It’s Sunday evening and, as is often the case, I’m making some pacts with myself. Granted this weekend was special—it was our book launch party at Evolue, and what a party it was. So let’s just say I’m a tad rundown from the fun and looking for ways to up my energy (and give my skin a boost while I’m at it).

That’s why this week I am committing to taking my omega 3s every day. For some reason, despite what I know about the powers of omegas to create glowing skin (not to mention a stronger brain) I have failed to take them with any regularity. But I figure that if you do something for a week straight, it will become a real habit. Right?

So going forward we’re going to create a beauty (slash health) challenge for ourselves (and you) every Monday. Are you on board? 

Look for omega-inspired posts throughout the week to keep us all on track.

The GOOD series continues, folks—this time with a shopping list you can actually stick to. We’ve picked the 10 most beautifying foods that (duh) also come with major health benefits, and explained why they’re so great. I try to eat these things as often as I can—especially the salmon, dark chocolate and avocado part—but funnily enough, as hard as I try and as much as I love broccoli, I don’t eat it anywhere near as much as I am telling the rest of the world they should. I’m good on my leafy greens, though.

From the article:

You can slather yourself from your forehead to your pinkie toe in organic lotions, but if you think that alone will make you glow, we have some bad news.

From its well documented health benefits to its undeniable impact on physical beauty, good nutrition is the pillar of every kind of healthy lifestyle. That doesn’t mean you need to swear off bacon and beer or anything. The trick is finding the right balance.

But with new studies coming out every month about what we should put in our mouths—not to mention the unending discovery of mysterious superfruits from deep in the forests of wherever—it can be hard to keep track of what, exactly, we should be eating. To simplify things, here’s a can’t-go-wrong shopping list. Bon appétit!

Continue reading….

I am neither a raw foodist nor a vegan, but this delicious raw, vegan borscht really makes me happy. Whatever your preferred diet—I tend to be vegetarian, with a side of bacon—do yourself a favor and make it: your tastebuds and your health (and your skin) will thank you.

Between the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory powers of the beets, tomatoes, olive oil and garlic—not to mention the cleansing powers of water and fiber—this soup is one tasty beauty elixir. I’ll have to check with Siobhan as to how many veggie challenge servings it would count for—but I bet it’s a lot.

I never got an exact recipe on this so I’m kind of winging the measurements—don’t worry though, you can really play around and it will still turn out.

Here’s what you need (and we always suggest organic when possible):

—1 small jar of sun dried tomatoes in olive oil

—3 large tomatoes

—2 beets

—2 large carrots

—3 celery stalks

—1 large leek

—2 cloves of garlic

—hot sauce of choice (harissa, sriracha*, or that asian chili garlic paste all work really well)

—1 lemon

—dill to garnish

—greek yogurt (optional)

—salt and pepper to taste

Peel the beets then chop all of these ingredients (including the sun dried tomatoes) and throw about a third of them (order not important) into the blender, adding about a cup of water or so before you start blending. Depending on the power and size of your blender you may need to continue doing this in batches, or keep adding the chopped ingredients into the blended soup. Add  water as needed to achieve your desired consistency, hot sauce to taste, the juice of your lemon as well as a few tablespoons of the olive oil left from the sundried tomatoes. If you want the soup to be super smooth, you can always use one of those handheld wands at the end to really make it velvety. Add salt and pepper and garnish with dill and yogurt (as pictured, but more dill if you like it).

And voila! Impress people at a summer dinner party or keep the soup in your fridge for a healthy snack. (It’s strangely satisfying as a breakfast side.)

*Sriracha is one of the best hot sauces going. Take a look at this list of 50 ways to use it.

Last week my friend mentioned a study he’d seen showing that Japanese farmers who ate on average 20 fruits and vegetables a day were in significantly better health than those who ate just 10. They lived longer, were in better shape physically and I would wager they looked pretty good too.

Intuitively this makes sense, and it’s partly why we devoted two chapters in the book to food and lifestyle. We’re big believers in the idea that you can’t just slather on products and expect to glow. You also need to eat avocados, drink plenty of water, sleep a lot, have sex, and take your vitamins.

Anyway, since I can’t find the actual study, I say to hell with the specifics, and propose a challenge: Cram 20 fruits and veggies down your piehole every single day. It’s way easier than it sounds (especially if you consider that coconut gelato totally counts).

To get started you need to forget the USDA pyramid and everything you know about “serving sizes,” because that’s not what this is about. One bite of your friend’s apple counts, and so does the garlic crushed into your pasta sauce. The idea isn’t to get all fussy and rulesy about it—just go wild and see how well you do.

Some tips:

1. Raid the salad bar. This is the easiest way to pack ‘em in without breaking the bank buying a zillion vegetables that will rot in your fridge. Today, for example, I went to Whole Foods and made a salad containing arugula, red, yellow and green peppers, roasted yams, pecans, tomato, cucumber, raisins carrots, kale, some kind of seaweed thing, beets, and a few different kinds of sprouts.

2. Dessert counts. I eat coconut sorbet more nights a week than I care to share. My favorite, by Ciao Bella, has a total of five ingredients in it, two of which are coconut (seriously) and one of which is water. I count it twice.

3. Get in the habit of eating berries. A weirdly specific suggestion, sure, but berries are habit-forming. These days, I try to eat them every day. A handful with my vitamins in the morning does the trick, or raspberries on my desk at work for when I get hungry.

4. Join a CSA or shop at the farmers market. The guilt of throwing away produce harvested by an independent farmer near my home that is nutritionally as good as it gets is a little hard to stomach (even when that produce is bok choy).

5. Juice, juice, juice. This, like the salad bar, is an easy win. Pack ‘em in, drink it down in three minutes, and check five more veggies or fruits off your list. Also, smoothies, if you’re into that kind of thing.

6. Throw everything in an omelette. Alexandra suggested this to me ages ago: Keep some eggs or a carton of whites on hand for an instant meal made of veggie leftovers. A stub of red onion, a tomato that’s seen better days, some basil leaves, the heel of zucchini, canned red peppers—throw em all in together and presto. Breakfast, lunch or dinner is served.

7. Condiments are an easy cheat. Cucumber raita, garlicky mayonaise and ketchup all count.

8. Eat fries. Probably not something you should do every day, but they’re my favorite food, and they totally make the cut.

9. Add at least three vegetables to your sandwich. Bean sprouts, tomatoes and cucumber are available at most delis for store-made sandwiches. Try to get at least three in every sammy you eat or, even better, get a falafel pita: In one fell swoop you get onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, chickpeas, red pepper and lettuce.

10. Salsa! Technically another condiment, but depending on how scoopy you get with your chips, you can really get some tomatoes down. Bonus if the salsa contains some other vegetable, like green pepper, or some garlic and onion.

Got any other ways to pack in vegetables?

Photo (cc) by Flickr user Selfnoise

I can’t lie: I am not exactly the ideal target for an eye cream. I’m a less-is-more girl at heart, and I find smile lines really sexy. And yet, I freaking love eye cream. Always have. There’s just something pleasing about the whole process: Patting it on instead of rubbing. The feeling of something soothing on such a delicate part of the face. How easy it is to conceal my bags after I apply it.

Of course, I’m still skeptical about the ingredients in most, knowing that these products are essentially snake oil in a $200 package—which is why I was delighted to try this new one by Kahina Giving Beauty.

We write about this luxey argan-oil-based collection in the book, and I’m a big believer in the oil’s healing and soothing properties. Their eye cream uses that same oil—which is super-high in antioxidant vitamin E—paired with tea extracts, rhodiola root extract and something called saccharomyces cerevisiae extract,  which has some encouraging research written about it.

I’ve been using it for a few weeks and I feel especially dewy. In a pinch I’ve also smeared it on other parts of my face and like it—though at $65 a jar I won’t do that often.

Image courtesy of Kahina Giving Beauty

We are the excited authors of No More Dirty Looks: The Truth About Your Beauty Products, and the Ultimate Guide to Safe and Clean Cosmetics. That’s Siobhan O’Connor on the left, and Alexandra Spunt on the right. We’re best friends and we’re journalists—and we also share a way-too-long history of product obsession.

A few years back we went for the then-new (and very expensive) Brazilian blowout. Sold to us as a healthy keratin treatment for our hair, the Brazilian, we later discovered, was actually laced with formaldehyde. The eye-burning fumes probably should have tipped us off, but we’d be lying if we said we gave it a second thought at the time. We were just psyched about how great our hair was going to look. Anyway, you can read all about it in our book, but it was this experience (and the self-diagnosing Google panic that ensued) that made us wonder for the first time: What the hell is in our beauty products, anyways? And once we figured out that they were loaded with all kinds of sketchy chemicals, we wondered: Does anyone have our backs when it comes to safety? The answer to the latter is a big, fat no.

We wanted to write something for women much like us—that is, women who love products but who also care about the planet, and don’t want to sacrifice their health for their looks (or vice versa).

We’ll tell you now: Our year of experimenting with what we call “clean” beauty garnered better results than almost everything we’d tried before. And we’ve tried a lot.

In the book we look at the lack of regulation in the industry and try to make sense of some of the confusing science around long-term low-dose chemical exposure, because our bodies absorb up to 60% of what we put on them, and the cosmetics business uses over 10,000 chemicals in their products—many of them with woefully inadequate safety data written about them.

Over the last two years, we trolled countless scientific journals and databases, we spoke to experts, and we asked questions—over and over again—until somebody would answer us. But the book is not all serious! It’s also an exhaustive guide to the most effective clean products on the market, tested by us. (And in the few cases where we didn’t fit the guinea-pig bill, for aesthetic or racial reasons, we turned to trusted friends.)

This site will be done in the same spirit. We plan to post frequently about everything from the latest research, to the latest blushes. There will be beauty tips, and new clean-product finds. There will also be rants about things that piss us off, like the fact that there was lead in every lipstick the FDA tested not too long ago.

We’re excited to hear from you—whether you’re already a converted clean girl, or whether you think we’re full of crap. It’s the discussion that counts, so we hope you’ll take part.