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Improve Your Health by Doing This for 30 Minutes

I always say – and I’ve written it many times – that gardening is a great antidepressant. As beautiful as nature is to look at, there is something deeply healing about engaging with it.
But if you’re not into getting dirt under your fingernails or dealing with spiders, you can still reap the benefits Mother Nature has to offer. There are so many studies that point to this, I hardly know where to begin.

Australian Man Morphs Potatoes into Cheese. Yummy?

If you love cheese but can’t digest dairy, an Australian man has found a way for you to safely enjoy one of your favorite foods. He claims he can create cheese…out of potatoes.
Andrew Dyhin is the founder of a company called Potato Magic, which makes a product called CHATO (CHeese potATO). [1]
CHATO products are not only dairy-free, but vegan- and gluten-free, too.

Nestle Seeks More Groundwater to Expand Michigan Plant

The state of Michigan has given a preliminary go-ahead for food and beverage maker Nestle to nearly triple the amount of groundwater it will pump from beneath the state, to be bottled and sold at its Ice Mountain plant, approximately 120 miles from Flint. [1]
Source: mlive.com
Nestle Waters North America asked the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to allow the company to increase pumping from 150 to 400 gallons-per-minute at 1 of its production wells north of Evart.

Legal Marijuana Created 18,000 New Jobs in Colorado Last Year

The marijuana industry created more than 18,000 new jobs in Colorado last year, and had a $2.39 billion impact on the state, according to a new report released October 26. [1]
In a study conducted by the economic consulting firm Marijuana Policy Group (MPG), researchers looked at two years’ worth of sales numbers from Colorado and found that legalization resulted in nearly $1 billion in retail sales in 2015.
Source: WeAreChange.org

UNICEF: 300 Million Kids are Breathing Toxic Air

New research from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) shows that 300 million children – 1 in 7 globally – live in areas with “toxic” levels of air pollution. [1] [2]
 
The poorer a child is, the more likely he or she is to be surrounded by filthy air, and the greater the likelihood that he or she will suffer health problems as a result.

Volunteers Transformed NICU Babies with Handmade Halloween Costumes

The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can be a place of great stress and worry for parents, but the NICU at St. Luke Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, has a bit more happy Halloween cheer, thanks to a kindhearted group of volunteers who created some itty-bitty costumes for the hospital’s tiniest patients. [1]
The gifted March of Dimes volunteers crafted the costumes from felt and glue in a controlled room in the hospital to ensure it was safe and sanitary for the premature newborns.

World’s Largest Marine Park Declared in Antarctica

An Anarctic bay encompassing 600,000 square miles of the Southern Ocean will gain protection from fishing for 35 years. The area is said to be the earth’s most pristine marine ecosystem. [1]
Attendies at the United Nations (UN) meeting in Hobart, Australia, agreed unanimously to designate the Ross Sea a Marine Protected Area (MPA) after 5 years of negotiation brokered by the U.N.’s Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

USDA Approves 2 New Types of GMO Potatoes

Two new types of genetically modified (GM) potatoes were approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on October 28. The GM potatoes are designed to resist the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine.
Source: PotatoPro.com
The approval covers Idaho-based J.R. Simplot Co.’s Ranger Russet and Atlantic varieties of the company’s 2nd generation of Innate potatoes.