Potatoes of course, need to be scrubbed well under water with a potato scrubber with stiff bristles. We like the Mr. Potato Brush shown here. It works well and my daughter loves that it has a face on it.

All other items will depend on how easily they bruise. Don’t use soap with any items you will be cleaning. Produce washes are available, however, clean, cool water is just as effective according to experts. The key is putting the item under the water for at least 20 seconds while scrubbing with an appropriate scrubber or your hand.

Now, when we talk about cleaning produce, this includes cleaning the skin of items like bananas, cantaloupes and other items where you won’t be eating the skin. These items may spread the dirt/toxins to your hands or to the fruit when you cut them.

If you are worried about how you are going to thoroughly clean your broccoli, asparagus, peas or corn, Environmental Working Group found that these items were lower in pesticide residue than other items.
They found that the following items were higher than others in pesticide residue:

You can learn more about how to clean different types of produce items by reading this article by the Environmental Working Group.

If so, here are some tips for water safety. Water safety is extremely important especially since drowning is the leading cause of death among children under age 5 in Florida. That’s a very scary statistic!

Supervision of your children around water is key. Don’t leave your children unattended in a pool, lake or even the bath. I often read newspaper articles about someone having gone inside the house for “just a minute” to answer the phone, get a drink, etc., and tragically, during that short time, the child drowns or nearly drowns in the family pool. No phone call or errand is worth your child’s life.

Also, be sure entrances to your pool area are in no way accessible to children. In Florida, there are laws for new pools that require fencing or some other mechanism to lock children out. All of my mom friends have fencing around the pool that allows for the mom to open for a swim.
Remember to consider the places where you may not be supervising your child personally like a relative’s or friend’s house. We installed plastic Burglar Bars at my mother-in-law’s house to keep our children from opening the doors to the pool.

Finally, have your kids learn how to swim. There are a variety of choices in swim lessons available depending on your area. Many YMCAs and recreation programs have swim classes. There are also private lessons by individuals, sometimes at their homes, sometimes at your home. If you are in a warmer area, you will probably find individual swim schools as well. With any of these, talk with the instructors about how they teach the child to swim. Repetition is an important part of the lessons and you may find you need to do lessons over the summer for a few years.

Personally, we picked a swim school local to us that came recommended by friends. Originally, we took our 3 year old daughter to the city’s recreation program for classes. At the end of the month (3 days a week), she was no better off than we started and she still wouldn’t put her face in the water.

The Seal Swim School located in Tarpon Springs, Florida was our choice. At the end of the first week (also 3 days a week), our daughter was swimming with her face in the water. By the end of the first one month session, she was swimming 5 feet with her face in the water unassisted. After a second consecutive session, she was swimming 8 feet. This year, we started her again and she’s turning into a fish in the water! This school has been a great help and I feel confident that if my daughter fell in a pool, that she could get out without help. We still watch her the entire time she swims but it is no longer necessary to be in the water with her.
If you’d like to learn more information about the Seal Swim School, visit their website at www.SealSwimSchool.com. They have other locations in Lutz and South Tampa. If you decide to attend, mention Vanessa Cox as your referrer and we’ll get a discount when we put our infant in next year.

Be safe!

What this means is that you should be buying items from the outer sections of the store. Every store has produce, dairy, bakery and meats all along the perimeter of the store. All the processed and non-food items are in the middle. If you “shop the perimeter,” you will be avoiding the chemicals, preservatives, dyes and other fake items in the processed foods.

This is a much healthier diet anyway, but recently I read an article about some of the larger corporations using a chemical to reduce the sodium and sugar in the processed foods. This chemical falls into the category of “artificial flavors” which don’t have to be disclosed any further.

You can read this article at Dr. Mercola’s website.

Personally, I do read the labels and find that organic products like soups and other boxed items don’t have artificial preservatives and flavors. More and more grocery stores are carrying organic items so look for these products as alternatives to your favorite processed foods or take the time to search the internet for ways to make the items yourself.

So, what do you do? Well, first, look at the plastic items you have to see if any have distinguishing marks on them. If you are unsure, it’s a good idea to decide if you should take a chance on using the item. There was a report on television that said that the more you use items with BPA, the more of the chemical leaches out. So, if it’s an older item and you are unsure, please keep that in mind.

There alternatives to these items out there. One choice is to confirm if the plastic item definitely doesn’t have BPA. www.SafeMama.com has a list of products detailing which items are BPA free. There is also more detailed information on BPA and how it affects people. You can view this information by clicking here. She also sells some of the products at this website: www.EliteBreastfeeding.com.

Options for adults include glass items and stainless steel. I have seen a number of stainless steel sports bottles for working out. I personally have a to-go coffee mug that is stainless steel on the inside that I use at this time and my daughter has a Hello Kitty stainless steel Thermos we purchased.
Check out www.TheSoftLanding.com for stainless steel and other safe items. Don’t be deterred by the prices as these containers will last for you.

Let’s keep our kids healthy!

Below I have links to information regarding Splenda and Aspartame. After I realized about 10 years ago that I was allergic or had reactions to Aspartame, I was very adamant about making sure I didn’t have any. So, of course, when new artificial sweeteners came out, I did my research on them.
First, there are many dangers to Aspartame (also known as NutriSweet), but less and less foods are using this in favor of Splenda. Did you know that Aspartame can make you hungry? Splenda is also known as Sucralose. Sucralose is created by taking sugar and adding in chlorine molecules to make it not metabolized by our bodies, in turn causing us to not get any calories from it. So, first, you are taking in chlorine molecules and second, your body is not processing the sucralose that you are ingesting and also it was found that your body will absorb it and not eliminate this chemical.

The reason I am concerned for our kids is that the company that manufactures Splenda is advertising it to be used for you AND your kids. I think this can cause long term effects for your kids (not including what it does to you) and don’t recommend allowing your kids to have it. Unfortunately, it is being slipped in to items more and more and you may not realize it’s in the products you buy. They don’t always list the Splenda logo on items and some items are not labeled as diet.
For example, I bought the Viactiv Vitamin soft chews and it listed sucralose as one ingredient.
I discovered recently that the Capri Sun Roarin’ Waters packs have Splenda and high fructose corn syrup in them. They advertise Capri Sun as having no artificial sweeteners, but that’s definitely an artificial additive. All Capri Sun has high fructose corn syrup too which is also a created sweetener and also addictive from what I hear. And of course, any diet sodas have either Splenda or Nutri-Sweet in them.

PLEASE CHECK THE LABELS when you buy items for your kids. All it takes is to be aware of what they are having to keep them healthy in the long run.

Here are a couple of links discussing these sweeteners:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/12/03/sucralose-dangers.aspx

http://www.vitalearth.org/Aspartame_Deception.htm