The world is our oyster at World Wise Beauty and we are serving up a ‘cultural cocktail’ of ideals for you to explore. When I was producing events here in the U.S and working closely with the spa industry, the thing that impressed me greatly was the industry’s openness to embrace global influences and wellness practices from around the world. From ancient healing rituals of the Far East to old European traditions, the spa experience is all about blending philosophies old and new, and adopting cultural ideologies and methodologies to create the ideal experience for you. Like the spa world, World Wise Beauty aims to explore ideals for wellness culture and glean wisdom from around the world.
Our new department ‘Culture Wise’ will help you stay on top of significant cultural shifts in wellness culture, which often come from places outside our borders, and strongly influence our local culture and lifestyles. Sometimes we’ll delve in deep and explore global practices and philosophies in-depth and other times we’ll provide a glean of what might be coming your way. Let’s mix it up…
As Margaret Mead said so wisely “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”. So let’s see what some ‘citizens of the world’ are up to today with my first “Culture Wise’ glean. We are off to France where ‘joie de vivre’, and eating in particular, is taken very seriously and cultural values are deeply embedded in the fabric of their lives. After reading these two gleans, I hope it inspires you to think about where you food comes from and you come back to ‘Culture Wise’ to explore both local and global influences in wellness culture. No passport required!
Truly Herself,
Lauroly
The ‘Culture Wise’ Glean
WWB RECAP: Is this homemade? Ahh mon chéri what does this little detail matter? Apparently a great deal to the French people. Where here in the U.S the people have demanded restaurant chains report the calorie count of foods on the menu, the French want to know if the food prepared in their dining establishments is homemade! Yes this is true and they passed a law! Do you think we will ever get this law passed here in the U.S? Well one demand at a time as there is another huge cultural shift taking America by storm regarding GMO foods. See links below for both ‘culture wise’ stories…
Excerpt (below) from NPR SALT:French Restaurant Law Stirs Controversy
If you go to France this summer, you might notice a new logo in restaurant windows or on menus. It’s a simple graphic of a rooftop covering a saucepan, and it’s supposed to designate fait maison, or homemade. It’s designed to highlight places that make their own dishes rather than bringing in frozen or sous vide — prepared meals cooked in a water bath, sealed in airtight plastic bags and designed to be heated up later. More on this story here…
WWB RECAP: To give us cultural perspective I had to share this additional story which you may be more familiar with. What is obvious from both my gleans is consumers world-wide are demanding transparency and want to know what is in their foods, personal care products, household cleaners and dietary supplements. What is great about the digital world is we can find more detailed information on websites and social platforms which allow us to become more educated on what’s in the products we purchase. But sometimes clever marketing tactics deceive us and there is no genuine transparency and this is where politics and policy making comes into the picture. The GMO issue or more accurately the non-GMO movement is gaining momentum here in the U.S. See what major food manufacturers in the U.S are doing behind closed doors to get ahead of this major food culture shift and how they are responding to consumer demands. Well sort of anyway…
Excerpt (below) from NPR SALT: Some Food Companies are Quietly Dumping GMO ingredients
Even Ben & Jerry’s, so vocal in its anti-GMO stance, has a conflict, of sorts. It may have eliminated GMOs, but it’s still owned by Unilever, which put a lot of money toward fighting labeling legislation in California and belongs to the GMA. That might make things sticky for Ben & Jerry’s CEO Solheim. More on this story here…