Dr Barbara Olioso's Blog

Have you ever dreamed of getting rid of Health and Safety? Somebody has put it into practise!

A friend told me about a recent article on the Independent about New Hampshire in the US. It is a tiny state in the North East (as big as Wales) where the motto is "Live free and die", meaning the ban of health and safety rules! People can ride bikes with no helmets and drive cars with no seat belts on and also there are no taxes. I do not want to express a judgement about it but I would love to visit this place and see how it feels to be health, safety and taxes free. Click here for the full article

Felt shrouds: a sustainable alternative now available in the UK

I attended the talk of a very passionate lady, Yuli Somme, who is trying to bring back to life the ancient tradition of using felt as a burial material. The concept behind this is very much inspired by the desire to thread lightly on the earth and to leave it lightly as well. By using all local materials from Dartmoore and Wales, such as sheep felt and wood (from wild woodland), the environmental impact is greatly reduced: there are no airmiles and the materials are from renewable sources (sheep wool is one of the most sustainable materials as it grows back very quickly). No metal is used.
The leaf shaped shrouds are really beautiful but what impressed me the most was not their sustainability or their beauty, but the idea of completing the life cycle by going back to earth in a way that is in harmony with nature.
Prices range from £150 for a small one up to £885 for a full size one with decorations. To know more visit BellaCouche

The cat and the frog: to rescue or to let nature free?

On Saturday I was enjoying the rare English sun in a beautiful garden wearing a green T-shirt with a frog on, when all of a sudden Little Boy (the black cat living in the house) found a frog in the garden and chased it out. Panic, what to do? Little boy is pointing the frog wanting to play with it possibly to kill it. I get up, putting myself in front of the cat to rescue the frog laying on the pavement out of its hiding place, still the cat is very interested and the frog does not move at all. The disgust towards the poor frog is too strong for me to make the effort to pick it up and throw it into the nearby pond. So here comes Georgina to my rescue, ending up chasing the frog herself wondering how the French can eat these creatures. After several slippery attempts the frog gets into the pond, Alleluja! This unexpected adventure makes me realise how we all have a rescuing tendency, and how difficult it can be to let nature take its course or to let an animal die in front of our eyes. Everybody is on about nature is in trouble, but I wonder if it us who are in trouble.

A very good reason to eat organic meat and drink organic milk

Last night I was at a party where I met a guy working for a farm. From the conversation it came out the the farm rents the land out to summer festivals and that the metal left behind from the festival goers gets eaten by the cows (the poor things eat anything and even if they try to pick up the rubbish things get left behind). You can imagine what a problem this can be for the poor cows so what they do is to feed the cows a magnet which can keep the metal all bundled together so that it does not cause any damage. The acid juice in the cow's gut eventually dissolve the metal leaving the magnet intact for future magnetic attractions. When I heard this story I was half amused and half worried because the dissolved metal (possible iron, nickel, alluminium, etc) gets metabolised by the cows ending up in their milk and meat. I knew of all sorts of reasons to go organic, but this one is the most original!

Organic Food Festival in Bristol

Today I visited the fantastic event organized by the Soil Association. It was full of green visitors, despite the bad weather. The amazing and cheerful live music played by a Spanish group put people in a really  good mood! It was really great to see the variety of organic products available, but there was a downside to it: a company selling hair products was making misleading claims about their products being organic, when they contained petrochemicals along with organic ingredients. Only when I specifically asked about the products being certified organic I got them to tell me the truth which I knew anyway from reading the ingredients list. It is sad to see this at a festival where people give for granted that everything is organic or at least truly natural. The lesson is to read the ingredients list always when you buy from a new source. Always!

Truly Natural icecream: a gateway to sensual heaven

Just come back from a break in my mother land and a friend of mine introduced to the best icecream I have ever tested: GROM. GROM is a chain of icecream shops, where icecream is totally natural and with fresh season ingredients (no frozen fruit!) and has a three dimensional taste where you can truly taste the rich flavour of the fresh ingredients including fresh cream from the mountains. This is so much better than the monotone commercial icecream , it is like a concert of flavours going on in your mouth. When I ate their almond granita (with almonds from Provence) I found very difficult to get on the plane back to the UK, I would have liked to try all their flavours. Now that I have tested thier icecream I am not sure if I will be able to eat any icecream better than that!
You can find them in Turin, Milan, Paris, Venice, Florence, Bergamo, Bologna, Genova, Ferrara, Mantova, Mestre, Novara, Padova, Parma, Perugia, Treviso, Asti, Casale. To know more about this fantastic icecream, visit the GROM website

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