When customers come by Jackson & Hines, they often comment on my skin and want to know what I use. I use natural and organic skin care products. My two favorites – and lines we carry at Jackson & Hines- are Dr. Hauschka skin care and Éminence Organics skin care. I like these lines because they are both truly natural and organic. I have learned that just because a product says,”with natural ingredients”, it does not mean it is good for your skin. It is not so much what has been added to the product, but more importantly, what is not in the products – ingredients such as parabens. Both the Dr. Hauschka skin care and the Éminence Organics skin care only have natural and organic ingredients. Both lines do not have chemicals added that create problems for our skin or the environment. I like the Éminence Organic line because of the wide range of products from which I can select. However, this wide range can be a bit daunting so I highly recommend working with an esthetician experienced with this line before purchasing. At Jackson & Hines, our esthetician is well trained by Éminence Organics skin care and has many years working as a certified esthetician. I believe as I have made this switch to these natural organic lines, and not having the chemicals on my skin, that the health of my skin has greatly improved.
Although I am such a believer in what we put on our skin, I believe the real reason my skin is so healthy is because of what I put inside my body. We are what we eat. We know that what we eat can affect our hearts, our spleens, our stomachs, our livers, our brains. Yet we tend to think that we eat does not affect our skin – our bodies largest organ. I believe it does and changing our diet to have healthy organs – including your skin- is not that hard to do. As a lactose intolerant vegetarian, my intake of animal products has been limited to eggs and honey. Many people that know me well will think this diet is what I would propose for healthy skin. But what I have come to appreciate is, although I eat a diet in limited animal products, my diet was still very heavily a diet with lots of processed foods. I am aware that anytime we change food from its natural form it is now a processed food. I am not referring to simple and long of years method for preserving food such as; drying fruit or baking bread. I am instead thinking of the foods that found its way into my pantry. Foods with ingredient lists that did not resemble anything on a food pyramid or food my aunt or grandmother did not have in their kitchen cupboards.
A few years ago, while vacationing in Tuscan Arizona, I attended a seminar on healthy eating. The speaker intrigued me as he shared why High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) may not be something we want to have in our foods and stressed how important it is we read the labels on all our packaged foods. I had already decided to limit high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from the foods I was eating and what I was feeding my family. Already missing from our food cupboards were sodas and all other soft drinks. Yet, when I started to read the ingredients on all the processed foods I was purchasing (and in what was already in my pantry and refrigerator) I was astonished with how ubiquitous this ingredient was in what I thought was food. A life without HFCS meant changes of what I was routinely buying for our groceries each week. I had to remove from my shopping cart; saltines, ketchup and bread, cans and jars of my favorite pasta sauces and most of the salad dressing, which I grown to love, had to be left on the grocer’s shelves. Chips, cookies, cereals and favorite brands of non dairy creamers listed HFCS as an ingredient. Sometimes it was tucked away after an array of chemicals I could barely pronounce. Other times it was proudly listed in the top two to three ingredients.
Is this manmade sweetener really bad for us? Do we know? Is it worth it for us to be the guinea pig of food manufactures that so love this cheap ingredient? What will the corn refiners association (CRA) gain or lose if we were to remove high fructose corn syrup from our food? I do not know the answers, but I decided for my family and me I did not want to take the risk. I decided for my family and me that until we understand more why in our society we have such an epidemic of obesity, type -2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, high cholesterol and a plethora of emotional disorders, whose timing are well correlated with when this laboratory created ingredient appeared in our foods, that I would leave high fructose corn syrup on the grocer’s shelves.
As I stared in my empty pantry and barren refrigerator shelves I questioned what do I now use for food? What do we now eat? And then common sense kicked in. As Michael Pollan in, In Defense of Food, states so succinctly, “eat the way your great grandmother would eat, eat food”. I do not have to go back that far. My grandmother and at least one of her daughter’s – unfortunately not my mother- ate food. They ate food the way in came from the ground. They ate eggs from chickens that lived and ate outside, milk from cows and enjoyed the vitamin and taste of oranges right from the fruit picked from a tree. They did not take supplements, probiotics nor followed the latest food fad or diet craze. Their doctors had no way of testing their blood for levels of Omega- 3 and even if they knew about this critical essential fat , their beautiful hair and glowing skin suggested it was of no concern. They picked fresh fruit and vegetables from their garden which were not government certified as organic. My aunt ate meat from cows and chickens that she knew – to my chagrin. But the meat was usually considered as just part of the meal and only on special occasions had the starring role on the plate.
So food has returned to my refrigerator and pantry shelves. It is not as convenient as before, but it is so much more enjoyable. I love the feeling of community as I shop for milk in the local dairy knowing that the cows from which it came are grazing nearby. My eggs are from a farm with chickens that sleep in coops, but spend their days foraging for food outside. I am anxious for warm weather so I can “shop” for the best local fresh produce. When I get it all home, put it together and enjoy cooking with real food. I know the fat in the pea soup I made this morning was with olive oil and not trans fat or something else derived in a laboratory. I know that the peas are organic, the onions and garlic fresh, the carrots crisp and the aroma wafting through out has transformed my house into a home.
With a refrigerator and pantry designed without; High Fructose Corn Syrup, trans fats and any other food imposter, I have seen many benefits: My heart (I hope) is happier - my stomach surely is. My energy is greater and both my waste (what I have been putting in my recycle bin) and waist are less. My hair appears to stay more on my head and less in my bathroom sink. And my skin is glowing.
Use natural, chemical free products to care for your skin, but without eating real food your skin will not be happy and may not glow.
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