Simple Tips to Beat Your Sugar Addiction

Make no mistake, sugar is a legitimate addiction. Our bodies build tolerance to it over time, requiring more and more of that sweet taste to satisfy. We have sophisticated systems in place to make us crave sugar, and it’s ubiquity in processed foods make it difficult to avoid.

You’re probably ingesting way more sugar than you realize, hidden away in the processed “shortcut” foods you use to cook (tomato sauce, broth, sauces), in your quick snacks between meals, and in your beverages. Even if you aren’t exhibiting diabetic symptoms, you could be slowly building up resistance to insulin and paving the way for diabetes.

Sugar is a tough habit to beat, but the damage it inflicts on the body is highly reversible! If you’re taking steps to cut down or eliminate your consumption of added sugars, these tips will help ensure your success!

Sleep: Calorie-Free Energy

One of the most effective ways to reduce your dependence on sugar is to give yourself a little more energy to work with each day by sleeping a little longer or a little better. As you cut out sugar, you’ll likely find this is a positive feedback loop, where the less sugar you eat, the better you sleep and the less sugar you feel you need!

Learn Sugar’s Aliases

Trying to eat processed foods without also eating sugar is really tough. This is partially because of all the other names sugar goes by on food labels, including: high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar, cane sugar, dextrose, maltose, sucrose, and many, many others. Even “natural” sugar sources like concentrated fruit juice, maple syrup, coconut sugars, and honey need to be limited.

Walk It Off

Often sugar cravings are caused by stress and boredom more than hunger. You can often head these cravings off by channeling that energy somewhere else — like a walk! Plus walking helps undo some of the past damage of sugar on your system. If you’re genuinely hungry, grab a handful of berries and some almonds and get outside anyway.

Don’t Replace with Artificial

Outdated wisdom held that it was safe to replace sugar with artificial sweeteners, but there’s more and more evidence coming in showing this is counterproductive and extremely dangerous. Not only are artificial sweeteners linked to countless health problems, but they also trick your body into thinking they’re getting sugar without actually delivering. That’s a recipe for more cravings.

Discover how to Find a New Source of Quick Energy on the original blog!

How have you reduced your sugar cravings? Share your insight in the comments!

Simple Tips to Beat Your Sugar Addiction

Make no mistake, sugar is a legitimate addiction. Our bodies build tolerance to it over time, requiring more and more of that sweet taste to satisfy. We have sophisticated systems in place to make us crave sugar, and it’s ubiquity in processed foods make it difficult to avoid.

You’re probably ingesting way more sugar than you realize, hidden away in the processed “shortcut” foods you use to cook (tomato sauce, broth, sauces), in your quick snacks between meals, and in your beverages. Even if you aren’t exhibiting diabetic symptoms, you could be slowly building up resistance to insulin and paving the way for diabetes.

Sugar is a tough habit to beat, but the damage it inflicts on the body is highly reversible! If you’re taking steps to cut down or eliminate your consumption of added sugars, these tips will help ensure your success!

Sleep: Calorie-Free Energy

One of the most effective ways to reduce your dependence on sugar is to give yourself a little more energy to work with each day by sleeping a little longer or a little better. As you cut out sugar, you’ll likely find this is a positive feedback loop, where the less sugar you eat, the better you sleep and the less sugar you feel you need!

Learn Sugar’s Aliases

Trying to eat processed foods without also eating sugar is really tough. This is partially because of all the other names sugar goes by on food labels, including: high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar, cane sugar, dextrose, maltose, sucrose, and many, many others. Even “natural” sugar sources like concentrated fruit juice, maple syrup, coconut sugars, and honey need to be limited.

Walk It Off

Often sugar cravings are caused by stress and boredom more than hunger. You can often head these cravings off by channeling that energy somewhere else — like a walk! Plus walking helps undo some of the past damage of sugar on your system. If you’re genuinely hungry, grab a handful of berries and some almonds and get outside anyway.

Don’t Replace with Artificial

Outdated wisdom held that it was safe to replace sugar with artificial sweeteners, but there’s more and more evidence coming in showing this is counterproductive and extremely dangerous. Not only are artificial sweeteners linked to countless health problems, but they also trick your body into thinking they’re getting sugar without actually delivering. That’s a recipe for more cravings.

Discover how to Find a New Source of Quick Energy on the original blog!

How have you reduced your sugar cravings? Share your insight in the comments!

The Problem with Drinking your Noni

Imagine walking along the beach in Hawaii one thousand years ago, bare feet in the sand, waves crashing by your side, sun on your back. Sounds nice, right? Now imagine finding a noni fruit, perfectly ripe and ready to eat. For thousands of years, native Polynesians and Hawaiians have praised the noni fruit for its wonderful healing properties. Did they juice this fruit thousands of years ago? Of course not!  According to Captain Cook’s log when he first found Polynesia in the 1700’s , he wrote “They were eating the fruit”. Notice Captain Cook did not write they were drinking the juice. And raw food noni is still the best way to get all the positive benefits. But once noni fruit is picked, it begins to ripen and ferment quite quickly, noni fruit is very difficult to preserve. One solution to this is juicing, but is it the best solution?

Some think so. Noni juice is used across the globe by thousands of people, dozens of different kinds sold by dozens of companies. But it isn’t what it’s made out to be. Why?

What You’re Missing with Noni Juice

The power of noni is in the pulp, and juicing noni takes that away. The juicing and fermentation process destroys key nutrients and enzymes. The noni juices are fermented, pasteurized and must be refrigerated. On top of that, it isn’t even pure noni! In many parts of the world, Noni is called cheesy fruit since the raw, non-fermented pulp tastes like blue cheese. But if noni is allowed to ferment, it smells and taste like a rotten blue cheese ,which doesn’t taste all that great. That is why most noni juices have added other fruit juices to make it more palatable, but diluted. In fact, fermentation destroys all digestive enzymes and about fifty percent of the beneficial compounds found in the raw noni pulp.

And what about pasteurization? Noni juice is most often pasteurized to make it safe to drink. Which means it’s exposed to very intense heat that kills off any harmful bacteria. But pasteurization takes away more than just the bacteria. It destroys all digestive enzymes and antioxidants, along with numerous other beneficial compounds found in raw noni.

So what does all this mean for you? It means you aren’t getting the maximum benefits of noni. It means you are being deprived of the true healing power of noni. It means it might be time to try an alternative.

What’s the Alternative? Learn on the original blog!

Why It’s So Crucial to Know Your Farmers

These days, when “sustainability” is mainstream and everyone is throwing around phrases like “natural,” “organic,” and “responsibly grown,” it’s hard to navigate the tangle of words, rhetoric, and jargon to get at the truth of what’s best for our planet.

One of those little sound bites you’ve likely heard if you try to eat responsibly is, “Know your farmer.”

But do you understand why this is so important? Earth Day was last month and really should be talked about and practiced every day, so here at Hawaiian Organic Noni, we’re unpacking some of our company’s sustainability ethic, as well as explaining a few of the organic practices we use every day on the farm to do our part.

Today, let’s dive into that issue of knowing your farmers!

Food: The Faceless Commodity

Knowing your farmer is far from the norm in today’s industrial agricultural society. Most people buy food from supermarkets, which, despite the often colorful marketing language on food packaging, comprise an institution designed to turn food into a transactional commodity rather than a social, cultural experience.

But this trend starts way before the food reaches the supermarket. Since World War II, giant companies have been swallowing up America’s small and midsized farms in favor of enormous monocultures of corn and soybeans. These commodity products come to us in the form of processed foods, further removing us from the actual fields where farming is done.

The amount of time people spend engaged with shopping for and preparing their food is decreasing while the number of calories we eat steadily increases. We don’t think it’s a coincidence that there’s been a corresponding rise in heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other “Western” diseases as a result.

Discover how you could be undernourished by not knowing your farmer in the original blog!

Farmers are Fun!

Finally, we want to get back to that idea of food as a cultural experience. That perspective is dying in this country as more of us buy food from self checkout, eat alone in our cars, and buy processed foods made by some of the biggest corporations in the world.

But farmers are pretty awesome people, with a lot to teach about food and nutrition! The best part is, most of us love to share what we know about nutrition, gardening, and sustainability with you. There’s no knowledge hoarding or industry secrets here. We believe transparency is the path back to food that is nutritious, sustainably-grown, and truly satisfying.

Get in touch with us! We love sending out our monthly newsletter to connect with you, and we post actively on social media.

Why Does Organic Matter to Hawaiian Organic Noni?

In honor of Mother Earth we’re focusing on sustainability, organic farming, and other ways we can help out our wonderful planet. We’ll be sharing how we do things on the farm, as well as tips to bring these techniques into your own home.

To us, sustainability means creating systems which ensure continued fertility, diversity, and vitality, benefiting humans, animals, plants, insects, fungi, and microbes for many years to come.

As we explore our sustainability ethic in the month to come, you can look forward to learning all about:

• Vermicomposting (that’s composting with worms!)
• Involving pollinators and other animals in agriculture
• Importance of supporting family organic farms
• The Laysan albatross sanctuary on our land
• How sustainability and organic practices impact food quality and nutrition

But before we get started, we wanted to share with you just a few of the many reasons sustainability, and organic farming in particular, matter so much to us.

Small Scale Farming

The world is moving more and more toward industrial food systems, meaning fewer larger farms growing larger yields of fewer crops with more pesticides and more herbicides.

Most big farms only grow one or two crops, most often heavily subsidized corn and/or soybeans. The market is flooded with cheap corn and soybeans, and then it’s the market’s job to figure out a use for them.

Unfortunately, there are some very heavy hidden costs that go with industrial farming:

• Edging out of small business farms and even medium-sized farms, putting farmers in debt
• Dilution of “organic” standards, increased difficulty in regulation
• Decreased diversity of plants, animals, and microbes
• Increased agricultural runoff, potentially harmful to the environment
• Increased consumption of processed foods, decreased nutrient intake

Later this month, we’ll discuss why it matters to the environment whether or not you know your farmer (even if you only know them online!)

Soil Fertility

Modern industrial agriculture places little emphasis on the long-term fertility of the soil, instead focusing on fertilizing intensively in the short term. Not only does this practice deplete the soil of nutrients over time, but it also causes runoff of toxic chemicals, decreased diversity, and the need to apply ever more fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides to keep nature at bay.

We see it as our responsibility as farmers to return as many nutrients to the soil as we can in the form of mulch, compost, worm castings and compost teas. Not only does this improve the nutritional content of the food we grow, but it also ensures the long-term ability of this land to stay productive over the years.

Learn the third reason organic matters to us on the original blog!

What are some of your best practices with regards to sustainability and protecting planet Earth? Let us know in the comments!

What Polynesian Culture Has to Teach Us About Sustainability

Today we want to draw your attention to a group that’s doing some really amazing work to spread the word about sustainability, world peace, and Polynesian culture: The Hokulea Polynesian Voyaging Society. This organization is midway through a worldwide voyage across the world’s oceans.

The catch? They’re making the voyage in traditional-style Polynesian voyaging canoes, and are navigating using only traditional Polynesian wayfinding methods. That means no GPS — not even compasses! So far they’re right on track. You can check out their route by clicking here. They’ve travelled from Hawaii, between Australia and Indonesia, around the coast of Africa, up South America, and are currently making their way up the North American coast. They plan to reach New York by the first week of June, in time for UN World Oceans Day.

We have long been inspired by the tremendous wisdom behind this group’s sustainability ethic, as well as by what we’ve learned of Polynesian society from the ethnobotanists who have come to talk to us about the traditional uses of noni. We’d love to share some of this knowledge with you, in the hopes that it inspires you to live just a little bit more with Planet Earth in mind!

Live With an Island Mindset

A big part of the intent of the Worldwide Voyage is collecting, sharing, and spreading wisdom about our planet, particularly with regards to sustainability. According to their website, “Living on an island chain teaches us that our natural world is a gift with limits and that we must carefully steward this gift if we are to survive together.”

This is very similar to the ethic of organic agriculture, which is obviously very important to us as certified organic farmers. We’ve seen it proven season after season how critical it is to protect and replenish the earth’s fertility and resources, which we do using mulch, compost, vermiculture, and our no-till system.

Earth is not a closed system, and there are many renewable resources available to us, but only if we respect their limits. We must replenish what we use and conserve where we can. Polynesian islanders understood this, simply because their world was literally an island. Polluting their resources or depleting the soil simply wasn’t an option.

It’s Possible to Modify the Land Responsibly

Many environmentalists today get so caught up in conservation that they see any modification to the land as a negative. But it’s possible to modify the land so it’s productive, diverse, and self-sustaining, while still reaping some benefits for us as humans.

This is the goal of real organic farming. We want to develop systems that are good for humans, but which also benefit the land. The Polynesian settlers brought noni saplings and seeds with them when they came to Hawaii, and the hardy tree has happily taken up residence here, providing habitat for many animals and a good food source for others.

Read how to let your foods heal you in the original blog here!

In what ways do you try to “live like an islander” in terms of sustainability? Let us know in the comments!

What On Earth’s Compost Tea? And How Can It Help My Garden?

In honor of planet Earth, we’ve been covering lots of different organic methods we use on the farm, particularly techniques to improve soil fertility. Here’s the last post in the series — hopefully you’ve gotten lots of inspiration to bring some of these practices into your own garden.

All of the organic practices we do on our farm are about mimicking what nature does naturally, and compost tea is no exception. Compost tea is a powerful tool in any gardener’s arsenal, and it’s not for drinking! Basically, compost tea is a nutrient-dense spray for the leaves of your plants.

Sound crazy? Ineffective? Possibly unsafe? We promise it’s none of those things, and we’ll let you know exactly how we do it.

What’s Nature’s Version of “Compost Tea?”

Have you noticed how plants always turn vibrantly green after it rains? This is actually not due to the added water — it’s due to nature’s version of compost tea!

There’s much more nitrogen floating around in the air than there is in the ground. When rain falls from the sky, the water molecules pick up some of that nitrogen and deposit it on the leaves of plants. The leaves can then absorb some of those nutrients through their skin and their pores (called stomata)

Farmers and gardeners borrow this concept by spraying a diluted, biologically active compost mix directly on the leaves of plants. Basically, we steep compost and worm castings in water, and then collect the liquid to use as a foliar spray.

Does It Really Work?

We’ve used this spray on our noni trees for many years, and we believe it’s part of the reason why they grow such nutritious fruits 12 months of the year. But a while back, we had an opportunity to do a real test of how well compost tea works.

My son was spraying compost tea on our noni trees as usual, and he ended up with a little extra — enough to spray one of our two rows of banana trees. So he sprayed the one row, and then forgot about it. Four days later, I was out at the banana trees with a group, and I realized that the trees that had been sprayed were a full 2 feet taller than the un-sprayed trees! That’s enough evidence for me.

How Can I Get Started?

We promise, this is something you can do yourself!

Read How to Get Started With Great Compost in the Original Blog!

Steep Away

Once you have a good source of compost and/or worm castings, all you need is a steeping container. It’s most important to seek out a container that you can oxygenate, to get a more lively, active compost tea.

You can use a fish aquarium, and keep in the aerator pump. Or if you’d like to buy a system, a company called Growing Solutions has a variety of compost tea systems, which all aerate your compost tea as it steeps.

The oxygen allows the populations of the beneficial microbes found in your compost and worm castings to grow into the billions. We also recommend adding just a little molasses to feed your microbes while  their population is growing, for best results.

How to Apply

We always spray our compost tea in the late afternoon, because that timing works out best for a plant’s respiration cycle. Plants are busy photosynthesizing in morning and early afternoon, and the stomata (pores) in their leaves close up to prevent much-needed water from evaporating in the heat of the day. In the late afternoon, those pores open up and will stay open all night.

Just give your leaves a good spray and you’ll be on your way to greener, happier plants that produce more nutritious fruits and vegetables!

Have you tried making compost tea at home? What were your results?

The Importance of Animals on an Organic Farm: Pollinators, Pest Control, and Decomposers

In honor of our wonderful planet, we at Hawaiian Organic Noni are discussing and sharing the organic farming methods we use on the farm. We’ve also be sharing some information about the ethic of sustainability that informs every decision we make as farmers and as a business.

Today we’re discussing the role of animals on an organic farm. Chances are, when you think about the word “farm” in the abstract, you think of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and maybe also a barn cat and a herding dog for good measure. From our childhood, we’re taught that these animals are a vital part of what a farm is.

In reality, however, most American farms today are remarkably devoid of animals. Cows, pigs, and chickens have all been taken off the farm, to be raised almost exclusively on ranches and CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations). Even insects have no place on the modern industrial farm — they’re killed off by large amounts of toxic pesticides. Indeed, most farms today are a monoculture of just one crop, usually soybeans or corn.

This lack of diversity has serious consequences for the fertility of plants, defense against pests, and the quality of the soil.

Pollinators

Probably the most important animals on any farm are the pollinators. Without them, most of the food crops we currently enjoy would not exist. And with populations of honeybees and other pollinators on the decline, that’s starting to become a very real concern.

Scientists aren’t sure yet exactly what’s causing the mass bee die-offs we’ve been seeing in the last 20 years, but they have some theories. Synthetic pesticides are almost certainly a contributing factor. The pesticides are supposed to be administered in a dose that’s non-lethal to bees, but it’s becoming clear that even a low dose can cause disorientation, weakness, and sickness. And who knows what the effects are of low long-term exposure?

If you’d like to learn more about the plight of bees, click here for a very informative video.

On our organic farm, we do all we can to support our friends the pollinators. In fact, there are over 45 beehives on our organic farm. We believe that offering them a wide diversity of plants to visit is beneficial, so we grow a wide variety of tropical flowers and fruits on our farm in addition to the noni.Click here to learn more about the role of honeybees on a noni farm — it’s a little unusual!

Pest Defenders

Another very important reason to support a healthy diversity of animals on a farm is their ability to deter pests. The stereotypical mouser cat is one example, but chickens, spiders, and beneficial insects are also critical for keeping pest populations under control. Have you ever seen a chicken chase a grasshopper?

When modern industrial agriculture uses herbicides and pesticides to try to maintain their monocultured fields, they’re trying to bypass their need for these pest-controlling animals. It works in the short term, but in the long run, pests are great at evolving to outstrip our chemical warfare. They build up resistance to our chemical warfare, requiring the use of more and more concentrated harmful chemicals.

Organic farms, like ours, use systems of Integrated Pest Management to suppress and prevent pests, rather than eradicating them. You can learn more about this approach by clicking here.

Learn about the most important animal, decomposers, on the original blog!

Animals can be incredibly useful in a backyard ecosystem too! There are lots of ways to support wild and domesticated pollinators, pest-controllers, and decomposers on your land. Just ask us if you’d like some tips!

An Unmissable Northern Kauai Adventure

Taking a trip to Hawaii this year? Hopefully you have some time to make it to the Garden Isle, Kauai. If you do, make sure you make the drive up the North Shore, home of dramatic cliffs, gorgeous beaches, and lots of fascinating wildlife.

From the airport, you’ll travel north on Route 56, a coastal highway that crosses over the Wailua River and the several busy small towns before transitioning to a more rural and scenic landscape, with stunning views of the island's rugged interior mountains. The highway turns west and narrows after Anahola (site of a very beautiful beach loved by locals), where it passes by our organic farm up at the northeast corner of the island. The road then travels through Kilauea and Princeville before dropping down into Hanalei Valley.

This gorgeous coastal drive only takes an hour or two if you don’t stop (impossible given the scenery, we promise), so it makes a great day trip even if you’re spending the bulk of your time on Kauai in the south part of the island. Here are some stops you’ll have to make along the way.

Kaakaaniu Plantation

We recommend starting your day with a 10am free tour of our organic noni farm, located on beautiful Kaakaaniu Plantation. We’re located just a few miles south of the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, so there’s lots of wildlife to see on our land, as well as many gorgeous native plants. Our Organic Noni Farm & Wellness Tour is very highly rated on TripAdvisor — here are just a few testimonials from 2015.

You’ll also learn about noni fruit, which we grow on the farm and turn into Noni Fruit Leather andNoni Lotions. Noni fruit is known to help with a wide variety of health issues from diabetes to high blood pressure to pain and inflammation to skin ailments. We’ll share everything we know about this unusual fruit, including the growing body of scientific research about this fruit’s properties and traditional usages. We also spend about a half hour on our organic processes- mulch, compost, vermiculture and compost teas. Things that we do on a very large scale that you may do on a small scale in your home garden.

Click here to learn more about our farm tour, and we hope to see you soon!

Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge

Here you can see many different species of birds, including possibly Laysan albatross. Many of these birds are very rare, or don’t often appear in the large numbers that frequent the wildlife refuge. There are also sea turtles, spinner dolphins, monk seals and, if you’re especially lucky, humpback whales! It all depends on the season and what the animals are up to.

Kilauea Point is also home to a very photogenic lighthouse, which you can tour if you plan ahead.

Discover two more unmissable adventures on the original blog!

What are your favorite sights on the North Shore of Kauai? Let us know in the comments!