So now I’ve decided to be an educated consumer and actually read labels. The evil oligopoly deodorant was ditched and then I started using something called a deodorant crystal. Had to love it, it was a mineral salt stone. By that, I mean something that looks like a medium size roundish rock.

The theory is you put it under running water to make it damp then rub it under your arms. Fine in theory. In practice, holding a slippery, round rock with nothing to act as a handle first thing in the morning is simply begging for trouble. I can’t count how many times I was chasing that damn thing around my bathroom, feeling like an extra from a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

Anyway, that was how the whole “natural” thing started!

It was a short step from looking in wonder at the label on my moisturizer, to closely scrutinizing food labels, to then glaring suspiciously at the food I bought in the supermarket. Although to be honest, the icing on the cake was when I was roasting a chicken for dinner and my husband came home to ask if we were having fish! and then I started to wonder what they were feeding the chickens! I’ve since learned that it sin’t just a question of feeding chickens with ground up fish and other odd things, it’s the conditions the birds are kept in. Now I could probably spend another three days just writing about those poor avians, but instead I’ll give you the bald facts. In the pre-growth hormone days it took a chick about 42 days to grow to eating size. Now it takes 21 days, and apparently they’re looking to make it even shorter (time, that is). The birds have such weak skeletal systems because they grow so fast that they can’t even stand, but it doesn’t matter anyway because there are so many of them crammed in one cage that they couldn’t move even if they had the space.

Think about it! Chicken is in everything! Soups, gravies, chips, noodles, crackers, the list goes on. And that’s not even touching on chicken burgers/wings/drumsticks in the fast food chains, or the restaurants, hotels, supermarket with fresh chicken, frozen chicken, chicken nuggets… the global demand for chicken must be phenomenal.

And eggs? Whew! Another one is if you have egg allergies you really have to be careful because egg is something else used all over the place. You would even find it in some form in dried papaya! How strange (revolting, really) is that? And people want cheaper and cheaper food, so someone, somewhere has to cut costs. And the pressure is usually on the farmer. So when something like bird flu pops up, all I can think is that we as a society have been asking for it. Put pressure on the farmer to keep costs down by maximizing the number of animals they raise and minimizing cost centers like space required to raise these animals and hey presto! Health disaster waiting to happen.

So what’s the answer? I know there aren’t enough desert islands for us all to take ourselves off and hide. Personally speaking, I’m not really a commune kind of girl, and not eating at all doesn’t quite appeal either. So instead I made a decision to go organic where I can, natural where I can’t (or can’t afford it), and cut out as much chemicals in my own home as possible. While I’m not quite single-handedly saving the world from disaster (my superhero suit is at the cleaners), I’m doing what I can to minimize my contribution to the damage. How virtuous. Now where has my halo got to??