Going green, living healthy: Food

This is part of a series of posts on Going green, living healthy. The first post is here. I'm not an expert on this subject, so if you find errors please let me know. I have tried to provide pointers to my sources where possible.

From my standpoint, "going green" with food means being more in touch with raw ingredients that go into making food and minimizing consumption of processed and packaged foods.  It takes quite a lot of effort to do that given the time constraints imposed by modern living.  Let's look at some of the things that I have found matter to me by look at the following 4 questions:

• How is the food grown?
• How does the food get to you?
• How is the food processed or prepared?
• How is the food packaged?

How is the food grown?

The most important thing here is to look for food that is grown without pesticides, without chemical fertilizers, and non-genetically modified.  There are local farmers that I've encountered that claim they don't use chemical fertilizers or pesticides, but they can't afford the cost of organic certification.  At the same time, we have big businesses that will try to game the organic certification process by getting regulators to relax the requirements.  Obviously, the only way to know for sure what you're getting is to grow the food yourself or buy locally from a grower that you trust.  It's kind of hard to do that exclusively, but some ways to get going in that direction are shopping at farmer's markets, and looking at options for community supported agriculture (CSA).

There are several other types of farming that I've recently become aware of, but I'm not an expert on these to really know what they are all about and be able to compare them.

• Veganic refers to food that is grown without any animal byproduct such as bone meal and blood meal that are permitted for use as fertilizers when growing organic produce.
• Biodynamic farming seems to be about farming in a way that heals the earth.
• Permaculture seems to be about sustainability and while it includes how food is grown, it goes beyond that aspect covering issues such as home building and landscaping.

How does the food get to you?

A closely related question would be "where is the food grown?"  Naturally there is a difference in the resources it takes to ship food a few miles versus shipping it thousands of miles across the globe.  Food that is local is likely to be fresher and I've heard from proponents of Ayurveda that it is healthier to eat seasonal, locally grown foods.  To be shipped half way across the globe, all sorts of extreme measures would be required including picking the produce before it ripens and possibly freezing it.

How is the food processed or prepared?

Unfortunately the nutrition labels on packaged and processed foods simply don't do justice because they typically only tell you what is required by law and no more.  Let's say for example we buy potato chips cooked in olive oil.  We know that olive oil heated beyond the smoke point becomes toxic.  While this is a simple example and is probably not a cause for concern, in general, the more the ingredients, the more one has to be careful about how it was prepared because combining certain ingredients and heating or cooling them a certain way could cause them to become toxic, or at the very least, something that is hard for the body to process.  Nutrition labels, for example, won't tell how the salt that is used in the product was processed and a variety of chemicals can be used in the processing of commonly available table salt.

In general, I try to buy foods that have the least amount of processing, but it's not always possible.  Got to satisfy those cravings for processed foods every once in a while.

How is the food packaged?

In general, less packaging is better because it's easier on the environment and we don't have to worry about the safety of the packaging materials.  Many canned foods, for example, have been found to contain traces of BPA.

A word about restaurants

Restaurants, at least in the US, depend a lot on processed and pre-prepared ingredients for their menus.  Even though the food that arrives at the table appears fresh, they are often made with sauces or other ingredients that are processed food.  This is the reason why they can maintain consistency of taste even across geographies and regardless of the chef preparing the food.

Additional resources

These here some organizations that bring us information on what is happening with our food supply.

• Organic Consumers Association
• Natural Society

Thanksgiving at the Yoga Farm

I have written several posts about the Yoga Farm, including how I found it and how I became a regular visitor every Saturday.  For the last several years, I have been going there to spend Thanksgiving evening.  They have a sumptuous dinner comprising 8 - 10 different dishes including a couple of different pies that conforms to the yogic diet.  What makes this event particularly fun, is that it often has a very large attendance (50-100 people), many of whom have had past association with the ashram as visitors, students, or staff, and as a result there's a lot of running into old faces.

Following the dinner is an evening satsang -- meditation followed by chanting and a concert or a guest speaker.  This year, the speaker was Dr. Edwin Bryant, who is currently a professor of Religions of India at Rutgers University.  He taught several classes during the day, but since I visited only for the evening, I was able to listen only to his evening talks both on Thursday and Friday.  He talked about a variety of subjects including the origins of Hinduism, the various texts such as the vedas and the puranas, the epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the origins of asana practice in yoga, and many other topics.  It was truly a treat to hear an accomplished scholar with in-depth and precise knowledge of these subjects who was able to put all of these ancient texts in perspective (e.g. how they're related).  At the end of each talk, he took a number of questions from the audience giving patient, in-depth responses to each.

One of things that I learnt from this is that documented asana practice is fairly recent.  Most of the older texts (vedas and puranas) don't say much about this subject.  Another interesting takeaway was the concept of yogamaya and mahamaya.  Up until now, I was only aware of maya, the term used to describe the illusory material world that we live in.  Yogamaya and mahamaya are terms to used to describe illusion that, for example, Lord Krishna creates so that people can have a relationship with him (such as a that of a parent or lover), and illusions such as the one created when Lord Krishna's mother looks into his open mouth and sees the whole universe.

Opting out of interest-based ads in iOS 6

I came across this in message boards on macrumors.com.

Apple decided to enable tracking by default in iOS 6.  To opt out, go to Settings -> General -> About -> Advertising and turn ON the Limit Ad Tracking option (OFF by default).

There's more information on what this is all about on Apple's website.  The tracking information is used to tailor advertising from the iAd network.  By disabling this, you'd still get advertisements, but they will be random rather than tailored based on information in an application or other non-personal information on the phone.

If you ever restore the phone, the setting will default back to OFF and must be enabled again.

Opting out of AT&T's ads and information sharing

You can opt out of receiving interest-based ads from AT&T by updating your preferences here.

Ways to own gold

(Some interesting quotes on gold in literature can be found here.)

This is not a post advocating that the reader buy gold.  This is simply a summary of my research on the different ways to own gold.  There was a period of time around the financial crisis in 2007-2008 when there were a number of people talking about why it's a good reason to own gold.  That got me into doing some research.  So here's what I came up with when I researched this subject back then.

There are several ways to own gold.

• Gold bullion
• Gold-backed exchange traded funds
• Leveraged exchange traded funds
• Online gold accounts
• Gold-linked CDs

Each of these has its pros and cons.  Let's take a look.

Gold bullion

In this case one would buy actual physical gold (coins, bars, etc.) from a reputable dealer and find a place to store it.  Most proponents of gold bullion fall into two categories.

• People who believe in an "economic armageddon" scenario.  They prefer to store it outside the banking system.  Of course, at that point, the safety of anything, anywhere is going to be questionable, so one would have to come up with creative and diverse ways of storing one's holdings.
• People who don't trust the "paper gold" varieties.  They prefer to be able to see and touch their physical gold.  For such people storing gold in a bank locker is probably acceptable.

The issues around theft of gold bullion from one's home is complicated; I haven't really looked into things like whether or not insurance would cover it.

So, in summary, one should be aware of several expenses -- there is a commission when buying (usually resulting in a premium over the spot price of gold), there may be storage-related costs (e.g. locker rent at a bank), there may be insurance costs, and finally, there would be a commission involved when selling it (usually resulting a getting a price slightly lower than the spot value).

Unfortunately, even with gold bullion there can be fraud (see #1, #2).  So if one goes the bullion route, one has to make sure the source is good and perhaps even get it tested.

Gold-backed exchanged traded funds

In this case, one would hold shares of an exchange traded fund.  There are several such funds.  The most popular and largest of these is GLD, but there's also SGOL, PHYS, and IAU.  These funds are reportedly backed by physical gold bars at vaults in places like London, New York, or Zurich.

OUNZ is an interesting option for those that might want to convert their ETF holdings into physical gold without tax consequences.  This page discusses some of the costs associated with doing this.

The pros of using this approach are clear.  It's easy to get in and out of the fund.  There's no premium when buying or selling (other than the fee by the brokerage for the stock trade).  However, there is a management fee for owning these funds (as there is for all types of funds) so there is an ongoing expense, although it's typically taken out by adjusting the net asset value of the fund.

The cons here are that even though the funds claim that their shares are backed by gold, there are some cynics that say there could be fraud involved and, in a doomsday scenario, the fund would simply report that bars of gold just aren't there, or that some number of them are missing.  The funds do state that the bullion is insured and audited -- would be one of the things to check in the prospectus.

Leveraged exchanged traded funds

These include funds such as UGL which use leverage to move at twice the percentage change in the price of gold.  As a personal opinion, I think this is getting into gambling territory, so I wouldn't touch something like this for investment purposes.

Online gold accounts

These include sites such as GoldMoney, BullionVault, and the Perth Mint Depository.  These often offer allocated and unallocated accounts, and in some scenarios will allow the account holder to take delivery in physical form, for a fee, if they should so choose.

The cons with these are similar to that of ETFs.  One has to place trust that they are being run in an ethical and well-managed fashion.

Of these, the Perth Mint Depository is interesting because it is the only one that is backed by a government -- the Government of Western Australia -- which would be the equivalent of something being backed by a state government in the US (as opposed to the federal government).

Gold-linked CDs

Some banks have either offered in the past, or currently offer, what is referred to as gold-linked CDs.  In other words, the returns of the CD are tied to the price of gold.  Often, the principal will be FDIC insured, and there is some, usually complex, formula that determines how the returns of the CD will be calculated based on the movement in the price of gold.

Here's a word of warning from the FDIC on market-linked CDs in general, so make sure that the terms of the CD are well understood before investing in them.

Additionally, with such CDs you typically have to pay income taxes on expected returns which may never actually materialize because the price of gold went up for a while, but then went down by the time the CD matured.

Is owning gold a good idea?

Even as of this writing, some of the blogs that I read such as ZeroHedge, Mish's Global Economic Analysis, and iTulip, talk about gold being an essential part of one's portfolio.  However, there are others such as Warren Buffett who don't think very much of the idea of owning gold.  More recently, there was this article by PIMCO which discusses a viewpoint on gold.

Just as with every investment, it seems like you'll find people on either extreme ("it's the only investment worth owning", or "stay away"), to those that have more moderate views ("it makes sense to have a percentage of one's portfolio in gold").

Personally, I'm much more comfortable with the approach detailed in my post on worry-free investing, sticking with instruments such as TIPS and I-Bonds.  They might not be ideal, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about all the fraud-related risks related to buying and storing of gold.  Of course, as with everything else I write about, this is subject to change.

A word about taxes

It is probably worth noting that any gains for gold holdings are taxed as a collectible rather than as long/short-term capital gains from a regular security.

Disclaimer:  I am not a financial advisor and it is possible that what I have written may contain errors so please do your own research and form your own opinions and/or action plan about this subject.  This post is just my way of documenting and sharing what I have learned.

The Yoga Farm: Lineage

In an earlier post, I had written about how I found the Yoga Farm and how I started spending all of my Saturday evenings there.  This evening, being Swami Sivananda's birthday, instead of the usual chanting and discourse following the evening meditation, they showed a couple of short films -- one was on the life of Swami Sivananda, and the other one was about Swami Vishnudevananda.  Swami Vishnudevananda  is the founder of the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers, of which the Yoga Farm is a part.  He was a disciple of Swami Sivananda.

The screening of those movies inspired me to write a brief post about the lineage of the teachings at this ashram.  Since I have been going there for many years, I have seen both of the movies several times.  For the purpose of this post, I tried locating them on YouTube.  I couldn't find the one on Swami Sivananda, but this clip on YouTube contains some representative material.  The movie on Swami Vishnudevananda was called In the Name of Peace, and the entire movie is available on YouTube.

Incidentally, I came across this chart depicting A Brief and Incomplete History of Yoga.  I'm no scholar on Yoga and its origins, so I have absolutely no idea how good this chart is.  But, in this chart, Swami Sivanada is shown to be a disciple of Vishwananda Saraswati.

Swami Sivananda founded The Divine Life Society in Rishikesh in the Himalayas in India.  They have made available for free many of the books written by Swami Sivananda.

Here are some ashrams in this lineage:

• Yogi Hari's Ashram in Florida (disciple of Swami Vishnudevanada)

Going green, living healthy: Clothing

This is part of a series of posts on Going green, living healthy. The first post is here. I'm not an expert on this subject, so if you find errors please let me know. I have tried to provide pointers to my sources where possible.

My first awareness into the materials used for clothing came about when I was using a number wrinkle-free and wrinkle-resistant products.  Many of these were labeled at being 100% cotton, so why is it that everything that's made of cotton is wrinkle free or at least wrinkle resistant.  A bit of research on the Internet showed that these clothes are made using fabrics treated with toxic chemicals,  For example, this article in the The New York Times states:

Though it is not obvious from the label, the antiwrinkle finish comes from a resin that releases formaldehyde, the chemical that is usually associated with embalming fluids in dissected frogs in biology class.

For me, there were two takeaways from this:

• Clothing labels can be misleading because they don't require a full disclosure of chemicals used in the processing.
• Simply buying organic cotton clothing does not mean that such chemicals were not used.

This has meant that while I try and stick with organic cotton clothing, I am not paranoid about it.  Instead, I try to look for manufacturers that care about the environment and focus on using simple fabrics that are not heavily treated with chemicals.  I've noticed organic cotton tends to be a lot softer.

I haven't found many mainstream brands that offer such clothing, but fortunately there are a few.  Patagonia is one that seems to use organic cotton exclusively (i.e. they don't use cotton that is not organic), but they tend to blend it with synthetic fabrics such as polyester.  But they do offer a few pieces that are 100% organic cotton.  Timberland also offers some organic cotton clothing under their Earthkeepers line, but for some reason their selection is very limited in the USA and they are often blends of organic and regular cotton, or organic cotton and polyester.  On the other hand, in Europe and Asia, almost everything that they offer is 100% organic cotton, but they also tend to be more expensive.  Why is it that the US has such a limited selection?  In an email exchange with them, they cited "market demand and other factors."

Greenroom Voice lists a bunch of brands and apparel that meet its standards for eco-friendliness.  Most are European.

The backdoor Roth IRA

If one's income exceeds the limits for contributing to a Roth IRA, there's still a backdoor approach for making a contribution.  The method, outlined in this article by Fidelity, shows that one can contribute to a non-deductible IRA (which has no income limit), and immediately convert that to a Roth IRA (which also does not have any income limits).

That catch here is that one must not have any other IRA -- Traditional or Rollover.  Otherwise, that will complicate tax matters since the tax liability is calculated as a percentage of all funds that are eligible for rollover.  If one has a Rollover IRA, usually from rolling over funds from 401(k) plans at previous employers, then to get the most benefit out of this, one would have to roll over the funds from the Rollover IRA into the current employer's 401(k) plan.  Most 401(k) plans allow that.  The down side to such a roll over is that, unlike an IRA at a traditional brokerage which typically has nearly limitless investment options, one would be restricted to the investment choices offered by the current 401(k) plan.

Useful reading

• Backdoor Roth IRA @ Bogleheads

Disclaimer: I am neither an investment advisor nor a tax preparer.  If you think this applies to you, please do your own homework to decide whether it works for your situation.  Otherwise, it can land you in a tax mess.  At the very least, it is a bit more paperwork since it requires filing IRS form 8606 which will show the contribution to the non-deductible IRA, the conversion to the Roth, and report that there are no other IRA funds.  Here is an article warning about some of gotchas to watch out for.

Update 3/21/2016

I recently came across an article which throws another wrench in the works--the Step Transaction Doctrine.  Read the article for details.  This article is the subject of a heated discussion over at Bogleheads.