Houseboundduring coronavirus-related shutdowns,many Michiganders may be donning their chef hats, maybe for the firsttime.

But the art of whipping together a delectable dinner using ingredients on-handisnt easy, and staying healthy and preserving food while doing it is evenharder.

Sophie Eganis the author ofHow To Be A Conscious Eater. She says theres two crises society facestoday.

Theres alack of food literacy and confidence in the kitchen, and this is understandable. - Sophie Egan,author

Cristin Young

Egan.

Above all Ithink what the virus shows us is how interconnected we are as aglobal community, says Egan, The climate crisis is also an emergency, [even though]its slower moving and may beharder tosee.

But, she says people have an opportunity to meet these challenges: three times a day. For Egan,the three biggest things anyone can do to eat consciously are to waste less, eat a plant-rich diet and support soil healththrough buying organic or regeneratively grownfoods.

But first, Egan says home chefs should switch theirmindset.

Theres alack of food literacy and confidence in the kitchen, and this is understandable, says Egan. Television and social media can make cooking feel intimidating, but it doesnt have tobe.

Egantalks with WDETs Annamarie Sysling about some of the important culinary tips laid out in her book and explains how they can be incorporated into life during the Coronaviruspandemic.

WDET is here to keep you informed onessential information, news and resources related to COVID-19.

This is a stressful, insecure time for many. So its more important than ever for you, our listeners and readers, who are able todonate to keep supporting WDETs mission. Please make a gift today.

Egan says the secret ingredient to cooking at home are the ones in you already have inyourpantry.

And when it comes to using processed foods, agood rule of thumb is, do you have that ingredient in your pantry? Egan says, pointing out that when looking at ingredients, its important that you recognize the items listed. If it sounds like a non-food substance, you might want to question consumingit.

To simplify things, Egan, a busy mom, says she prefers working withfive ingredients or less during theweek.

Her second piece of advice:A good knife goes a longway.

Egan notes thata good knife isnt the same as an expensive knife. Just make sure youreworking with a sharp utensil. Itll make a really bigdifference.

Choosing a recipe for a home-cooked meal can present its own challenges. Especially when using prepared, processed foods like a jar of store-bought spaghetti sauce, forinstance.

Egan points out while fewer ingredients on a packaged food label might seem like the best option, sometimes a long ingredient list is okaytoo.

For example, salsa or spaghetti sauce containseveral ingredients, but many are simply spices thatcontribute to texture and flavor. The items in the ingredient list to watch out for are the ones you dontrecognize.

Becauseingredients go in descending order by weight, the first ingredient is the most important, Egan says. For packaged goods, she says youwant it to be a whole, plant-based food you recognize like peanuts oroats.

For canned food, Egan says to pay special attention to the nutrition facts on the label, especially the saturated fat andsodium.

Our pantries are where we spendtime, but Egan says the freezer is an under-utilized,additional storagespace.

Think about our freezers, theres an abundanceof opportunityto make food last longer, shesays.

When shopping,Egan says, frozen organic produce is less expensive and just as nutritious as the fresh option. The same goes for wild-caughtseafood.

See more here:

Tips For the Conscious Eater On Cooking In the Age of Coronavirus - WDET

This revolutionary British smart food brand has created the worlds smartest food that can improve reaction times and decision making by 10 percent. Who doesnt want to be quicker and smarter? I certainly do and some colleagues and family will be thinking I definitely need to be.

The idea of speeding up my reactions and decision making caught my attention. About two months ago, I joined a cricket club with the intention of playing competitively for the first time in 37 years and was nervous.

As part of the plan not to humiliate myself on the field, I was on a diet, going to the gym and was using vision training website Eyegym to improve my reaction time and decision making.

This was a perfect opportunity to test out Human Foods Organic Daily Nutrition Bars and boost my chances of doing more than ok with the bat and ball.

Not only that, creator Ky Wright, who spent four years working with nutritionists, professional athletes and doctors to come up with the formula for his vegan bars, said they were packed with ingredients that would stave off hunger for longer than standard nutrition bars.

And its a subscription service so the bars are delivered to your door, which is also handy in these awkward times where going to the shops is not a simple experience anymore. The claims improving reaction times and feeling full are backed up by the results of clinical trials at the University of Swansea where participants were put through the Stroop Colour Word Test where a colour is spelled out in letters of a different shade to the word eg black written in red lettering.

Human Food have three types of bar.

All contain 20 ingredients and extracts including cacao, maca, ginseng, hemp seeds and omega 3.

On top of this, the red bar is flavoured with goji berries, the green spirulina and yellow is laden with turmeric.

According to Dr Richard Bracken, a sports scientist who carried out the study at the University of Swansea, the turmeric version was the most effective.

In his report he said: The Yellow Bar demonstrated, compared to the control, a greater number of completed responses, as well as more accurate and faster responses over the entirety of the two hour observation period, with an improvement in reaction time of over 10 percent."

"All bars showed an initial rise in perceived fullness that was sustained throughout the whole two hour observation period. The combination of a low, blood glucose response combined with sustained satiety is conducive to maintaining a healthy balanced diet that's proportional in calories to the needs of the body.

My experience with the bars was not carried out under the same scientific conditions but I did see some similar changes.

Over the space of a week, I had one bar every morning with a pint of water then within an hour did an online reaction test on the University of Washingtons website and a 10 minute session on the eyegym.

The reaction test involved hitting the space bar when the red light turned green.

On the first day my average over five attempts was 0.319.

By the seventh day it was 0.272.

My eyegym performance which is not solely about straight reaction times also appeared to have improved by 0.08 seconds.

What all that will mean on the cricket field I do not know, but it wont hurt.

I hesitate to say this is all down to Human Food, as daily practice on the tests has its own benefits but the science says eating the bars probably played a part in the improvements.

Even if they did not, I found them a decent breakfast.

My favourite was the red.

They are dense and chewy but tasty.

And I definitely felt full for several hours after so gone was the morning craving for snacks.

I always ate them as bars but the makers say they can be blended into a smoothie, mixed with muesli or porridge and used as a pre- or post-workout snack.

They work as part of a diet because it is easy to cut back on food and lose out on vital nutrition.

These vegan bars are packed with vitamins and minerals so one bar is equal to half the recommended daily intake of calcium, iron and vitamins D and B1.

They also have 100 per cent of the vitamin B12 needed every day to stave off conditions such as anaemia.

According to the literature, none of the nutrients are synthetic either.

Ky Wright, the founder of Human Food said: Our unique recipe has been created by a team of leading health experts, including doctors and nutritionists, to create the worlds most nutritionally-dense organic food. By only using 100 percent wholefood nutrients and no synthetics, we produce a far more bioavailable and effective product.

Ethical consumers, will be pleased to know that all the wrapping is either compostable or recyclable and the company reinvests 50 percent of its profits to research and development.

The bars are also the first of their kind to be certified EU organic.

Human Foods Organic Daily Nutrition Bars (RRP: 3.30 per bar) are available via the brands website and can be purchased individually, as a two-week trial pack (RRP: 33.00) or as part of a monthly subscription (RRP: 66.00 for 20 bars).

Original post:

Diet: Worlds smartest food can improve reaction times and decision making by 10% - Express

BANGKOK -- Measures to protect the public from COVID-19 have transformed daily life in Bangkok, as elsewhere. But the food and beverage industry, its survival threatened by a ban on on-site dining, is fighting back with a wide range of emergency strategies.

Restaurants have been hit hard by the pandemic, which has slashed tourist arrivals as well as stoppedlocals going out to dinner: International visitor arrivals plunged by 91.15% in the first 20 days of March, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Association of Thai Travel Agents.

While no one questions the sagacity of a government decree restricting food sellers to takeout and delivery, many businesses feared they would collapse without on-site dining. Some went into fire-sale mode, offering perishables from live lobsters to wheels of French cheese at bargain prices.

Others had already turned to delivery services for new sources of revenue. While ordering cooked food from street stalls and food courts is routine in the Thai capital, it is unusual to see the multicourse menu of a two-star Michelin restaurant in takeaway containers.

Chef Chumpol Jangprai of R. Haan offered his elaborate Thai dinner for home delivery in 19 individual packets and trays ranging from the amuse-bouches to petits fours, along with a detailed list of instructions, color-coded tags for serving the dishes at room temperature or gently reheating and -- virus oblige -- hand sanitizers for each guest.

Some of the city's most promising new restaurants were left floundering. But Zenaida Vannaying, owner of Lola's Kitchen, a Filipino restaurant that opened its doors to packed houses and rave reviews in January, vowed to fight on primarily for her staff, delivering steaming dishes of bulalo and kaldereta to customers. Vannaying said she is committed "100%" to maintaining service, unless staff safety is threatened.

Another familiar face on the Bangkok dining scene, award-winning celebrity chef Gaggan Anand, recently opened the eponymous fine-dining Gaggan Anand and the casual Indian-Mexican fusion restaurant Ms. Maria and Mr. Singh. Plans to keep the former location open by teaming up with Suhring (in which he is also a partner) were announced and then scuppered by the restrictions.

But Anand, in self-isolation because of a sore throat (he later tested negative for the virus) said he planned to stay in business by selling wraps and curries from the fusion restaurant's menu -- a far cry from the playful spectacle and dizzying price tags that are his trademark.

"We all have to look at surviving," he said. "But it's going to be a very tough time in the next six months."

Others have launched new products that reflect their sense of community. Community-Supported Agriculture boxes from Bo.lan Grocer are packed with a potluck of organic produce similar to the ingredients used in Bo.lan, a restaurant known as much for its exacting approach to sustainability as its heady Thai flavors.

"[The boxes] raise awareness of ethical, sustainable produce and food security," said Dharath Hoonchamlong, Bo.lan's environmental manager. "It supports local producers, especially in this time when it's harder for them to access markets," he added. "We need to help them sustain their livelihood." The boxes are delivered with easy-to-follow recipes for the most seasonal ingredients.

When the in-house dining ban was announced, Garima Arora of Gaa, named best female chef in Asia in 2019, thought first of her fellow chefs around town. "It's not a good feeling to be packing away your restaurant not knowing when you will be back again," Arora said. So she decided to send out gifts of cheese and wine, each accompanied with an uplifting handwritten note. "I guess I thought all my friends must feel the same. So we made a little care package to let them know we're all in this together."

Social media has been an obvious platform for bringing the industry together. The popular website Bangkok Foodies has created the hashtag #eatitforward, encouraging people to order from local businesses, post descriptions of their meals to social media to promote the businesses involved, and push their friends to do the same.

The website's creator and local food guru Samantha Proyrongtong is also busy dispensing tips for businesses and customers. Now is the time to try new things, eat local and write online reviews of favorite places, she advises. Another tip: Buying a voucher for a future meal gives restaurants much-needed cash now.

"It's kicking off for sure," she said, with #eatitforward gaining traction even abroad. "There have been only positive reactions so far."

Chef Deepanker Khosla, who has pioneered urban farming at Haoma, sees an immediate need to provide help for tens of thousands of immigrant workers, primarily from Myanmar, who worked in kitchens as stewards, cleaners and back waiters but have lost their jobs and do not qualify for government assistance.

"No one goes hungry," said Khosla, who has appealed for donations from individuals and other restaurateurs. "Do I have the money to do this? No. Do I have the will? Yes," Khosla said, adding that donations to his crowdfunding page totaled nearly $3,000 on the first day.

He calculates that a healthy meal wrapped in a sustainable banana leaf can be produced for less than 50 cents, including immunity-boosting ingredients such as turmeric and ginger. In its first night on the streets his team distributed 2,000 meals; it aims to reach 10,000.

Bangkok's restaurateurs are not alone in their efforts to help their local community. In Malaysia, for example, Fruiti King, headquartered in the Klang Valley, is delivering free popsicles to locals, hospitals and police stations. Founder Max Teh said the idea was "to share some joy with the folks in this very depressing and distressing virus outbreak period" in the form of the company's bestselling Musang King durian ice creams and other fruit-based flavors.

In Hong Kong, Black Sheep Restaurants, a group of 25 venues that includes some of the city's best-known eateries, is doing what it can to safeguard the most vulnerable members of its 1,000-plus staff. Chef Daniel Calvert, of the flagship restaurant Belon, ranked fourth on the 2020 list of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants (announced on March 24 in the midst of the crisis) is focusing not on celebration but on solidarity.

"We're fighting for our own community," he said. "And for Hong Kong. It's getting tough."

A year before the virus hit, the group started an in-house Family Fund that will now be diverted to provide necessities for staffers in difficult situations. Proceeds from sales of Belon's signature Three Yellow Roast Chicken dish and a special menu dubbed A Feast for Our Family also will go to personnel in need.

In Singapore, L.G. Han, the chef at the Michelin-starred Labyrinth, is delivering free meals to health care workers at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases and other public hospitals, in collaboration with several other local businesses. "It started when many Singaporean medical workers were rejected from coffee shops and restaurants because of fears of being exposed to the virus," he said.

Han decided to set aside corkage fees and a cut of every dinner and bottle of wine he sold. Pezzo Group offered pizza, bento boxes and chicken rice sets, while Diya Tan of Sanity Coffee pledged coffee. Keng Eng Kee (KEK), Jam at Siri House and other businesses have also made donations in cash and kind.

Han said he recognizes that helping others is not always easy. All food and beverage businesses are struggling as the pandemic worsens, with rising numbers of cases in many Asian countries.

But "giving is giving, even if the business takes a hit," he said, summing up his philosophy: "We can help. We have food, we can give, and we have heart."

Original post:

Bangkok's shuttered restaurants fight the virus gloom - Nikkei Asian Review

TheKardashian-Jenner clancan definitely afford to have chefs cook their meals for them but Mama Kris and her daughters have spent some time perfecting their own dishes in the kitchen.

Kourtney Kardashian is one of the most health-conscious of all her sisters. Although she admitted she does allow herself to have some cheat days, she cut out processed foods and recently began the keto diet. But Kourtney has admitted that macaroni and cheese is the perfect comfort food. Read on to find out a healthy way you can make the dish just like the reality star.

The mother of three has become an advocate for clean-eating.

I felt like there wasnt really [a resource] for a woman who is healthy and into wellness but also sexy and cool, the Poosh founder said during an interview with Health Magazine. There is this image out there of the woman who cares about eating organic and feeding her kids that way that is somehow uncool. Thats not the case, and I wanted to make something that embodied my passions and interests.

Kourtney also told the publication, In my house, we are gluten and dairy-free. My skin is very sensitive, and if I eat dairy, it affects it. I love doing a keto diet, though Im not doing it now. I noticed my body change for the better. I love intermittent fasting. I try to do that all the time. Sometimes if Ive had a normal day of eating and Im pretty full, instead of having dinner, Ill have some bone broth, especially if Im not feeling well or starting to get sick.

So you must be wondering how Kourtney makes bacon mac and cheese on a gluten and dairy-free diet. Well, she uses all organic ingredients and gluten-free noodles as well as non-dairy cheeses.Oh and she still does use bacon; turkey bacon that is. The eldest of the Kar-Jenner siblings previously shared her recipe with People.

To make Kourtneys turkey bacon macaroni and cheese youll need the following ingredients:

*Serves 8 to 10

6 tbsp. organic butter 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. pepper 3 cups organic pepper jack cheese (or a non-dairy cheese substitute like Kourtney uses) 3 cups organic mild cheddar cheese (or a non-dairy cheese substitute) 1 package of gluten-free macaroni noodles 1 tsp. dry mustard 5 cups almond milk cup organic flour 1 package pre-cooked and crisped chopped organic turkey bacon

Then, follow these step-by-step instructions:

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Next, prepare the noodles according to package directions.

Melt butter, then add in flour, salt, dry mustard, pepper, and almond milk. Stir for 10 minutes until thick, over medium heat. Then add in the cheese and melt completely.

Pour cheese over fully cooked noodles and mix well before placing it in an oven-safe pan or dish. Finally, bake for approximately 45 minutes until crisp.

Read more: Kris Jenner Has a Famous Lemon Cake Recipe That You Can Try At Home

Original post:

Kourtney Kardashian Has a Healthy Bacon Mac and Cheese Recipe You Can Try at Home - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

farmers converting to organic farming, produce less greenhouse gases. Organic is better for the climate, is it? May not. Because At the end of a lot of or even more emissions are still the same, as if they would produce with conventional methods. Why this is so, scientists from Cranfield University in the UK investigated, and the results in the journal Nature Communications published.

the Team of agricultural economists Laurence Smith calculated how much greenhouse gases would arise if England and Wales would completely switch to organic farming. The result: The emissions of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide in agriculture declining to 20 percent, the emissions in the Livestock sector to four per cent.

And now comes the big But: the yield of The organically farmed fields would be about a 40 percent lower. In order to compensate for this, we would need more arable land. Or is it more food would have to be imported. If a quarter of the required agricultural area of green won the country and the lack of food would be imported, would be the organic farming about the same climate-harmful to the environment as a conventional management. The Organic energy saved CO2-Equivalents were elsewhere.

to be Running in Switzerland, exactly the same

The differences are large, especially because organic farming foregoes synthetic fertilizer. The nitrogen that a Plant needs to Grow, gets you to an organic farm from compost, biomass from Preculture, manure and slurry. An adapted crop rotation could increase the income, but the loss of Production not aufwgen, as the authors write.

organic farming is less productive, it can absorb but also, for example, more carbon from the air and bind. The additional emissions due to the Import not be able to compensate but.

The new study explicitly refers to the United Kingdom, the results are also valid for the local agriculture. In Switzerland, the same mechanisms are at work, says Adrian Mller from the research Institute of organic agriculture (FiBL) in Frick. The emissions would decrease in the domestic, abroad is on the rise.

Better basic water, greater species diversity

Quite agree the science is not, however. There are several studies that have emerged at the greenhouse gas emissions of organic foods, some of which come to different conclusions. The results have a large bandwidth, in their totality, but a good Overview, says Mller. The bottom line is they came to the conclusion that organic farming per kilogram of product is causing more greenhouse gases than conventional agriculture, which depends strongly distinguished from the Income.

Brings Bio-climate so theres nothing? Not quite. Organic farming has some advantages. It protects, for example, the ground water and promotes the biodiversity. The consumer would also change your eating habits, would be the Organic farming in the emission balance is much more rewarding, the English scientist.

For the most emissions, the Livestock industry is causing. This means that the consumer would have to consume less meat and more food like potatoes and beans. Adrian Mller confirms this: With consumption change could also produce with high amounts of organic, climate-friendly, he says.

to Know More on higgs Knowledge is the higgs.

Read more from the original source:

Organic cultivation brings to the climate, nothing? View - The KXAN 36 News

EarthRenew has partnered with CCm to develop and test new organic fertilizer product formulations.

Highlights:

EarthRenew Inc. (CSE:ERTH) (EarthRenew or the Company) is pleased to announce that recent product formulation testing with CCm Technologies Limited (CCm), a United Kingdom-based company, has resulted in several potential innovations and processes for converting waste organic streams into high quality organic fertilizer products. We anticipate that the outcomes of these tests will help create a higher value organic fertilizer product for EarthRenew.

EarthRenew sent samples to CCm at the beginning of January 2020 to investigate how CCms award-winning carbon capture and utilization technology could improve the nutrient profile of EarthRenews existing product formulation. Using EarthRenews feedstock as a base, CCm was able to produce a 7-1.7-2.2 NPK ratio organic fertilizer product. This exciting result gives us reason to believe that implementing CCms technology into our own processes could lead to the development of a wide range of specialist formulations in the future.

CEO Keith Driver commented, As we finalize our redevelopment plans at the Strathmore Plant, we have the opportunity to implement new technologies and processes to create additional higher value products for organic gardeners and farmers who will use EarthRenews fertilizers. Using CCms technology, we hope to develop specific formulations to meet the needs of different plants and growing conditions that are competitive with the nutrient inputs of conventional fertilizer. Our plan is to develop an integrated, sustainable system that maximizes the efficacy of the waste that is being transformed into organic fertilizer. In addition to our collaboration with CCm, we have various other initiatives under development to accomplish these goals.

The three numbers generally published on fertilizer product packages represent the value of the three macro-nutrients used by plants. These macro-nutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), or NPK for short. The higher the number, the more concentrated the nutrient is in the fertilizer. Nitrogen is largely responsible for the growth of leaves on the plant, phosphorus is largely responsible for root growth and flower and fruit development and potassium is a nutrient that helps the overall functions of the plant perform correctly. EarthRenew in its original product formulation has a 1.8-1-1.6 NPK ratio pelleted fertilizer product. In addition to delivering NPK nutrients, EarthRenew fertilizer also helps with water retention, builds organic carbon content and provides soil aeration to help grow healthy plants.

Organic fertilizer products sell in the wholesale market for between C$250-$2,000 per tonne, depending on formulation with particular emphasis on nitrogen content. With the addition of CCms technology, we anticipate that EarthRenew will be able to increase the organic nitrogen content of its pelleted fertilizer, creating a higher value product. By increasing the nitrogen content of our fertilizer from 1.8% to 7%, EarthRenew expects be able to sell this product at a correspondingly higher price, thereby capturing at least some portion of the 4 times multiple increase in nitrogen content. We expect that by utilizing CCms technology in producing our fertilizer products, we will differentiate ourselves from our competitors. We recognize that there are currently only a limited number of other products available in EarthRenews target markets that provide this nutrient profile in an air-seedable pellet.

CCms processing technology is designed such that it can bolt on to our redesigned facility and seamlessly integrate into our commercial production redevelopment plan. We therefore believe that incorporating CCms technology into our processes will allow us to produce and wholesale an organic fertilizer for broad applications.

EarthRenew also advises that it has launched a new website which can be found atwww.earthrenew.ca.

CEO Keith Driver commented, We encourage shareholders to visit our newly launched website to learn more about EarthRenews production process, redevelopment plans and future product offerings. We will continue to expand on the information on the website to keep shareholders, production partners and future consumers fully informed about our progress and the sustainable environmental benefits of the EarthRenew production process and resulting organic fertilizer.

EarthRenew Grants Stock Options

EarthRenew also announced it has granted a total of 1,000,000 stock options to a consultant of the Company pursuant to the Companys stock option plan. 250,000 of such options vest on the date of the grant and the remaining 750,000 stock options vest in equal increments of 250,000 every three months thereafter. Each option may be exercised to acquire one common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.10 per option for a period of five years from the date of grant. This grant of options is subject to the approval of the Canadian Securities Exchange.

About CCm Technologies Ltd.

CCm Technologies Ltd., previously CCm Research Ltd., is an award winning cleantech company, focused on resource optimisation, including Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU). CCms technology converts captured carbon dioxide and other waste streams (such as ammonia and phosphate) into stable value-added materials with multiple uses across global priority sectors of food/agriculture, advanced materials & energy storage. CCm is based in Oxford and Swindon, UK, and was established in 2011. CCm is a founding member of the recently formed Sustainable Markets Council, an initiative of HRH the Prince of Wales with the support of the World Economic Forum. The company has also received the coveted Solar Impulse Foundation Efficient Solutions Label.www.ccmtechnologies.co.uk.

About EarthRenew

EarthRenew transforms livestock waste into a high-performanceorganic fertilizer to be used by organic and traditional growers in North America. Located on a 25,000 head cattle feedlot, our flagship Strathmore plant is capable of producing up to four megawatts (MW) per hour of low-cost electricity powered by a natural gas fired turbine. The exhausted heat from the turbine is used to convert the manure into certified organic fertilizer.

For additional information, please contact:

Keith Driver CEO of EarthRenew Phone: (403) 860-8623 E-mail:kdriver@earthrenew.ca

Cautionary Note regarding Forward-LookingInformation

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to EarthRenews ability to sell electricity to the electrical grid or to cryptocurrency miners, EarthRenews ability to execute its business plan, our commercial production facility redevelopment plan, implementing CCms technology into our processes, the evaluation and implementation of various technologies to increase and maximize the efficacy of our fertilizers, our ability to increase the organic nitrogen content of our pelleted fertilizer, our ability to develop specialist formulations in the future, anticipated future electricity prices in Alberta, the granting of stock options, the information available on our website and EarthRenews proposed business activity. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; regulatory risks; and other risks of the energy, fertilizer and cryptocurrency industries. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Click here to connect with EarthRenew Inc. (CSE:ERTH) for an Investor Presentation.

Source

Read more from the original source:

EarthRenew Develops New Organic Fertilizer Formulation With Higher NPK In Collaboration With CCm Technologies And Launches New Website | INN -...

Exploring the ins and outs of how you can begin to start growing in your own backyards and balconies.

Whether its a window, balcony, garage, patio or lawn what makes urban farming a particularly viable avocation in our fast-paced daily lives is that it can be tailored to fit the budget and space you have at hand.

And while eating food youve grown yourself sits at the junction of fulfilment, tradition and modernity, adapting to a rapidly changing world and new ways of eating it isn't an easy feat.

In fact, it requires seriousness and commitment.

Essentially, urban farming is all about growing food in a densely populated city or urban environment for sale, barter or consumption, and varies greatly in terms of productivity and scale and even extends to include raising animals as well.

In Pakistan, there exists a growing urban farming community that is not only involved in promoting sustainability and adaptive food consumption but also in encouraging habits of slow food, organic eating, buying local, seasonal produce and using traceable ingredients in cooking.

By speaking to those who know the ins and outs of urban farming and gardening, Images explores how you can begin to start growing in your own backyards and balconies.

Years ago, Sanaa Zubairi started her garden when she and her aunt decided to bring a dormant turai (gourd) creeper back to life in their yard with their gardeners help. It worked, and they added a few banana trees and a lemon tree.

They grew well and we had a lot of fruit, says Zubairi, a 36-year-old mental health counsellor, clinical supervisor and life coach.

Our maali started teaching me about [farming] since he had done it before in his village. Gradually, we experimented, researched online, picked up ideas and added more vegetables to the garden.

Zubairi and her aunt were never alone on their journey. The pair was inspired early on by others in their circle with already thriving kitchen gardens and consulted with their local Karachi chapter of Ikebana International the 20,000-strong international organisation to promote the Japanese art of flower arrangement where members meet once a month for workshops, lectures and discussions of plant and flower-related subjects and Tofiq Pasha, a renowned local farmer who regularly opens his farm to the public for planting workshops and lessons.

Along the way, we started hearing a lot about others growing their own food. I also met with Tofiq Pasha and saw his farm. It was pretty clear it is possible to grow [food] at home. The best part is opening up my window to a lush garden every morning, seeing the fruit hanging all around. Theres nothing like picking your own food, heading into the kitchen and cooking up a storm.

Zubairi revealed that for the past six or seven years, they havent needed to purchase the vegetables they already grow at home. That includes loki, turai, karaila and kakri, as well as spinach for six to eight months of the year and seasonal veggies besides.

There is always something that you can grow even if you don't have resources. Our pantries are packed with seeds; potatoes, garlic and ginger are always available to begin with. When you don't have everything listed in a gardening book or website, then you truly learn how to be creative and how nature finds a way to keep producing.

We have our lemons, basil and mint throughout the year. Seasonal vegetables like broccoli, tomato, eggplant, coriander and peppers keep us going for some months. We've added more fruit and have been enjoying mulberries (shaitoot) for a while now.

Every season, she says, We assess what we want to grow that time around and how much. Some stuff we manage to freeze as well and use whenever.

With a lot of produce coming through, Zubairi shares it with family, friends and house staff, and has also set up a barter system with other growers like her.

Seema Khuled has been regularly conducting gardening workshops and training sessions across Lahore and Islamabad for years.

Each session is three hours long and begins with basic theory the hows and whys followed by a tea break and an interactive practice session.

Workshops are registration-based and cover the basics like organic kitchen gardening, but also go beyond for the more serious enthusiasts with sessions on bonsai, vertical gardening, espaliering and growing mushrooms.

We have quite an informal interactive session where the participants are at ease to ask [questions] and understand. The best part which is very encouraging is that participants execute all the ideas that we discuss during the workshop, says Khuled.

I am always there whenever they need any further guidance but they are well equipped to try on their own.

And the interactive guidance goes beyond the weekend workshops. Khuled helps run Our Gardens, a Facebook group with over 114,000 members who use the platform for everything from help identifying plants (Is this lettuce edible?), to advice on techniques (Will this trellis be strong enough to hold up my vine?; Should I repot or transfer this into the ground?) to why their tomatoes arent thriving.

People also trade seeds and plants there are even giveaways from time to time and share photos and videos of the literal fruits of their labour for others to see. Plus, lots of wholesome memes.

I believe that nobody knows everything but everybody knows something. That is why an urban gardening community is important, says Khuled.

Everyone has something to contribute [with their] experience and knowledge.

Though she'd always had an affinity for nature and the outdoors since childhood, Karachi-based sustainability educator and writer Zahra Ali became a full-time urban farmer in 2008 after she had an accident that caused her to put her career on hold as a result.

During that one year, I asked myself, what will really make me happy if I had no pressures from society and no worry about my future?

I wanted to grow my own food and since then, I have found my way in the most magical ways possible. I gave up my career, which was all about consumerism and was totally not making me happy. It was a daring thing to do back then but amazing things happen when you follow your heart.

Around the same time, she started Crops In Pots, a blog that has since blossomed into a community of urban farmers and led to other projects and initiatives. Organic City, the organisation she started with her husband Yasir Husain, holds horticulture therapy sessions with The Recovery House, runs an heirloom seed bank and opened up the Organic City Eco-Store in 2016.

Then theres The Learning Garden, an initiative that promotes sustainability and conservation in schools through classroom and experiential learning via planting and caring for an organic vegetable patch. Over 7,000 children have participated in the programme over the last 12 years.

I learned gardening skills mainly through reading online and emailing experts from around the world who were very supportive. I watched [videos] and practised. That is why I started my blog in 2008: to share what works and what doesn't, says Ali.

I also got in touch with a group of urban farmers in the Philippines that emerged after the [2004] tsunami hit their area. They used trash to make fertilisers and planters; that truly inspired me.

At home and in the gardens she manages across the city, Ali mainly grows organic heirloom vegetables, herbs and fruits in containers or grow boxes and native trees for tree plantations, along with flowers, which help attract pollinating bees.

Flowers are always a part of any organic and permaculture garden. I have grown all kinds of plants, from orchids, cacti, bonsai [to] tropical and water plants as well. All these years, I have never planted hybrid or genetically modified seeds, and all my initiatives [have also grown] only heirloom vegetables each year since day one.

Lahore-based software project manager Muhammad Khabbab has a similar story. Back in 2008, he first got into gardening because of rising tomato prices at the time. Apart from the standard vegetables and some dwarf fruit trees, he is now growing hundreds of plants on his rooftop and is also a collector of rare and exotic flowers which can get tricky thanks to the fluctuating exchange rate and import restrictions.

Like Ali, he too created a community when he could not find one.

An active member of international gardening forums like Dave's Garden and Houzz, Khabbab started a blog, discussion board and an online store selling local and exotic bulbs, seeds and plants. His forum, Gardening Pakistan, often organises workshops and he makes sure to attend workshops run by others in the city.

I always learn a thing or two whenever I attend a workshop, says Khabbab. When you meet with other gardeners who see things from another perspective, then you get to know many new ideas and many solutions which you did not know in the first place. Learning is a process which never stops.

But for the urban gardening community, the learning is not all online.

Those who have access to or contacts in the rural farmlands regularly travel to interact with farmers on the ground to gain a deeper understanding of how to grow and how to grow better.

For example, Dr Sabeeka Kazilbash, who grows guava and mango trees at her home on the outskirts of Karachi, often visits her aunts in Punjab during the sugarcane or rice harvest seasons and consults with local farmworkers there to add to her knowledge.

She also writes directly to local nurseries in Karachi to ask what theyre up to and shares her own progress.

Extreme temperatures and deadly heatwaves in Pakistan over the past decade led to recognising the impact of losing green spaces in cities to concrete and urbanisation, resulting in government and private efforts to restore tree cover and urban forests.

Although climate change was named as a key contributing factor behind the exceptionally high temperatures of up to 49 degrees Celsius during the deadly 2015 heatwave which killed nearly 2,000 people in mostly Karachi and Sindh, what really drove the phenomenon (and subsequent heatwaves) are deforestation and the loss of green spaces in densely populated areas. This is known as the urban heat island effect.

Though urban gardening and farming also took off around the same time, campaigns calling to increase greenery in cities apparently arent responsible for their popularity.

According to Ali, heatwaves have not been the driving factor behind the growing interest in growing.

Speaking of lawns, Its important to point out that the gardens under discussion almost tend to be privately-held in homes and not, for example, public or commonly-held allotments or gardens, as is often the case in contemporary cities around the world.

Heatwaves did encourage mass tree plantations, she notes, referring to drives to plant trees in public spaces but people have always wanted to be closer to nature.

Over the years, so many gardening societies have bloomed and established, garden stores are spreading and nurseries are [more] accessible. People have also started growing vegetables now and are more aware of the harmful effects of genetically-modified seeds and chemicals used in agriculture.

Khuled concurs with Ali and says growing things has been an integral part of home life for generations. If we rewind our memories, we can see our elders growing a few things and surely having one or two fruit trees in our houses. It's kind of reviving that culture again.

Though they say the heatwaves arent directly behind the rising interest in gardening, both Khuled and Ali do credit a greater awareness of climate change and its effects and declining air quality among young people.

Zubairi who is also an active member of a Karachi-based gardening Facebook group acknowledges there are lots of pitfalls when it comes to growing and sustaining your own food and garden.

In fact, she says, failure is an important teacher. It hasnt been easy dealing with bugs and birds, but the experts shared their experiences, and desi fixes, totkas and failures here and there prepped me.

It takes patience and work.

While water is a constant and omnipresent challenge in Karachi, there are ways to work around it.

Dr Kazilbash, for example, grows according to Karachis climate in a limited space and is lucky her home is on the outer edge of the city, so the soil is richer.

Certain limitations of space and resources are a common factor here [in Pakistan] and turning them into opportunities is a collective effort beneficial to all. Small space gardening is one of the primary examples on which we have gone quite far, Khuled adds, referring to the most common type of setup group members have.

For the last 10 years, 29-year-old digital marketer Mavra Azeemi and her family have grown mostly fruit trees, flowers and ornamentals within their Lahore home: kinnow, mosambi, chikoo, red and green grapes, papaya, curry leaf, lemongrass, basil, date, guava, aloe, jasmine and rose.

Then theres the empty plot of land next door, where theyve planted moringa described as a miracle tree for all its nutritious benefits and a diverse vegetable patch.

She says, Thanks to the empty plot next to our house, we've been lucky enough to grow a whole bunch of different seasonal vegetables.

And though Lahore has better soil conditions and season differentiation, the smog and other irregularities can lead to an uneven or sometimes no output, which can get expensive in terms of time and effort.

Although, for Ali, who grows heirloom and organic, it was all about learning slowly through experience over the years.

She says, It was very challenging to find organic experts, garden shops or even local gardening social media groups back then.

Nearly a decade ago, she created a guide for starting a vegetable garden on a less than shoestring budget based on her own experience.

Dr Kazilbash, who is in her 30s, grew up watching her grandparents harvest their own kitchen essentials and took on gardening as a hobby as her interest grew.

Their encouragement, however, came from the pain of their own experience.

My grandfather often recalled his pre-Partition days and always advised that if a war-like situation [like that] happens again, [you must be prepared and] you have to plant food for your own survival. I always laughed, but this point always remains in my mind.

For some, the drive and satisfaction of growing food lies in maintaining family tradition and a kind of modern pastoral nostalgia. Linked to that are concerns like eliminating food miles or avoiding pesticide biomagnification. Plus, when you grow spinach and lettuce in your own yard, you know they havent been watered with sewage.

There is nothing as rewarding as picking up fresh food from your garden just before cooking, says Ali, who grows organic produce in all her gardens.

We are missing out [on] a diverse range of vegetables thanks to commercial farming. We need to revive heirloom seeds especially because over the past few decades, the world has lost a huge percentage of heirloom seed diversity.

The joy of picking a fresh orange from the tree that grows in your garden can never be matched by anything you get in the market, explains Azeemi, who comes from a landowning family in Punjab.

The connection you feel to the food you grow runs a lot deeper. You've shared the same piece of earth and gotten the same sun, grown up together, it's like the most beautiful friendship.

Food is the basic fuel for our body, says Khuled, who notes that pesticide intake tends to be highest when it comes to raw leaves and vegetables.

Growing your own food is taking charge of your health with your own hands. It also tastes much better.

I know we cannot grow everything but at least we can grow those which are consumed raw.

Organic farming can be challenging enough at subsistence level but even more so at scale, and is much less commercially viable in comparison to conventionally grown crops. Even when produce is labelled organic, its difficult to ensure it is 100% so and hasnt been exposed to harmful pesticides or fertilisers at some point.

This means the Pakistani urban garden is atomic, individual and domestic, with no infrastructure or sustainable model to turn it into a true community project that can build social cohesion and empower people.

Commercial farms cannot be completely organic even if they try [to be] due to pesticide sprays in adjacent farms, says Khuled, alluding to the fact that, though there are exceptions, organic farms are often located near or on the same properties as conventional ones.

For Zubairi, however, the benefits of urban farming go far beyond solely clean food: it can be revitalising in terms of mental health too.

Kitchen gardening and nature are a huge personal resource to help reconnect with the world and nature, ground the self and teach and encourage others to do the same.

It also helps to enjoy the many things we discover every now and then: butterflies, all kinds of winged bugs and different birds coming in to share the fruit. Some are just absolutely fascinating.

Dr Kazilbash, who also grows herbs, garlic, ginger, eggplant, potatoes and chillies, finds similar happiness when she gives much of her produce away.

When a friend shares her experience of how she used brinjal Ive grown in tarkari and raita, Im just overwhelmed with joy.

So what does the future of urban farming look like in Pakistan?

Ali is optimistic. It is bright, especially since [many] schools have started educating children about being close to nature. I am very hopeful to see our future community leaders shaping greener communities.

Urban gardeners are getting more active with the food growing movement now, says Khuled, which indicates a break from pristine balconies and the primly landscaped yet monotonous lawn.

"Along with beautiful, colourful and fragrant gardens, we are seeing edibles grown all along. This is very encouraging.

It's going to get even better if kitchen gardening can be introduced in every school and college, Khuled echoes.

She says, It's important to bring young children close to nature. I am seeing a much greener and healthier environment in years to come with all these youngsters joining us.

Speaking of lawns, Its important to point out that the gardens under discussion almost tend to be privately-held in homes and not, for example, public or commonly-held allotments or gardens, as is often the case in contemporary cities around the world.

This means the Pakistani urban garden is atomic, individual and domestic, with no infrastructure or sustainable model to turn it into a true community project that can build social cohesion and empower people.

Mid-February to early April is the spring planting season, which means right now is the perfect time to plan and start your very own garden.

Ali recommends growing locally available flowers, herbs and vegetables.

Try to include a water feature for bees, butterflies and birds, she adds.

There is always something that you can grow even if you don't have resources. Our pantries are packed with seeds; potatoes, garlic and ginger are always available to begin with. When you don't have everything listed in a gardening book or website, then you truly learn how to be creative and how nature finds a way to keep producing.

If that seems too daunting, Khuled recommends starting small.

Start with growing things you love to see or eat, she says. Always ask others for help and information with your gardening. Don't get discouraged if you fail to grow something. That is a part of learning.

Gardening is addictive. Once youre in, there is no way back.

See the article here:

Urban farming is the future of healthy living - DAWN.com

Lets take a timeout from politics.

The American Heart Associations National Walking Day is April 3. Walking will put your brain in a meditative state, reduces stress, boosts stress busting endorphins, with a partner boosts stress relieving benefits, boosts energy and reduces fatigue.

Whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent, uncertainty about employment, schooling, worry about health of family and friends, and isolation, a daily walk can reduce stress and alleviate mild depression that you may be feeling.

Many of my favorite writers have been walkers. Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Mahatma Gandhi connected the working of their minds to the steady movement of their feet.

Walking with a purpose is taken as a sign that people are focused, with eyes on the prize. But the art of walking is not about purpose or a prize. As Immanuel Kant maintained, the creation of beauty is embodied in a purposiveness without a definite purpose. The art of walking is all about this purposeless purpose.

We typically walk in order to get somewhere: the grocery store, get the mail, to confer with someone at work. We need to walk the dog or walk in protest like Murrays Womens March for Social Justice. We walk to get in shape, counting our steps on a Fitbit. Our walking becomes a matter of proving, achieving, gaining, or winning.

The frantic attempt to get somewhere, and to be on time, amounts to a Sisyphean struggle, a task that is endless. In Greek legend Sisyphus was punished in Hades for his misdeeds in life by being condemned eternally to roll a heavy stone up a hill.

When walking, we reach a destination, then we must immediately set off again, intent on the next stopping place, then again and again.

Walking is increasingly measured by technological gadgets worn on wrists. We spend an increasing amount of time screening our world using a smart phone screen that captures objects of immediate interest. Instead of asking What do I see? We are told instead how to see, and often what to feel much of which is determined by an algorithm.

Lets instead pursue the art of walking, the opposite of screening the world we live in, and no set of rules. Walking can be a brief respite in our coronavirus stressed lives, allowing us to see life for ourselves again, not unlike a child does. In walking, we can just step out the front door, pay attention, and perceive and feel.

As a pilgrim, or an evening stroller, the pilgrim ambles for the sake of a blessing; an evening stroller may seek digestive benefits, whether walking with a companion or encountering neighbors along the way.

When we walk without a goal, there is a certain beauty in the awareness of being fully alive while moving through a given space in time. This experience cannot be gotten on a page or a smartphone screen, but only through eyes, ears, nose and skin: the sensation of light, of a buildings grace, of streams and rocks, wind and leaves, fragrances of nature, and a boundless horizon.

Someone might say, what is the point of simply ambling along? This would be like asking what the point of watching a sunset is or smelling a rose. The answer is simple: for the experience alone.

A genuine experience of the art of walking is aimless, while we can experience sunsets, fragrance of flowers, and the sounds of animals and insects.

We can travel through this world by walking in a state of awareness. We can behold, rather than being told.

When we give ourselves over to the art of walking, we exist in the moment for no reason other than that of the experience alone, for the appreciation of beauty. There is no purpose in this occurrence, only the immeasurable effect it has on our nerves, our body, our being.

We have many excellent quiet neighborhoods, many miles of new sidewalks. We have a college campus with many possible circuits. Find a partner, practice social distancing, and take your mind off the stressors of this moment.

See you out there on the walkways at a safe!

Read the original here:
The art of walking | Opinion - Murray Ledger and Times

Philosophers and psychologists may provide an explanation for the tedium some of us feel during lockdown.

The nineteenth century German philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche once asked: Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Thats a question millions around the world, with the privilege of self-isolating themselves amid the coronavirus pandemic, now find themselves forced to confront.

Many developed states have either ordered mandatory curfews or strongly advised people to stay at home for all but essential trips. In some cases people are now starting their third week at home with the possibility that they could be stuck there for months more.

For many of those under lockdown, there may be remote working obligations, child care responsibilities, Zoom hangouts, exercise, or a newly found penchant for cleaning or cooking to provide a break from the tedium.

Nevertheless, the spectre of boredom lurks, appearing most frequently after a long and unsuccessful trawl of offerings on Netflix or when a book or mobile phone can no longer hold the attention. A pang of ache in the wrist while refreshing a Twitter feed can give way to that most dreaded of questions: So what now?

Why do we get bored?

The consequences of boredom are not trivial. Psychologists have long documented its link to the development of harmful habits, such as binge eating and substance abuse. People who are bored are also at heightened risk of developing depression and anxiety.

But at the same time, philosophers and scientists have had a hard time defining what boredom actually is and why we feel it.

A 2012 paper by psychologist John D Eastwood summarises boredom as the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.

Eastwood based that definition on the synthesis of four rival theories for the phenomenon. These are: the arousal, existential, psychodynamic, and cognitive theories of boredom.

For the sake of brevity and relevance, lets single out two of those.

The first- the arousal theory- seems most relevant to boredom induced by the lockdown. Eastwoods paper defines it as the nonoptimal arousal that ensues when there is a mismatch between an individuals needed arousal and the availability of environmental stimulation.

Put simply, we feel the urge to be stimulated but our environment is not able to satisfy that need.

Coronavirus-related lockdowns have restricted our stimulatory environments to our homes and social media. Whereas before the pandemic, there were cafes, nightclubs, and football stadiums, now we have only the contents and members of our homes, as well as those we can reach virtually through technology.

The second, the existential theory, has a more broader explanation on the phenomenon of boredom but can perhaps provide a way out of our current tedious impasse.

We will allow Eastwood to provide his definition before going our own way.

The York University academic explains: Existential theories argue that boredom is caused by a lack of life meaning or purpose; boredom ensues when an individual gives up on or fails to articulate and participate in activities that are consistent with his values.

He further describes existential boredom as: A sense of emptiness, meaninglessness and a paralysis of agency- the bored individual is unable to find impetus for action.

Boredom and the meaning of life

It seems like a dramatic jump to go from discussing the boredom felt while trying to find something good to watch on Netflix to talking about the meaning of life, but the two are intertwined, at least according to the existentialists.

Explaining philosophical ideas is hard at the best of times, let alone explaining their relevance to why you feel bored during an ongoing pandemic, so bear with us.

The starting point of existential thought is that all attempts at understanding the meaning of life start with the individual, and not an all governing cosmic order.

Human beings must reconcile the urge to find purpose in their existence, with the seeming indifference of the world around them. That inherent contradiction is the cause of anxiety, which philosophers have described as angst or dread.

Not many people are thinking about the purpose of their lives during their morning commute, shopping trip, or coffee date. Normal life provides plenty of distraction from the feeling of existential anxiety.

For some, the coronavirus pandemic will have created an upheaval of that sense of normality, exposing its construction on chaotic underpinnings, and forcing them to recognise the fundamental randomness of their environment.

This confrontation between individual purpose and chaotic reality can lead to an inertia from which boredom with everyday life is a byproduct - Ordinary activities lose their stimulatory appeal, as we can no longer find meaning in them.

Boredom and creativity

It is important to make clear that existential anxiety is not tied to specific temporary situations like the coronavirus lockdown but understanding it can provide a way out of the boredom some of us may currently feel.

Thats because for existentialist thinkers like Nietzsche and Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard, boredom was not just a weight dragging down humans into the pits of despair, but could also be the impetus for dramatic individual change and transformation.

Nietzsche described boredom as the unpleasant calm that precedes creative acts.

While for Kierkegaard, it was our abhorrence of boredom that provided the impulse for creativity.

Boredom is the root of all evil. It is very curious that boredom, which itself has such a calm and sedate nature, can have such a capacity to initiate motion. The effect that boredom brings about is absolutely magical, but this effect is one not of attraction but of repulsion, he wrote.

There is some scientific evidence to support this link between boredom and creativity.

A 2012 study by Sandi Mann, an occupational psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire, suggested that participating in boring activities led to better performance in certain subsequent creative activities.

Interestingly, Manns research provides a possible mechanism for this link, suggesting that daydreaming may prove to be an important vector in turning boredom into creativity.

At the risk of oversimplifying, Manns explanation is summarised as follows: Boredom forces people to seek out forms of stimulation. Unable to find it externally, the focus shifts to internal thoughts and feelings, which manifests as daydreaming. That inner stimulation gained by daydreaming compensates for the external lack of stimulation. This leads to more creative problem solving.

With fewer external distractions due to the pandemic, it could be that many more of us start looking internally rather than externally for our sources of stimulation.

Recent articles by the Washington Post and the Atlantic have described how Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare wrote some of their greatest works during times of pandemic. It may well have been that a series of daydreams brought on by boredom gave the world calculus and Macbeth.

Source: TRT World

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This is why youre bored in quarantine - TRT World

The memoir will feel slight in your hands, only 165 pages long. Even so, for sheer insight per page, Mans Search For Meaning has no rival among books written in the last 100 years.

It is the story of Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist from Vienna, and how he survived the Nazi death camps. It is a tale of extreme struggle, despair, loss, grief and the many ways in which life can challenge us.

In other words, a perfect book for life in the face of COVID-19.

I first read Frankls book while slogging through the crash of a marriage in my early 30s. The end of that relationship left me bitter, ashamed and feeling toxic on a daily basis.

Reading about the victims of Auschwitz and their suffering provided some much-needed perspective.

The Nazis took away everything Frankl valued: His wife, his mother, his father, his brother, his possessions, everything down to the manuscript he considered his lifes work.

What they could not steal was what Frankl describes as the last of the human freedoms to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose ones own way.

Over the years, that quote has crossed my mind thousands of times: At the bedside of my mother as she wasted away in the hospital; in the face of professional disappointments and losses that made me angry, frustrated or despondent; while driving along the freeway and getting cut off by a moron; and over this past week, dealing with the fallout of the coronavirus outbreak.

Theres liberation in the idea: That ultimately we all get to choose our own attitude, no matter what happens around us or to us, no matter how life tests us.

Of course, Frankl wasnt done dispensing wisdom with one quote, which is why I have read his book at least once a year since the first time I picked it up.

He writes eloquently about surviving the icy cold march to a work site by fixing his imagination upon the face of his wife as he stumbled along for miles.

Her face, he explains, allowed him to grasp the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief hold for us.

The salvation of man, Frankl writes, is through love and in love.

Re-reading the book again over the past few days, I found myself thinking, of all things, about a spat I witnessed in the grocery store: A grown man threatening an elderly woman for adding what he believed to be too many cans of soup to her shopping cart. Profanities flew. The old woman gave as good as she got.

Eventually they went off in separate directions trailing f-bombs in their wake, but not before the man delivered this pearl.

B-h, youll be dead soon enough anyways.

Frankl, whose book covers far greater deprivation than a lack of Campbells chicken noodle in a can, writes with insight about suffering and how it can lead us to find meaning in our lives. Suffering pushes us to live in one of two ways, he writes.

(We) may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.

For Frankl, finding meaning in life is the ultimate goal. Twice he quotes Nietzsche on the subject: He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

My thought: If the COVID-19 crisis tests us in the most profound ways, youll be glad you read the book. If not and Im just being overly dramatic, youll be glad anyways.

There are far worse ways to spend a couple hours in quarantine.

View original post here:
Holocaust survivor's book applies in these times | Opinion - westvalleyview.com