Safe Soap

Keeping your family germ-free while reducing your dependence on petroleum- and chemical-filled products is a difficult endeavor. Lately it seems as though petroleum byproducts and corn syrup derivatives are in most products, even when they don’t seem necessary. Petroleum is often found in various fuel types, plastics, detergent and many other daily household products. The effort to shrink [...]

A Chocolate Family Affair

It’s no longer an oxymoron to use the words “healthy” and “candy” together thanks to Q.bel. The Nyack, New York-based food company has created a product that is part cookie, part candy, with no corn syrup and unnecessary additives. Founded by Bahram Shirazi, a former finance executive, Q.bel Foods was created after Shirazi’s wife, Isabel, [...]

Sustainable Soap

Maggie Hanus has been erasing her carbon footprint far before green became a fad. In 1995, she started the Austin-area small business, A Wild Soap Bar, making soap and other person care products, without using harmful chemicals such as parabens, sulfates and phthalates. She went further, and excluded filler ingredients such as petroleum products, preservatives [...]

Eco-Friendly Inside & Out

Named after its founder, Lafe Larson, this small-business deserves a gold star for bringing the safe plastic movement to the world of cosmetics. Most mommies and camping folks know the growing prevalence of metal water bottles is thanks to the debate over the possible harmful effects that can come from an element found in most [...]

Back To SchoolThe Healthy LunchboxWhat: This sparkling drink is a healthy alternative to regular juice and soda for kids on their way to a sugar addition by way of the ubiquitous corn syrup.

The Dirt:Fall brings both reality and the return to school, and with it, school lunches, sitcom previews, film and fashion festivals, overall, more trends. Or at least that’s what marketers and retailers want you to think. This season, we encourage parents and kids to just say no– no drugs, no to corn syrup and no [...]