Disease Proof : Disease Proof : Health & Nutrition News & Commentary : Dr. Joel Fuhrman

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• If you’re trying to live greener, a clothes dryer can be a real drag—on your electric bill! That’s why Green Living Tips offers these suggestions for amping up your dryer’s efficiency. Take a look:

Proper loading
Ensure your drier isn't overloaded. Air needs to circulate easily between the clothes in order for drying to be most effective.

Venting
Open a window when using the dryer. A closed up laundry gets very humid and that humid air just gets sucked into the drier; decreasing its effectiveness. If your drier has an exhaust leading to the outside; ensure that it's cleaned regularly.

Separate loads
Heavier items should be dried separately to light weight clothes.

Cool it
Many modern clothes driers have a cool-down cycle which allows the clothes to complete drying with the remaining heat in the dryer. If you live in a dry climate, a cool cycle can be extended.

• Activists are cracking down on users of palm oil—like General Mills, Nabisco and Kellogg’s—because producing palm oil destroys tropical rainforests. Marc Gunther of Fortune reports:

The Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace International, Friends of the Earth and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are all campaigning against palm oil. (You can find their arguments here and here and here and here.) Last week, RAN asked about 2,000 volunteers to sneak into food stores across the United States and attach stickers to products made with palm oil.

"Warning!," the stickers said. "May Contain Rainforest Destruction."

The targets of the RAN campaign are three global agricultural firms that grow or import palm oil: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Fortune 500), Cargill and Bunge (BG). The goal of last week's stunt was to get the attention of consumer-goods companies, who are being asked to look into their sourcing of palm oil.

"We're working our way down the food chain," explained Mike Brune, the executive director of RAN. "Most customers won't want rainforest destruction and climate change in every mouthful of cookies or crackers, so our plan is to start with the most prominent brands. Once we get some of the top brands on our side, we'll use the power of the pocketbook to convince the 'A,B,C's' (ADM, Bunge and Cargill) that destroying rainforests and increasing climate change isn't smart - for business or the planet."

• The fish you bought might be labeled as one thing, but it could be something very different. Two TEENAGERS figured this out with a little DNA testing. Alister Doyle of Reuters explains:

In the worst cases, two samples of filleted fish sold as red snapper, caught mostly off the southeast United States and in the Caribbean, were instead the endangered Acadian redfish from the North Atlantic, according to the tests, revealed on Friday.

"We never expected these results. People should get what they pay for," Kate Stoeckle, 18, told Reuters of the project with Louisa Strauss, 17.

The two classmates from New York's Trinity school collected and sent off 60 fish samples to the University of Guelph in Canada. Of 56 samples that could be identified by a four-year-old DNA identification technique, 14 were mislabeled.

In all cases, the fish was labeled as a more costly type, apparently ruling out simple chance. It was the first known student use of DNA barcoding technology in a public market.

"We really like sushi and we'd take home fish samples and put them in alcohol," Stoeckle said of fish bought in shops and restaurants in Upper Manhattan.