Clean, Green, Confused

Keeping track of my efforts to live a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle, while trying to stay away from health "scams", hypes and biases.  

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I've been using this app for a few weeks now, mainly to keep track of what food I might be intolerant/allergic to.

I suffer from chronic cystic acne, which seems to be aggravated by certain foods. (Currently highest on the list of suspects are nuts and dairy).

This app is definitely helpful for keeping a record of all the food I eat, down to individual ingredients for home-cooked dishes, as I can save these as personal "recipes".

An added bonus - it's also made me a lot more mindful of the nutritional value and calories in what I eat. I think I've lost some weight just keeping an eye on the calorie counter each day.

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What I bought at the supermarket:

Ecostore's shampoo

Works wonders on my oil-prone hair.

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101cookbooks' list of summer picnic bowls

A list of summer picnic bowls to use as inspiration for picnics and potlucks this long weekend. Enjoy! Most are the sort that can be prepped ahead of time. And they're all meant to be served family-style as part of a larger spread.

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Coconut oil vs olive oil

Coconut oil was big in 2014. Some called it the "healthiest oil for cooking". Some warned against cooking with any other oil, based on the fact that coconut oil has a high smoke point, and is supposedly more stable for high heat cooking. 

But coconut oil is also a lot higher in saturated fat than olive oil. See comparison here.

I've found a couple of well-researched articles here and here, which conclude that cooking with good quality olive oil is perfectly fine.

As always, I'm sticking to moderation here. I've got both in my pantry, and use each for different recipes.

Olive oil is pourable, so it's heaps more convenient for quick frying, hummus and salads.

Coconut oil is delicious with corn (just grab frozen corn, defrost in the microwave, and add a bit of coconut oil and salt), and chocolate sauce/ganache (for that hint of coconut).

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What I bought from the supermarket:

Pole and line caught tuna

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I'm calling this Vegan Chocolate Buttercream however it may be more aptly named Vegan Chocolate Not-Buttercream due to the omission of the two main ing...

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Ali Kamenova's yoga classes

Great yoga classes on Youtube.

My aim for 2015 is to have a daily yoga practice (at least 30 minutes a day). So far, so good. These videos are definitely helping.

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'Detoxing' has been debunked. Maybe it's time to debunk that | Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman: We live in an age when disagreeing with something too often means we declare it absolutely wrong

"Even if the only thing your January detox delivers is an empowering sense of being a person capable of making choices, rather than being enslaved to impulse, it might be worth it. You can certainly take things too far: believing that your environment and the contents of your fridge are out to poison you is a pinched and miserable way to live. But at its best, the age-old religious tradition of renunciation – found everywhere from Ramadan to Lent to Buddhism’s “five precepts” – isn’t about neurotically regarding pleasure as dangerous or shameful. Instead, it’s about voluntarily deciding to deny yourself certain easy forms of escapism and distraction, in the belief that facing up to reality without them, for a short time at least, might prove beneficial."