Hungry For Change DVD Review

Hungry For Change - Your health is in your hands.

This latest release DVD from the makers of “Food Matters” is informative, educational and entertaining. For many who already lead a natural, healthy lifestyle, the information contained in the DVD will confirm and cement your views on healthy eating. However, for a majority of people who have veered off the path of healthy living, this film provides insightful information on how commonly consumed processed ‘foods’ are contributing to the declining health in western countries.

As with their previous documentary “Food Matters”, “Hungry For Change” encompasses a combination of interviews with health professionals & testimonials from health advocates, intertwined with the fictional tale of an average woman living a standard mainstream life. We follow the journey of this woman who, for all intents and purposes is living a normal life, however is not feeling optimal health due to her less than healthy lifestyle choices.

Specifically, this film looks at weight loss (or weight gain) issues and addresses the influence of diet drinks, monosodium glutamate (MSG), aspartame, artificial colours, flavours and sweeteners in processed foods and how they are influencing the overall health of western society. During the course of the documentary, suitable alternatives to processed foods are provided to encourage the viewer to take greater responsibility for their own health and to move away from the marketing incentives of denatured processed foods.

Snippets of wisdom from health experts like Dr Alejandro Junger, Joseph Mercola and Dr Christiane Northrup are seamlessly intertwined with interviews with healthy eating advocates such as Jon Gabriel (“Gabriel Method”), Kris Carr (“Crazy Sexy Diet”) and Australia’s own Joe Cross (“Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead”). Refreshingly, there are no products that are being marketed, no brands being pushed and no gimmicky sales pitches.

Ultimately, “Hungry For Change” is the kind of documentary that you will go back to and watch a few times, just to refresh your passion and motivation for living a healthy life and choosing nutritious foods. I would recommend this film for anyone who feels that they have lost sight of their health/weight/life goals and needs some gentle persuasion to refocus their journey towards a healthy & happy life.

For the month of August 2012 www.downtoearthorganics is selling this latest DVD Hungry For Change at 20% off the recommended retail price. Get your copy here while we still have stock!

Down To Earth Organics – your one stop natural and organic stop

How Supermarkets Are Regaining Control Over Consumer Choices.

While many of us do our best to ensure that a majority of our purchases are local, ethical and environmental, ultimately, finances and necessity (read convenience) overtakes our cynicism and we end up buying our organic chickpeas from a major supermarket chain.

If we rewind a few decades to the 1950s and beyond, consumers had little or no choice when it came to consumable items; the store keeper chose the brand and allocated a price for our purchases. This relationship between the consumer and store keeper all changed when somewhere in the 60s when the supermarket was introduced and consumers we permitted to browse the isles for products. Consumers could themselves select what they wanted, a turning point in the control of consumer choice.

These abundant choices continued through to the present day where we no longer use a basket to carry our groceries, we need a tank sized trolley to cart our purchases to our self-serve checkout. We have endless choices for any item that consumes our attention and we well and truly have control of our choices. Or do we?

Our supermarket roller coaster ride has been spent for many of us with our eyes wide shut. While some may have been quietly hoping for the dynamic range of choices to be minimised (do we really need an entire isle dedicated to soft drink?), for some of us we are now becoming cognisant to the fact that we really have not been in control of our choices for some time now.

Like the evil sister that quietly studies and entices our boyfriend until she finally covets his affections right under our naive nose, supermarkets have been studying our purchases (loyalty cards), understanding our preferences (stocking organic chickpeas) and providing us with incentives to spend more (how many times have I spent $28 on groceries and found myself disappointed that I didn’t spend enough to get my fuel voucher?).

How could we not have seen this coming? Obviously there have been some big monopoly decisions that have occurred in order to manipulate the general course of events, but I suppose it really started when some of the big guys realised that the idea of a supermarket or no label brand was attractive to the consumer. I remember in the 80s when the supermarket brands were originally shelved near the ‘Homebrand’ and ‘Black & Gold’ budget brands, until that is, they did their research and realised that there was more money to be had in eliminating competitors’ brands from the shelves and stocking their own products.

For me, this really all came to crisis point when I realised that the organic chickpeas that I had been unashamedly purchasing from a major supermarket chain was no longer available. I tracked down my cherished brand of organic chickpeas at a local independent grocer, only to find that their price was more than double what I had been purchasing them for. I also realised that a huge majority of natural and organic ‘healthy alternatives’ that you could previously purchase in supermarkets have been replaced with identical supermarket products. Granted, these products may well come from the same farms and be manufactured in the same factories and simply packaged differently, who really benefits here?

Being both a consumer and a small business owner myself this really made me realise that some of my purchases as a consumer were not in line with my beliefs as a small business owner. As we grow and learn, each of us begins to understand the value of how even our smallest purchases influence our global economy. Ultimately it is up to us as consumers to support small independent businesses, to allow ourselves to sustain and relinquish control of our choices and enable small businesses to remain as an integral part of our economy. As I learn to make more conscious and aware choices with buying natural, organic and local products from independent small business I hope this will somehow influence others to do the same.

Choose natural, choose organic, choose local.

Ten Reasons to Choose Organic

At times it seems that choosing organic isn’t always the easiest option especially when we are surrounded by an abundance of choices at the supermarket. The following list provides some health, economic and environmental reasons to choose organic and inspire us to make better choices now for ourselves, the environment and for future generations.

1.    We avoid chemical pesticides, fertilisers, herbicides and livestock additives such as steroids and antibiotics when we choose organic. Trace amounts of these chemicals are ingested or absorbed into our bodies when we use non-organic products, the cumulative effect of these chemicals can have a deleterious effect on our long-term health and may contribute to the increased incidence of chronic diseases in modern society.

2.    Choosing organic we are naturally avoiding genetically modified foods, many of which have unspecified effects on our health and the health of the environment. The potential negative effects of GM farming include the growth of ‘superweeds’, the killing of beneficial pest species and the creation of new viral diseases.

3.    Organic farming practices are more beneficial for the environment, using techniques such as crop rotation, biological pest control and irrigation management which reduces issues such as soil erosion.

4.    Because organic foods and products are grown in naturally fertilised soils and often have a longer growing period, the nutritional, medicinal and therapeutic value of organics are far greater than those grown rapidly with chemical fertilisers.

5.    Taste! Yes, many organic foods taste much better than foods grown conventionally and then kept in cold storage for months. Unlike many conventional products, organic foods and products are vital, vibrant and alive and many of us can sense, feel and taste it too.

6.    Although on the surface, choosing organic often seems more expensive, long term, buying organic is actually much more economical. When choosing organic you often avoid many of the hidden costs associated with pesticide regulation, hazardous waste disposal and environmental damage associated with conventional industry.

7.    Pesticides used in conventional agriculture can have some dramatic effects on aquatic life and the ecology; organic farming significantly reduces the amount of chemical runoff and residues which are currently going into our drinking water, waterways and coastal areas.

8.    Save energy with choosing organic; there is a significant amount of energy expended by conventional farming practices with the manufacture of synthetic fertilisers and mass production. Organic farming is often still labour based, with many labour intensive practices such as hand weeding, green manure and crop covers which use time tested methods that consume fewer fossil fuels.

9.    Protect future generations: the average child is said to receive four times more exposure than an adult when consuming foods treated with common pesticides. Also, choosing organic for our children means avoiding food additives, artificial flavours, colours and preservatives that may contribute to learning or behavioural difficulties.

10.           Local farmers markets are the perfect place to choose organic, this gives us an opportunity to learn more about the organic food or product that we are purchasing, we learn about where it has come from and thus have a greater connection to its origins.

Follow Down To Earth Organics on Twitter @dteorganics where you can find out about local farmers markets and other community events where you can find local, natural and organic produce all around Australia.

Choose natural, choose organic, choose local.

Down To Earth Organics – Launch of New Website Design

There is nothing like making use of a rainy public holiday to launch the new layout for our Down To Earth Organics website! We have performed a major, much needed overhaul of our website to improve ease of navigation through the site and make browsing a little easier on the eye.

Our online store has blossomed from humble beginnings in 2007 and has proudly evolved into one of Australia’s largest online stores stocking well over 1000 natural and organic skincare products, natural cosmetics, BPA free baby bottles and accessories, eco cleaning products and everything in between that you need to maintain a natural, organic, healthy & eco friendly lifestyle.

Obviously one of the new features that we will be resurrecting is our online blog where we will be posting articles on what is new in natural and organic skincare, hair care, health and eco cleaning, plus reviews of natural and organic products as well as articles about how to reduce your impact on the environment.

For those of you who have known us for a while know that we like to add the odd special treat into your order and have the occasional day when we offer free postage throughout Australia. This week, with the launch of our newly made-over website we are offering free postage throughout Australia until Sunday afternoon. To access this free postage, just add the code ORGANIC into the field: “redeem coupon” when you reach the shopping cart and the postage fee will be automatically subtracted from your cart (offer valid until 17^th June 2012).

With still more features and improvements in the pipeline for www.downtoearthorganics.com.au hope that you will enjoy our new easier to navigate website and visit us in the future for more updates and information. If you have any comments or opinions on our new website layout, please contact us at contactus@downtoearthorganics.com.au we hope to be hearing from you in the near future.