I’ve worked with countless cancer survivors in my private practice. They are some of the nicest people you would ever meet. Over the past ten years, I’ve had the good fortune to work with two wonderful groups in my community, Gilda’s Club and Support Connection that do great work supporting those dealing with cancer and other chronic illness. I highly recommend donating to these fine organizations.

Those cancer survivors who know me and my work know how crazy upset I get when I see a stunt like this KFC Pink Buckets for Cancer! The Susan G. Komen foundation has partnered up with KFC who will donate 50 cents for every bucket of chicken purchased.  Fortunately Think Before You Pink has come up with an online petition to try to convince the Susan Komen Foundation to re-think their partnership with this junk food giant, you can sign their petition by clicking here.

Of course I signed the online petition, which in turn got me an automated letter from the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Here’s what it says:

Thank you for your e-mail to us – we do appreciate you taking the time to tell us how you feel about this partnership. You should know that our partnership with KFC is designed to help reach millions of women we might not otherwise reach with breast health education and awareness messages which we consider critical to our mission. This additional outreach is made possible through KFC’s 5,300 restaurants (about 900 of them in communities not yet served by a Komen Affiliate). This partnership also helps us to generate funding toward the $1.5 billion in research and community programs that Komen has funded over 30 years – programs that are literally saving women’s lives through better treatments and early detection.

Our partnership focuses on healthy options at KFC – grilled chicken and vegetables, for example. Ultimately, we believe that the decision to maintain a well-balanced diet lies in the hands of the consumer. KFC provides tools to make those choices, by providing a healthy choice menu and advice on its website on how consumers can limit fat and calorie consumption in its products. We appreciate your concern and thank you for sharing it with us.
Very truly yours,

Margo K. Lucero
Director, Global Corporate Relations
Susan G. Komen for the Cure(r)

My automated online click with Think Before You Pink resulted in an automated email response. I’m sure the folks at Susan Komen Foundation are quantifying the onslaught of online responses, but so far they are still promoting pink buckets of fried chicken. Right now, the best thing to do to get Susan’s attention is to get out your good stationary and hand write her foundation a nice (angry) note. Good old snail mail will do more to change this foundation’s mind than an online petition.

Here’s the address:

Headquarters
5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 250
Dallas, TX 75244

Let’s talk about this food for a minute.  If you want to check the ingredients of KFC’s products, you’ll have to click on this “nutrition page” and then click on the box on the left that says Ingredient Statement. You’ll need your reading glasses, but do take the time to read them. You’ll be shocked at all the MSG, hydrogenated cottonseed oils and soybean oils that goes into most of their products. I’ve written about Cotton ( It’s not a food!) and about their grilled chicken back when Oprah decided to promote free buckets of the stuff.

I know that you know better than to eat fast food like KFC if you want to be healthy. It’s not about the calories, or the “tools” on their website, it’s about ingredients. Even KFC’s green beans are coated with MSG! (you’ll see in on the ingredient list online, I’m not making this up!). Please take the time to tell Susan Komen that they are misleading people into believing that these pink buckets of chicken are somehow health supportive.  Tell Susan Komen to hire me! I’d be happy to teach them about how to make health supportive decisions that will benefit their Foundation and the people they serve.

Friday night I took my youngest daughter to a screening of Tapped at the nearby Greenwich Audubon Society.  It was an interesting feature length film about the many reasons why we should be re-thinking our bottled water habit.

Admittedly, I am already familiar with the main reasons why we should not be guzzling bottled water. Tapped touched on all of them.

#1 Its really stupid! Bottled water is exponentially more expensive than tap water and no better in quality.  Penn and Teller did some funny stunts around this a few years back.

#2 It’s a waste of fossil fuel. Trucking water around burns gas. And guess what those plastic bottles are made of? Petroleum. In a world where peak oil and climate change are deeply impacting our way of life, there is no room for wasting oil and gas on something stupid like bottled water.

#3 Plastic bottles pollute! We’ve got giant garbage patches in both Pacific and Atlantic oceans now. Less than 30% of all plastic bottles ever get recycled.

#4 Plastic bottles leach questionable chemicals into our bodies. Why drink water from a bottle that could be leaching BPA and phthalates? Both are potent hormone disruptors that are increasingly linked to health effects like brain and behavior changes, cancer, and reproductive system damages.

Something happened at the screening of this movie that has made me more determined than ever to not buy bottled water for myself or my family. Kim Jeffery, the President and  CEO of Nestle Waters, North America and a Greenwhich resident, showed up after the screening to screen an 8 minute film of his own. Despite the fact he refused to be interviewed for the movie, he wanted equal time here in his own backyard.  Afterwards, he took the stage to answer questions, refusing to have a dialog with the film’s producer and director. Talk about rude, this dude takes the cake.

My daughter stood up to ask a question about bottled water in schools. Like a slick politician, he did not answer her question. My daughter didn’t stand a chance getting her point across.  Mr. Jeffery went on to blame lack of  recycling as the reason why plastic bottles are clogging our landfills and oceans.  Meanwhile his corporation along with the American Beverage Association routinely fight bottle bills and recycling legislation.

I’d love to see Mr Jeffery, his wife and four kids to take a nice cruise out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and see some of the impact his plastic bottles have made on our planet.  Better yet, I hope at least one of  his kids studies environmental science in school and comes home to ask his/her dad some tough questions.

Thanks to the wealthy CEO of Nestle Waters, my daughter is inspired to convince her friends that bottled water is not the way to go. His behavior at this screening did more than me or  the movie to turn my kid into an activist!

Meanwhile, I’ll do my part and drink water from my new Klean Kanteen. See Tapped when you get a chance. Take the pledge to stop drinking bottled water.

This morning I attended a program on Greenwashing courtesy of Westchester County’s Conversations on Conservation. Here’s my review of what went on along with some links for you to learn more.

Patti Wood of Grassroots Environmental Education gave a thoughtful overview of the situation and mentioned a great resource:
The Seven Sins of Greenwashing. That tip was worth the trip. From there, the discussion seemed to go off topic and even down hill.

Next up was Lea Cullen, the sustainability coordinator for Westchester County Parks. She spoke about the challenges of getting soap without Triclosan. She forgot that some in the audience might not even know what the heck Triclosan is! It’s a toxic chemical found in anti-bacterial soap, which is favored by many germophobes. So was she talking about green washing? Like washing your hands with greener products? Clearly a different definition than what Patti Wood was talking about!

Last but not least was Dr. Larry Bridwell, Professor of International Business at Pace University.
He spoke about BMW and how they are positioning themselves as a green company. Dr. Bridwell has spent extensive time in Germany and told us that German drivers are nowhere near ready to slow down, they love their Autobahn with no speed limit. The Greenwashing Index gave BMW a 4.6 out of five. That’s about as close to BS as you can get!

Dr Bridwell also mentioned that Pepsi was on campus earlier in the week talking about reducing their water footprint. Don’t even get me started with Aqua fina and all the rest of the Pepsi propoganda!

The bottom line: check out the Seven Sins of Greenwashing Print one of their handy dandy BS detectors for your wallet and play the Name that Sin game teach your kids critical thinking skills. If you help them to become familiar with the misleading tricks connected with green washing, it will cross over to their food choices as well.

The NY Times recently reported about a new food labeling system “Smart Choices” that will help consumers figure out what foods are better choices in the supermarket. Froot Loops, a smart choice? This one really takes the cake!

The president of the Smart Choices board is Dr.Eileen Kennedy. She is the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. She says the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards. This industry-backed marketing ploy–puts a green check mark on products that are determined to be “smarter food and beverage choices.” But the choices selected are anything but healthy.

The good news is that grass roots food activists are all over this new example of hypocrisy. Change.org‘s Sustanable Food page has a nice email letter that you can send to Dr. Kennedy and the rest of the high mucky mucks who have endorsed this latest health hype. Click here to get involved.

My system for evaluating food has no giant corporate sponsors. It’s based on my years of education, my experience as an eater and a parent of 3. It has a healthy dose of common sense thrown in for good measure.
I rate foods on a continuum from “Beneficial” to “Useful” to “Useless” to “Hazardous.” Beneficial foods include any food that is unprocessed or “whole,” with most of their nutrients intact (e.g. whole oat groats or steel cut oats). Useful foods are a little processed, but in a way that does not excessively diminish their nutritional value (e.g. old fashioned rolled oats). Useless foods are too processed to be considered “health augmenting” but not dangerous enough to be considered hazardous (instant oatmeal with sugar). Hazardous foods, however, are heavily processed and artificial – often having a negative impact on one’s health (e.g. instant oatmeal with “dinosaur eggs” in it).

Hazardous ingredients are simple: Things like high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), artificial colors (food dyes), and partially hydrogenated oils are clearly hazardous to our health. High-fructose corn syrup can raise LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels and damage children’s livers. Certain food dyes have been found to cause behavioral issues in children, such as hyperactivity and ADD. Partially hydrogenated oils, on the other hand, contain unhealthy trans fats that increase insulin problems and predispose children to lifetimes of diabetes and obesity.

Contact me for more information about my House of Health, it makes more sense that the silliness that the food industry is feeding us!