Entertainment

July 2015 - Posts

  • RED Hearts: Entertainment: Speak Truth to Powder: #TruthBeauty

    By Zoe Mendelson, 25, reporting from Mexico City on a healthy, smart new way to shop for beauty products

    If you’re not into putting potentially harmful things in your body, you might be interested in #TruthBeauty. I know, I know. Beauty products don’t go in your body, they go on your body. But skin is an organ (our largest organ, in fact), and the beauty products we tend to use are completely unregulated by the FDA, even though everyone well knows they actually do end up in your body.

    In a sense—as far as absorbing the ingredients within—you might as well be eating your shampoo, toothpaste, lotion, younameit. And a lot of those ingredients are just arbitrary chemicals we don’t need. Shampoo and toothpaste both contain foaming agents. The mineral oils and petroleum-based products found in many (if not most) moisturizers actually dry out your skin. Thing is, many of these stupid ingredients—to use the proper scientific term—are so ubiquitous they’re hard to avoid without buying super-expensive products.

    That’s where #TruthBeauty steps in, a Kickstarter-funded online store that launches this month. On their blog, BeautyLiesTruth, the team of Harvard Business school student Jessica Assaf and Sleigh Bells singer Alexis Krauss expose widespread, totally effed habits and environmental practices, give recipes for natural products you can make at home, and review what’s out there.

    Now the artist and activist have curated a collection of natural, nontoxic products—that they themselves swear by—and are selling them for under suggested retail value. This is their commitment to making healthful products, made by ecologically and socially sustainable companies, accessible.

    But it’s really not just a store they’re launching; it’s a movement. It’s a movement to turn women into proactive, educated consumers. And to stop us from damaging our bodies without realizing it. And to take back the beauty industry from the men who own and run it. This is an ingenious, easy way to get great products at great prices from small, responsible companies. No lies, just #TruthBeauty.

  • RED Hearts: Entertainment: The Great No-Stick Popsicle Hack

    This is the first hot summer 2015 suggestion in a RED Hearts series of seasonal recipes – things you can cook or bake, usually healthy things, always easy things – for the people you heart! Served up by Erika Kwee, 24, “the baker, photographer and typo-maker” behind vegetarian food blog The Pancake Princess.

    There aren’t many things better than a cold popsicle on a steamy summer day—unless said popsicle is far from your hand, say, a sweltering six miles away tucked inside a grocery freezer.

    Lucky for those who find themselves frozen treat-on-a-stick-less this summer, my brilliant friend created a superfast hack for three-ingredient fruity popsicle bowls. She served them as a perfect light dessert after an indulgent dinner of lobster mac ‘n cheese. But I immediately put them into my afternoon snack rotation (and my summer is better for it). Yours will be too.

    The bowls are this easy: Add ½-1 cup frozen mixed fruit (grapes and cherries are especially good) to a bowl. Pour in a splash of almond milk (or milk of your choice), only enough to barely submerge the fruit. Wait a minute or three for the milk to firm up into a slushy, icy consistency around the fruit. Then top with a drizzle of maple cream (highly recommended!) or honey.

    Enjoy right away…and you may never seek your summer desert on a stick again.