If you want to live healthily, you have to dig deep into your pockets. At the latest since the (among other things) inflation-related price increase of our food, the difference between organic and non-organic is becoming more and more conspicuous. In January 2023, a report by the price watchdog thus suspected retailers of skimming off excessive margins. So instead of paying farmers more, the majority would go into the coffers of Coop, Migros & Co. Depending on the product, this is up to 50% that organically produced fruits and vegetables cost us more.
Little transparency in pricing
How sensitive the issue is is proven by the fact that Migros initially wanted to prevent the publication of the report by price supervisor Stefan Meierhans. Shortly before Christmas, Migros prevented the publication of a report by price supervisor Stefan Meierhans on excessive organic prices at the two large distributors Migros and Coop. The report concludes that of the high price difference between standard and label / organic meat products, only a fraction ends up with the farmer, while the rest flows into the pockets of the final seller. The opposite is also the case: prices are pushed down, but consumers do not pay the same amount less in the shop. An example of this is the price collapse of pork: from June 2021 to October 2022, farmers received 33% less for their animals, but the prices in the shop only fell by about 12%.
Buy directly from the farmer
The fact is: if you buy directly from the producer, you get more quality for less money. There are many farm shops where you can get regional and seasonal produce. With some farmers, you can even harvest the vegetables yourself, so that, thanks to the freshness, as many nutrients as possible are preserved. This is the case, for example, with Marianne and Jakob Bürgi on their organic farm in 8834 Schindellegi.
Synthetic colours are suspected of causing allergy-like reactions. A good reason to embellish the eggs from the farm with colours from nature. Whether with a pattern, in one colour or printed: with our tips, every Easter nest will be an eye-catcher.
Colourful plants
Coloured eggs always require a broth in which the eggs are placed and thus take on the colour. If they are cooked directly in the broth (approx. 10 min), the colour is more intense. The plant parts can either be removed (results in plain coloured eggs) or left in the water, which can produce interesting patterns. And all this with natural colours!
There are no limits to your imagination. As diverse as our native plants are, so are the possible colour combinations. If you want to give the eggs a nice shine, rub them with cooking oil after dyeing while they are still warm.
-Red: Onion skins provide a delicate red. For a rich red, use fresh beetroot or its juice. The peeled beetroots are cooked for 40min before you put in the eggs, which turn red to purple. The colour becomes more intense the longer they stay in the broth.
If you prefer russet eggs, madder roots are a good choice. Madder roots are available in drugstores and you need about 50g. First, pour two litres of water over them and soak them overnight. After straining, place the eggs in the madder liquid and fill the container with the hot boiling water. Depending on how long the eggs cool in the dye bath, the redder they become.
-Lilac: After boiling, the eggs are placed in blueberry juice, which colours quickly. After half an hour, the purple tones are already dark. Then carefully pat the eggs dry with household paper.
-Yellow: Turmeric is the magic word. The golden-yellow spice is used in Ayurvedic medicine for gastrointestinal problems and is also perfect for colouring Easter eggs. For the Easter eggs, boil about 10 g of turmeric powder (1 tsp) in half a litre of water for ten minutes. If you boil the eggs at the same time, you will get dark yellow eggs. They become light yellow if you boil the eggs separately and only then add them to the broth.
You can get orange-yellow eggs with carrots, which you cut into small pieces and boil for 30-40 minutes. Cut up about 250 g of carrots, add to a litre of water and boil for 30-40 minutes.
-Blue: Of the berries, elderberries and blueberries are particularly suitable.
However, the blue cabbage (red cabbage) is the front runner. A good side effect is that you can serve the cabbage as a vegetable afterwards. For blue Easter eggs, cut 1.5 kg of red cabbage and boil the small pieces with 1.5 litres of water in a large pan for 25 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar. Then boil the eggs and put them into the warm cabbage broth while they are still hot. The eggs begin to take on colour after an hour. If you want them very dark, put them in the broth in the refrigerator overnight.
-Grey: Stone-coloured eggs are obtained by adding 1 dl of blueberry juice to the red cabbage broth described above. If you then draw white lines on them with white paint (e.g. chalk), the eggs look like real stones from the riverbank.
-Green: Spinach, parsley and nettles are popular. About 300 g of spinach is boiled covered with water for about 40 min to make a green broth. Alternatively, blue eggs dyed with red cabbage can be recoloured in a turmeric decoction. To do this, boil 1 tsp of turmeric in half a litre of water and pour into a container. Because turmeric colours quickly, the blue eggs should only be put in for a short time.
-Brown: Add coffee grounds or fresh coffee powder to hot water to make brown eggs. They become dark brown if you add onion peelings to the broth.
Easter eggs with pattern
You can create unique patterns and shapes on Easter eggs with simple household products. To do this, attach the items to the eggs before dipping them into the broth and only remove them when the paint has dried. To make the paint stick better, some people wipe the eggs with vinegar beforehand, which roughens the eggshell.
For example, rubber bands (rubber rings) wrapped around the eggs make beautiful ring shapes.
Plants also make very nice prints. For example, moisten the front of a clover leaf and press the moist side onto the egg so that it sticks well. Now button up a pair of nylon tights that are no longer needed on one side (e.g. the tip of the foot) and pull them over the egg on the open side. The plant should not slip. The stocking is now stretched, smoothed and also buttoned on the second side. After dipping it into the brew, the area with the leaf is blow-dried cold and the leaf is pulled off. The organic pattern is finished.
100 trillion of them are in the gut, more than the body has cells. Together they make up about two kilograms of our body weight. The gut microbiome and its effects on health have long been neglected. But for some time now, there has been a real hype about the countless bacteria in our gut. They help with digestion, produce vitamins and together displace disease-causing germs. If they are satisfied, we are supposed to feel great. An intact microbiome is even said to be responsible for positive effects on diseases such as diabetes or depression. It is even said to make kilos fall off!
Diversity is dwindling
He wants to store stool samples from all over the world in a Swiss bunker to preserve the diversity of intestinal bacilli for posterity. According to Adrian Egli of the University of Zurich, a veritable "species extinction" is taking place worldwide. In an interview with "SRF Puls", the microbiome researcher emphasises the importance of gut bacteria. Even during pregnancy, the mother's diet has an influence on the child's immune system and psyche. The development of the intestinal flora is not complete until the child is three years old. After that, it is only possible to influence it to a limited extent.
Variety makes the difference
A varied diet with lots of vegetables and natural foods is recommended. On the other hand, convenience food and low-fibre fast food should be avoided.
And always important: do not overdo it. The magic word is "variety". Because if you eat a vegetarian and gluten-free diet like the test person in the SRF programme Einstein htps, you risk a monotonous microbiome like the one in the upper part of the graphic. Only after she consciously incorporated calcium-rich foods (e.g. milk, cheese, quark, yoghurt) into her diet for several weeks did the full diversity emerge.
Reasonable portions
The graph shows the change in the microbiome of a test person who previously ate a vegetarian and gluten-free diet. Only by adding more variety to her diet, including dairy products, did the microbiome become more balanced within a few weeks, as can be seen from the many coloured bars.
So if you have the size of the portions under control, do not overload the intestines and eat a balanced diet, you are well on the way to a flourishing microbiome.
The most important thing first: generosity brings happiness. And not just generosity with oneself, by giving oneself gifts and living large. Rather, it's the small gestures and gifts to others that fill us with lasting happiness. Studies have even concluded that money only increases psychological well-being when it is spent on donations or gifts.
Double happiness lasts longer
A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. But shared happiness brings joy to two people who are close to each other. It is clear that gift giving strengthens existing relationships and builds new ones. It is important that the gift really fits the preferences and wishes. Over a personal gift, which was selected carefully, one is pleased more than over a thoughtless fast purchase. This can be something homemade, a joint excursion or a specialty that is only available in selected stores.
The right gift for every age
The requirements for gifts seem endless. Regional and seasonal, preferably from the farmer next door, produced in an environmentally and people-friendly way, with a certificate and seal of approval, not packaged in plastic, the price must be right, etc., etc. The list of criteria can be extended at will.
Age also plays an important role: What should I give to a child who already has everything? What does my partner want? Doesn't my mother already have enough pans? But first things first:
Generation Z prefers to get its gift ideas on Tiktok and Instagram. Experiences are high on the list. They'd rather have a ski weekend together than a saucepan that's gathering dust in the cupboard and that they could buy themselves if necessary.
For your own parents, carefully selected gifts are more important. A good bottle of red wine, cuddly socks, family games or a beautifully framed photo occupy the first places on the bestseller list.
And now the crux: What should I give a child who already has everything? A child who has the world at his or her feet - 365 days a year. Whether there are 30 instead of 12 presents under the Christmas tree doesn't really seem to increase the barely existing joy. And every year one wonders again why one should invest time and money in the gift search at all, if in the best case a thank-you comes back. For such hard cases there are the following options: a we-do-what-YOU-want day, exclusive time for two, a good book, a movie voucher, an action cam, a magazine subscription or something that encourages creativity (e.g. window painting pencils, music class) or gets the child moving (e.g. bike, ice skates, skateboard, balls).
Gift baskets, experience days and regional specialties
If you still don't know what to give, you can find regional specialties in the store of Mucca.ch (click here). Whether alpine cheese, cereals, cosmetic products or organic beeswax cloths: the sustainably produced specialties from the homeland are a very special gift and they are delivered directly from the producer to the doorstep - without long detours, intermediate storage or high margins.
Of course, experiences are not to be missed: For example, there are vouchers for vacations in a Bernese alpine hut, a tree sponsorship or experience days in the schnapps distillery, on the Heiterhof or in the smokehouse with Claudia.
Who has the choice, has the agony. With this in mind: Merry Christmas!
Animal welfare or their own wallets - which is more important to the Swiss electorate? With their initiative, "Sentience Politics" with Green National Councilor Meret Schneider wants to reduce the consumption of animal products and introduce import regulations. All this in favor of animals and nature. But what does this mean for consumers and farmers? Mucca.ch provides an overview of the most important arguments and possible consequences of the Factory Farming Initiative (MTI).
Demands of the factory farming initiative
- Animal-friendly housing with more space, species-appropriate feeding, opportunities for play
- Daily access to pasture and slower growing breeds
- Gentle slaughtering methods with short transport routes and better control of anaesthesia
- Maximum group sizes and fewer animals per hectare of pasture
- Import regulations so that only animal products that meet all standards enter Switzerland
A change in agriculture explains Meret Schneider in an interview about the goal of the initiative. Grazing animals such as cattle, cows, sheep and goats are better suited to the topography of Switzerland, where grassland accounts for around two-thirds of agricultural land. At the same time, however, cattle numbers are to be reduced to the standards required by Bio-Suisse, although opponents say that Swiss animal welfare laws are already "among the strictest in the world".
Today, farmers who keep their animals according to the RAUS guidelines (regular outdoor exercise) receive an annual subsidy if, for example, they let their animals out to pasture for at least 26 days per month in summer. Currently, a maximum of 18,000 laying hens per farm is permitted in Switzerland, with 4,000 for organic farmers. In nearby countries, the numbers are correspondingly higher: in Germany, farms with over 100,000 laying hens are not uncommon, in some cases there are up to 600,000.
The agriculture of the future
Swiss agriculture is changing rapidly: while in 2000 there were still around 70,000 family farms providing our food, by 2020 there were only 50,000 - a decline of 30%. Expand, work more economically, produce cost-covering: In recent years, falling producer prices have forced many farmers to produce more cheaply and buy additional land. To what extent this was good for the environment remains to be seen. The MTI is now demanding more space for fewer animals, which is likely to accelerate the decline of farms and the associated jobs. Direct payments are already vital for the survival of some farmers. For Meret Schneider, the decreasing meat supply is a step in the right direction to reduce the consumption of animal products for climate and resource reasons.
A tightrope walk
It is not clear whether and to what extent Swiss citizens will give up their meat in the future. Surveys assume that if the initiative is adopted, the self-sufficiency rate for chicken would drop from 58% today to 5% and for pork from 92% to 50% - unless consumption drops drastically at the same time. The difficulty, then, is to produce Swiss meat according to organic guidelines, while consumers also take a leaf out of their book and want to eat less meat, pay more for quality and avoid food waste.
Rethinking must take place
The fact is that meat consumption per capita in Switzerland actually increased in 2021. And it is no secret that higher prices lead to more shopping tourism. The initiative demands the same standards for foreign animal products. Only products that meet Swiss standards may be imported. For example, Brazilian chicken or genetically modified Argentine beef should be banned. However, it is not clear how these imported goods will be controlled. For example, it is not defined whether the individual ingredients of processed products must also comply with the MTI standards. The initiators speak of a "pragmatic approach" because it would be too time-consuming to check the ingredients of a finished product for compliance with Swiss standards, i.e. whether, for example, eggs from caged farms are in it. In addition, the new requirements would probably violate some international obligations.
Financial impact
The additional costs of the MTI must be covered by the federal government and the market - and thus by us consumers. Meret Schneider assumes that the required barn conversions and reduction of livestock will cost around CHF 400 million. Furthermore, the cattle farms, which currently receive about CHF 5,000 p.a. for complying with the animal welfare standards (RAUS), would probably have to do without this subsidy. Schneider hopes that this loss will be compensated by higher prices. At the same time, the price pressure caused by cheap imported food should disappear.
What the initiators are calling for is understandable and protects the environment and climate. But the question is and remains whether the timing is right and whether we are not doing more harm than good to Swiss agriculture and our food security. The farmers would be helped most by a change of system if they could once again focus on quality instead of quantity and if this would also be financially worthwhile. Because with the currently very low producer prices, we are doing neither our health nor the environment any good.
Over 500,000 dogs live in Switzerland. The Amicus database reported a record increase in registrations during the Corona pandemic. Young puppies and kittens are popular with the Swiss. However, their need for time, love and food should not be underestimated. Otherwise they will end up back in the shelter just as quickly as they were bought. Animals are not consumer goods.
Good for animals and environment
A dog can turn your life upside down. For some it is a faithful companion, for others a sports partner, sometimes it even replaces a child. Dogs need exercise - lots of it. In the best case, the nearest park is not far away, sometimes a car ride is indispensable.
Which dog owner does not attach great importance to a beautiful, well-kept path? Preferably with few people and even less noise. What doesn't work at all are aluminium cans, masks or whole rubbish bags in the meadows. Littering kills: If an aluminium can is thrown into the field, sooner or later it will be cut up in a mowing machine and end up in the feed of the farm animals. In the worst case, a tiny piece of aluminium can slit open a cow's stomach to such an extent that it dies in agony or has to be killed. And who wants to be responsible for the death of a beloved animal?
Proper handling of dog excrement
Cows eat grass, dogs prefer meat. Dog excrement is not fertiliser. It contains the pathogen Neospora Caninum, which is dangerous for cattle, sheep, goats, foxes, horses - and again dogs. Dog excrement in food leads to infestation in the organs of intermediate hosts and causes infected animals to give birth to sick young, if they do not already lose it during pregnancy. Again, everyone contributes to the environment and healthy animals.
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