15 projects: what you can do for your country at the local level - nutrition & environment

You can represent your local community by creating intergenerational projects that combine nutrition and healthy foods with environmental greening. Here's how to get started. First find a local spin how nutrition links to environmental health. See my book: How to Make Basic Natural Cleaning Products from Foods.

The first step in going greener is to set up a contest or competition in your area for conservation. You can begin with your own garden and your neighbors' gardens. Create a best compost contest. Encourage buying locally from your community food and environment-related items.

1. Compost. Get the best compost for gardens contest going in your area. Start a contest or competition at the next County Fair for the best compost for home gardens.

2. Community Supported Agriculture. Encourage people to buy community-supported agriculture products, even farm shares.

3. Slow Food USA. Introduce to your local community if it's not already there, to a Slow Food Convivium. See: Slow Food USA. Sacramento, for example has a slow foods site. There are 170 convivia in the United States, including the Sacramento chapter, which now has about 150 members. See: Slow Food Sacramento archive at Slowfood Sacramento. You are welcome to join the convivium if you live in the Sacramento region. Simply visit the national Slow Food website. See: FAQs at Slowfood Sacramento. Read the Midtown Monthly - Slow Food.

4. Start festivals. If you're in Davis, see the Yolo Slow Food Convivium. If you're in other areas see the following sites: Slow Food Los Angeles: Events: LA Convivium Archives. One Festival is sponsored by: Riverdance Farms, Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, Tower Garden. Slow Food Yolo is particularly committed to offering support to area farmers.

See the PDF file: How to Renew or Join Slow Food USA. It doesn't matter what city you're in. If you're in Sacramento, see: Slow Food Sacramento or Slow Food USA. Are you in Placer County? See: Slow Food Placer Gold Convivium.

5. Recipes and Home-Made Cleaning Products. Develop recipes for home-made cleaning products and offer them at local Farmers' Markets in your own area. Make cleaning products from food products such as vinegar, salt, and baking soda or olive oil soaps.

6. Immunize Your Shopping Against Economic Woes. Create items such as food, recipes, clothing, and other products that are more immune to economic woes.

7. Thrift-Store Shopping. Research the benefits of thrift store shopping. Do you save money? Do the products or clothes last long? Are they cleaned and safe to use for your family? Where are the best places to shop for thrift?

Share on a blog or write reviews of thrift store shopping experiences so others can find out where to shop for quality at lower prices for gently used items. It's something like dreaming you were looking in the trash bins of the highest-priced neighborhoods of the most expensive cities and guessing what you might find there, provided it's legal to look in those areas.

8. Watershed Health. Create a group if one doesn't yet exist to monitor the health of local watersheds.

9. Lawns into Gardens. Ask people how they feel about transforming their lawns into gardens, if their community, zoning laws, and neighborhood overseers permit it.

10. Cloth shopping bags. Ask local stores to design their own cloth shopping bags. Design some yourself and offer it to some stores.

11. Local environment issues. As citizen journalists, you can cover the local enivronment in your area, or even your neighborhood or street. Ask newspapers, especially weeklies and online media to improve their coverage of the local environment. Or start a local environmental issues blog online on one of the free blog sites.

12. Catalyst. Bring people together. Be a catalyst and gather others to become active in whatever ways they can or have an interest in-- for new environmental outcomes instead of always quoting other's research. You do this by acting locally as you think globally.

13. Greener washing products. Introduce safer, greener laundry soaps or brands to stores and your community. Or make your own cleaning products from foods. Find out more about how laundry detergent phosphates contribute to eutrophication in lakes/rivers. Look up local issues in ecology. What are the local universities studying in ecology as it relates to your own area?

14. National Science Foundation. Read the information put out by the National Science Foundation. That's where the National Association of Science Writers finds a lot of their information from at the association's Information Office publications. According to your specific interests, what other foundations or associations can you find that provide the publications or information you're looking for to help you go greener in foods or environmentally-friendly items and products?

Can a foundation or association help you invent the better solution to a local problem or current issue? Can an event inspire you to create or develop some item that will solve an environmental problem in some way at any level, locally or globally?

15. Spinoffs. What high-tech spinoffs are safe, and how can you use them at the local level in your daily routine? What can you learn about sustainability in your area? Does your community have a Climate Action Day? Do you want to create one? What other projects do your communities need that are forward-looking and visionary? What would you like to invent that would help others in a specific stage of life or situation?

You might also enjoy these:

• The family that eats together weets together: neurotechnology and food
• Info 101: Smart foods
• Does an alkaline diet with added blueberries increase your bone density?
• How biorhythms and food balance your inner clocks
• Cranberry juice fights tooth decay and gum disease: dealing with the disconnect between scientists
• Ethnic human and pet food marketing reports generate thousands of dollars each
• How some doctors might unknowingly create prescription drug addicts and overdosers
• Scientists study risks of contracting fatal brain diseases from eating farmed fish fed rendered cows
• Favorite childhood Greek, Turkish, and Armenian delicatessen shared one another's music
• Citicoline/Cognizin information & alphabetized links to Sacramento nutrition examiner's articles
• How pomegranate juice & GliSOD® reverse carotid atherosclerosis better than any commercial drug
• Can the fatty organic acid, butyrate and high fiber diet shrink colon polyps & lower cancer risk?
• 25 foods, spices, or oils that help to cleanse your skin of blackheads
• Health Guide: how consumers can play a role in quality control of nutritional supplements
• How to bake healthier dog biscuits to help clean your dog's teeth
• Raw vegan dinner for a hot summer day you can prepare in 10 minutes
• How to find training & begin nutrition careers in dynamic phytotherapy or dietary supplement science
• How to find alternative medical and nutritional online resources for menopause and beyond
• Natural alternatives versus standard medications for vertigo, Meniere’s symptoms, and migraines
• How should the Food Pyramid be changed when its updated next year?
• Annual USA sales of nutritional supplements top $23 billion, but where's the quality control?
• How to tell from specific food cravings what your body really needs
• Can magnesium and riboflavin (vitamin B2) stop those monthly migraines?
• Cooking with avocados
• Heal simple diarrhea with raw, shredded coconut for humans and dogs and coconut oil for mouth ulcers
• What are the health benefits of fermented soy foods?
• Genetic iceberg linked to weight, food, behavior, personality, physical performance and core biology
• How to mix essential oils for specific health applications
• How to blend spicy essential oils for men's gifts, including Father's Day
• Where to find out whether there's lead in your magnesium supplement
• Does the acrylamide in French fries, potato and tortilla chips cause cancer?
• Do medicinal Indian herbs for male genital problems sold online work well?
• How to use cream of tartar to clean mineral stains from kitchen and bathroom fixtures or porcelain
• Where to find information on cooking with Indian spices & the benefits of raw whole buckwheat groats

• How food makers capture our brains with factory farms, a documentary

  How vitamin C keeps you alive by balancing the atoms in the electrons of each of your cells

• How biorhythms and food balance your inner clocksAbdominal fat is a protein-and-hormone-producing 'organ' causing inflammation that hardens arteriesHow rice wine (sake) removes freckles and age spots from your skin
• Cooking with organic lemon tree leaves and lemon flower petals
  • The history of nutrition in time lines
  • How do your genes respond to food and medicine?
  • Can high blood pressure be controlled by repressing infections from common herpes and cold viruses?
  • Consumer surveillance, manipulating plant micronutrients, imported foods, and personalized medicine
  • How do you keep colon polyps from becoming malignant?
  • Why after a heavy, fatty meal at night you're at risk of a heart attack in the morning: preventions
  • Functional foods may help those with genetically-linked diseases
  • Foods versus vitamins to prevent brain shrinkage and/or Alzheimers
  • How to make a kale-carrot-raspberry-cherry-pomegranate-celery-almond-sesame-flax smoothie
  • How to become a creative food and nutrition writing therapist
  • How to picnic overnight at a rented fire lookout tower for $40 a night high above the forest
  • How to make Father's Day beer, wine, or champagne raisin-carrot-coconut pancakes
  • How to make your own soaps from cooking oils
  • How to make your own herbal shampoos from cooking oils and foods for humans, dogs, and cats
  • Unique UC Davis-tested grape seed extract lowers blood pressure and may prevent Alzheimer's
  • How to make exotic, fragrant ice creams and spiced frozen desserts
  • What if you're a calorie-counter and you'd love to cook with hard liquor?
  • How to choose cooking wines
  • How to cook with liqueurs
  • Medical doctor goes to cooking school to practice culinary medicine
  • Swine flu immune support nutrient, monolaurin from coconut oil: where to find information
  • How excessive protein powder consumption and chromium deficiencies connect to glaucoma
  • How to tailor smart foods to your family genogram
  • High carbohydrates and cataracts
  • Treating colds, flu, shingles, warts, herpes, parasites, fungi, and sore throat with oregano oil
  • How some doctors diagnose health problems by looking at finger nails
  • How bovine colostrum turns up your immune system
  • Cooking with citrus tree leaves: organic lemon or keffir lime and lemon flower petals
  • Which anti-viral mushrooms help to shrink tumors and also lower only the 'bad' cholesterol?
  • How do your genes respond to smart foods?
  • Which foods raise your good cholesterol (HDL) and lower your bad cholesterol (LDL)?
  • Why are table salt and MSG called health destroyers?
  • Food misinformation is the hottest nutrition controversy
  • Ask nutritionists about food-based gum disease remedies
  • What's the news on Splenda®?
  • How plastics cause high cholesterol
  • The vitamin C, glutathione, and lipoic acid detox cocktail
  • What is nutrigenomics?
  • How to make natural deodorant from coconut oil, coconut milk powder, mandarin oil, and baking soda
  • Fermented soybean product called 'natto' lowers blood pressure and inhibits renin
  • How neem oil, tea tree oil, spices, magnesium, and baking soda remove facial blackheads
  • Make your own natural toothpaste from spices, herbs, salt, and baking soda
  • World Health Day cookies baked with garbanzo bean flour, flax meal, oat/rice bran, and almond meal
  • Aromatherapy and ayurveda techniques for skin care
  • The politics and health benefits of nuts
  • How to find reliable information on resveratrol
  • How to control wood moisture and toxic mold from cooking spaces and homes
  • How to remove rust, lime, and mineral deposits with cream of tartar and hydrogen peroxide
  • Magnesium Versus Calcium
  • How to make your own vegan nondairy ‘milks’ from nuts, grains, seeds, or soy beans in a blender
  • The politics of soy
  • Are sudden screams in TV food advertisements making you sick?
  • What slow breathing and cod liver oil studies can show you
  • How to start a career or business as a food stylist
  • How to make nondairy coconut-pineapple-carrot-almond-mango sherbet
  • Sodium versus sodium chloride
  • Health benefits of rice bran oil in foods, soaps, and cosmetics
  • How cherry juice helps arthritis pain, headaches, and gout
  • Brew your own recession beer like the ancients
  • Does pomegranate juice lower LDL cholesterol and reverse calcification of the arteries?
  • Will taking vitamin D3 calcify your aorta if you have a certain genetic variation?
  • How to override your bad genes with food
  • How to make more nutritious vegan cookies with rice bran, oat bran, and flax meal
  • Ways preventive medicine says homogenized and pasteurized milk affect your health
  • Why the fight against cancer is moving too slow when it comes to funding research
  • How to make champagne or beer batter carrot pancakes