Healthy Living

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Colette Chuda 1989 photo credit Irene Born Newton-John  “When a parent loses...

The holidays are coming. You just spent a fortune on that special cream that is meant to reduce stretch marks but did you ever...

By Lorri Ballance Laird, Writer and LuxEcoLiving Advocate Since 1978, lead paint has been banned in the United States.  But even today, in 2012, the...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Making Waves Over 60 It takes guts! You stand...

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant The Sex and the City ladies each seem to have a sixth sense: fashion. As the world continues to grow eco-conscious,...

Gregg Cave is a brilliant creative pioneer in the travel industry. He literally just stepped off the plane having received the most prestigious award yet, Best Oceanic Day Spa and Best World Day Spa.

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Melbourne Australia We may not be winning the war...

  Chloe Rose Lattanzi for LuxEcoLiving What does it take to become a supermodel? Unlike other professions that captures and allures masses of media,...

rstBrands offers a variety of sustainable handmade outdoor furniture and utilizes one of the most important sun shields in the development of their products. The patented Sunbrella fabrics who I might add made environmental responsibility a priority decades before the "green" movement.

By Megan Boyle, Editorial Director, Healthy Child Healthy World Reproduced with the permission of the Environmental Working Group, www.healthychild.org. When choosing the right school for their children,...

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article entitled “Fragrance Chemicals and the Scent of Suspicion,” the fragrance industry has been keeping vital chemical information from the public. The article says two recent reports, one by the EWG and one by Women’s Voices for the Earth, have caused a stir amongst researchers, environmental groups, consumers, and industry legislation. These reports reveal that on the label of any given personal care product, bottle of perfume, or cleaning agent the word “fragrance” is loaded with unknown meaning. Manufacturers have used this one word, a nondescript listing among the other ingredients, as a catch-all to legally mask the dozen-or-more chemicals not actually listed.

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” In the 1970s, several senators began to recognize a literal truth behind this Chinese proverb. They realized the importance of teaching the man how to provide his own food source. When the government grasped the self-sufficiency and power of being able to fish, or in this case garden, they began granting $100,000 per year to gardening programs. This evolved to $100,000 to each of 20 metro areas around the United States, one of them being Los Angeles.

By Mary Elizabeth Williams-Villano, LuxEco Editorial Assistant "And unlike the mindless, wasteful consumerism that our culture celebrates, it's a conscious, conscientious, sustainable lifestyle that is eco-responsible. If you've been looking for a way to live your values, here's a rebellious, joyous way to do just that."

By: Molly Rovero, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Nancy, LuxEco founder and garden guru recommended that I try the Topsy Turvy. Excited about the success of her flourishing tomato plants at The Green Home Under the H she showed me pictures of them on her Blackberry one day while we were chatting. This eco-friendly planter would be perfect for my busy schedule she said, no weeding necessary! Aside from the initial planting, all that Topsy Turvy requires is watering once daily.

By Bethany Colson, Managing Editor of LuxEcoLiving.com According to the US government, One third of all children born in 2000 or later will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lives; many others will face chronic obesity-related health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and asthma. A recent study put the health care costs of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion per year. With rates having tripled over the last three decades and with millions effected and the percentage of obese or overweight children at or above 30% in 30 states, the childhood obesity epidemic shows no slowing in site... YET. Enter First Lady Michelle Obama. The Goal: Through nutrition education, healthy food alternatives, physical fitness and a coordinated effort between public, private and non-private sector, the challenge of childhood obesity will be solved within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight.

By Nancy Chuda Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Santa Ynez Valley Historical Museum and Carriage House LuxEcoLiving Custom Saddle...

Sustainable Design: Green Cabinetry By: Lisa Adams, Designer and CEO of LA Closet Design and LuxEco Advocate So much is said about going green, but what exactly defines green? In short, green design (also referred to as "sustainable design" or "eco-design”) is the art of designing and building environments that comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability. The goal of designing green is to produce places, products and services that significantly reduce or eliminate negative impact on the natural environment, while creating healthy places to live and work. When it comes to your home, educate yourself and make conscious choices about the materials living with you. Do they meet these goals?

The Christmas season is upon us, and people everywhere are gearing up for the holiday. In her book, I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas; Gifts, Decorations, and Recipes That Use Less and Mean More, author and LuxEco Advocate, Anna Getty shares with us her ideas on how to create memorable traditions while taking small steps to reduce our carbon footprints, minimize waste, and creatively use what we already have.

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Saying goodbye to a feathered friend We lost her yesterday. It...

By Dow-Yung Kou, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Vintage is a very affordable eco-alternative, because it is giving clothes a second life, while reducing the amount of waste both during production and post-consumption. What it boils down to is good old fashion recycling. An average American throws out 65 pounds of clothing a year, and cumulatively as a country we add 11.8 million tons of clothes to landfills a year.

By: Leslie Harris, Interior Designer, Leslie Harris Interior Design and LuxEco Advocate With as much time as we spend in our homes these days, we want to create a home that is a retreat, that is what we speak to, but we want our retreat to be safe so this is definitely going to be an option. Certainly they don’t have to take it all the way to major extremes, but they can do little things that will make a huge difference in their health, their design and in the environment.

It’s a question as old as campfire, and the answer is getting more and more difficult to produce: “Hey Ma (or Pa), What’s for dinner?”. The realities of mass food production in this modern age are out there, and perhaps the harshest light of all has been shed on the meat production industry in particular.

By Nancy Chuda, co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World, and Megan Boyle, Editorial Director, Healthy Child Healthy World Reproduced with the permission of the Environmental...

Yes, the bracelets made of delicately rounded glass beads that look like raindrops dripping around the wrist are stunning.  I'm like a squirrel with...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World   The Brothers know how to bring home the...

By Megan Boyle, Editorial Director, Healthy Child Healthy World, and Dawn Undurraga, Nutritionist, Environmental Working Group Reproduced with the permission of the Environmental Working Group www.healthychild.org. Your kids rush home...

By Megan Boyle, Editorial Director, Healthy Child Healthy World Reproduced with the permission of the Environmental Working Group, www.healthychild.org. For parents, feeding a new baby can feel...

By: Leslie Harris, Interior Designer, Leslie Harris Interior Design and LuxEco Advocate Lori Dennis’ desire to be part of the solution to waste and pollution in the interior design and construction fields led her to write “Green Interior Design” which came out last month. Along with beautiful images of her work, it is a manual of resources for anyone wishing to create green interiors.

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World "All that is authentic and true to one’s...

By: Leslie Harris, Interior Designer, Leslie Harris Interior Design and LuxEco Advocate I believe that every home should be a sanctuary and that upon entering it one should immediately feel physically and emotionally protected. What I first noticed upon entering Jim and Nancy Chudas Green Home to select a room to design for an upcoming feature in Los Angeles Magazine was that it had all of those qualities even in the construction phase.

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Imagine if the very thing you used and depended on to protect you from skin cancer was capable of exacerbating the growth of epidermal lesions and tumors. Well that’s what the Environmental Working Group claims may be the case. A recent study shows that retinyl palmitate, a synthetic form of vitamin A, is carcinogenic on skin exposed to the sun.

By Megan Boyle, Editorial Director, Healthy Child Healthy World Reproduced with the permission of the Environmental Working Group www.healthychild.org They’re cheap, appealing and easy to find. They...

By Florence “Flip” Ross, LuxEco Advocate One day at work, I happened to mention that I found these hills so pleasant to look at every time I passed them, and I wondered how they had developed there in the midst of all the flatness, which looked like God had ironed the land. Everyone laughed and said: “Don’t you know what those hills are?

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World   Have you ever had a center stage moment when you...

By: Leslie Harris, Interior Designer, Leslie Harris Interior Design and LuxEco Advocate. Jill Salisbury, founder of Chicago based el: Environmental Language, formally educated and trained as an Interior Designer, has found her true calling and passion in the design and manufacturing of furniture. Ten plus years ago, while working as an interior designer, she began learning about the benefits of sustainability but wasn’t able to find furnishings that were stylish and had any kind of environmental initiative. “There wasn’t anything available and I felt the Interior Design community needed to have what I call the Eco-Chic Alternative where you can have style with environmental integrity and promote a healthy indoor air quality for your clients.”