices. We are simply offering sweet fruits and vegetables all intact with their natural fibers (well, except for the peels . . . for now).
     One time Lucy had a raw pear (peeled) and seemed to have acute stomach aches that day. Its hard to tell if she's just not developmentally ready for it or whether it was a fluke. Naturally, there could have been other explanations for her behavior, but I don't like the idea of experimenting on my daughter. We simply avoid raw pear for now, but we'll try it again in a few months. However, she has had lots of raw apple with no discernible problems. Cooked apples and pears are much sweeter, however.
     Cascadian Farms frozen peas are amazingly sweet and well worth it.

Favorite Foods - Like a lot of babies, Lucy prefers sweet tastes to savory. Her favorite meals are oatmeal with combinations of fruits. She loves tropical fruits, especially.

It's hard to get creative. Lucy eats a lot of rich, healthy foods, but she also eats a lot of the same things over and over. Hardly a day goes boy when she doesn't have oats, avocados, bananas and peas in some form. I know I'd be sick of them if I did that. But we also serve foods that make us feel great when we eat them. We often enjoy a big bowl of oatmeal with fruit or a meal of avocado and fruits or concoctions of health meats and veggies. Sometimes when I'm traveling I'll find a grocery store and get an avocado, apple, banana and maybe some pistachios for breakfast and I just feel great.

Some of our favorite foods:

chicken - mango - avocado
banana - avocado - blueberry
oatmeal - banana - prune, apricot and/or fig - (served with coconut oil)
pea - cauliflower - (served with olive oil)

That's it for now! We appreciate hearing other tips,  recommendations and insights from others, as well!

Now Playing in Our House: Moana

 

If there's a TV on in our house, it is probably playing Moana (or episodes of The Detour after Lucy is sleeping, but that's another story). We have tried to avoid TV time for Lucy at her young age but we do offer it here and there. I especially leaned on it recently when Andrea was sick.

 

Honestly, Moana is just about the only thing Lucy'll watch. Whenever it starts, she stops whatever she's doing and turns to be immersed. She's only interested in the songs and the grandmother's talk at the beginning and loses interest in the rest, but that is a good chunk of the movie.

 

The movie is superb. Andrea has used it at school for its science and ecology lessons. It's a great portrayal of Polynesian life, culture and religion. It is chock full of profound spiritual wisdom--seriously, it is quite deep. Everything from a charming Polynesian village that has lost its way as its traditions began to hold it back to a young girl ("not a princess!") struggling to be true to who she is. It culminates in an amazing message of peace, compassion and nonviolence (this movie should put to rest any notions that peace is for wimps). There are lessons in every scene about the power of choice and how the universe supports you when you decide to do something.

 

We can just about feel the history of the people when we watch and listen. I get chills. Deep rhythms of spirituality permeate the whole movie. A very high level of consciousness is displayed in this movie that is really awe inspiring. So hard to explain, best to experience.

 

Lucy has great taste! Maybe she likes it partly because her mom had it on repeat in the background when she first came home from the hospital.

 

The music is incredibly good. I'll be sure to check out other music by Opetaia Foa'i in the future. The whole music team is great but his pieces in particular really transport you and communicate the spiritual wisdom through song and music.

 

I know it's Disney but I think they did a great job this time. We really can't say enough good things about it.

 

A clip with my favorite song.

 

 

 

Mass Shotings, redux

If you do what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always gotten.

Mass shootings are very common in our country. Virtually nothing has actually been done to address any of the suspected causes. I'm not aware of Congress debating the pros and cons of any proposed plans to address this problem.

Therefore, we should all be willing to admit that mass shootings will continue at about the same rate (or perhaps greater, since the causes have not been addressed) than before. Right? This is just basic logic. We should all be willing to agree on that regardless on where we stand politically or what we think are the causes of mass shootings.

So... is this something we are willing to accept? Gun control people actually have a plan. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. NRA-types... don't actually have a plan, other than the slow arming of the entire population. If gun control isn't the solution, then what, pray tell, is?

Let's say you make a machine in a factory. Everything is going well until suddenly you start getting a lot of complaints from customers. The product is now defective. What do you do?

Common sense: You do more inspections... hire more people... fire some others... have stronger consequences for bad work and extra praise for good work… add some extra regulations... remove some other regulations... you do SOMETHING. You adjust the process and add extra oversight. You may do this indefinitely, but at the very least, you do this until the problem has been solved.

 

Regulation of some kind is generally part of the solution--both in the short and long term.

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting in the U.S.A.

We all know the drill, because we have been through it so many times:

IF the suspect in a mass shooting is an immigrant or African-American, then the answer from so many is to build a wall, restrict refugees and increase police and criminal sentencing to the max. We sound the "terrorism" alarm and quickly attack civil liberties and bomb Middle Eastern nations.

IF the suspect is white, we're told that laws and regulations never work because criminals break laws anyway and this is simply the "price for freedom." They say he must have been a "lone wolf" acting out of "mental illness." His whole race, religion and nationality are not implicated, only this one isolated individual.

 

Why the difference?

 

Personal Responsibility

 

Gun rights people tell us that gun ownership increases the sense of personal responsibility. Rather than waiting for the "nanny-state government to coddle and take care of us," they tell us that gun ownership allows us not to outsource our own self-defense but rather take responsibility for it. The sheer firepower in our hands forces us to be mature and act responsibly, they say. Nice theory. The reality is that over 50,000 Americans die every year because many gun owners are not in the least bit responsible. They can't seem to own guns without shooting themselves or others. We need to do with them what we do with children--take their toys away because they have demonstrated that they can't handle them.

 

A better scenario perhaps is to only take the guns away from the people most likely to abuse gun ownership.

Good Guys, Bad Guys and Other Childish Notions

 

The NRA says that "only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun." Besides being outrageously false--there are MANY ways to stop a person with a gun that don't require guns--it also just sounds like something a 10-year old who reads too many comic books would say. My world is much more complex than "good guys" and "bad guys." Are you kidding me?

 

Besides, the track record of gun owners successfully stopping mass shooting is pretty bad.  There was an off-duty police officer at the Orlando massacre.  Even well-trained professionals often do not perform well under fire.  Studies are pretty clear that gun ownership makes it more likely someone will be hurt or killed by mistake than out of self-defense.  That might be justifiable if gun owners were the only ones who bore the consequences of their own actions, but all too often it is not they but family members or strangers who gets shot by their irresponsibility.

Long story short:  Your right to own a gun is secondary to my right to not get shot. Experience has shown us that gun owners cannot guarantee this.

Nukes Don't Kill People...

Nukes don't kill people... people kill people, right? Then why are we trying so hard to keep North Korea from having a nuke? The answer to that question is the same reason why we don't want automatic and semi-automatic weapons floating around outside of a "well-regulated militia": By the time a person can come along to stop them, there has already been far too much damage done. No one wins. If North Korea sends a nuke and destroys an American city, yes, we can retaliate. But we will have lost an entire city. No one wins. The same is true with people with mass shootings. Someone like the Las Vegas shooter will have already killed dozens of people before anyone can stop it. We have to answer the question further upstream.

The 2nd Amendment says... 

Many Americans have a problem with reading comprehension. The 2nd amendment says NOTHING... I repeat... NOTHING about private gun ownership. It only talks about a "well-regulated militia." In other words, all the guns would be locked up in the center of town in an armory and only brought out with a chain of command facilitating it. I think many of us have been so conditioned by the NRA to read the 2nd amendment as private ownership we forget to look at the actual words.

"Well regulated militia" is a conditional clause--in other words, it is the condition that must be met for the rest of the sentence to be true. The "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is ONLY allowed under the CONDITION of a "well-regulated militia" according to the 2nd amendment.

Now, some courts in recent years have tried to interpret the 2nd as a broad support for the right to self-defense. That's not what the text says, but I am ok with that and I think most Americans are as well. But things like semi-automatics belong only in the military along with tanks and missiles, as they can't reasonably be approved as weapons of "self-defense."

Both/And

The answer is both/and. Whenever a crisis happens, the most obvious first step is to tighten up regulations: Add a law, increase oversight, bolster regulations somewhere. Then, yes, in the long run, we have to look at the long-term reasons for why people do what they do.

Look at shoplifting. If shoplifting increased suddenly in your neighborhood, what would your community do? The first is to increase police and tighten up any loopholes in the laws. That's just common sense. Perhaps there are even some bigger loopholes that have allowed crime to get out of control and have made it easier for organized crime to be established. The second thing you do is ask why shoplifting is happening in the first place...we know that enforcement does not always adequately address the problem if there are issues of poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunities and other issues going on. But we do both. You have to do both. But we have been so paralyzed by the NRA that we are not doing the most common sense adjustments needed.

Whenever there's a problem, you do SOMETHING differently. Change a law, add oversight, SOMETHING. It's just common sense. You might even attempt trial-and-error for a while until you figure out the best thing, but you do SOMETHING.

The low hanging fruit is to first restrict "high powered" arms from civilian ownership. This, I realize, will take some debate to properly define.  Certainly automatic and semi-automatic weapons fit this bill along with silencers. We simply have to classify them as "for military use only" and group them with the tanks, missiles, nukes, bombs and the thousands and thousands of other weapons that are not allowed outside of the well-regulated chain of command of the military.  This is not something new. It is not a major break with the 2nd amendment:  The fist majority of weapons are already classified as such. Second, we need to close loopholes. It makes no sense that guns are restricted in one city but not the surrounding areas. It makes no sense that trade shows have different rules than brick and mortar stores. We should also restrict gun ownership from certain individuals who demonstrate problems with violence and mental health. All of this is tricky and needs vigorous public debate, but we must move in this direction.

Then we can also deal with the existential problem of why evil exists in the world today and why people commit violence.  Tall order. But we do know that the problems of human nature have been with us since the beginning of our species. But the problems of mass gun violence is not a worldwide problem.  There is something about the U.S.A. today that makes them happen, because they very rarely happen anywhere else in the world. This is not an existential problem related to "bad guys" who will find some other way to commit violence if guns are take away.

You Become What You Hate

It's a page out of Greek tragedy: So many Americans are so afraid of the government, that in their fanciful interpretation of the 2nd amendment, they want to stockpile weapons as a way to check-and-balance the powers of the Federal government. The dripping irony here is that people who are constantly afraid, who are "at the ready," are so easy to be controlled by the government.  Any would be dictator knows that a population that is constantly afraid can be made to do almost anything.  People will even give up their civil liberties if you scare them enough about some phantom "terrorist" thereat. 

What really establishes personal freedom is exploration of ideas through education, exploration of creativity through the arts and economic security. Civic and neighborly associations build relationships and rapport. True freedom is not to be found in the paranoid gun owner stockpiling weapons and waiting for some "threat" on a hairpin trigger. It is rather someone confident and secure in their own thoughts who is not easily manipulated by boogey-men phantom threats because he can distinguish fake news from real news. That's freedom.

War Zone

What is the answer to gun ownership?  The NRA never says, but it seems like the answer they support is that every citizen would be trained, armed and at the ready at all times. The problem is that this is a definition of a war zone, not a civilized society. This is not "freedom" but rather an incredible burden of near-constant obsession with self-defense that has been proven unnecessary and counter-productive in civilized societies.  It is simply not a reasonable scenario. Imagine every child walking up to every individual and assuming they are armed is a horrible way for kids to grow up. This would severely limit creativity, exploration and fun. There would be no leeway for accidents, experimentation or just goofing around. You could never jump out of the bushes and play a trick on your uncle, because he might shoot you. Everyone would need to be dead serious constantly. This would impact the way children grow and develop.  PTSD would be a way of life. It has been well-proven that fear limits growth and personal freedom.

Most people in war zones want to get out of them as quickly as possible. Trying to establish one on our home turf is insanity multiplied. It makes me think that NRA-types have simply watched too many action adventure movies and have confused them with reality.

My Animal Saver Device

I got tired of reading about wildlife getting trapped in human garbage. I've seen enough disturbing pictures of turtles deformed by six-pack rings and seabirds strangled in plastic grocery bag handles to want to do something about it.

Trash that is hazardous to wildlife is everywhere: I see plastic rings from milk and motor oil containers, plastic bags, elastic hair ties, packaging ties and all sorts of other items in a ring shape—including the dreaded six-pack plastic rings. I find them laying in parking lots, park trails, in my front yard and just about everywhere.

It's hard to just leave it there and walk away, knowing the damage it can do. But who wants to touch someone else's trash?

My Animal Saver Device

I found this tool at Wal-Mart for $3.97 plus tax. Super cheap. They're called "aviation snips." I have no idea what that is or how this device is generally used. All I know is that it works swimmingly well at cutting things.

The package states that it "cuts through 1.2 mm of cold, rolled steel." I can tell you from experience that it does all that and more. You don't need a strong grip for this tool to work for you—so ladies (or anyone else with dainty hands), you need not be intimidated in trying this. You can cut through all sorts of metal wire or thick plastic as if it were warm butter. It's quite a rush, actually.

I keep this tool in the side compartment of my car door, so it's readily available. I snip things all the time. Sometimes I carry the objects to a trash bag, but if I have to leave them where I found them, at least I've minimized their threat as a wildlife trap.

I keep a small box in my car trunk to haul stuff away, as well as one of those "arm extender tools" so that I can grab stuff that I wouldn't want to touch with my bare skin.

Not On My Watch

You might think this is the hobby of an extremely obsessive, eccentric person. Perhaps that is true. But I can tell you that this is extraordinarily easy to do. It takes no time at all, and it's not even the least bit dirty. Even a germophobe could do this (speaking from personal experience here)! It's something anyone can do, and that is why I'm sharing it.

I may not save all the wildlife out there, but at least the trash I come in contact with has been rendered safer for wildlife. 

At Home

In my own home, I try to make sure that anything that goes in my garbage can or recycling bin has been properly cut. Any loops or rings (including the garbage bag handles themselves) are cut through. This gives me a little bit of reassurance in the odd chance that what I throw away gets loose somehow.

Items floating around in parking lots are more at risk for coming in contact with wildlife than trash sealed away in a landfill. However, you have to imagine at some point in the future that anything in a landfill can and will eventually get loose again. It may take a million years, but it will eventually happen, and I'd like the wildlife that may come in contact with it to have a fighting chance.

For Further Thought

Consider being part of efforts to ban plastic bags and six-pack plastic rings. Look out for petitions and other efforts. There are more wildlife-friendly options being developed, such as edible six-pack plastic rings. Public pressure can do a lot to speed up the process. There are lots of different groups doing this work. The groups in the previous link are large, well-known organizations, but don't overlook small, local organizations, which are often very effective, as well. You can adopt a highway, either as part of an official group or simply tend to the road in front of your home.

We all have to do our share, because if we don't, who else will?

The (Probably) Perfect Deodorant

I wrote about my quest for natural deodorant alternatives so frequently on this blog in years past that I feel obliged to write this post to set the record straight. I have for the foreseeable future concluded my search. I found a deodorant that works amazingly well, is cheap and seems relatively healthy (there is one very small potential caveat, but we'll get to that in a bit).

The answer is: Milk of Magnesia (MOM).

Yes, the same stuff that relieves constipation. 

You apply it to your underarms in a thin coat. My wife paints it on with a paintbrush. I just pour some on my hands and slop it on.

We haven't noticed any problems with odor, even with heavy perspiration, and we've been using nothing but MOM for about three years. It works as well (if not better) than commercial deodorants, and it by far surpasses any of the other natural alternatives. There is simply no need to look elsewhere. The protection is long-lasting and secure. Case closed, end of story.

MOM works far better than baking soda, which is what I previously used for several years. I'm still a fan of baking soda, but you do have to manage it to get it to work right and not burn out your skin.

The one caveat mentioned above involves the inactive ingredients. In some brands of MOM, there are lots of chemical inactive ingredients. The most concerning is sodium hypochlorite (AKA bleach). I go to great lengths to only use MOM that has no other inactive ingredients besides "purified water." No artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and definitely no bleach. Again, these are listed among the inactive ingredients. All brands of MOM have the same active ingredient--magnesium hydroxide. Sometimes it is hard to find the inactive ingredients on the label, but keep looking, they are there (examples are below).

I buy the DG brand, which is found at Dollar General. I believe the Kroger's brand is also good. There are a few other options that I can't remember right now, but not many. 

One internet commenter made the point that bleach is most likely used to purify the water, and that the ingredient "purified water" may have just as many traces of bleach as the labels that actually come out and specifically list it. The good news is that there are other way to purify water rather than with bleach, so there is at least a fighting chance that bleach is not part of the process for all of them.  Given that generics are often made at the same locations and by the same people as name brands, there is a chance that going out of my way to buy a brand that doesn't list bleach is a fool's errand, but there is at least a ray of hope. I seem to be one of the few who maintains a small bit of skepticism on this. Most are satisfied that the brands that only list the following two ingredients are safe: Magnesium hydroxide (active) and purified water (inactive).

Here is an example of a GOOD brand:
(click for a better view)

The following is definitely what you DON'T want:
(click for a better view)

I can't take credit for this discovery. There are many folks exploring healthy uses of magnesium--both internally as a nutrient and topically to relieve achy muscles and joints and for skin care. This is one of their many discoveries. For more info, check out the Facebook group "Magnesium Advocacy Group." 

MOM has all sorts of other topical uses.

Also, check out this article for similar information on MOM as a deodorant.

As news of MOM as a deodorant is beginning to spread, some companies have seized the moment to build MOM-based products. I suppose they have additional essential oils and fragrances for an additional price, but all that seems unnecessary to me. I prefer my $2 bottle of DG brand MOM. I wonder what the cashier thinks of my colon health when I arrive at the checkout counter with a half-dozen bottles of MOM, but so far that has been the only socially awkward moment in using MOM as a deodorant!

Padmé Amidala: A Feminist Critique

Taken from:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Padm%C3%A9_Amidala

Staying up late with a newborn baby is one way to get re-acquainted with movies and late-night television. I've been enjoying the nonstop Star Wars marathons that have been running since May the 4th. It's been a while since I've seen the prequels, and I have to admit I like them a lot better now than I did when they first came out. Yes, I know fans are supposed to hate them, and they do have flaws, but each one pulls me swimmingly into the drama and mystery of this world that George Lucas created. I think they "work" better now than I originally thought.

However, one glaring flaw gnaws at me. Perhaps it is because of this newborn baby girl and our recent experiences with childbirth, but I have been tuning in much more to the story of Padmé Amidala. She's the young woman who marries Anakin Skywalker (the man who later becomes Darth Vader) and is the mother of Leia and Luke.

At a young age, Padmé was princess and then later queen. She was a highly-influential intergalactic senator who was an outspoken advocate for peace and diplomacy during the Clone Wars. She survived several assassination attempts and took part in her own share of gunfights and space odysseys. She also more than held her own with the increasingly cantankerous Anakin. They married in secret and she was pregnant with their twins.

So what happens to her? Here's where I'm going with this: At the moment of childbirth, she simply dies... of a broken heart. Seriously. The robot midwife cannot figure out why she dies, because her body has no physical issues whatsoever.

I hate to stereotype anyone along gender lines, but is this consistent with any woman you know? Despite her incredibly distinguished career, despite being an international leader during the monumentally turbulent times of war, and at the very moment her newborn babies need her the most, she simply gives up and bails out on life. And why, you might ask? All because she makes the comes to the realization (that I'm sure no other woman has ever had) that her husband is actually an a$$hole. Really.

So to George Lucas, I say: It is easy to believe that this story unfolded a long tie ago in a galaxy far, far away. It's easy to believe that Jedi knights bring peace to a galaxy filled with robot droids, marauding bounty hunters and conniving Sith lords. I find it entirely plausible that there would be an intergalactic war between robot droids and human clones. But I find it more than a little far fetched to think that this woman Padmé would simply fall apart 100% at such a critical moment in her life all because of the shock of discovering that the love of her life turns out to be a galactic jerk of epic proportions.

Would that discovery be soul crushing? Yes. Might she go through some post-partum depression and buyers remorse for her marriage? Absolutely. But this woman has "survivor" tattooed on her soul. You would think she would at least hang out another day to see what tomorrow brings. And then another day... and another. I can imagine her wanting to run screaming into the hills of Naboo from time to time. But I can't imagine her just checking out so totally and so soon.

Just check out her bio on Wookieepedia.