by Katrina Love Senn, Collective Evolution

Have you ever devoured a whole bag of cookies or crisps while you were feeling distracted, exhausted, or emotional? And then, completely forgotten what (or even if) you had eaten?

I know I have!

In the past, when I was feeling sick, stressed, and overweight, I would constantly find myself eating food throughout the day, just trying to get enough energy to keep myself going.

But all this changed when one day my body completely collapsed and I was intuitively guided to start my own healing journey.

It was on my healing path that I discovered the idea of eating consciously. Embracing mindful and conscious eating habits helped my attitude toward food and my body change for the better.

I healed my body of chronic health conditions including asthma, eczema, chronic fatigue syndrome, and adrenal exhaustion, among many others.

by Alexa Erickson, Collective Evolution

I regularly find myself faced with a predicament at checkout counters of places like grocery markets and pet stores: “Would you like to donate a dollar to this charity?”

Sometimes I do it because it feels right. Other times the look in the attendant’s eyes makes me feel guilty and pressured, and I oblige, as if I wasn’t asked, but told. Other times, I refuse because I’ve already done it, and I make sure to tell them that, as opposed to simply saying no. But when this conversation came up with a friend the other day, they advised me to ask, next time, “How much of the donation money actually goes to the charity?”

A quick sweep of the web will reveal why this question is so important.

by Alexa Erickson, Collective Evolution

The repercussions of Nestlé’s controversial decisions continue to surface. Most recently the bottled water giant outbid a small town in Canada pushing to secure long-term water supply through a local well. The outcome caused a national boycott of Nestlé as a result.

Activist group, The Council of Canadians, launched the boycott on Thursday shortly following the news that Nestlé outbid the Township of Centre Wellington, Ont. for the well that has the potential to give it a new water supply.

The activist group stressed the critical need for bottled water industry reform given the fact that the country continues to battle drought and depletion of ground water reserves.

by Alexa Erickson, Collective Evolution

The Dakota Access Pipeline has exposed a harsh reality many were unaware of or attempted to ignore: U.S. oil interest and government co-conspirators will bulldoze over any and all obstacles standing in their way of collecting billions from exploiting fossil fuels.

While the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and thousands of supporters across the country, have vehemently protested the 30-inch pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners have, without blinking, stolen land from private landowners, ruined ancient Native american burial grounds, and put hundreds of waterbodies in harm, including the Missouri River water source of the tribe.

The people of Standing Rock have even filed a lawsuit to halt the construction from further damage, as has one of the South Dakota Native American nations and landowners in Iowa. Meanwhile, other members of the camp have taken nonviolent actions, locking arms around construction machinery to stop the digging. Many have been arrested as a result.

by Alexa Erickson, Collective Evolution

Scour the aisles of the grocery store, and you may be astonished to find just how many types of Pringles there are out there. But while there seems to be no end to the diversity of junk food, a comprehensive infographic has been put together to show you just how few corporations provide us with the hundreds of products available at our fingertips.

Oxfam International created the infographic that exposes an inconceivable reality: Just 10 main corporations manufacture the majority of what we purchase at the market.

“What we did is we took certain issues … [and] we saw the kind of impacts they had on the ground,” Chris Jochnick of Oxfam told NPR. “We released reports about those issues and those impacts and how they’re tied to the 10 largest food and beverage companies. And then we pushed the companies to begin to address them.”