The Benefits Of Making Your Own Healthy Infused Drinking Water

The other day my kids took over the kitchen to make infused water. 💦 💧 They chopped up organic lemons and cucumbers. We don’t drink juices, sodas or other sweetened beverages, so for them it was an opportunity to try something tasty and refreshing that was not plain water.

Infuse Your Own Water

What are the benefits of infusing your own water?

You get to:

• Choose your own fruits, veggies and herbs to infuse

• Naturally consume more vitamins, minerals and antioxidants while you drink water.

• Keep yourself hydrated by encouraging you to drink more water overall

Why is this SO MUCH HEALTHIER than simply purchasing a store-bought flavored water?

Stay Away From Commercial Flavored Water Brands

It is best to avoid most commercial infused-water brands such as Bai (“water infused with flavor”), LaCroix and Bubly.

They:

• Contain “natural flavors” (which are not so healthy and the subject of several lawsuits) and other additives

• Are made from some form of purified water (as opposed to spring water)

• Come in plastic or aluminum containers (which are wasteful) and, in the case of the cans, usually contain BPA

What Are The Benefits Of Infusing Your Own Water?

• When you infuse your own water, there are no natural flavors, preservatives, added sugar or BPA (in the cans).

• You can chose your own flavor and nutritional profile to make it fit your needs.

• And you can also choose your own water: if you prefer spring water, reverse-osmosis water or even Brita-filtered tap water, at least you know what you are getting.

What’s The Best Way To Infuse?

• Choose your own fruits, veggies and herbs to infuse.

• Chop up the fruits and vegetables.

• Grab a 32-oz (or larger) mason jar and fill with water.

• Drop the fruits, veggies and herbs into the water.

• Cover and leave in the fridge overnight, for up to 12 hours.

We purchased a spout to fit the mason jar so the water doesn’t spill when we pour it.

Enjoy Your Healthy, Homemade Infused Water

There’s no reason to buy an infuser. The only benefit is that it keeps the flavor elements from mixing with the drinking water.

And there’s no reason to buy flavored water in the store.

Save the money. You can make this yourself. It’s much healthier.

Eating Healthy On A Budget

“You don’t need a silver fork to eat good food.”

— Paul Prudhomme

It’s a brand new year. A lot of people will make resolutions in January to eat better and live a healthier, more conscious life. Then they will fall off the wagon by February. The problem is that eating more consciously is a habit that takes practice, just like establishing any new habit. And it can also be brutally expensive.

When my wife and I scrapped our old way of eating about five years ago, our monthly food expenditures shot up at first. That’s because we were shopping for produce at the most high-end markets like Erewhon in West L.A.; buying super-pricey, grass-fed and humanely-raised kosher meat; and stocking our pantry with bulk items that we never had before. We were trying to “do the right thing”. But our approach was neither sustainable nor sane.

When you decide to eat healthy, it is tempting to get over-ambitious and overbuy. But with the right knowledge, eating healthy need not be a scary expense.

In this article, I outline several strategies to make the transition easier so the resolutions stick.

You Don’t Need To Buy Everything Organic

Know The Clean Fifteen And The Dirty Dozen

Get to know the Clean Fifteen and the Dirty Dozen lists put out by the Environmental Working Group. Not all fruits and veggies need to be purchased organic. For instance, avocados, bananas, onions, eggplants, asparagus, frozen peas and sweet potatoes generally have much lower pesticide levels than other crops.

Buy Organic From Box-Box Retailers

Organic canned goods can be purchased from house brands at Walmart, Target and Smart &  Final for less money than at Ralph’s, Whole Foods or Erewhon. Sometimes, even the organic versions of the 365 Everyday Value brand at Whole Foods will feature prices nearly in line with conventional products. But always check that the cans are non-BPA.

Shop Farmer’s Markets

Eating healthy, organic and unprocessed food doesn’t have to be out of reach for your budget. And farmers' markets aren’t always more expensive than supermarkets. If you shop around your local farmers' markets and hit up different vendors, you will often find prices below supermarket rates. You may also get more bang for your buck. For instance, I purchase heads of kale from Underwood Farms and Sunrise Farms that are much larger than what you would find in the supermarket, for the same price or less. The biggest upside is that it is freshly picke

Take Advantage Of Sales & Coupons

Mainstream snack brands like Saltines and Ritz crackers are very cheap. But they  are also ultra-processed and highly refined foods with little to no real nutritional value.

On the other hand, many very pricey artisan brands go on sale on a regular basis at Whole Foods and Sprouts. These include Mary’s Gone Crackers, Simple Mills crackers and Banza chickpea pasta. I’ve seen these brands discounted as much as 35% for 2-3 weeks at a time. Use these opportunities to stock up on them.

If you are an Amazon Prime member (who isn’t these days?!), download the Whole Foods app. You will get access to coupons so you will know what is going on sale ahead of time. You will also receive an additional 10% off sale items when you have the app scanned at the register.

Get A Costco Membership

Costco is an essential destination for people who want quality organic and healthy food. When it dawns on you, as it eventually did for us, that you cannot make everything from scratch, Costco is also an excellent source of packaged kosher snacks for the kids:

• Dried mango (organic and unsulfured)

• Chestnuts (Gefen brand, organic)

• Organic hummus school lunch-sized containers

• Tnuva sheep feta

• Simple Origins organic penne pasta (lentils, brown rice and buckwheat)

There are many, many other excellent and healthy kosher items at Costco at very reasonable prices.

Save Money On Essentials: Buy From Bulk Bins

You can find bulk bins in most health food markets. In Los Angeles, these include Sprouts, Whole Foods and Cooportunity. When you take advantage of the bulk bins, you can purchase as much or as little as you need and you still get the bulk pricing.

Grains

We have been gradually buying more of our grains from these bins: oatmeal, millet, quinoa and amaranth. When you have access to so many varieties of grains, you also have the opportunity to experiment with grains that you’ve never eaten before, without the commitment that comes with a large bag and hefty price tag.

Herbs and Spices

You can also buy most of your spices in bulk and refill the old glass containers. Spices do not last forever in your pantry and there is no reason to waste them. Look for spices that are whole, organic, non-irradiated and certified kosher. Just remember to label the spice with the purchase date, as the packaging will not reflect when you added new spice to your old container. You will save a lot of money in bulk vs. small spice jars.

Some comparisons (prices are from Frontier Co-Op brand at Cooportunity supermarket):

Organic garlic powder

• 2.4 oz jar is $2.71/oz

• 1.0 oz bulk is $1.06/oz (a savings of 61%)

Organic paprika

• 1.7 oz jar is $3.49/oz

• 1.0 oz bulk is $1.07/oz (a savings of 69%)

Organic Ceylon cinnamon

• 1.8 oz jar is $2.70/oz

• 1.0 oz bulk is $0.73/oz (a savings of 73%)

For more information specifically about spices, you can read this post.

Not everything is cheaper in bulk, though. For instance, almonds ($14.99/lb), walnuts ($14.99/lb) and cashews ($13.49/lb are very expensive.

Grow (Some Of) Your Own Food

A very viable option is to grow some of your own food. All you need is a sunny space indoors or a narrow strip of land in your backyard. We’ve grown basil, oyster mushrooms and sprouts in our apartment. It’s also another interactive way to involve the kiddos in the food process.

• You can buy an entire basil plant at Trader Joe’s for about what it costs to purchase a few cut leaves packed in plastic wrap.

• Whole Foods sometimes sells oyster mushroom kits. Or you can order one from the resources listed on this site.

• Seed-growing kits like Hamama and True Leaf Market are great for growing your own microgreens.

Buy Food, Just Enough, Mostly Plants

There is a common misconception that healthy food is expensive and beyond the reach of the average consumer. On the contrary, some of the healthiest food is also the most affordable.

The biggest key to shopping healthy-on-a-budget is to plan before you go. It’s very tantalizing to overbuy – whether at a farmers’ market or at Costco – only to relegate some of that produce to the trash can. It’s also very easy to shop for convenience. But that costs steeply.

Talk to your spouse once a week to plan out meals and the ingredients required to make them. Don’t forget to plan for healthy packaged snacks for the kids.

Compile a list the night before. I use the Reminders app on my iPhone. I have a list for each market that I shop at, including each farmers’ market. That way, I can plan out the best places to purchase each fruit or vegetable. This also curbs the urge to splurge at the last minute because you forgot to eat breakfast and are hungry.

To paraphrase Michael Pollan: buy (real) food, just enough, mostly plants.

Why Natural Resources Are Important

Editor’s Note: My 7-year-old son wrote this piece with me about why natural resources are important. ThIs is a topic about which he is very passionate. The piece has been lightly edited for syntax and grammar.

I use natural resources when I drink water. I use them for building toy robots out of cardboard, which is made out of wood. I wear clothes and shoes made out of leather. And I eat fruits and vegetables that are grown in soil.

I wrote this article because I was curious about why natural resources were incredibly important and how I could learn about them. Without these things, we would have a hard time living on this planet.

I wanted to write this on my dad’s blog, Consciously Kosher, because it is all about showing respect for the resources we use and how we use them.

What’s A Natural Resource?

Natural resources are resources on our planet that were not made by humans. Natural resources include: clean air, fresh water, wind, trees and forests, animals, plants, coal, oil, soil, natural gas, phosphorus, minerals like bauxite and metals like iron, copper and gold

Renewable resources are natural resources that get replaced in nature over time. Some are remade all the time, like fresh water, or grow, like trees.

But some take a very long time to make again. We need to be extra careful with them. For example, coal and oil come from animals that died millions of years ago. These are not renewable. We will eventually run out of them.

Why Are Natural Resources Important?

They enable us to breathe, feed ourselves, keep warm and get from one place to the other.

They provide us with soil to grow plants, grass to feed animals and sunlight to make solar energy.

What Do We Do With Natural Resources?

We use natural resources:

• To build houses

• To create paper

• For food to feed ourselves with fruits and vegetables

• As energy that comes from fossil fuels, wind and solar power to move cars and elevators and to power our devices and to cook

• For keeping warm with firewood

• For dressing ourselves with plant fabrics and animal skins

How Does Something Become A Natural Resource?

Some resources like coal and oil, come from plants and animals that lived many years ago. So these take millions of years to form. Other resources like sunlight and water are always available.

Why Is It Bad To Not Take Care Of These Natural Resources?

Some of them, like sunlight, air and water, are renewable. This means that they are created by nature and we can use them over and over again. But others, like coal and natural gas, are not renewable, which means that they will run out if we keep using them.

What Happens When We Use Them Up?

Once we use up the resources that are not renewable, they are gone. So we need to be conscious of how we use them.

My dad says that we should always be mindful of what we use and give back something when we can. That means planting new trees, like they do in Israel all the time. It means not wasting food. And it means finding new ways to build machines and devices so we don’t use up all the resources on our planet.

Does Making Healthy Food Choices Mean You Are Missing Out?

homemade sourdough bread and vegan butter

“Making healthy decisions doesn’t mean you’re missing out on the so-called ‘good things in life’. Ironically, it means you’re gaining a better life.”

— Sara Speckels, Professional Whole-Food Plant-Based Chef

Since I was a child, I’ve always loved food. At every major family event, including my own bar mitzvah, I was always the last person to clear my plate. However, as it turned out, the food I was eating was not as healthy as I was led to believe. I suffered from debilitating sinus issues, food allergies and sensitivities for over 25 years. Whenever I would get a cold, it always evolved into a sinus infection.

In 2014, while experiencing brain fog, lack of energy and a host of issues brought on by work-related anxiety and stress, I also learned that I was suffering from advancing adrenal fatigue, which is certainly not helped by the Western diet.

Updating My Diet

On the advice of my doctor, I made a conscious decision to remove the refined breads, dairy, soy, processed and manufactured items, food additives and, for a time, all red meat and wheat products. With my wife’s help, I learned how to make almost all of my food from scratch.

Over several months, my sinuses largely cleared, many of my sensitivities disappeared, I lost 20 pounds, my mind became clearer and my energy began to return.

Eventually, this journey affected my entire household. My wife and I figured out how to make everything from nut milk to sourdough bread to school snacks for the kids.

Seeing Food As Medicine

I learned that the food that we eat can have a powerful effect on the human body. Do I miss eating a bagel and cream cheese, a pizza, a hot dog or a doughnut? To be honest, not really. But that’s just me. Like binge-drinking, eating the wrong foods always felt terrific in the moment. However, I always paid for it later.

I no longer struggle to breathe in the morning (the California wildfires notwithstanding). I have not gotten a sinus infection in nearly six years. And when I do react to something in my diet, it is very easy to identify it and make the appropriate substitutions.

What Are The Health Effects Of The Western Diet?

According to a study reported on by Forbes, 58% of all calories and 90% of added sugars consumed in the United States are from ultra-processed foods. Needless to say, these are a major health concern. These ultra-processed foods are loaded with empty calories, unlike the calories in their nutrient-dense whole-foods counterparts.

What Foods Should You Be Eating?

By switching to a diet rich in predominantly whole, unprocessed foods, you’ll consume much less simple starch and sugar, experience less inflammation and reduce toxins in your body. You will almost certainly feel better that you were before. It need not be a sudden shift. A gradual evolution is the best way to proceed.

Starting this Thanksgiving, why not use the holiday season to experiment with healthier new recipes? I’ll be posting simple and efficient meal ideas from my own experience. These include foods that have become staples in our household and that our kids have learned to enjoy as well.

Advice For The Holidays

Eat as many colorful plant foods as possible. Eat animal foods that have been sustainably farmed, properly fed and given a good quality of life. Using these raw materials, pick a handful of recipes that you can learn to make from scratch.

Don’t think in terms of what you might be missing out on. Consider what you are gaining.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Average Consumer: Is Kale Trendy? Real Foodies: Who Cares?

preparing homemade kale chips

My family has been eating kale chips for about 4 years. It is one of our go-to snacks roughly every Monday and Thursday. Each week, we buy 3-4 heads of kale, usually at the farmer’s market. We usually dehydrate them into chips. Plus, through some significant stroke of luck, my wife convinced my then-6-year-old son last year that kale chips would make his nightmares disappear.

Maybe it’s time to find a new green leafy obsession, though.

The Atlantic published an article on September 30th, The Saddest Leafy Green, lamenting the decline in kale’s popularity in the United States. It even questioned whether it was ever truly liked in the first place. It’s a great article and definitely worth a read.

It’s a strange point of view, however. Foods are inherently healthy or they are not. They are not better for you because Gwyneth Paltrow endorses a vegetable (as when she demonstrated how to make kale chips on the Ellen Show in 2011) or because Beyonce dances pantsless in a music video while wearing a T-shirt with “Kale” written on it. These two incidents arguably helped fuel the kale-as-a-superfood trend. But kale has been cultivated for hundreds of years and it will continue to be cultivated and consumed.

Another vegetable that gets a bad rap (or worse, not even a rap at all!) is arugula. Arugula has been cultivated for thousands of years. It is mentioned in the Torah and the Talmud and is eaten all over Italy, Israel and the entire Mediterranean region. This leafy green had its day in the sun in 2007, when then-candidate Barack Obama name-checked it while on the campaign trail in Iowa. Alas, in the popularity contest that is Google Trends data, it never quite took off after that. But it is very much in demand among culinary enthusiasts and others who know food.

How do food trends get started, anyway? This BBC article explains how avocados and kale became so popular.

When you make discovering and trying new vegetables a regular part of your food shopping experience, you get to decide what’s popular in your home and what isn’t – based on an entirely different set of criteria than the cultural popularity meter.

To not be influenced by the marketing trends is difficult but doable.

Real foods have no need for popularity trends. They stand on their own merits. Besides, what’s the alternative, an Oreo cookie?

I can tell you with absolute certainty that kale makes my 7-year-old son’s nightmares go away. How do I know that? He believes that it makes his nightmares go away and tells me all the time. Placebo effect? Obviously. But in our household, that is a good enough validation for a vegetable that has gone from being the darling of the food world back to relative obscurity.

The Lost Art Of Interacting With The Natural World

tule river, sequoia national park

“Unless we are willing to encourage our children to reconnect with and appreciate the natural world, 
we can’t expect them to help protect and care for it.”

— David Suzuki

For many young people, interacting with the natural world is virtually a lost art. Children may experience nature on a hike, a camping excursion or a field trip to a local farm. But touching nature is not an activity that occurs regularly.

Sequoia National park

Sequoia National park

To touch, feel, smell and taste the natural world is getting harder and harder as cities grow denser and the natural outdoors becomes more difficult to reach. Increasingly, both we and our children are preoccupied with digital devices, social networking and virtual reality. We live in artificially lit environments, eat packaged foods and breathe perfectly-filtered air conditioned air in antiseptic buildings. All these impediments preclude us from taking off our shoes and walking in a truly natural environment.

There is a disconnect. Many kids are not even familiar with what common plants look like. And if the kids don’t recognize them, then how can they have a connection to them? How can they protect and care for them?

Descanso Gardens

Descanso Gardens

Luckily, there are many urban oases to explore with your kids in and around Los Angeles. Here is a sampling:

• Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge

• The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades

• The Virginia Robinson Gardens in Beverly Hills

• The L.A. Arboretum

• The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino

• Abalone Cove Shoreline Park in Rancho Palos Verdes

• Malibu Creek State Park

• Tree People (temporarily closed)

• Topanga State Park

• Japanese Gardens in Van Nuys

• Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden at UCLA

You can even take the kids to visit a local farm, where they can learn how to pick their own fruits and vegetables! The most popular is Underwood Family Farms. Underwood has two locations: Moorpark (the larger one) and Somis.

Descanso Gardens

Descanso Gardens

It is essential to talk to children about showing respect for natural resources and for the flora and fauna that inhabit our local environment.

Once our children become familiar with plants in their natural environment, they are more likely to become stewards of the land, to respect and protect it. They are also far more likely to want to seek it out at a farmer’s market, a local farm or in our own backyard garden.

Sequoia National Park

Golan Heights Winery, Israel

For children in the 21st century, to become conscious of your natural surroundings is not automatic: it is a gift that must be consciously sought out.

Revised on March 31, 2021

The Whimsy Of Imperfect-Looking Produce

This past Sunday, my kids had a field day exploring all the imperfect-looking produce they discovered at our two favorite Los Angeles-area farmer’s markets, Larchmont and Hollywood. We were greeted by numerous fruits and vegetables that were either conjoined twins or had whimsical-looking appendages. Perhaps it was the proximity to Halloween.

In just one visit, we found:

• Persimmons and bell peppers with protrusions

• Conjoined delicata winter squash

• A conjoined carrot in the shape of a woman’s waist, with legs crossed (!)

• Heirloom tomatoes that were bursting at the seams

• Oversized Wonderful pomegranates that were cracking apart because of the sweet, juicy seeds inside

• Undersized white Paper Shell pomegranates (ironically, these were the tastiest of all the poms!)

• Apples with bumpy skins and inner cores that curve

• Oranges with yellow blemishes

• Gourds full of contortions, spikes and warts

it got me thinking: With the exception of the gourds, I’ve rarely, if ever, seen any of these others in an American supermarket. The gourds are associated with Halloween, so their disfigured, grotesque and ghoulish forms are in line with our expectations of how these fruits should look and feel. Ironically, most people purchase these for display purposes and then throw them away afterward. So they are a source of waste rather than food.

I’ve never quite understood what is repulsive or off-putting about fruits and veggies that are not perfect-looking. Nothing in nature is perfect. People come in all shapes and sizes. So do dogs.

Why not produce?

Real Produce Is Enchanting

Real produce runs the gamut from the whimsical to the grotesque. Once you move past the familiar story that produce always has to appear instagrammably perfect, you become conscious of the variety and character of imperfect-looking produce. The defects in the produce take on an enchanting quality. Developing this consciousness can be a powerful method for teaching kids to recognize fruits and vegetables in their natural state. It elevates the veggie experience from the mundane to the extraordinary.

The effect that perfect produce has on our minds is similar to that of the beauty industry on young women: When all you see are airbrushed, unblemished and impossibly thin bodies in fashion magazines, you begin to feel that your own body is less than adequate. Similarly, when you walk into a major American supermarket, you see rows and rows of beautiful produce with nary a bump, blemish or extra protrusion.

Unfortunately, according to ImperfectProduce.com, at least 20% of all the produce grown in the United States goes to waste because it does not look beautiful. Yet, these cosmetic defects have no effect whatsoever on the quality and taste of the produce. Imperfect Produce, the company, has done an amazing job bringing top-of-mind awareness to this problem in the United States. If you don’t have access to a farmer’s market, I wholeheartedly encourage you to subscribe to their grocery delivery service. And no, this is not a paid endorsement, just a recommendation to encourage my readers to take action on this subject.

How Do You Involve Your Kids In Developing A Passion Around Produce?

Every piece of produce, blemished or otherwise, tells a story. And kids love stories. First, take your kids to a farmer’s market to pick out some imperfect-looking produce. Then engage them around the dinner table. Ask them to pick a fruit or veggie. Tell them to imagine that each piece of produce is a character with an interesting back story. Have them consider its shape, size, color and texture. Let them take turns bringing these foods to life, as if it were a puppet show.

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Bonus: Here’s some conversation-worthy stone fruits from the summertime.

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Making Food is a Family Collaboration

Weekly Farmers Market Visits

The farmers market is a family ritual for us, a weekly adventure of discovery. Every Sunday morning at 8am, we take a trip to the Larchmont Village Farmers Market in Los Angeles. My kids talk to familiar farmers; schmooze new vendors; sample fruits, kombucha and dairy-free yogurts; and assist one of the vegetable vendors in shucking corn and de-leafing broccoli.

It is one of the highlights of their week!

Teaching Healthy Choices

People constantly ask me how I have been able to convince my two primary school-aged boys to eat healthy, unprocessed whole foods.

It’s really quite simple.

As a parent, I’ve learned that it’s not enough to espouse a certain lifestyle. You must actively practice what you preach – or your kids call your bluff. When you are conscious about the food that you eat, when you discuss the sources of your food with your kids, when you establish new eating habits together and allow them to actively pick out their food each week – you and your kids grow together in your habits. They will crave what they experience and they will feel confident in their choices if you feel confident in yours.

After avoiding kale chips for several years, my younger son started eating them a year ago because my wife mentioned that kale makes nightmares disappear. Does it work? According to him, it is the only foolproof method!

It’s not perfect. There are occasional slip-ups at school and tense standoffs in our pantry.

Food Substitutes

You also learn to find substitutes for common conventional foods. For instance, my younger son loves starch. So we take him to Trader Joe’s to pick out pastas that are more nutrient-dense than traditional, refined flour pasta: brown rice & quinoa, lentil, black bean. And sometimes to Whole Foods for his current fave: Banza chickpea pasta.

Social Pressure

There is strong social pressure to conform, however. Friends and family constantly get on my case for not allowing my kids to eat processed foods, partake of cake and ice cream at birthday parties or eat pizza, dairy and packaged snacks. They hound me that my kids are somehow missing out on “the fun things in life.” I point out that I have trained my kids with the knowledge to decide what goes into their stomachs. They choose to eat what they like, not what the majority is having.

My older son had a schoolteacher a couple years ago who got angry at him for refusing to eat the matzo that they made in class for Passover. She sternly told him that "if you don't have Celiac disease, then you are missing out on valuable nutrients in your diet”. The teacher was caught off guard when he responded back, deadpan, that refined flour has no nutrition!

Involve Kids In The Process

Whether it’s a farmers market, a trip to the local supermarket, a visit to a farm or even planning an Amazon Fresh order together, involving the kids in the process is very important. It will pay dividends throughout life.

Rosh Hashanah: A Taste of Honey

“A taste of honey, tasting much sweeter than wine…”

So goes a classic song from 1961, later covered by the Beatles.

Indeed, honey is a gustatory and sensory experience most powerfully perceived during Rosh Hashanah, as we dip apples in honey, swaddle our bread in honey and serve pastries made with honey.

Why Do We Dip Apples In Honey On Rosh Hashanah?

One of the most pervasive customs around Rosh Hashanah is eating apples with honey. Apples are symbolic of the Garden of Eden and represent the sweet year that we hope to have. Honey symbolizes the sweetness of life and encapsulates our hopes for the new year. It is also a reminder of one of the Biblical attributes of the Land of Israel, a land “flowing with milk and honey.”

But ancient honey was very different from the commercial honey that we consume nowadays. A good-quality raw honey contains an abundance of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidant polyphenols, pollen, enzymes and probiotic bacteria such as acidophilus. Raw honey is a very rich food!

What Is Wrong With Most Commercial Honey?

By contrast, honey that has been processed is much less nutritious than raw honey. Pasteurization extends shelf life, while filtration removes debris and air bubbles so the honey looks smoother. The heat treatment reduces the viscosity and make it easier to pour. It also destroys the beneficial enzymes and reduces the antibacterial and antimicrobial properties. Some honeys undergo an additional ultrafiltration step that removes pollen, enzymes and antioxidants. What is left is nutritionally sterile: refined sugar in liquid form. Additionally, it’s very likely that the fields that the bees pollinate have been sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals.

As if the sterilization and filtration are not enough, honey is often adulterated with glucose, high-fructose corn syrup or starch to make it cheaper. This particularly applies to honey imported from China. Since there is no reliable regulatory body safeguarding consumers from adulterated versions, I suggest avoiding cheap commercial honey altogether.

Where Can Trustworthy Honey Be Found?

How does a consumer know that the honey is real? Buying raw local honey from actual beekeepers at farmer’s markets is one way to ensure you are getting real honey. Real unadulterated honey should contain the producer’s name and information on the product label. It should say “raw” and “unpasteurized” on the package. And it should be local, if possible. Short of buying it from a local vendor, trustworthy brands can be found at Whole Foods, Amazon or Costco. We buy our raw honey from Costco (the Kirkland brand) and YS Eco Bee Farms Raw Honey from Amazon.

Why Do We Eat Apples On Rosh Hashanah?

Along with honey, apples are highly coveted during Rosh Hashanah. The custom to eat apples on this holiday may have begun in the Middle Ages, when apples became more widely cultivated.

But seasonality also plays a strong role in the apple being a Rosh Hashanah fruit: Popular apple varieties such as Fuji, Gala, McIntosh and Honeycrisp are first harvested during September.

What Are The Health Benefits Of Apples?

In addition to the religious symbolism and seasonality, why are apples held in such esteem in our culture’s health consciousness? Apples are full of fiber, vitamin C and certain anti-oxidants, which makes them not only the perfect holiday fruit but also the perfect antidote to other not-so-savory food cravings at this time of year. As the ancient aphorism states, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”.

Not surprisingly, modern nutritional science is increasingly backing this up. According to Cornell University biochemist T. Colin Campbell, “it is now clear that there are hundreds, if not thousands of chemicals in apples, each of which in turn may affect thousands of reactions and metabolic systems. This enormous number and concentration of vitamin-C like chemicals in apples poses a serious challenge to the notion that a single chemical – vitamin C or anything else – is responsible for the major health-giving properties of apples.” This supports the contention that the whole food in its natural state is always more potent than any of its individual components.

Why Buy Organic?

Before you go shopping for your Rosh Hashanah apples, consider buying organic. Conventional apples are doused with a heavy amount of synthetic pesticides (ranking fifth on the EWG’s list of most contaminated fruits and vegetables). But if you can’t buy organic, then you can clean the apples with a mixture of baking soda (1 tsp) and water (2 cups). This hopefully removes more of the pesticide residue than simply rinsing with water.

Have a sweet and consciously kosher New Year! Shana Tova u’Metuka!

Food Is Your Responsibility

“The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else’s responsibility until I’m ready to eat it.”

— Joel Salatin

Eating in the United States is a simple act, mostly performed by third parties until the food is on your plate.

Much of this blog is about sourcing and preparing your own food. Yet, with the exception of Friday night and Shabbat meals, few people take the time to be in charge of what goes on their plates.

I make it a point to have two meals a day with my family: breakfast that the boys and I prepare before they go to school; and dinner, which my wife always cooks fresh. We take full responsibility for the preparation and for what goes into the dishes we eat. Before the cooking even happens, the entire family goes with me to the farmer’s market every Sunday morning and picks out what they want for the week. And mealtime isn’t just about the food. The bonds that we forge by interacting together are irreplaceable.

But our household goes against the grain of the cultural norm.

In 21st century supermarkets, convenient packaged kosher items are very easy to find: According to market research firm Mintel, more than 40 percent of new foods launched in 2014 claimed to be certified kosher. And over one million ingredients that come from suppliers of raw materials are certified kosher, translating to over 135,000 packaged items being certified kosher. With this many prepared and packaged options, it is obvious that eating kosher in the United States is a simple choice.

On the flip side, there is a perception that making your own food is not easy, affordable or accessible. Often, it is perceived as a privilege.

This is unfortunate.. Unless you live in an inner city “food desert”, where there is truly – and tragically – a lack of fresh and healthy food, cooking should be a habit that is practiced regularly in the household.

Cooking your own food is amazing. And doing so results in numerous positive benefits. On the other hand, not doing so has negative ramifications:

According to author and journalist Michael Pollan, “the decline of everyday home cooking doesn’t only damage the health of our bodies and our land but also our families, our communities, and our sense of how our eating connects us to the world.”

Dr. Mark Hyman goes a step further: “We have abdicated one of the essential acts that makes us human – cooking – to the food industry. Making our own food is essentially a political act that allows us to take back our power.”

The benefits are many:

• You save money. Going out to eat (or ordering takeout) is expensive! And it is hardly ever healthy.

• You get to practice meal prepping. Once you discover the dishes that you and your family enjoy eating – and the ones that you don’t – you can build simple meal planning menus. For instance, why not schedule a Taco Tuesday meal every week? Or establish that Sunday nights are for finishing Shabbat lunch leftovers? Every night does not need to have a theme but setting up a recurring schedule with thematic elements simplifies shopping, speeds up preparation and relieves stress.

• You eat healthier, more nutritious food.

• You feel better by providing yourself and your family with the most valuable health insurance policy of all: real and nutritious whole foods that build health rather than foster disease.

• You decide which ingredients go into your food. You get to choose where your ingredients come from, which markets sell the best produce and which vendors you trust.

• You transform the process of preparing a meal from a solitary chore into a family collaboration. Kids love to help, from picking out ingredients at the market to mixing, baking and cooking.

• You take the power to influence your kids away from the food industry, the advertising industry and society as a whole. Your kids will model themselves after your choices. If they see you eating nutritious food, then that is what they will crave. The younger you start them on this path, the easier the transition and the more resiliently they will stick to these habits.

• Most importantly, you re-establish the connection between the food you eat and the origin of that food.

Writer Jo White has an excellent and thoughtful blog post on Medium, entitled “Is the Kitchen Dead?”, about how, despite the advances in technology and convenience, cooking in the kitchen will remain a fundamental human behavior and people will still cook.

Once you take responsibility for cooking fresh, homemade food, you will no longer want to rely on the vast majority of packaged and processed foods on the market.