You don’t need to do everything at once. Everything below is what we actually keep in our own kitchen: the specific brands, what to check on the label, and what to skip. Pick your guide to start.
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The exact brands our family uses, in the same order and under the same section names as your workbook. Organic, every time.
Why you can trust this list
We have spent countless hours researching and vetting these companies: reading labels, asking how things are grown, sourced and tested, and trying them in our own kitchen. Most of what we tried didn’t make the cut. What’s here is what we actually use.
Section 5
Nutrients From Food
The foods behind the selenium, zinc and fiber in your workbook.
Brazil nutsDaily
Our selenium food. 1 to 2 a day, no more; a few nuts a day is plenty and more can be too much. Organic, raw, kept in the fridge so they don’t go rancid.
The size the recipes in our book are written for: about 9 lb of cabbage. Earthenware with a water well and its own stone weights. Harsch is the brand we use.
Not available in every state (New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island are the usual exceptions). Take your results to your doctor; they don’t replace your care.
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If you change nothing else this cycle, change these three.
Switch your seeds and oats to organic. You eat these daily, which makes it the highest-value swap on the whole page.
Move from tea bags to loose leaf. You’re drinking a concentrated extract of the leaf — whatever was sprayed on it comes along.
Replace the seed oils. Read three labels. Swap the dressing for olive oil and lemon.
Pantry staples
Organic wherever you see it noted — and it’s noted on everything you eat daily.
Ground flaxseedDaily
1 Tbsp daily through the first half of your cycle. Buy whole seed and grind small batches — pre-ground goes rancid within weeks, and rancid omega-3s are the opposite of the point.
Organic matters more here than almost anywhere else on this page — it’s the only way to rule out ethylene oxide, a sterilant that needs no label disclosure in the US. Dry-toast them in a pan before using.
Organic matters here more than most people realise. Oats are among the crops most often treated with glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant, and this is a daily breakfast.
Glass, not cans. Tomatoes are acidic, which pulls more out of a can lining than almost anything else in the pantry — and “BPA-free” usually means a substitute with similar activity, not no lining at all.
Wild-caught, never farmed. Omega-3s are the best-evidenced food change in the whole guide for period pain. “Atlantic salmon” is farmed by definition — look for sockeye, pink or coho.
Organic, and from a brand that publishes heavy-metal testing. Ground turmeric has a documented history of lead adulteration, and there is no federal limit for lead in spices.
The other one. Raw, unfiltered, in a glass jar. Real raw honey crystallises — a jar that stays perfectly clear all year is the red flag. A local apiary beats anything you can order.
Organic and loose leaf, without exception. Brewing tea makes a concentrated hot-water extract of the leaf — of everything on this page, tea is where organic makes the biggest practical difference.
Green tea175°F · 2–3 min
EGCG inhibits aromatase; L-theanine gives calm focus without the crash. Space it an hour from iron-rich meals. The first is the good-cup sencha; the second is the one to drink two cups of daily.
One habit instead of four separate teas — nettle and raspberry leaf in a single bag, no “natural flavors,” and genuinely plastic-free bags. It contains licorice, so drink it the week before and during your period rather than all month.
Nettle interacts with diuretics and blood-pressure medication, and with glucose-lowering drugs. Red raspberry leaf should be avoided in early pregnancy, and with endometriosis, fibroids, or hormone-sensitive cancers. Herbs are not gentle by default — check with your provider if any of these apply to you.
Clean living
Everything for the castor oil packs, plus the swaps worth making as things run out.
Castor oilFor the packs
Organic, cold-pressed, hexane-free, in glass. Golden or pale means cold-pressed — dark brown is Jamaican Black, which is roasted, and not what the packs need.
Stores the oiled flannel in the fridge between uses. One flannel lasts 20–30 packs. Not a plastic lid — castor oil is a mild solvent for some plastics.
Check your own supply first — it’s free and it’s by zip code. Then look for NSF/ANSI 53 or 58 certification for the specific thing your water actually has. “Tested to NSF standards” is not certification, and a filter that isn’t verified to remove your problem hasn’t solved it.
On a US label, “fragrance” is a legally protected trade secret that can stand in for dozens of undisclosed compounds. Look for EWG VERIFIED — it requires full disclosure. And “fragrance-free” is not “unscented”: unscented products often contain a masking fragrance.
Deodorant
Genuinely aluminium-free, not just labelled “natural.” “Crystal” and alum deodorants are aluminium salts despite how they’re marketed. If baking soda irritates you — it’s common — look for a formula without it rather than giving up.
Dental floss
Silk, or waxed and explicitly PTFE-free. Anything sold on being “glide” or “slick” is usually coated in the same chemistry as a non-stick pan, and you’re running it along your gums twice a day.
Why there are no brands in the last three
Personal care reformulates constantly, and a brand that’s clean this year often isn’t next year — so a list of products would be out of date before you read it. What doesn’t go out of date is knowing how to read a label yourself. That’s the next section, and it’s free.
Look up what you own
How to check anything — what’s in your shower now, what you buy next year, what we’ve never heard of. All free.
Do this, and only this, first
Look up the two or three products you use every day on the largest area of your body. Body lotion. Deodorant. Whatever’s in the shower. The laundry detergent that sits against your skin for sixteen hours.
Not the mascara you wear twice a month. Exposure is surface area × frequency × time, and that’s the one part of this you can see without a toxicologist.
EWG Skin DeepPersonal care
Where most people start. Over 100,000 products scored 1–10. Read the “data availability” rating next to the score — almost nobody does, and it’s the most honest thing on the page. A product can score low simply because nobody has studied the ingredient.
A free extension that flags ingredients while you’re looking at the product page on Amazon, Target, Sephora and Walmart — so you check before you buy instead of regretting after. Every alert cites its source, and it takes no brand money.
It doesn’t score anything — it explains, plainly, what each ingredient on a label actually is. That’s why we like it. Every other tool answers “is this bad?”, a question the science often can’t settle. This one answers “what is it?”, which it can.
The best tool on this page, and almost nobody uses it. Government scientists review the complete formula — including the fragrance, which no app can see — at real concentrations. It’s the only one where the people certifying have no financial relationship with the company certified. Its limit: only enrolled brands are listed, so absence tells you nothing.
A–F grades for cleaners, laundry and dish soap. Its real strength is that it marks a product down for not disclosing — cleaning products aren’t legally required to list ingredients in the US.
A nonprofit, entirely open database of over four million foods. No score to argue with — you see the actual label. Volunteer-built, so coverage varies, but it’s the raw material several paid apps are quietly built on.
Food and cosmetics, by barcode, in the shop. Its funding is the cleanest in the category — subscriptions only, no ads, no brand money. Its scoring is shakier: it ignores how much of an ingredient is in a product. Trust it to tell you what’s in something; check anything alarming elsewhere.
How not to use these. A score is a hazard rating, not a risk rating — it says an ingredient has a concerning property in some study at some dose, not that your product will harm you. EWG says so themselves: their score “does not account for exposure or individual susceptibility.” So don’t read “no data” as “safe.” Don’t check three apps until one agrees with you — if they disagree, the evidence is thin, and that’s your answer. And don’t scan your whole bathroom and replace everything at once. Two or three daily products, changed as they run out, is the entire assignment.
Where we shop
You don’t need all four — pick whichever fits how you already shop.