Big Brand Health Mags Online

I had the pleasure of meeting with the Rodale folks today (Earth Day), who are launching their new website: Rodale.com. If the name "Rodale" sounds vaguely familiar but you can't place it, it's the publishing house behind Prevention Magazine (which has been around since the 1950s), Men's Heath, Women's Health, Organic Gardening, Runner's World and Bicycling, as well as the South Beach Diet books, The Doctor's Book of Home Remedies, and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Doesn't that sound like the kind of organization that should have a website?

"A lot of green websites don't address health, and most health websites don't talk about being green," said Rodale Editor-in-Chief Maria Rodale. She's the granddaughter of J.I. Rodale, a dude who lived in a Lower East side tenement in Manhattan, and thought about healthy living and being good for the planet before anyone else. Rodale started publishing in 1930.

We talk about all that here on Tonic, but here are three reasons you should visit Rodale.com

1. You know that Doctor's Book of Home Remedies Rodale published? Well, it's browsable online. I clicked on "anxiety," and found three pages of doctor-free suggestions. I checked out the allergies page, too ('tis the season). Smart, easy stuff like eliminating clutter!

2. Maria Rodale has an adorable blog she writes from her Pennsylvania home where she's raising three daughters with fun, non-health fanatical topics like 10 Easy Ways to Talk to your Daughter About Sex and Why I Eat Meat.

3. Know all those magazines we listed above? If you have a question about any health or green issue, you can search the website and they will pull relevant content from all those magazines. No more weeding through Google for credible sources — Rodale is a name that even Al Gore trusted. Rodale is your lockbox.

Al Gore is my boyfriend.

So go to Rodale.com, "Where Health Meets Green," and read their five news stories per day and find the answers to all of your health and eco-questions. It's not the kind of place that's gonna make you feel bad about yourself. Even Maria Rodale admits: "I do take long showers."

Photo of Maria Rodale courtesy of http://www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com/.