Finding Healthier Food

The Dirty Dozen

Of the 12 most contaminated foods, 6 are fruits: apples, strawberries, peaches, domestic nectarines, imported grapes and domestic blueberries. Notable findings:

• Every sample of imported nectarines tested positive for pesticides, followed by apples (97.8 percent) and imported plums (97.2 percent).
• 92 percent of apples contained 2 or more pesticide residues‚ followed by imported nectarines (90.8 percent) and peaches (85.6 percent).
• Imported grapes had 14 pesticides detected on a single sample. Strawberries, domestic grapes both had 13 different pesticides detected on a single sample.
• As a category. peaches have been treated with more pesticides than any other produce, registering combinations of up to 57 different chemicals. Apples were next, with 56 pesticides and raspberries with 51.

• Some 96 percent all celery samples tested positive for pesticides, followed by cilantro (92.9 percent) and potatoes (91.4 percent).
• Nearly 90 percent of celery samples contained multiple pesticides, followed by cilantro (70.1 percent) and sweet bell peppers (69.4 percent).
• A single celery sample was contaminated with 13 different chemicals, followed by a single sample of sweet bell peppers (11), and greens (10).
• Hot peppers had been treated with as many as 97 pesticides, followed by cucumbers (68) and greens (66).

Worst of the “Dirty Dozen:”

1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Strawberries
4. Peaches
5. Spinach
6. Nectarines (imported)
7. Grapes (imported)
8. Sweet bell peppers
9. Potatoes
10. Blueberries (domestic)
11. Lettuce
12. Kale/collard greens

Clean 15 – Lowest in pesticides:

1. Onions
2. Sweetcorn
3. Pineapple
4. Advocado
5. Asparagus
6. Sweet peas
7. Mangoes
8. Eggplant
9. Cantalope (domestic)
10. Kiwi
11. Cabbage
12. Watermelon
13. Sweet potatoes
14. Grapefruit
15. Mushrooms

FDA unveils final cigarette warning labels

New labels will help prevent children from smoking and help adults quit

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today unveiled the nine graphic health warnings required to appear on every pack of cigarettes sold in the United States and in every cigarette advertisement. This bold measure will help prevent children from smoking, encourage adults who do to quit, and ensure   every American understands the dangers of smoking.

The warnings represent the most significant changes to cigarette labels in more than 25 years and will affect everything from packaging to advertisements and are required to be placed on all cigarette packs, cartons and ads no later than September 2012.

“President Obama is committed to protecting our nation’s children and the American people from the dangers of tobacco use. These labels are frank, honest and powerful depictions of the health risks of smoking and they will help encourage smokers to quit, and prevent children from smoking,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “President Obama wants to make tobacco-related death and disease part of the nation’s past, and not our future.”

Tobacco use is the leading cause of premature and preventable death in the United States, responsible for 443,000 deaths each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and costs our economy nearly $200 billion every year in medical costs and lost productivity.

These warnings, which were proposed in November 2010, were required under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act which was passed with broad bipartisan support in Congress and signed into law by president Obama on June 22, 2009.

The FDA selected nine images from the originally proposed 36 after reviewing the relevant scientific literature, analyzing the results from an 18,000 person study and considering more than 1,700 comments from a variety of groups, including the tobacco industry, retailers, health professionals, public health and other advocacy groups, academics, state and local public health agencies, medical organizations and individual consumers.

Each warning is accompanied by a smoking cessation phone number, 1-800-QUIT-NOW, which will allow it to be seen at the time it is most relevant to smokers, increasing the likelihood that smokers who want to quit will be successful.

When implemented in September 2012, all cigarettes manufactured for sale or distribution in the United States will need to include the new graphic health warnings on their packages. The introduction of these warnings is expected to have a significant public health impact by decreasing the number of smokers, resulting in lives saved, increased life expectancy, and improved health status.

“The Tobacco Control Act requires FDA to provide current and potential smokers with clear and truthful information about the risks of smoking – these warnings do that,” said Commissioner of Food and Drugs Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.

The FDA action is part of a broad Obama Administration strategy previously announced by HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Howard K. Koh, M.D., M.P.H. “Ending the Tobacco Epidemic: A Tobacco Control Strategic Action Plan” outlines specific, evidence-based actions that will help create a society free of tobacco-related death and disease.

For more information on graphic warning labels and hi-resolution images visit www.fda.gov/cigarettewarnings.

(U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2011)

When a 43-foot gray whale was spotted off the Israeli town of Herzliya last year, scientists came to a startling conclusion: it must have wandered  across the normally icebound route above Canada, where warm weather had briefly opened a clear channel three years earlier.

On a microscopic level, scientists also have found plankton in the North Atlantic where it had not existed for at least 800,000 years.

The whale’s odyssey and the surprising appearance of the plankton indicates a migration of species through the Northwest Passage, a worrying sign of how global warming is affecting animals and plants in the oceans as well as on land.

“The implications are enormous. It’s a threshold that has been crossed,” said Philip C. Reid, of the Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England.

“It’s an indication of the speed of change that is taking place in our world in the present day because of climate change,” he said in a telephone interview Friday.

Reid said the last time the world witnessed such a major incursion from the Pacific was 2 million years ago, which had “a huge impact on the North Atlantic,” driving some species to extinction as the newcomers dominated the competition for food.

Reid’s study of plankton and the research on the whale, co-authored by Aviad Scheinin of the Israel Marine Mammal Research and Assistance Center, are among nearly 300 scientific papers written over the last 13 years that are being synthesized and published this year by Project Clamer, a collaboration of 17 institutes on climate change and the oceans.

Implications for fisheries

Changes in the oceans’ chemistry and temperature could have implications for fisheries, as species migrate northward to cooler waters, said Katja Philippart, of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research who is coordinating the project funded by the European Union.

“We try to put the information on the table for people who have to make decisions. We don’t say whether it’s bad or good. We say there is a high potential for change,” she said.

The Northwest Passage, the route through the frigid archipelago from Alaska across northern Canada, has been ice-free from one end to the other only twice in recorded history, in 1998 and 2007. But the ice pack is retreating farther and more frequently during the summers.

Plankton that had previously been found only in Atlantic sea bed cores from 800,000 years ago appeared in the Labrador Sea in 1999 — and then in massive numbers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence two years later. Now it has established itself as far south as the New York coast, Reid said.

The highly endangered gray whale sighted off the Israeli coast in May 2010 belonged to a species that was hunted to extinction in the Atlantic by the mid-1700s. The same animal — identified by unique markings on its fluke, or tail fin — appeared off the Spanish coast 22 days later, and has not been reported seen since.

Though it was difficult to draw conclusions from one whale, the researchers said its presence in the Mediterranean “coincides with a shrinking of Arctic Sea ice due to climate change and suggests that climate change may allow gray whales to re-colonize the North Atlantic.”

That may be good for the whales, but other aspects of the ice melt could be harmful to the oceans’ biosystems, the scientists warn.

The migration of a solitary whale and two species of plankton is not of much concern so far, Reid said. “It’s the potential for further ones to come through if the Arctic opens. That’s the key message.”

Plankton is normally the bottom of the marine food chain, but some are more nutritious than others. Plankton changes have been blamed for the collapse of some fish stocks and threats to fish-eating birds in the North Sea, the studies show.

(Arthur Max, 2011)

Written by Rina Rafael, Today.com

A feisty vegetarian since age 12, Berlin Reed was a self-described “punk” who swore to abstain from supporting corporations that he believed profited from mistreating animals, abusing labor practices and “destroying” the environment.

“I have ‘vegan’ tattooed on my neck,” said Reed, 29. “You could say I was a little passionate about it.”

Today, however, he’s known as “the ethical butcher,” a title which  might seem odd for someone whose friends once arranged a “bacon intervention” to sway him to omnivorism. “It wasn’t a moment of weakness,” Reed said of the switch; instead it was motivated by his realization that, as a butcher, he was in a position to affect the industry he once protested. Reed holds that the butchery trade, in constant contact with customers, is the key to a better and more sustainable meat system.

Berlin Reed, known as “the ethical butcher,” is an ex-vegetarian concerned with animal protection.

“I don’t eat beef from factory farms for many of the same reasons I won’t buy clothes from The Gap,” Reed said. “It’s all about the industries and practices that are polluting our world, not whether or not it is OK to kill for food.”

Featuring stunning footage of medicinal plants and thought-provoking interviews with Drs. Tiearona Lowdog and Larry Dossey, the late Bill Mitchell, ND, author Kenny Ausubel, herbalists Rosemary Gladstar, Phyllis Light and many others, the film calls for a re-awakening of traditional knowledge about plants and their uses.

Numen is for herbalists, gardeners, medical practitioners, plant lovers – and everyone concerned about human and environmental health. It offers an introduction to the following topics:

• Whole plant medicine
• Ecological medicine
• Environmental toxins
• The limits of allopathic medicine
• Spirit and healing and more

A primary objective of Numen is to bring the same awareness to medicine and the medical industry that the organic food movement has brought to food and the food industry. The film presents a sobering view of conventional healthcare and the dangers of environmental insults, as well as a vision of safe, effective and sustainable medicine. It offers stories about how individuals have improved their own health and well-being and provides concrete steps for viewers to do so as well.
Numen: the Nature of Plants film

Our guide to a bite-free (and non-toxic) summer will keep you armed and ready for any mosquitoes and ticks you encounter- in the backyard or back woods. Pith helmet optional.

All it takes to turn a nice backyard cookout or vigorous hike into an annoying bout of target practice is one little problem: hungry bugs. Theoretically, you want to coexist with all of earth’s critters, but that’s hard to remember when you’re being dive-bombed at a summer barbeque.

Think you’re getting unfairly blitzed while your companion sits unscathed? You might be right. “Some people are more appealing to mosquitoes than others,” says Adelaide A. Hebert, M.D., of the University of Texas–Houston. It’s unclear why, she adds, though one theory suggests a link to the amount of carbon dioxide you exhale (mosquitoes are attracted to CO₂). Biting insects are more than a nuisance, however—they pass on illnesses that can sideline you for days, weeks, or longer.

Ticks may transmit diseases, including Lyme (there are nearly 40,000 human cases in the U.S. each year), and certain types of mosquitoes carry the West Nile virus. Weighing against those concerns are worries about the toxicity of popular insect-spray ingredients (that means you, DEET!).

What’s battle-scarred outdoor warrior to do? Some simple measures go a long way toward warding off bugs, beginning with just taking a shower before you head out. And wear light-colored clothing—some are also drawn to dark colors.

Next, seek out the most appropriate protection. In these chemical-wary days there are a number of plant-based choices to consider.
Natural ingredients are relatively (though not completely) nontoxic, and many can be as effective as synthetic repellents.

“All things being equal, I recommend a plant-based repellent versus a synthetic one,” says entomologist Thomas Jaenson of Uppsala University in Sweden, adding that they’re cheaper and more energy-efficient to make. Plus, they degrade more easily in the environment.

But things aren’t always equal in the wild; experts say there are some situations in which the benefits of strong synthetics such as DEET outweigh the risks. The smartest course is to follow a mix-and-match approach, according to behavioral scientist Emily C. Zielinski-Gutierrez of the Centers for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colorado. Keep several choices in your survival kit and pair the level of protection with the time and place of your adventure. A daylong trek through heavy brush calls for different ammunition than a stroll in a park. Here’s a guide to creating your own arsenal.

LEVEL 1

A DASH OUTSIDE

For brief respites in your backyard or quickie picnics in a city park, choose a product with one of these plant-based ingredients; they offer a gentle level of short-term protection.

LAVENDER & GERANIUM OILS

A 2006 study in the Journal of Medical Entomology found that these essential oils are proven deterrents. Dilutions containing a drop of 30% lavender oil or 30% geranium oil repelled certain ticks linked to Lyme.

TRY Making your own: In a glass jar, mix 25 drops of essential oil with 2 tablespoons vegetable oil. Apply on skin and clothes.

CITRONELLA OIL

Distilled from grasses, citronella is registered as a mosquito repellent by the EPA, meaning that sufficient data has been provided to back up this claim.

TRY Making your own citronella mix using the formula described for the oils above; or, check out skin products containing a blend with at least 5 to 10% citronella oil (candles contain the oil but aren’t as effective as topical products).

LEVEL 2

A DATE WITH NATURE

For medium-length hikes, an afternoon planted on the beach, or even a few hours of gardening in your yard, you need protection that will last. (A note about reapplying: Don’t exceed the frequency recommendations on the label, warns Zielinski-Gutierrez, whether you’re using natural or synthetic products. Over time, extra applications can be toxic.)

IR3535

Popularized by Avon’s Skin So Soft, this synthetic version of the amino acid beta-alanine outperformed a product with 10% DEET in a Consumer Reports test. It lasts two and a half hours (or more), depending on concentration.

TRY Products containing at least 7.5% IR3535.

SOYBEAN OIL

This oil has such a great track record when it comes to fending off mosquitoes that Canada’s national health agency added it to their list of recommended repellents. And when combined with the compound vanillin (as it in HOM’s Bite Blocker Xtreme), it has more power than on its own. In Consumer Report’s 2010 ratings, Bite Blocker Xtreme rated as well as a product with 7% DEET. Protection lasts up to 5 hours.

TRY Products containing at least 2% soybean oil.

LEMON EUCALYPTUS OIL (PMD)

This oil from the eucalyptus tree—and the active ingredient in the oil, PMD—is a strong contender for the best all-around, plant-based repellent. It is right up there with DEET when it comes to mosquitoes, may prevent tick bites, and lasts for 6 hours.

TRY Products containing 30% lemon eucalyptus oil.

2-UNDERCANONE

This repellent, which wards off pests using an ingredient from a wild tomato, is so effective that it is registered by the EPA. In one study, 2-undercanone, the active ingredient in BioUD, was more effective against both the blacklegged (deer) tick, the main transmitter of Lyme disease, and the lone star tick than a solution of 98% DEET. It shields you from ticks for two hours and against mosquitoes for four and a half hours.

TRY BioUD insect repellents, which contain 7.75% 2-undercanone.

LEVEL 3

INTO THE WILD

Fishing in buggy waters, camping in the woods—when you’re setting up shop in the wilderness, you want to bring your A game, and that means using
repellents that offer hours and hours of protection.

“Having camped in northern Minnesota, I wouldn’t venture into some of those areas without a DEET-based repellent because of the voracity and density of the mosquitoes,” says Brent Bauer, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

PICARIDIN (KBR3023)

In head-to-head studies, picaridin and DEET are nearly equal when it comes to mosquito repellency. One reason to choose picaridin: It’s not as irritating to the skin.

“I recommend it in my practice over DEET,” Hebert says. Here’s another: One study found that DEET was absorbed into the bloodstream 6 times faster when combined with SPF than when used alone, which may compound the risks for toxicity. It lasts up to 8 hours.

TRY Products containing 15 to 20% picaridin.

DEET

With all the benefits of picaridin, why would you ever go with DEET? Well, thanks to extended-release formulations, it’s still the longest-lasting repellent on the market, so it’s ideal for daylong hikes or camping. Even the products with the highest percentage of picaridin last only 8 hours, whereas a one-time application of 33% DEET extended-duration formula will last up to 12. A second reason? Ticks.

“The CDC recommends only one repellent for ticks, and that is DEET,” says Zielinski-Gutierrez. But DEET is not without its critics. Since its creation by the U.S. Army and its approval for public use in 1957, DEET has been shown to produce skin irritation in enlistees who wore it while sleeping.

In children, its possible toxicity is more worrisome: A handful of studies have shown that it might increase the risk of seizures and cause neurological symptoms (lethargy, disorientation) in a very small percentage of users. Despite concerns, however, the American Academy of Pediatrics approves products with up to 30% DEET for children older than 2 months, and many experts maintain that DEET is a smart choice when the insect-biting pressure is high.

TRY For mosquitoes, products containing 15 to 30% DEET; for ticks, at least 20%. Unless you’re an outdoor worker, you won’t need more than 30%, says Zielinski-Gutierrez, despite the fact that some sprays contain 100%.

“The percentage has more to do with how long the product lasts, not how effective it is,” she explains. Do the math, and save yourself some chemical exposure.

(Tula Karras, 2011)

Maja’s note: This amazing article showed up on my doorstep earlier this week. I have already posted a number of water and water conservation-related posts, since water and water conservation are “hot button” topics for me. This one addresses the intersection of water, poverty, and personal philanthropy. It is lucid, thought-provoking, and provides an unusual insight into celebrity philanthropy done well. Kudos to Mr. Damon for his unorthodox methodology, and to Ellen McGirt for a well-written article that doesn’t pander to celebrity status or “Sally Struthers guilting” charity fund-raising stereotypes!

The inside story of Matt Damon’s bold yet sane plan to use his celebrity and smarts to help attack one of the globe’s great crises.

Once upon a time, Matt Damon went for a long walk in rural Zambia. The devoted family man and method philanthropist was accompanying a 14-year-old Zambian girl who had no idea that her hiking companion was an Academy Award-winning international heartthrob.

The walk came toward the end of a 10-day African journey, a systematic primer on the complexities of the continent’s extreme poverty that had been organized for Damon by staffers from his friend Bono’s ONE campaign. Damon was on a quest to understand what it meant to be really, really poor. “It was like a mini course in college,” he says. Every day brought a different subject: urban AIDS, microfinance, education, and, finally, water. While walking with the young teen on her hour-long trudge to collect water for her family, something clicked. “We talked the whole time [through a translator]. When I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up — ‘Do you want to stay here?‘ ” he says, pointing to the memory of the dusty village — “she got shy all of a sudden.” As they returned, both toting 5-gallon jugs of water filled at the well, she finally confessed her dream: to go to the big city, Lusaka, and become a nurse.  Damon recalled his dreams at the same age, when he and best friend Ben Affleck were plotting their way from Boston to casting agents in New York. That connection opened the door for Damon. “I remembered so well the feeling of being young, when that whole world of possibility was open to you.”

But while Damon’s dream was made possible by Amtrak, the girl’s was possible only because somebody drilled a borewell near her home — and, yes, an hour’s walk for water is good news in lots of places in the world. Nearly 1 billion souls lack access to clean water; three times that number lack access to proper sanitation. “This is not something that most 14-year-olds have to go through,” says Damon, 40. Without access to the water, his companion would have been unable to go to school and would likely have been forced into a precarious fight for life, spending her days scavenging for often-filthy water in unhealthy and unsafe environments. “Now she can hope to be a nurse and contribute to the economic engine of Zambia,” he says. “Of all the different things that keep people in this kind of death spiral of extreme poverty, water just seemed so huge.” He pauses. “And it doesn’t have to be.”

Damon tells me this story on a rainy spring day in Manhattan, after a full schedule of board meetings for Water.org, the charity he cofounded in 2009, three years after his Zambia trip, with longtime water expert, and now dear friend, Gary White. It has been a long day but a good one, and Damon has more news to share. He checks his watch. “I have to pick up my daughter from school. Come along and we’ll keep talking,” he tells me. As we make our way from a conference room at McKinsey in Midtown (a board member works there) to a car waiting on the street, I watch passersby light up in recognition and try to catch his eye. In spite of his attempt to blend in — Damon is wearing glasses, a splash of whiskers, and a Panavision baseball cap — he is unmistakable. And he never fails to return a smile. “Clearly my strong suit is and will be trying to get people to care about this issue,” he says of his primary role. “Our vision is clean water and sanitation for everyone, in our lifetime …” he trails off. “So we better get to work.”

For all his star power, though, Damon is more than just the pretty face of Water.org. He has turned himself into a development expert. This would seem like an obvious and necessary first step for someone embracing the global water crisis as a personal mission. But, in fact, it’s highly unusual for a celebrity to dive this deep into a problem this daunting. Whether talking microfinance strategy with rural bankers, giving detailed reports from the field at the annual Clinton Global Initiative, or personally thanking donors like PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Damon has quietly developed the cred of a program geek. “If you want to understand how this works,” he says, sounding more like an anthropologist than a celebrity spokesperson, “there is no substitute for going there and talking to people in their homes.” It’s an approach he comes by honestly. His mother, a professor of early childhood education, spent part of her summers living with local families in Guatemala and Mexico, attending language school in preparation for her field research. She brought her impressionable teenage son along. “She specialized in nonviolent conflict resolution,” Damon explains. In war-torn areas like El Salvador, she interviewed children, studied their artwork, and documented their trauma. “So I’d seen extreme poverty at an early age,” he says. “I knew what it was, and I always cared about it.” He has replicated her research process, immersing himself in the business of social enterprise until he found the cause that he felt passion for — water.

Damon reads as equal parts hardworking, ambitious, grounded, and caring, the kind of celebrity you’d want your son to be if you had a son who could get both the girl and the point of fame. He’s a son who’d make a mother proud. “She doesn’t say it quite that way,” he says. “It’s not the way she talks. She says, ‘I affirm him.‘ Hang on a sec.” As he hops out of the car to go pick up the eldest of his four daughters, a charming tween who will never have to fetch water for her family, he smiles and looks affirmed.

THE BUSINESS OF philanthropy is a difficult one, often as challenging to decipher as the problems it aims to solve. But Water.org is the smart and careful merger of two capable organizations: Damon’s H2O Africa, which he founded as a way to funnel money to well-managed NGOs in Africa; and Gary White’s WaterPartners, a two-decades-old group that had developed a series of highly innovative and counterintuitive approaches to water access. WaterPartners’ strategy had less to do with digging wells — which, if maintained poorly, can break down and leave a place in worse shape than before — and more to do with encouraging communities to participate in the creation and ownership of water and sanitation systems that function as mini utilities. These issues, known as WASH in philanthropic circles — water, sanitation, and hygiene — are among the least glamorous of all support efforts, yet are the most likely to lift a community out of poverty if done right. Think of toilets, hygiene education, pump maintenance, faucets, and a nascent form of self-government that literally takes a village. “A community has to invest in the project themselves to manage it,” insists White, 48. “It’s bottom-up, not top-down.”

In 2009, Damon and Gary White cofounded Water.org. That same year, they visited this town in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Their initial trips into the field included a foray to South African slums while Damon was shooting Invictus. | Courtesy of Water.org

The merger involved a leap of faith for both White and Damon, though neither describes it that way. In a world where celebrities routinely rain shame upon their personal brands with public meltdowns, sex tapes, or undeclared children, and where professional philanthropists come under fire for spending a lot to do very little, each had a difficult judgment call to make. Their long courtship started as collaboration and ended in partnership. “We were a grant recipient of Matt’s before we merged,” White says. “He was clearly looking for the same things we were and had developed such knowledge on the subject.” Damon had studied White’s innovations, particularly a microfinance instrument known as WaterCredit, as he brought himself up to speed on the water crisis. “Gary is the expert. I’ve come to trust him implicitly and value his input above all others,” says Damon. “When you talk to Gary, you understand that we can solve this thing.” The two were also in sync on the practical aspects of working together. Both willingly gave up the names of their organizations, and neither fussed about titles, credit, or where their names should go on websites or programs. In separate conversations, both men declare themselves lucky to have found the other. “He’s not what I expected at all,” they say of each other, sounding similarly surprised.

Water.org is on track to raise $10 million in 2011, up from $4 million in 2010. The primary use of that money is not as a handout to well drillers. Rather, Water.org tends to negotiate deals between microfinance institutions and communities. It might help a village get access to a local banker, who will then lend money to build systems that tap into a well, or a previously inaccessible water or sanitation grid. Water.org may guarantee the loan, but repayment falls to the villagers, who work together to manage the water supply and organize credit payments.

“By using local capital markets to develop the projects, people get access to the credit system,” White says. “The villagers own the project at the end of the exercise. They’re proud of it, and they have done it themselves.” Water.org claims that this approach has allowed it to help more than 315,000 people gain access to clean-water systems that are reliable and maintained.

That leveraged success, combined with Damon’s celebrity, explains why donations to Water.org are on the rise and why it has earned the attention of institutional funders. “It was clear that Gary had developed a really high impact and interesting play in the world of water access and sanitation,” says the Skoll Foundation’s David Rothschild of its decision to back the organization in 2009. “We were looking for something that would scale, and this was it.”

He put all of this together and came up with the basic thought behind WaterCredit: What if communities self-organized to get a loan to create their own wells or buy their way into water access? “We began to work with microfinance institutions [MFIs] instead of just NGOs,” White says. But infrastructure financing was a sticking point. “Microfinancers had never lent to anything that didn’t have a built-in revenue source or collateral.” Convincing a local lender to take a risk means demonstrating demand, training communities to run a project, and making the case that the poor people can afford to repay the loan. “A tough sell,” says White, “but not impossible.”

WaterCredit is a full-on microfinance tool that tries to leave nothing to chance. Let’s say Water.org identifies an urban Indian community it might be able to help build a public toilet. They rally local people into a committee to run the project, and then persuade the local utility to risk a construction project in a neighborhood that seems too poor to pay its bills. An MFI works with a local lender to loan the committee the necessary money. After the toilet is built, educators must teach people how to pay their loan — as well as why they should use their new toilets and, for that matter, wash their hands. All this for men and women who are in a hardened caste system. It is especially important for the women, because research shows that projects that ultimately succeed are designed with them in mind, as well as maintained mostly by them. So yes, it’s a long, tough sell. But if it works, a woman of low status might then be in charge of collecting maintenance fees — just pennies — at the new public toilet. That’s a woman who now has a job and dignity, and no dysentery.

In 2009, while filming Invictus in South Africa, Damon made a point of going with White to visit WaterCredit beneficiaries. “We’d go into a slum and talk to people who had taken out the loan, had a water tap or toilet in their house, and had already paid it back,” he says. “Their lives were changed.” Later, Damon got to know WaterCredit bankers and was just as impressed. An Indian branch manager explained that he was thrilled with his new customers, many of whom had returned for basic banking services. “He had been calling other branch managers, telling them how well it worked,” says Damon. “WaterCredit is our proof that risky ideas do work sometimes. It is a big idea gone right, and it’s working all over the place. That’s when it gets really exciting.”

WaterCredit has elevated White to star status in the philanthropic world. In 2009, after a rigorous, multiyear vetting process, he won a Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, scoring a $765,000 grant and access to an unparalleled network of entrepreneurial thinkers. “[WaterCredit] is well beyond proof of concept now,” says Skoll’s Rothschild. “Financial institutions, and other people, are doing it now too. It’s a shift in the way that systems operate.”

SHORTLY AFTER HIS TRIP to Zambia, in a burst of his own orthogonal thinking, Damon, who has his own production company, greenlighted a documentary that dovetailed with his newly discovered water quest. Three ultramarathoners had decided — for reasons that don’t seem much deeper than “It would be really cool to do this!” — to run across the Sahara Desert from Senegal to Egypt. The runners, Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab, and Kevin Lin, suffered (both with, and because of, one another) through the equivalent of one-and-a-half marathons a day for 111 consecutive days amid the toughest conditions on earth. Before his Zambian conversion, Damon might have passed on producing the project. “This is basically a masochistic, somewhat selfish sport,” he says. “But these three crazy guys were going right through the belly of the beast in terms of poverty, in six vastly different countries. We could use the film to highlight the water issue.” Damon and his producers discovered several small, good NGOs focused on water along the way. “That’s how we found Gary.”

The film, Running the Sahara, released in 2007, is an example of the type of messaging that Damon can employ, one that deftly uses his skills as a Hollywood power player and storyteller. (When the Libyan government threatened to deny the runners entry, Damon and pal Robert De Niro, who were then shooting The Good Shepherd together, personally worked the phones.) “Awareness is as important to us as fundraising,” says Damon. “We want people to understand the issue in all its complexity.”

But getting attention isn’t as easy as you think, even for Damon. Consider this odd couple of YouTube videos: Matt Damon speaks to the Clinton Global Initiative about water — 3,669 views; Matt Damon does a spot-on impression of Matthew McConaughey on Letterman — 13,492,392 views. Damon has no interest in typical celebrity heart-tugging. “Basically, there is the Sally Struthers approach,” he says, “where you guilt the shit out of people and they end up turning the TV off.” And most star-studded mega-events, of which he’s headlined plenty, end up netting little to the organization. “That seems very analog to me,” he says. “Unless,” he adds, referring to a recent Robin Hood Foundation event, “you’re doing what these Goldman guys do and get Lady Gaga to raise $47 million because they’re drunk and they’re trying to impress each other and they’re calling out numbers from the tables.” He pauses and laughs. “Of course, that is a kind of fundraiser we’d entertain for Water.org, but it’s the exception, not the rule.”

In today’s digital world, engagement can be stoked in ways that may not require Hollywood wattage. Sure, Damon can talk up his organization on Letterman; “that’s an audience of 2.4 million to hear our message,” says Water.org chief community officer Mike McCamon, who works closely with Damon on strategy, and is a veteran of Apple, Intel, and a handful of startups. But McCamon points out that 28 million people learned about the mission last December when they played Zynga’s FrontierVille and were offered a chance to buy or give a Water.org-branded blue water bison. That is the kind of engagement he could neither buy nor predict. “I cold-called Zynga out of the blue,” he says. “It was incredibly effective and took us about as far away from the pandering, puppy-dog-eyes style of messaging as you can get.” Zynga confirms raising $300,000 for Water.org.

The organization is also developing its My.Water.Org, a mini site that lets people follow a community in Haiti that is in the process of developing a water project. This is method philanthropy the way it should be. Instead of showing pictures of Damon with desperate kids or wells with YOUR NAME HERE! plaques, visitors learn about the difficult struggle that comes with creating sustainable water projects, virtually shadowing a community’s efforts as it goes through months of town-hall meetings, trainings, negotiations, and public debates. Upon signing up, people become digital ambassadors of sorts, with progress reports, even the disappointing ones, posted through their Twitter or Facebook feeds. Around 13% of those who sign up donate, and “65% get another person to come to the site,” says McCamon. For a profession that deems a 2% clickthrough rate as success, that’s an avalanche of engagement.

Which raises an interesting question: How in the world is a mere global celebrity supposed to compete with that? How can Matt Damon contribute when a FrontierVille bison and online town halls are hotter than an Oscar winner?

To the credit of both White and Damon, they rejoice that they even have such a question to consider. Damon does not seem to need the ego strokes of being associated with a good cause: He lives a quiet life for a celebrity of his stature. Damon, like White, is far more interested in pursuing the next big innovation, something that will likely build off of the contrarian genius of WaterCredit. The two have come to see that turning the poor into paying customers of a utility of their own creation spawns a consumer consciousness that can be harnessed. “There is development money allocated to communities all the time [via municipalities, NGOs, and international-aid agencies] that often never arrives,” says White. What mobile service could keep them in the loop, like a 311 for the poor? “If they knew what should be coming their way, they could hold others accountable,” he adds. In some communities, a water truck shows up daily. But since the women never know the time of the delivery, they can waste hours waiting with their water jugs for a truck that sometimes shows up empty. “What if there were a text system,” asks Damon, “that lets people know where the truck was and how full it was?” A compelling, time-saving notion, but hard to sell from the drawing board.

To explore possibilities such as these, the Water.org board approved, on that rainy day when I met with Damon, the creation of a new innovation fund. Damon kicked it off with a $1 million donation, and the Hult International Business School followed with a $1 million gift of its own. The fund’s goal is to spur development of a portfolio of new products and services that are specific to the bottom-of-the-pyramid water consumer. “It’s a very Silicon Valley approach,” says White. Invent. Test. Iterate. “And like the tech world, we can get the attention of bigger investors with concepts that have been proven in the field.” Damon hopes the fund will one day be open to individuals, not just institutional investors. “We all know what angel investing is now,” he says. “Why can’t we let people invest $25 in, say, the Water.org lab? Let them be part of picking the next big idea.”

White and Damon agree on their movement’s future. The new big thing will probably be the result of orthogonal thinking. “We want to support people in demanding the services and aid they’ve got coming to them,” says White, “while having an easier life in the process.” What can make the lives of people at the bottom of the pyramid, the people who form their customer base, better? Mobile-phone apps? A new financing scheme? An unconventional alliance? A technology yet to be born? Whatever it is, the story to be told will require more than a plastic bottle of dirty water.

A version of this article appears in the July/August 2011 issue of Fast Company.

(Ellen McGirt, 2011)

My client Francine’s husband had started behaving oddly. “I’ll do something ordinary, like offer to check his e-mail for him, and he’ll react as if I’ve killed a child,” she said. Another client, Selma, was a sunny optimist—except when her sister Eve called to complain about life; by the time they hung up, Selma was always exhausted and depressed. Meanwhile, my friend Pamela was getting blindsided at a public-speaking workshop. “I gave a speech that went really well,” she told me, “and then this other woman got up and spent her whole speech mocking everything I’d done wrong.”

Let’s call it emotional mugging: You’re going along minding your own business, and suddenly, when you least expect it, you’re faced with a shocking attack on your mood or peace of mind. Being emotionally mugged can be crippling, but because the damage is so often invisible, few of us are ever taught self-defense. Time to change that. You’re probably aware that the Asian martial arts, with their deft approach to handling attack, are popular practices for warding off physical muggers. Well, karate-do (“the way of the empty hand”) and bushi-do (“the way of the warrior”) have a psychological equivalent I call emo-do (pronounced “ee-moh-doh”): the way of the emotional master.

An Ounce of Prevention…
Like all opportunistic criminals, emotional muggers target people who wander around bad neighborhoods. The best way to become a victim is to turn your own mind into such a place—a place filled with self-hatred, unfair criticism, and gloomy predictions. This kind of setting not only attracts muggers but can leave you so emotionally tapped out that you turn to psychological crime yourself.

By contrast, those who follow emo-do create an inner space of clean, clear self-confidence. To cultivate such an environment, you must keep three brave commitments. First, vow never to deliberately create suffering for yourself or others. (If you can’t do this, count on being mugged frequently. There’s no honor among thieves.) Second, always own your mistakes and do your best to correct them. Third, forgive yourself when your best isn’t good enough. Keeping these commitments creates deep strength that scares off most emotional muggers. And should some misguided thug ambush you anyway, emo-do will help you launch a powerful defense.

If You Are Attacked
My former karate teacher, Jay Cool (yes! really!), used to study muggers’ patterns to help develop counterattack strategies for the Phoenix police. “There are only so many ways to assault someone,” Jay says. “Every mugger uses some version of a few basic approaches.” This is also true of emotional attackers, and knowing their strategy helps you thwart them. Here are six types of emotional mugger—and, for each, the commensurate emo-do response.

1. Puppy Kickers
The term sounds brutal, but most of us can understand it—because most of us have been perpetrators ourselves. Picture: The cat’s sick, your husband’s away, you didn’t sleep all night, and as you rush to get your 6-year-old ready for school, she tries to tell you something about her imaginary koala using whispered pig Latin, in which she is not remotely fluent. After five minutes of unintelligible babble, you hear yourself shout, “For God’s sake, talk like a normal person!” You’ve just emotionally mugged your own offspring. It feels, as Anne Lamott writes, like bitch-slapping ET.

I’m not saying puppy kicking is okay because it’s common. But seeing it from the mugger’s perspective helps you mount an effective defense when you’re the kickee.

Emo-Do Defense: Start by recognizing that the mugging isn’t about you; you just happened to be standing there, wagging your tail, when someone went temporarily insane. Try puppyish responses: Trot off and find another friend, or (if the mugger is a loved one) offer kindness. Say, “You seem really stressed. Can I help?” This can actually turn puppy kicking into gratitude.

2. Exploding Doormats
Cora’s assistant, Angie, had been glum all day. Trying to lighten the mood, Cora said, “You should leave early—there’s traffic.”

“Leave early?” Angie shouted. “That would mean I have to do everything in even less time!” Then she stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

Angie is an exploding doormat. She doesn’t stand up for herself until her emotions reach a critical limit—at which point she goes postal with virtually no provocation. Exploding doormats are more harmful than puppy kickers because they harbor festering hostility toward their targets.

Emo-Do Defense: Cora’s attempt to soothe Angie’s anger by being extra nice was manipulative, so it made things worse. The next day, she switched to open, frank discussion, which is all that’s necessary to keep doormats from detonating. “You seem so angry,” Cora said. “What’s really on your mind?” When Angie admitted she felt overworked, Cora realized she’d been taking the young woman’s quiet diligence for granted. Together they came up with ways for Angie to let Cora know her limits. Conflict solved.

3. Deflators
When Kimberly told her mother she’d been promoted, the older woman sighed. “Well,” she said, “you’re going to have to work harder to prove you’re worth it.” Kimberly’s mother is a deflator, a person who sees virtue in pessimism. With one well-placed jab, she can let the air out of any good time, and make a bad time feel even worse.

Emo-Do Defense: Deflators almost always have a history of feeling crushed. As such, they’re simply upholding tradition. Unlike puppy kickers or exploding doormats, they rarely respond well to discussion, so don’t bother. Instead, simply and cheerfully reject their pessimism. To the prediction that she’d have to work harder, Kimberly calmly responded, “No, I won’t.” Her mother had no choice but to slouch off with her dagger.

4. Secret Keepers
Remember Francine, whose husband blew up over ordinary behavior? She later learned that he was having not one but several online affairs. No wonder he freaked when she tried to check his messages; cheaters, addicts, and liars attack people who threaten to stumble onto their misdeeds. This kind of mugging feels crazy and surreal. If you’re questioning your sanity after a surprise argument, you may be dealing with a secret keeper.

Emo-Do Defense: A secret keeper’s mugging leaves you with an icky sense that something’s wrong. Don’t jump to conclusions, but don’t ignore your instincts. (An emo-do master never keeps secrets from herself—for example, by going into denial.) Hold firm to your reality. Ask questions. If more violent attacks ensue, revise your trust levels and watch for more evidence.

5. Cannibals
To be happy, each of us must create meaning and joy from the raw material of everyday life. This isn’t easy, so some people become cannibals, devouring the positive energy of others. Selma’s sister Eve is an example. She made a habit of calling Selma whenever she was miserable, off-loading her misery and draining Selma’s joy.

Emo-Do Defense: Don’t feed cannibals the patient, sorrowful consolation they expect. Selma eventually redefined her responsibilities as a supportive sister and began answering Eve’s complaints by saying, “You’re so resourceful—I know you can solve that problem!” Eve gagged on this response and went off to hunt tastier snacks.

6. Dementors
The woman who publicly shamed Pamela after her speech was the most destructive kind of emotional mugger, the equivalent of a rapist: someone who gets off on causing pain. In Harry Potter’s world, such beings are called dementors. They are endlessly unhappy, addicted to the sense of control they get from violating others. They don’t care whom they hurt, as long as they hurt someone.

Emo-Do Defense: If someone attacks with no provocation and seems intent on inflicting maximum harm, you may be dealing with a truly disturbed person. First, eat some chocolate (any Harry Potter fan can tell you that). Then distance yourself in any way you can. This wasn’t a problem for Pamela—she was easily able to avoid her attacker—but may be daunting if you’ve got a dementor in the family or at work. If you can’t remove yourself from the relationship, at least keep your emotional distance. Don’t trust a dementor with your private thoughts.

Staying away from dementors allows them to socially self-destruct—and they always do. Though onlookers may at first be too horror-stricken to come to your rescue, most people are appalled by dementors’ behavior. This is why cruel conversationalists ultimately end up friendless, and—on a much larger scale—why evils like prejudice and discrimination have slowly but surely become less acceptable in almost every human society.

After an Assault
No matter how well prepared you are, an emotional mugger may still catch you before you can defend yourself. In the short run, you’ll feel violated. In the long run, you can use the experience to become a stronger emo-do practitioner.

To start, dispense with any lingering nasty energy by recognizing that it probably belongs to the mugger, not you. If the negativity won’t dissipate, there are two possibilities: Either you really did provoke the attack, or you’re operating under the misconception that you deserved it. Return immediately to basic emo-do code: Stop causing suffering for yourself by thinking you deserved victimization; correct any behaviors that might have triggered the mugging; and, finally, forgive yourself for the whole misadventure.

The way of emo-do is rigorous—and hugely rewarding. The more you follow it, the more muggers will avoid you. Instead of a target, you’ll become a walking haven, a place where emotional criminals rarely strike—and if they do, are swiftly rendered harmless. Plan to welcome many of us to walk with you, because that’s just the kind of neighborhood where most people want to live.

Martha Beck is the author of six books, including Steering by Starlight (Rodale).

TOKYO — A Japanese music foundation has sold a renowned Stradivarius violin for $16 million at a London auction to raise money for tsunami disaster relief.

The nonprofit Nippon Foundation said Tuesday the proceeds from selling the nearly 300-year-old violin known as the Lady Blunt will go to relief projects in northern Japan.

The group’s music affiliate owned the violin made in 1721 and hardly used. The new owner was not identified.

Foundation spokesman Hideo Fukuda said the group plans to use the proceeds to support and promote traditional arts in the region.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami left more than 23,000 people dead or missing in northeastern Japan and destroyed hundreds of homes, offices and factories.

The 1721 “Lady Blunt” Stradivarius violin sold in an online auction for a record $15.9 million on June 20.

“While this violin was very important to our collection, the needs of our fellow Japanese people after the March 11 tragedy have proven that we all need to help, in any way we can. The donation will be put to immediate use on the ground in Japan,” said Kazuko Shiomi, president of the foundation, in a released statement on Monday.