Ingredients
3 Ice cubes
1/2 Bar of frozen acai (optional)
1 Cup of mixed frozen berries
2 Tbsp of yogurt
2 Tbsp of honey
2 Eggs
This berry smoothie is quite a healthy treat. Averaging at nearly 350 calories, it covers an array of vitamins and minerals needed for a hearty diet. Fresh and organic products is ideal, which I do follow up on the organic part, but fruits are expensive and go rot to fast for a college students budget. All ingredients can be adjusted to suit each person. I recommend starting with one tablespoon and increase slowly to find a satisfactory taste. Also, frozen acai is optional because I have only seen it at Whole Foods. Another option is to add a vitamin and mineral powder at the end.
Directions
If you have a heavy duty blender than chances are you can just throw in everything at once and not have any problems, but this is a thick recipe. If your blend is more like mine, then you will probably find yourself doing the following:
Add ice. Blend. Add acai bar. Blend. Add fruit and yogurt. Blend (not completely though). Add raw eggs. Blend. Add honey. Blend until smooth. Add miniral powder. Blend until smooth. Drink and enjoy.
Remember: it is highly unlikely you come across an egg with salmonella, but you can never be certain, which is why I put the eggs in boiling water for 30 seconds while making the smoothie.
Every day now, without fail, information seeps into my head about how much worse everything is in comparison to the past. Sex. Drugs. Violence. Global Warming. It is everywhere. But, is anybody doing anything about it? If I had to take a guess, it would be no. Not even a chance.
As an example, let us take into consideration of the waste we produce. Landfills, I have heard about this growing problem since being in the third or fourth grade (over a decade ago). There is a lot of talk on this subject every year and I am sure each person has seen the iconic recycle symbol everyday of their lives, but a majority of us still do not recycle. Personally, I would of started several years ago, if I would of known that it takes about five minutes to call ‘Waste Management’ and order a free recycling bin. Here are four of fifteen facts about waste from The Daily Green:
- Forests store 50% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. (In other words, they are awfully important “carbon sinks” that hold onto pollution that would otherwise lead to global warming.)
- Half the world’s forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80% of what’s left has been seriously degraded.
- 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.
- The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among United States manufacturing industries, and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon emissions.
- Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste).
However, on the good side the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that “in 2006, the national recycling rate of 32.5 percent (82 million tons recycled) prevented the release of approximately 49.7 million metric tons of carbon into the air–roughly the amount emitted annually by 39 million cars, or 1,300 trillion BTUs, saving energy equivalent to 10 billion gallons of gasoline.” This is an increase of the eight percent we had in 1990, but it just illuminates that only a small percentage of the population are making a serious effort towards fixing an issue that they are reminded about every day. There is a video created by Jorge Furtado called “Ilhas das Flores”. It can be found translated on YouTube.
If you would like to take action, find a problem and fix it. And there most certainly will always be problems, but that is no justification for no action. The best thing you can do for your environment is care. Care by recycling, reusing, and using your purchasing power to push the market towards a healthier future. More specific actions can be found at Zero Waste America.
Since my previous article, Physical vs. Chemical Sunscreens, I found out there are other ways to protect yourself from the sun. The most obvious being sunscreen with the more obscure being your… clothing? While clothing provides a reasonable amount of protection from the sun already, it is very much lower than you would expect. While it depends on the material, color, thickness, and thread type; an average white t-shirt provides a person with 5 UPF (UV Protection Factor). Which sounds very much like the SPF (Sun Protection Factor), but it is a different concept. It means for 5 UV waves that strike your clothing, one will get through. Meaning, your shirt blocks 4 out of 5 UV waves, or eighty percent.
For most of you, this will be acceptable. However, there are some of us, like me, who were under the impression that our clothing completely protects us from the SUN’S VIOLENT RAYS. Of course this will change from shirt to shirt and chances are it will be higher, but you cannot be certain.
So, there are a some options:
- apply sunblock like a madman
- buy clothing with higher UPF ratings
- increase your clothing’s UPF rating.
Option one and two to me are impractical. Applying sunblock like a madman is expensive and time consuming, while buying new clothing can be the same. When looking at some online retailers, I found that a shirt with some sort of UPF rating costs thirty to sixty dollars. That is why I chose and I would recommend giving Sun Guard a try. It is a detergent mix-in which applies a transparent layer of TINOSORB to your clothing to give you 30 UPF rating. This is about the same amount as you would get if you paid for a typical shirt for fifty dollars, except you can mix it in with a full load and fifteen of your shirts are now protected. Now the best part of it all is that it only costs $1.99 plus shipping.
For those who are fine with eighty percent protection for the sun, good for you, but if you want up to as much as ninety-six percent, then I would go with Sun Guard. I must forewarn you though, Sun Guard does wear off after about twenty washings, just as it does with the shirts purchased with protection (option 2). Also, when you mix in the powder into your detergent you must use hot water and allow then to sit for close to fifteen minutes, which may be a problem for some of you.
Sun guard has been recommended by the Skin Cancer Foundation
There is a lack of confident knowledge about the properties and usefulness of sunblock. Sunblock is intended to protect the skin from ultra violet electromagnetic wavelengths. This is a portion electromagnetic spectrum which is invisible to human sight. There are several categories of ultraviolet light. There is ultra violet A, B, and C. Each of them have different affects on the body and highly dangerous.
Ultraviolet A (UVA) waves are between 320 nm and 400 nm in length and damage the collagen in the skin, causing it to lose elasticity and begin to wrinkle. Ultraviolet B (UVB) waves are between 290 nm and 320nm in length and cause the skin to tan and burn by stimulating the melanocyte cell. In addition, it is known to have a carcinogenic effect by “a process of direct photochemical damage to DNA from which gene mutations arise”1. As it is believed of now, ultraviolet C (UVC) is not as much of an issue because the ozone blocks a majority of these waves, but with the depletion of the ozone this will become more of an issue.
Continue reading ‘Physical vs. Chemical Sunscreens’
