Eco Health Sense

Johannesburg, 01 November 2018, an exciting chefs’ plant-based foodie experience, hosted by Fry’s own Tammy Fry, International Marketing Director of The Fry Family Food Co., was held at Lexi’s Eatery this week. Being a certified plant-based nutritionist, the creator of The SEED Blog, international spokesperson, animal rights advocate, athlete, and mother, Tammy answered all plant-curious attendees’ pressing questions.

Featuring a gourmet plant-based eight-course meal, specially created by Lexi Monzeglio, head chef and owner of Lexi’s Healthy Eatery (Johannesburg), the workshop sold out once again after six successful Seed Workshops were held in various locations around South Africa and Australia in to date.

Guests were entertained by Tammy’s demonstration of the resemblance between fruits and vegetables, and the human anatomy, according to what their nutritional purpose is in the various functions of the human body. Furthermore, Tammy spoke about the effects of our nutrition choices on animal agriculture, greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and animal rights, as an increasing public concern.

Tammy shared how passionate she is about wellness and creating awareness during the Q&A session as guests asked various curious questions about the benefits of eating plant-based for heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Guests got their vegan myths debunked just in time for Vegan Month in November, along with some nifty tips on how to navigate a plant-based and flexitarian lifestyle with their family.

When asked about the easiest way to make a transition to a plant-based or reduced meat diet, Tammy’s advice was to find your tribe, saying, “There is no hard or fast rule for a perfect diet in the household or successfully introducing a plant-based diet to your family. You need to surround yourself with like minded people, whether they are changing their diet to be more conscious, healthier or simply to make more organic choices.”

Adding to the experience, Lexi Monzeglio did a Pumpkin Pie Smoothie Bowl recipe demonstration using Fry’s Kasha, a new high-protein, instant and gluten-free cereal, which can be enjoyed in freshly prepared products. Lexi additionally added some handy tips for storing products for on-the go smoothies and cereals. Naturally no one left empty handed as all guests received a Fry’s bag filled with food surprises to take home.

EXCERPT . . .By Susan Scutti, CNN - A single sample of strawberries showed 20 pesticides, the report indicated. More than 98% of strawberries, spinach, peaches, nectarines, cherries and apples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue. And, on average, spinach samples had 1.8 times as much pesticide residue by weight than any other crop. Rinsing produce under tap water is an effective way to eliminate pesticide residues from produce, according to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, a government-run scientific group. Scientists there advocate rinsing all fresh produce under tap water for a minimum of 30 seconds before using.
Water is enough, the scientists say, as mild detergents or commercial vegetable washes do not increase the amount of pesticide residues you are able to wash away. However, a recent study from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, suggests that soaking produce in a solution of baking soda and water is a more effective way to rid fruits and veggies of pesticides.
Research "suggests that pesticides may induce chronic health complications in children, including neurodevelopmental or behavioral problems, birth defects, asthma, and cancer," noted the authors of a 2012 American Academy of Pediatricians report quoted by the Environmental Working Group.
Other studies indicate that a child's earliest exposure to pesticides -- through the mother during pregnancy -- may also be harmful.
Tom Stenzel, president and CEO of the United Fresh Produce Association, says consumers should not rely on a shopping guide when deciding which fruits and vegetables to purchase. The industry group represents growers, shippers, fresh-cut processors, wholesalers, distributors and retailers.
"Consumers have more choices now than ever before when it comes to the fruits and vegetables they consume," Stenzel said.
"Food safety is a top priority for the industry, from field to fork," he said. "The fresh produce industry seeks to ensure a safe, efficient and timely supply chain, allowing consumers to experience fresh fruits and vegetables at the peak of their performance."
He encourages consumers to continue educating themselves about food safety and consult the Safe Fruits and Veggies website from the Alliance for Food and Farming, which represents both organic and conventional farmers.
"Empowering consumers with knowledge is key to helping them make healthy choices for their diets and that of their family," Stenzel said.

We are INFINITELY GRATEFUL to everyone here for their support and opening their minds to conscious sustainability of our planet. Thank you for LIKING US & PLEASE KEEP CHATTING WITH US, AS WE CONTINUE TO PROVIDE NEWS AND INSIGHT.

Eco Health Sense Enriching your Life . . . makes Eco Sense

Eat Out for Earth Hour

What is happening to fight food waste globally? To help people eat more sustainably, WWF-UK has teamed up with the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s One Planet Plate initiative launching this Earth Hour. From the 24 March over 1000 restaurants across the UK will serve up planet friendly dishes to show how delicious a sustainable meal can be. Chefs involved include Skye Gyngell, Tom Hunt and Raymond Blanc OBE, and high street restaurants including Wahaca, Carluccio’s and Jamie’s Italian.

Visit One Planet Plate and find your plate !
Join Earth Hour and !

CAPE TOWN HEADING FOR AN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
Anthony Turton recently tried to explain the current dire situation in Cape Town in a non-technical manner. The piece was written with the intention of generating an informed public debate, because all things being equal, Cape Town is potentially the first city in South Africa to experience total system failure in 2018.

To take this debate to the next level, he hopes to crystalize out some very clear cause-effect linkage, because this is needed when making the correct decision about future strategy going forward. In his view there are three distinct “things” that need to be profoundly understood for adequate policy-reform. Anthony tries to explain them in non-technical terms so that the layperson can understand their relevance.

The first of these “things” is that the core problem confronting the Western Cape in general, and Cape Town in particular, is what is known in the technical literature as “hydraulic density of population” (HDP). Developed by highly acclaimed Swedish scientist Prof Malin Falkenmark, this is now accepted globally as a key indicator of sustainability.

It is widely used by various intelligence agencies as an indicator of social stability / cohesion in a given country. Stated simplistically, there is a direct relationship between human population, water availability and social cohesion. Seen through this conceptual lens, the WC problem is the interplay between population dynamics and water resource availability, with social cohesion being the result of this interplay.

I recently did a confidential peer review for an investment portfolio that had flagged Cape Town as a high risk for incoming capital, citing the HDP, but not using these exact words. While I am unable to share details because of professional confidentiality, this specific risk report highlighted what I believe an informed policy reform process should be centred on. Let me build this argument further.

HDP has two components to it – population dynamics and water availability – with different implications arising from a range of relationships between variables.

On the population dynamics side, there has been massive urbanization since the transition to democracy in 1994, with little by way of infrastructure upgrade to cope with these demands. The outcome is that Cape Town simply has too many people dependent on its current water resource-base. If a government response is to curtail water use per capita, as it currently is, then the unintended consequence is that the Western Cape (WC) economy will be increasingly unable to attract capital and existing assets will be increasingly at risk.

This triggers a vicious cycle, because lower economic activity results in more unemployment, less taxes to the fiscus, and therefore less money available for infrastructure upgrades. It also drives the loss of social cohesion – something we need to guard against.

On the water availability side, there is a long-term trend in climate variability at work. Whether this is human-induced climate change or not is irrelevant, because all that needs to be known is that current datasets show that cold fronts are becoming weaker, and therefore less able to pe*****te inland, to provide water as rainfall.

More importantly, higher ambient air temperatures also mean increased loss to evapo-transpiration (ET). More water is lost off open dams (E) and plants transpire more water through the stomata of their leaves (T) under such conditions. Climate is important to grasp, because the response by the Mayor is predicated on an assumption that the current drought is temporary, so the policy response is only on temporary solutions, most notably with groundwater becoming more important and desalination as a stop-gap.

Seen through the lens of HDP, this is clearly an inappropriate policy response. A growing population needs to survive off a dwindling water resource base, so to merely shift emphasis from surface to groundwater, ignores the simple fact that groundwater needs to be recharged in order to be sustainable. More importantly, to consider desalination as only a short-term stop-gap measure, means that the cost per unit of water generated will always be prohibitively high.

This leads logically onto the second core concept needed for any informed policy reform debate. Any coastal aquifer is governed by known physics. In a nutshell, any aquifer along the coast has a balance of forces defined simplistically as recharge (water percolating into the aquifer from the surface), abstraction (water withdrawn artificially to sustain human needs) and the pressure of sea water exerted laterally.

So, there are three critical elements – volume in, volume out and balance between fresh and salt water along the coastal margins. The physics of water are specific. Fresh water is less dense than saline water, so the two never mix. Along the coastal margins, this means that a saline wedge lies beneath a lens of fresh water. If more water is abstracted than is recharged into the aquifer over time, then the angle of this interface changes, and the saline wedge pe*****tes deeper inland. This is catastrophic, because once an aquifer is salinized, it takes decades (if not centuries) to once again become fresh.

This is known in the scientific literature as the Ghyben-Herzberg Principle. The physics of water flowing through an aquifer is known in the scientific literature as Darcy’s Law. Both of these are fundamental to any evidence-based policy response being developed if it is to be sustainable over time.

This means that an unintended consequence of failing to grasp the core driver of the problem – HDP – results in an inappropriate policy response by merely replacing surface water with groundwater resources. This is dangerous, and can be likened to what the same Swedish scientist called “Ecocide” – su***de committed by a society when they destroy the ecological foundation of their daily well-being. Excessive groundwater abstraction will certainly result in ecocide, because of the salinization of the coastal aquifers in the absence of increased recharge.

This logically leads us to the third “thing” that is relevant. Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) is a rapidly growing solution driven by the convergence of science, engineering and technology in advanced societies.

Called by different names, including Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR), it simply means that water is cleaned up to a level that makes it safe for use, but then instead of storing it in an open dam where evaporative losses (E) reduce the volume over time, it is pumped underground into a confined aquifer. This is happening all over the world and is a viable technology with an increasingly predictable set of pros and cons.

The Stockholm Industry Water Prize was awarded to a MAR project in California, where a series of injection wells had been engineered to prevent the movement of the saline wedge defined by the Ghyben-Herzberg Principle. This solution made use of recovered grey water, treated to a safe standard, and then used as a curtain to prevent salt water intrusion along the lateral fringes of a coastal aquifer.

The best local example of this is found in Botswana and Namibia, where water is temporarily stored in surface ponds designed to recharge local aquifers. The most sophisticated example that I am aware of is currently being run by the Water Utility Corporation in Perth, West Australia. They will eventually be recovering 120 mL/d (mega litres or million litres per day) from the sewage effluent stream at the Beenyup Waste Water Treatment Works.

This is treated by reverse osmosis followed by UV disinfection before being recharged back into the Leaderville Aquifer more than 100 metres below surface. In my professional opinion, the only way that the Table Mountain Aquifer, and other local sub-surface water resources, will be viable over the long term, will be if they are serviced with active MAR technologies. If this is not done, then Ghyben-Herzberg tells us exactly what will happen as the saline wedge moves into the aquifer, destroying the resource for decades into the future.

These three “things” need to be inserted into the public debate as elected officials decide on strategy for what is probably the single biggest existential threat to the future of the people of Cape Town. To summarise then, these three things are:
1) Hydraulic density of population (HDP) as the core driver of the problem with two distinct sides being active – population dynamics and water resource availability over time – with social cohesion being the resulting outcome of this dynamic interaction. Get it wrong, then we will logically see social decay into anarchy and chaos; but get it right and social cohesion will be restored, or even enhanced.
2) Long-term climate cycles that are reducing the volume of water in the overall WC system, irrespective of whether climate change is human-induced (or not).
3) The physics of coastal aquifers is defined by the Ghyben-Herzberg Principle that defines the angle of the interface between fresh and salt water in response to changes in the balance between abstraction and recharge over time. These are the key variables to understand.

We are now able to have a more informed and hopefully constructive discussion in the policy arena.
To inform this discussion further, I believe that three critical elements of any policy reform will be required, if we are to reverse the system collapse now seen to be more-or-less inevitable in March 2018. These three critical policy elements are:

1) Desalination of seawater.

2) Recovery of water from waste streams

3) Managed aquifer recharge (MAR).

Let me explain why these three elements are needed:

Firstly, it has been known since the first National Water Resource Strategy (NWRS) was launched in 2004, that the Berg River Water Management Area (WMA) would be in deficit by 508 million cubic metres (mcm) per annum by 2025. The same NWRS told us that at national level we would have a deficit of 2,044 mcm by 2025, with major areas of risk being the Upper Vaal (with a projected deficit of 764 mcm) and the Mvoti-Mzimkulu WMA (with a projected deficit of 788 mcm). Government decision-makers have therefore known of this for more than two decades, but have simply failed to act accordingly for reasons beyond the scope of this think piece. Therefore, for all coastal areas sustaining significant economic activity and human populations, the most logical solution is to desalinate seawater. The technology is mature and the cost per unit of water treated is declining significantly as refinements take place. Personally, I am unable to see a future for KZN, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape without desalination being a core component – not as a short-term drought response, but rather as a deliberate long-term strategy that recognizes the harsh implications of HDP. South African companies have lots of experience, with examples being the AMD desalination at eMalahleni, the Trekopje desalination plant in Namibia, and a plethora of smaller plant dotted around the country. We already have the technology, so we have no need to import it from anywhere.

Now the question arises, what of the desalination plants when there is sufficient rainfall to sustain surface water resources? I will answer this key question below. It’s an important issue to grasp for any informed policy reform.

Secondly, water recovery from waste is a growing phenomenon globally. The UN has recognized waste water as one of the critical resources for future sustainability. We already have successful waste water recovery systems in South Africa, but for some reason they are not placed on a pedestal as successful solutions. These include, but are not limited to, various desalination plants in the Mpumalnaga coalfields (such as eMalahleni and Tweefontien), the Durban South Sewage Works where industrial process water is generated for the petrochemical industry and adjacent paper and pulp mill, and the Potsdam works in the Cape where grey water is harvested for irrigation of public spaces. We simply need more of these – in fact we could conceivably generate around 50 billion litres of water daily if we do this across the entire country – but central to this is the fact that the technology used for recovering water from waste is similar to the desalination of seawater. We therefore get back to this central issue – this is a permanent and not a short-term policy trajectory.
Finally, we get to Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR). Now we can deal with the issue raised above – what of the desalination plants when there is sufficient rainfall to sustain surface water resources? The answer is simple – that surplus water is used for MAR. It is banked in a safe place for use in the future. This enables surface water to be optimized for agriculture and other major job creation drivers in our economy, BUT at the same time it increases the assurance of supply (stated conversely it reduces the risk that arises when rains fail sequentially for a few years). Correct sizing of plant means that one does not have to build a massive desalination facility for drought relief only, but rather a few smaller plants, strategically located where they can contribute to MAR. There are many complexities in this process, so for the purpose of an enlightened policy discussion, let us merely raise the issue and ignore the nuanced detail for the time being.

In conclusion, if these three elements of policy reform are incorporated – desalination of sea water, recovery of water from waste streams, and MAR – then Cape Town will emerge from this crisis invigorated, socially cohesive and a safe destination for the capital needed to grow jobs and create general wellbeing across the entire population, irrespective of race or wealth status.

If you care about this policy reform process, please reflect on what I have said above, and consider sharing it with your respective networks. It is important that an enlightened citizenry engage with their elected officials with a clear set of ideas in their heads. I have offered a few of these ideas for consideration by the broader population. Please educate yourself by becoming familiar with the key concepts mention above. Google them at leisure and educate yourself so that you can ask appropriate questions of your elected representatives. After all they are making decisions over complex issues with highly embedded risk that will directly impact your future wellbeing. Water is far too important to be left solely in the hands of politicians who only have a short-term election cycle in mind when making major decisions.

So where is the CHANGE?? . . . Now its Climate Change

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power Movie Clip - Right vs. Wrong (2017) | Movieclips Indie An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power Movie Clip - Right vs. Wrong (2017): Check out the new clip directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk! Be the first to wat...

The Cannabis Scramble continues . . .

How To Get A Cannabis Grow License In South Africa With people scrambling to get a cannabis grow license in South Africa, the latest claim made by a new organisation that they can help you achieve this so far unreachable goal sounds like it may just be too good to be true. So I went to go see for myself. At a humble meeting held last week

This chemical is ending up in processed foods like Cheerios, Ritz Crackers, and Oreos and being consumed by humans across the world. The health of millions of people is at stake! Activists are calling on every single one of you who reads this post to share this breaking story now. The only way this injustice will be corrected is if enough of us stand up and demand that something be done to stop the poisoning of our food supply.https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/human-rights/monsanto-is-scrambling-to-bury-this-breaking-story-don-t-let-this-go-unshared/ #.WaoX3ibKIEc.facebook

Monsanto is scrambling to bury this breaking story - don't let this go unshared! I am frankly shocked this information is not making front page news right now. Monsanto will do anything to bury this story… and as of right now, it’s working.

CRITICAL ELEPHANT HABITAT . . . An ancient, 6.5 million acres of lush rainforest and steamy peat swamps, and because of its rich biodiversity, is one of the most important rainforests still standing today. Its clear rivers provide drinking water for millions of people and its lowland and mountainous rainforests are literally the last place on Earth where Sumatran elephants, orangutans, tigers, rhinos and sunbears still coexist in the wild. Globally, we all depend on it for the climate regulating effects such a large carbon-sink can have. And yet, the Leuser Ecosystem is being actively destroyed for palm oil and other industries. It time to call the World's Biggest Brands to book as they are the ones pushing Indonesia's Endangered Elephants to Extinction

Visit:

World's Biggest Brands Are Pushing Indonesia's Endangered Elephants to Extinction "It's time PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever, Mars, Kellogg's, McDonald's and Procter & Gamble to put elephants over profits and end the destruction of the Leuser Ecosystem."

What fun chatting on Cliff Central in August!!

Beyond Ears and Eyes - The Magic of Plants - CliffCentral Shemane and Liezl learn about the magic of plants from Wanda J Bruce.

The Global SCP Clearinghouse is commendable resource that consolidates knowledge on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) from diverse regions and sectors, connecting stakeholders around a global framework for action to spark collaborations and scale up projects on the ground.

In reality are they doing enough to bridge the gap?

I was surprised to notice that the first global conference was held right here in South Africa, 21 -23 June 2017 in Pretoria in collaboration with our Department of Trade and Industry.

The theme of the conference: “Sustainable Food Systems for all

”Catalyzing Change through Multi-Stakeholder Action”.

The conference explored innovative multi-stakeholder approaches to tackle food systems challenges in general, and discuss the need of ensuring sustainable food systems in the face of a changing climate and growing urbanization in the African context more specifically.

Perusing through the agenda, I certainly did not see any representation from NGOs nor private business participation. So where is the multi stakeholder action going, when participation is not indicated and appears to be international stakeholders only.

I am convinced that SA local pertinent groups on the ground such as farmers, producers and consumers had no idea of the SCP clearing house’s existence – surely they would derive benefit from such a conference and be the vehicle to purport its existence. Authored W J Bruce - Visit www.healthsense.co.za

Many African people utilise indigenous medicines for a myriad of ailments, this includes the use of cannabis to treat cancer. Non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer are now on the rise especially amongst the African people. Read more http://www.healthsense.co.za/indigenous-cannabis/