Day 5 - Breakfast and Sun Screen

Day 5

"Let's start today with the new  Bran Flakes I bought from Planet Organic" I thought this morning. I was pretty happy to be finally having cereal that hadn't been tucked away inside a plastic shell on top of my fridge and so my expectation was that my new buy would be great. I used my raw milk, which I've been told you have to really give it a good shake to mix the cream back in before you use it (ooops) and sat down with that and my tea. I took the first mouthful, and thought hmm this is quite nice, if a slight be cardboardy.. But then as I carried on chewing, it hit me. The salt! Salt bombarded my taste buds, and my face actually recoiled a bit at the taste! It was awful, the salt was soo strong, even after I decided to add a little sugar to help the situation. The experience really wasn't enjoyable and i'm not even considering eating them again because they were so disgusting. So that leaves me in a slight conundrum because that was the only cereal I kinda fancied at the shop. However my mum told me you can buy porridge in a box with no plastic! For me this not only means the promise of porridge, but also homemade granola! I love granola, and i've made my own in the past, so this is great. Also my dad mentioned that Weetabix is also all plastic free, so that's another option for me too if i'm feeling too lazy to make granola. I think those bran flakes are going to become bird food if i'm honest.

 Today I took my sister out to ZSL Whipsnade Zoo for her birthday, which was great! We got to see lots of animals and meet some too (the peacock under the picnic table and the cute little baby lemurs we got to feed <3). The day was absolutely beautiful - actually more beautiful than I had planned on it being, and I had not come prepared whatsoever for the weather. The zoo is massive compared to what I'm used to, so there was A LOT of walking around in the sun, realising that with every minute we would be frying away. This made me think that all sun screen seems to come in plastic containers! But there's no way you can't use sunscreen in hot weather and risk skin cancer/ melanomas etc. So I got researching online and found that you can create your own sunscreen. Apparently the basic principle of it is to use a few moisturising agents such as almond oil, coconut oil, avocado oil etc, bees wax and the UV protection ingredient - Zinc Oxide. Now when looking these up, there were also other articles online about being careful making your own sunscreen as you cannot guarantee the SPF factor of your own made screen, and you'd have to apply it quite readily. However on the other side of the story is that apparently people are making their own sunscreen because they are concerned with the hormone disrupting chemicals in shop bought sunscreen. The active ingredient Zinc Oxide in sunscreens was difficult for the skin to absorb, so years ago people would have difficulty getting rid of the white paste effect the lotion would leave on their skin. These days apparently the zinc oxide has been produced so that the particles in it are much smaller, therefore it is easily absorbed into the skin and doesn't leave that pasty residue behind. Great you think! Apparently not, because now it's able to be absorbed into the body, then with the help of oxybenzone, it disrupts hormones in the body and can cause a number of issues, such as: changing oestrogen/testosterone levels, lowering sperm counts, delaying or increasing rate of puberty in children and many more issues not mentioned here. So, as you can imagine, this is a tad worrying to be reading that unexpectedly. Apparently there are a few brands that do not contain oxybenzone or nano particles of zinc oxide, so they are a lot safer, brands such as Badger, but all seem to come in plastic containers. I am considering trying to create my own as it does seem simple enough, but this may be one of the things I might not be able to get around for health reasons (although how often is it THAT sunny in England anyway!) so may not be too problematic - only if I go on holiday. Though I am slightly pink after my day in the sun with no sunscreen, so it's something I will have to look into for now! And i'll need to look into after sun too, because ow it does kinda hurt right now!

One last thing! I wanted to mention that for my dinner last night I had these frozen Cheese and Spring Onion Cake bake things from Sainsburys which came in cardboard and no plastic! Win! They were pretty tasty too, so I was very pleased with the purchase. Will definitely buy these again!

Anyhow, that was my day. Until tomorrow!

Thanks for reading.