Introduction by Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World
I had the great fortune of meeting Laura Turner Seydel many years ago when our charity, (CHEC) Healthy Child Healthy World was in the early stages of development. Honorary Board Member and a founding board of director, Carrie Cook Platt was kind enough to make the introduction. Throughout the years, The Captain Planet Foundation had generously offered support thanks to Laura’s recommendation. Not long ago, I invited Laura and her husband Rutherford to be a guest at our Green Home Under The H of the Hollywood sign. She was so amazed by the beauty of our home and canyon and commented how excited she was to see so many bees flourishing in the flowering acacia tree’s on our property.
Green Bee Buzz On
Last year she was presented with Healthy Child Healthy World’s Mom On A Mission Award.
Laura Turner Seydel along with Penelope Jaggesar Shaffer, Sandra Steingraber and Amy Brennamen
I am so very grateful to Laura and to all of our Mom On A Mission recipients for their dedication to protect children’s health and for their leadership to inspire others to do the same.
By Laura Turner Seydel LuxEcoLiving Advocate
Laura Turner Seydel shares her passion for protecting bees.
Information is power, so it is important to build your knowledge base with all the facts possible to best protect your health, your family and the environment around you. Empower yourself to become an advocate for change with these three powerful documentaries.
Vanishing of the Bees
Hailed by one film critic as “the most important documentary since an Inconvenient Truth,” this documentary takes an in depth look at our rapidly declining bee population. Did you know that the honeybee is responsible for 1 out of every 3 bites of food on your dinner plate? Honeybees are essential to our food supply, pollinating over 80% of our flowering crops (worth about $15 billion), including apples, broccoli and alfalfa, which is an important dietary staple for cattle.
Our disappearing honeybee is an indicator of environmentally quality, so when they are dying it means something is wrong. Vanishing of the Bees dives into issues surrounding Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), discusses the role pesticides play in the bee decline, examines the EPA’s involvement, and presents ways to help combat the problem.
One of the many solutions to protect our honeybee is to reduce our dependence on pesticides used on our lawns and in our agriculture processes. Systemic pesticides, those which are incorporated into the soil and travel up into the stem, leaves nectar and pollen of plants, are one explanation for CCD and the sudden die off a hive’s adult bee population. While little testing is required by the EPA here in the United States to determine a product’s “safety” in the market, several pesticides have been banned throughout Europe. This banning has allowed bee populations to return and flourish once again in those regions. www.vanishingofthebees.com
Bee's Forever
An estimated 6,700 Georgians die each year (10% of all deaths) as a result of obesity related health issues like heart disease and type 2 Diabetes. Across the United States, we are spending $75-$100 billion a year to fight these weight-related issues. “Forks Over Knives” examines the theory that these diseases can be reversed – and even eliminated – by eating a reduced diet of meat and dairy.
The film follows two top doctors and researchers across the globe as they examine the theory that a healthy and balanced life can be achieved through a comprehensive diet of fruits, veggies and alternative protein sources. www.forksoverknives.com
Bag It
Asking the question “is your life too plastic,” “Bag It” explores America’s dependence on single-use plastic and documents its pressures on our planet. Designed to be disposable, plastic actually never really goes away; it clogs storm drains, accumulates in our rivers and streams, and worst of all makes it into our oceans.
Save the Bees
The filmmakers make a compelling case against single-use plastic, like grocery bags and straws, and inspire us to make plastic alternative changes in our own lives. From lips to the landfill, did you know that in the United States we throw away 500 million plastic straws each day? The impact of these disposable plastics has placed a burden on our oceans and has taken form in five enormous garbage patches. Twice the size of United States, the Great Northern Pacific Garbage Patch is just one of the five floating islands of plastic whose existence threatens the ecosystem and marine life. The plastic concentration in these gyres overwhelms the food supply, causing marine life to feed on plastic instead of plankton (5gyres.org). www.bagitmovie.com
For more healthy living tips, visit www.lauraseydel.com.
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Nancy Chuda is a seasoned broadcast journalist, television writer/producer, talk show host and author. Her career spans over three decades having appeared on both national and cable television.
In 1971 she authored one of America’s first low-calorie cookbooks, How To Gorge George Without Fattening Fanny, published by Hawthorn Books. Appearing as a regular guest on Dinah’s Place, Dinah Shore’s ABC daytime talk show. And later on The Johnny Carson Show, The Today Show with Barbara Walters, Merv Griffin, Phil Donahue, and David Frost. In 1972, Nancy and ABC’s Good Morning America co-produced Michael Krause produced a cable program, The Low- Calorie Gallery, based on her best selling cook book. In 1975, hired by Warner-Amex as part of a creative team, she was responsible for hosting and producing content for Columbus Then and Now, a program, the invention of QUBE, an interactive television system which played a pivotal role in the history of American cable television. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUBE
In 1978 she developed a series for ABC’s Good Morning America based on an article which appeared in Mother Earth News magazine. The Integral Urban House, a case study project and model for a sound urban habitat sponsored by the Farallones Institute in Berkley California was the first example of green architecture ever to be televised.
In 1979, Nancy co-produced and hosted Sunnyside a Los Angeles based public affairs program viewed on the CBS affiliate station KNXT, From 1980-1984, she appeared on KABC’s Eyewitness News as entertainment reporter and film critic.
Her environmental advocacy began when her daughter was diagnosed with cancer. In 1990 she co-produced an Emmy nominated ABC Variety Special, An Evening With Friends For The Environment to benefit Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet one of the first national children’s environmental health advocacy groups in which she served as a volunteer.
Currently, she is the co-founder and President Emeritus of Healthy Child Healthy World, a non-profit organization established to honor the Chuda’s only child, Colette, who died in 1991 at the age of 5 from Wilm’s tumor a nonhereditary childhood cancer. She is also the co-founder of The Colette Chuda Environmental Fund, a donor-advised fund which supports major epidemiological research on children’s health.
Nancy has won numerous awards for her advocacy. In 1996, the California League of Conservation Voters Environmental Leadership Award, The Healthy Schools Heroes Award, presented to both her and her husband James Chuda by California Governor Gray Davis for their legislative efforts in securing The Healthy Schools Act which was signed into law in September, 2000. In 2003, Parent’s Magazine published an article Mom’s On A Mission and awarded Nancy for her environmental leadership for children’s environmental health.
She serves as an associate of the Director’s Council of Public Representatives of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was appointed by President Clinton’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, to serve as a member of the National Advisory Council for the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) a position she held for four years.
In 2010, along with her husband James she founded LuxEcoLiving.
