Canadian Family | home page

Features

Baby Guide

Canadian Family's 2009 Everything Baby Guide

Tools

Generate Your Own Birth Plan
From our friends at Just the Facts Baby

Videos

Palm-Oil Free Candy for Valentine’s Day!

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt, via Flickr

Before you grab that heart-shaped box of candy off the shelf, check the ingredients list for palm oil. Readily found in everything from makeup to food products—it’s found in about 50% of all packaged goods available today—palm oil has come increasingly under scrutiny for the ways in which it is harvested.

Palm oil is produced in Malaysia, Indonesia and in many tropical climates, and giant swaths of bio-diverse rainforest have been cleared to make room for fields of oil palms: in the process destroying habitat and putting many forms of life (animals, plants, insects, etc.) at risk, including orangutans and elephants.

Since the World Wildlife Federation introduced a Palm Oil Scorecard in 2009 to rate various corporations who buy palm oil for their products, some have committed to buying only sustainable palm oil. But you can cast your vote as well, by buying Valentine’s Day treats that don’t contain palm oil. Happily, there are lots tasty options to choose from!

Palm-Oil Free Candy:

• M&Ms, Mini M&Ms and Peanut M&Ms
• Reese Miniatures
• Russel Stover Assorted Chocolates
• Hershey’s Kisses (but not Hershey’s Hugs)
• Wonka Sweethearts
• Dove Milk Chocolate Almond, Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate, as well as Dark Chocolate Collection, Raspberry Truffle Hearts, Milk Chocolate Hearts, And Dark and Milk Chocolate Roses
• Wrigley Life Saver Valentine Mix

Comment on this post!

Family News Update: Words to Marry By, Daycare Cuts, Barbie in the Real World, 10-year old Britons Getting Pregnant and more

• Great marriages are built on a solid foundation of proper wording:
Happy marriages: The benefits of going from ‘me’ to ‘we’ (The Toronto Star)

• If you didn’t want all-day kindergarten before, you may have to reconsider:
Subsidy cuts mean fewer daycare spots (The Toronto Star)

• Now she’s traded the dream home for a one-bedroom apartment and can’t afford the gas for her pink convertible. Life in plastic was fantastic:
‘Barbie jam’: Youths give icon real world makeovers (ParentCentral/The Toronto Star)

• What? You didn’t know?:
So you thought Generation X was angry? (The Globe and Mail)

• Seems the WHO charts are more flattering:
Canada switches to growth charts based on WHO, not U.S., standards (Yahoo)

• Most men won’t write their loved one a poem on Valentine’s Day. In other breaking news, the sky is blue:
Valentine’s day men likely to disappoint, says study (The Telegraph)

• From the country that reported that their children drink two bottles of wine a week, we have the inevitable result:
Primary schoolgirls getting pregnant aged 10 (The Telegraph)

Comment on this post!

Vote For Barbie’s Next Career

ICanBe-300x212 That Barbie. She is one busy woman. Since 1959 she has held 120 careers. The list has included nurse, astronaut, paratrooper, presidential candidate (1992, 2004, 2008), stewardess, Mountie, rock star and aerobics instructor, not just once, but twice (1984, 2009).

Now you can have your say on her next career move. Should she be a surgeon, an environmentalist, an architect, a TV news anchor or a computer engineer? Which one would your daughter want to play with? Which one would you want her to play with?

Go here by February 12 to make your vote count.

Plus, email us at win@canadianfamily.ca and tell us which career Barbie you had growing up (full disclosure: we had the Olympic gymnast [1976] and Superstar Barbie [1977]) for your chance to win a Barbie from the My Favourite Barbie collection, courtesy of Sears.

Comment on this post!