Elizabeth Hurley, it appears, has moved to the countryside, and she’s cooking up new recipes there. The famed personality has caught hold of 400 acres of that’s working and even has sheep and cattle. While the glamorous farm girl is away from London, she’s been creating a couple of new low fat eatables to float into the market.

She plans to sell an organic snack bar, using oats from her own farm and with the calorie count well below 100. The oat snack bar will be accompanied by a fruit snack bar, and both will have the approval of the Soil Association. The fruit bars will be available in two flavors, strawberry-cherry and orange-cranberry. The oat bars will have banana-chocolate and orange-chocolate flavors.

But that is not all. Liz says her 10 years in Los Angeles gave her a love for beef jerky, so she has also come up with bags of beef jerky. This one is a high protein, low fat snack with each bag counting for only 74 calories. And what could be a better endorsement than Liz herself proclaiming that she lost 12 pounds while munching on her beef jerky.

Source: TreeHugger

The initial frenzy kicked up by some media outlets over the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) has subsided to some extent, but of course there is a (slight) threat and beating it could have you walking down over a delicious road that you would lovingly embrace. You could simply get the vaccination shot and have it over with the flu thing, but having good food to increase the overall immunity is a great idea, shots or not.

The author of the book 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life, Dave Grotto has revealed 10 foods that could help you on your way to a healthier immune system without putting your taste buds under compromise. Immunity enhancing foods on the list include dark chocolate, oysters, mushrooms, yogurt, tea and sweet potatoes. A single oyster can provide you with the Zinc you need for one day. Zinc helps development of the white blood cells and the immune system. Mushrooms have beta glucon that can put infection destroying “superhero” cells into action, and drinking five cups of black tea everyday could increase the body’s defense system four-fold in two weeks.

Strawberries can be good for reducing intensity and duration of the flu, Vitamin D in almonds and Vitamin E in wild caught salmon can prevent infections. Fresh Garlic too is great for the immune system.

Source: Yahoo Green

Everyone loves pizza.

But, don’t you just hate having to store leftovers in those big, awkward boxes? Even when all of the pizza is finished, you still have to throw all that cardboard away.

Shouldn’t there be a more eco-friendly alternative to packaging one of the world’s favorite foods?

Now there is.

This Monday, October 19, ECO Inc., a Manhattan-based manufacturer of sustainable packaging, will launch its first product, the Green Box. The Green Box is a pizza box made from 100% recycled material that ingeniously breaks down into serving plates and a storage container.

On its website, ECO Inc. lists several benefits of the Green Box, including:

Manufactured at no additional cost.

Removable top breaks down into serving plates.

Bottom converts into storage container.

Storage container fits easily into the refrigerator.

Storage container and serving plates fit easily into standard trash bin.

Manufactured from recycled material.

The company even provides a video to illustrate how this new “pizza box of the 21st century” works.

‘Green Box’ Product Promo (Pizza Box) from Green Box on Vimeo.

Source: ECO Incorporated

I was born in Philadelphia and grew up eating those great Philly Cheese Steaks from Pat’s and the second best in the world from a little hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop around the corner from where I lived.  There were vegetarians back in the 50’s and 60’s, but they mainly stayed away from the steak shops, or more commonly, broke their vow of no meat to satisfy their own tummy and taste buds.

We used to grab some fully-loaded cheese steaks and hoagies, add some Hires Birch Beer and listen to the Eagles play and beat their opponents on the radio.

Now, there is a place in Philly where you can get a combination of meat and veggie dishes.  And guess what?  They happen to be green.

I did a brief stint in my youth working at a hoagie shop and anything that was green was thrown out.  Of course green had a different definition is those days.

The Pita Pit is probably the first all-green sandwich shop in Philly.  They also seem pretty internet savvy, as they also have their own blog.

They have already replaced their lighting and changed their plastic forks and knives to biodegradable utensils and swapped out their paper products with recycled products.  They belong to the Green Restaurant Association and will continue to stay green in their future operations.

Happy World Vegetarian Day

Most of us probably agree that what we eat affects our lives and it’s true, a vegetarian diet might actually be healthier. Of course there are people (like me) who probably wouldn’t do without meat on their daily diet, for them, vegetarians around the world have a really simple test. How about a meat-free diet for 24 hours, just to see that it can be done?

World Vegetarian Day is observed annually on October 1st. It is a day of celebration established by the North American Vegetarian Society in 1977 and endorsed by the International Vegetarian Union in 1978.

It’s a proved fact that animal farms help create more methane and nitrous oxide than any other industry in the world. The same reports say that if an American wouldn’t have their meet once a week, it would be just as good as taking 500,000 cars from the US roads. More to it, raising animals is a way of generating land and water pollution and a factor to deforestation. Add to the whole lits of things above, the fact that it’s cruel to kill the animal and you already have a nice recipe for becoming a vegetarian.

And if that didn’t got you convinced, at least we can wish every vegetarian out there a Happy World Vegetarian Day.

Meanwhile, we’d like to know if you’re vegetarian or not? Why yes and why not?

Indoor Hydroponic gardens usually are big and hungry energy sucking installations, with abnormally high electricity usage. The Omega Hydroponic garden though, is a different variety all together as Vancouver based Omega Garden’s Carousel System aims at more efficient use of energy, with claims of higher food yield as compared to conventional hydroponic gardens.

At the heart of the system are LEDs that reduce power consumption, and plants are rotated around these sources, each plant exactly at the same distance from the source, and at the optimal distance for maximum efficiency.

Omega Garden says plant growth depends on plant growth hormones called Auxins. With rotation, the Auxins are distributed through the plant more efficiently, thus leading to quicker growth. The Garden calls this phenomenon “Orbitropism”.

They even have figures and stats to back their claims. While growing a pound of basil used 3.7kWh of energy from a flourescent lamp, the same feat was accomplished by consuming just 0.38 kWh of LED lamps.

Growing plants in the sunlight may not require any use of electricity at all, but then the use of tractors, pesticides and transportation requires a lot of fossil fuels, which isn’t the case with the Omega Garden.

[via TreeHugger]

Vice-Presidentof Amway India Mr Yoginder Singh said the product is backed by extensive research on fruits and vegetables like tomato, apple spinach, raspberries, oranges and green tea. “Despite being the largest fruit and vegetable producer in the world, the per capita consumption of fruits and v egetables in India is the lowest in the world. The nutrition industry has huge potential in urban India,”

‘Nutrilite Concentrated Fruits and Vegetables’ is designed for urban health conscious Indian keeping in mind the need for bridging the gap of fruits and vegetables in their hectic lifestyle and diet. he added

Farms in California - aerial view

The farmlands of California are irrigated by diverted rivers and streams that are filled yearly with runoff from the Sierra Nevada snowpack and by pumping of groundwater as well through some other less-reliable methods. But, the snowpack is disappearing fast.

The cruel drought is now in its third year. In California’s central valley – which is home to a majority of the state’s agricultural output – farmers are leaving hundreds of thousands of acres fallow.

In April 2009, a series of spring showers and storms had raised the snowpack to 80% of normal, but, at the beginning of May, it fell to 66%, compared to 72% the year before.

Matters have been complicated by the recent federal directives requiring reductions of water deliveries to farmers and urban users of California by 5% to 7% – this was done hoping to preserve the Pacific Coast’s salmon fishery.

And, salmon fishery, like the Sierra Nevada snowpack, is on the verge of extinction.

What next?

[via AlterNet] Image courtesy of dwinstonfidler

Valley Farm, West Wratting

But there’s hope as organic farming is the fastest growing sector of the American food marketplace today. And is gaining greater acceptance in nations like UK, India, Australia or Japan.

Although studies across have found a 20% smaller yield from organic farms, it should be considered that it’s a result of using 50% less fertilizer and 97% less pesticides. In other words, there is just a marginal decrease in yield when compared to the huge reduction in costs and energy that is spent when compared to conventional farming.

It has also been concluded with evidence that organic food tastes a lot better, has more nutritional values and greater health benefits due to lack of synthetic and chemical compounds in them when compared to other food material.

However, the most important aspect of course is that the production of organic food actually helps build clean, pollution-free and sustainable ecosystems devoid of chemicals— making them invaluable environmental assets. And there’s hope. There are companies like Abel & Cole Organic Food in UK that are at the cutting edge of producing organic food and hopefully will soon oversee a revolution towards farms that stop becoming pesticide dumps, while offering nutritious diet hat builds a healthy society.

We’re game!

Image courtesy of stawarz

According to PETA president Ingrid Newkirk, the tofu combines the odor of George Clooney’s sweat with the delicious and wholesome taste of a tofu that encourages complete vegetarian habits.

“As a mammal, I’m offended”

To create this completely undesirable tofu, top minds have gone through the painstaking process of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to replicate the essence and odor of Clooney’s sweat. There is nothing wrong in loving and idolizing a certain star, but this seems downright lunatic.

PETA has once again managed to do what they know best really wants to achieve- draw attention towards its cause. Guys that’s not the way to go vegetarian … don’t you think?

Image by pierrotsomepeople