Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

HI July 2014

Healthy Indoors Magazine

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Change 've made it a favorite pastime to have adventures in cooler climates during the 115+ degree days that are all too com- mon in Phoenix, Arizona during the sum- mer months. Like many people, I have a bucket list of places I want to visit and things I want to do. Guatemala has been on that list for many years. Mexico and Central America have always intrigued me. I love the history, the ruins, the people and the simplicity of day to day living. My last trip to Costa Rica five years ago was amazing, so when a friend told me at brunch that she had some friends with a vacation rental house on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, I was hooked. Serendipity. We booked the trip within several days of talk- ing about it, and planned a dinner with Earl and Suzanne, the owners of the house who split their time between Phoenix and Antigua, Gua- temala. I was even more drawn to this house and these people because Earl and Suzanne have a non-profit in Guatemala called Seeds for a Future (http://bit.ly/1mbG9FO). Guatemala is home to 13 million people, ap- proximately 75% of whom live in poverty. The country has the highest malnutrition rate in Lat- in America and the fourth highest in the world. Ironic, as much of the produce we consume in the U.S., as well as the coffee we drink, is grown and harvested in Guatemala. (On a side note, I was reading a sign while in Guatemala about coffee, and it said by the time the coffee is grown, harvested, processed, shipped and consumed as a $5 latte in the U.S., only about 3 cents makes its way back to Guatemala. Even more reason to pay attention to buying fair trade (http://bit.ly/1rc78Zq).) PBS recently did a segment (http://to.pbs. org/1sg3EFL) on the child malnutrition problem in Guatemala. "In the Americas, the situation is most dire in Guatemala, where roughly 50 percent of the children are so malnourished they're stunted, I Healthy Indoors 47

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