Not for Nibbling

Deck the halls with boughs of holly mistletoe Boston ferns...

So, after our 1 year old wolfed down a leaf off our lipstick plant this morning, I called poison control (love them! love my operator's calm, calm voice and subsequent willingness to talk about every single plant in our house) for some plant 911 411. Turns out the plant in question was safe, mainly because I did some serious houseplant purging five years ago in preparation for kid one. Gotta love the pre-kid frenzy. Anyhoo, I thought I would share what I (re)learned with y'all.

Safe plants: spider plants, Christmas cacti, aloe (may cause stomach upset), poinsettias (despite causing stomach upset, these actually get an undeserved bad rap for being toxic), Boston ferns, African violets, and hibiscus, among others.

Lethal plants: holly, mistletoe, rhododendrons, philodendrons (including pothos and calla lilies), peace lilies, delphinium, foxglove, lantana, and lupines, among others.

Check out these guides to poisonous houseplants and make sure you have those blecch face stickers on your phones with the poison control phone #s on them.

Lucky for us I gave away and/or hung up our dangerous plants years ago. I probably even could have told you yesterday that lily of the valley, nightshade and belladonna were bad news. But I am newly reminded of the need to be aware of all our plants (in our tiny front yard, we have yew bushes, azaleas, a cherry tree, and vinca vines -- all fatal if ingested! -- and hydrangeas, which can cause serious illness and vomiting. We're hoping for the cessation of constant mouthing by spring).

Before I leave the flora front, houseplants can also do remarkable double duty as air purifiers -- some of the best are also poisonous (pothos) but some aren't (spider plants, Gerber daisies). Check out this guide to plants that can clean up your indoor air.

And for goodness' sake, lose the mistletoe. Read more!

Smart Babies + Flexible Mamas = Sweet Reward

And you thought all those saintly mothering moves were going unnoticed? The best bites of buttered toast topping tiny tongues? The perennial postponement of peeing? Turns out that babies favor doers of good deeds from infancy. In a recent Yale study, 6 month olds and 10 month olds favored "helper" shapes over "mean" shapes. Way to go, babeez.

Speaking of mothering moves, apparently women's lower backs curve differently than men's to compensate for our giant pregnant selves (and beer bellies, no joke, should we head in that direction postpartum). Read the whole article (Why Pregnant Women Don't Tip Over) for an amusing lowdown on the work of Harvard and UTexas anthropologists isolating differences between male/female and human/chimp spines.

Finally, why not make gumdrop Christmas trees? You might want to find an alternative to the styrofoam (gasp) cores, but they are super cute and they will keep your kids from gnawing on their lead-laden stocking stuffers. Read more!

SpaghettiNOs

BPA in plastic? Check. Sippy cups? Pacifiers? Toys? Check. Head exploding, but check.

Now bisphenol-A in cans? Ruh-roh. Wasn't I just talking about how being healthy and sustainable was making me feel like we are living out Little House on the Prairie? Time to make our own soup (good thing I got that stock simmering....) and, well, read this. Read more!

Soy Vey

Maybe a health food, maybe a toxin? Not to knock the Tofurky, but soy seems to have been on some kind of nutrition roller coaster in the past few years, judging from the headlines. It's been bothering me, the not knowing about soy, while my child continues to gobble edamame in quantity. So here's the basic lowdown.

Some of the biggest hopes for and worries about soy stem from the fact that soy's rich in isoflavones (genistein and daidzein), chemicals which behave like estrogen and, possibly, anti-estrogen (!) in the body. They're not really sure how isoflavones work in our bodies. They may replace estrogen (which would be positive, if stemming the spread of estrogen-receptive breast cancer cells, for example, by replacing them) or they may mimic estrogen (which would be negative, if disrupting the endocrine system of a developing baby, for example). Soy's chemical makeup also may act as an antioxidant. Complicated plant. I'm surely no scientist and welcome any helpful analogies....

On the hopeful side, some argue that avoiding meat sources of protein (high in saturated fat, high on the food chain and therefore high in toxins) by any means necessary substituting soy protein can't be a bad idea, especially since many cultures have eaten soy for hundreds of years without adverse effects. Scientists still theorize that soy may be helpful in preventing heart disease, lowering blood cholesterol and blood sugar, preventing prostate cancer and osteoporosis, and lessening menopausal symptoms, but the jury is still out (and much-lauded heart claims may be overrated). Most research is unclear about the reality of soy's role in our diet, so doctors tend to advise people to eat it in moderation (surprise!), some on the basis that it's been eaten for so long in many Asian countries whose health profiles are vastly better than here in the US.

On what some have called the Dark Side of Soy, soy may cause breast cancer, disrupt thyroid function, cause premature puberty in girls, and may in fact be a problematic food source for infants due to possible hormone disruption during development. There has also been speculation that soy decreases mental function and sperm count in men. Sally Fallon, of the Weston A. Price Foundation (proponent of traditional foods including grass fed meat, raw milk, and lacto-fermented goods), believes that soy is dangerous to eat unless it's properly fermented. She highlights the seemingly obvious point that Asian societies have traditionally eaten small amounts of tofu/miso/tempeh, not highly-processed soy protein products we see in many supposed 'health' foods like meat substitutes.

Of those scary claims, and the laudatory ones too, it appears that the jury's still out (there's no solid evidence to back up most of the theories pro or con).

Because we lack information about most prospective positive benefits to soy, and it's a common allergen, some advise parents to feed babies soy formula only if a child has a milk allergy and there's a compelling reason to choose soy. Claims that soy might prevent allergies or cure colic are two common (unsubstantiated) reasons for its introduction but avoidance due to the theoretical possibility of hormonal/endocrine disruption due to soy formula hasn't been proven either.

So what do they know for sure about soy? Not much.... But here's a few (tofu) nuggets:

• Research this fall showed that genistein (an isoflavone in soy) in soy infant formula is protective against rotavirus (a really unpleasant and common childhood illness for which they recently introduced a vaccine as well).
• People who have had kidney stones should completely avoid soy because it contains oxalates, which promote the formation of the most common type of kidney stones.
• Research has shown that a diet replacing meat protein with soy nuts is effective at reducing a host of risk factors (abdominal fat, low HDL, high LDL) that together form a "metabolic syndrome" seen in postmenopausal women at risk for coronary disease. Soy nuts (not soy flour) effectively lowered blood sugar and LDL levels in this cohort.

Most soy available in this country is genetically modified and is not organic, which is another topic altogether but bears noting as some believe that genetically modified soy may account for skyrocketing allergy rates. So, if you're going to eat soy at all, make sure it's not GMO and that it's organic. This is harder than it sounds, btw, as you probably know if you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma; soy (and corn) products and by-products are everywhere in our food chain. Once again, time to read your labels. Such a conspiracy to get us to cook and source every food we eat!

I think my cautious takeaway from this may be to judiciously limit the edamame, as they're not fermented (to make the soy more digestible) and to consume limited amounts of organic, non-GMO tofu, tempeh, and miso, truly traditional soya foods. I'm sure we can come up with another satisfactory salt-bearing device for EGirl! Read more!