People love the idea of backyard gardens and urban fruit trees, but I have to say, as someone who professionally deals with people’s yards, most backyard fruit goes to squirrels, rats, and worms. Which isn’t the worst thing, but it just goes to show how much work it is to take responsibility for your own food.

Our backyard apple tree is basically the reason we ended up renting this place. A few years back we spent months looking for a new place to live when we moved to Berkeley, it was December when we found this apartment, 1/3 of an old house on a busy street on the Oakland/Berkeley border. My (then to be) husband went into the mess of a backyard (then to be garden), picked the last apple off the bare tree, took a bite, and he was sold. For our first fall here the apple crop was overwhelming for us fruit tree newbies and a lot of the apples went to waste (ie garden rats and compost). The second year (last year), heavy Spring rain knocked off almost all the blossoms and we hardly got any fruit at all. This year, the blossoms were incredible. The picture above was actually from trying to capture one of the hundreds of bees buzzing up in the pink and blue. The tree has gotten more love this year, more water and compost and good intentions, and we made out with a decent crop, this time with intentions to use our bounty.

Luckily they don’t all fall at once and we’ve managed to keep up with ripe apples by getting in five very full apple pies in the last month. A pie a week seems like a good run right? Well before October I had never actually made a real deal apple pie. My go to apple gallette has now been replaced with something far more substantial as it uses far more apples (which is the goal after all). This has been a great reminder of how to get a particular dish right- make it once a week for a couple months. Now the idea of throwing together a stellar apple pie for dinner guests coming in two hours doesn’t seem the least bit daunting (and yes, we have been sharing all this pie action with others). Through repetition you learn what you like and what proportions get you there, the steps become second hand and before you know if you’ve mastered a dish and can make it with confidence and ease.

I am pretty set on having a flaky crust, but I wanted to avoid the temptation of a white flour pie. (my mother in-law makes the best tasting pie crust from white flour and crisco…and while I enjoy it, at a pie per week, it kind of crosses the line from indulgence to dietary staple and so I have to make it something more nourishing) I learned “white” and “flaky” don’t necessarily go hand in hand. The heavy whole wheat crusts I’ve humored over the years at hippie pot lucks largely have their fat (or lack of it) to blame. The more shortening the better, but that being said you don’t want a high protein whole wheat.  In the nutrition facts on a sack of flour (if you are buying pre-ground, from a store) will give you the protein content, which for a flaky pie you want to be low and for chewier things like bread you want a higher protein. Whole wheat pastry flour is low protein and really makes a great crust- provided that you have enough good fat.

For pie, butter or lard are the best. I haven’t made a pie crust with lard yet (the ranch I get my grass fed meat from has been out…pie making time they say), but I hear that once you try it, you won’t be able to go back. I also haven’t made pie crust from flour ground at home. I did make a crust from sprouted spelt flour and was really pleased with the results. It is very rare from me to eat grains that have not undergone one of the three S’s (sprouting, soaking, sourdough) but I just wanted to make a “normal” pie. Again, as it it now officially pie season I just couldn’t justify the exception (my tummy and skin agreed). I don’t quite understand why spelt works well because it contradicts the statement above about protein levels- it is high in protein, but I have to assume that there is something different with regular wheat protein and spelt protein- since some people can’t digest the former but are fine on the latter. The sprouted performed well and tastes great, largely to do with how fresh it is. Check out what the Whole Grains Council, a pretty mainstream group nutrition-wise, says about sprouted grains…so good for you.

The lessons of cooking can be learned quickly when you work with a dish consistently. Our first pie ended up shallow which led to my first lesson in apple pie: cut the apples into big chunks and pile them very high. Out of habit from the gallette I am used to I sliced them, which makes for a very shallow pie (and also takes longer). The apples are peeled, which I did hesitantly, but I think it makes a difference for getting the right texture. I should try going un-peeled and see for sure.

The cross cuts are so classic and just make me feel…wholesome. The way the steam comes pouring out into the cool air seems like it will lure neighbors, cartoon-like to our house, floating with their noses on the scent.

With the sprouted flour this pie is a dessert (or snack, or part of breakfast) that stays out of “exception food” territory. Made with at least eight apples, only two tablespoons of unrefined palm sugar, lots of healthy butter fat and a bit of arrowroot powder for thickening its something I’m thrilled to eat week after week all season.

                          

I started and continue to take a small dose of this old-timey medicine for three reasons: skin, stress, and sore joints. The magic of a good, high vitamin cod liver oil (and yes, like most things they are not all created equally and a good brand matters) is as follows:

“Large amounts of elongated omega-3 fatty acids [EPA and DHA], preformed vitamin A and the sunlight vitamin D, essential nutrients that are hard to obtain in sufficient amounts in the modern diet. Samples may also naturally contain small amounts of the important bone- and blood-maintainer vitamin K”

These four elements all need each other in the right balance to work properly. (This fact is why I appreciate this food-as-medicine over supplements-as-food approach because our bodies know how to work with whole food: once it’s broken up into these very special bits, the bits just don’t work as well. Here’s some food for thought on the issue of supplements generally.)
Both Vitamins A and D are fat soluble, so your body needs those fatty acids to use them at all. Additionally: “vitamin A protects against vitamin D toxicity in part by helping to properly regulate the production of vitamin K-dependent proteins. The most readily obvious benefit of cod liver oil is clear and healthy skin. Our skin is an organ that needs nourishment from the inside much more than it needs fancy creams and soaps. The most important skin nutrients are vitamins A and D. Vitamin A. When I was a teenager dealing with bad skin I was prescribed an anti-biotic and a retinol cream. Well those antibiotics did a number on my long term gut health, where skin health originates anyway. And the retinol cream worked well enough, but I don’t know what the effects of a synthetic version are and I just would have been better off getting that nutrient in food rather than on my face. A lack of this nutrient will result in rough dry skin that wrinkles earlier. For the skin to deal with sun exposure and damage from environmental toxins it needs vitamin A for the repair process.

Vitamin D and skin have a very important relationship as our skin is where the body captures Vitamin D from the sun. Vitamin D from the diet  (and there are limited sources, probably because we used to get what needed from being outside) and the sun helps skin metabolism and growth. Our big brains are hungry for Omega 3 fats, specifically the DHA fatty acid. In fact, the brain gets first dibs anytime you consume foods with Omega 3’s. Julia Ross, author of the Mood Cure, explains why these fats are the key to good mental health:

By correcting fatty-acid imbalances in your brain (the brain is 60% fat), [Omega 3's from fish sources] can usher out low-catecholamine depression and increase concentration in a hurry…

[Catecholamines include dopamine and adrenaline...they provide feelings of zest and excitement , and also provide the energy needed to deal with stress]

…Your adrenals need plenty of both vitamin D and omega-3 fat in order to make their stress-fighting [catecholamines]. Many people report significantly increased energy as well as peace of mind when they take these two nutrients as part of their basic supplements.

We need these fats to protect and produce the chemicals our brain uses to deal with life, to stay positive, and to take life in stride. There is a lot of research on the use of Omega 3 fats in helping depression specifically, but it is necessary for a whole range of emotional and neurological needs on a daily basis. I seem to be person who tends toward worry and anxiety. I have made a number of changes in my life to help me avoid this tendency, from controlling my work life to the demands I take on generally. I am also getting more perspective and calm as I get older. All this likely goes hand in hand, but it’s been very clear that since taking cod liver oil I just feel more even keeled. I understand now why that is, but it’s encouraging to actually experience it. The omega-3 fatty acid EPA in cod liver oil don’t just go to the brain, but also helps the rest of the body. According to the WAPF article on this super food, “EPA is the precursor of important prostaglandins, localized tissue hormones that help the body deal with inflammation…” These prostaglandins are the biochemical messengers that control certain aspects of inflammation, rather like aspirin, which also affects the prostaglandin system. As a gardener, a baker’s assistant, a farmer’s market schlepper, and computer user my hands and body in general get worn out at the ripe old age of 27. Anything I can do to ease the inflammation of lots of physical work helps me continue to do that work. And the more I move this body, the more butter I can eat. win win!

When it comes to long term health and wellness I fully stand behind the statement that food is medicine. All the supplements and herbs and pharmaceuticals won’t get you very far if your daily meals are wearing down your system. However, even with all the time, effort, and money we put into getting nourishing foods at every meal, we live in the city and deal with all kinds of known and unknown substances; the city puts antimicrobials in the water, which might fix some public health issues, doesn’t really help all the little guys helping me digest my food; while most of my food comes from local, organic farmers, much of the soil is depleted and we likely don’t get as much nutrition in our food as we used to. So are all these reasons to line my shelves with this vitamin and that anti-oxidant to make up for it all? I’ve decided no. Mainly to preserve my budget for better food, to have a simpler and tastier relationship with my nutrition needs, and because most of stuff in bottles or drinks or bars or any other supplemented form just doesn’t work. Much of my  effort in cooking goes into making sure the food I eat is useful to the body (soaking grains and legumes to avoid phytic acid, making sure I have good fats to use all the fat-soluble vitamins, avoiding the depleting effects of sugar, etc) I don’t like the idea of medicine that either has side effects or isn’t really prepared for the body to use effectively.

But I do take cod liver oil. And here’s how:

In a shot glass full of a nice thick juice, like tomato juice. (I use a black cherry juice because it aids in the need for something anti-inflammatory. This thick, sweet, and almost smoky flavored juice has the same compounds as medicines like ibuprofen). Fill the glass about three quarters of the way and then put about 2ml of cod liver oil on top. Shoot it back and have a chaser of some kind. It doesn’t taste good, but you get used to it. You can also get it in capsules. Not all cod liver oil is made with the same quality or has the right ratio to Vitamins A & D. We take the Green Pastures fermented oil, available here (this source also has other options that might appeal more)

*I always assumed the snake oil of old was always and consistently a con artist scheme to get desperate folks to part with their money. And it was, in the States anyway. In China it was and is a total legitimate topical remedy for inflammation. Pure snake oil is higher in eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) than other sources. EPA is the starting material the body uses to make the series 3 prostaglandins. (see explanation above of why these help inflammation, same as in cod liver oil)  EPA can be absorbed through the skin and so pure snake oil could be very effective for aches. The stuff sold here by scammers was a combination of beef tallow, mineral oil, red pepper, camphor, and turpentine- so, no wonder.

                          

Given two recent reports about the dangers of pesticides there really shouldn’t be a choice. But that isn’t a guilt trip to people who won’t fork over the cash to pay for safer products. It is to say  no one should have to choose not to poison their kids or be forced to bring harmful chemicals into their system because the other options are more affordable.

The recent report by the President’s Cancer Panel reveals, finally, that the most important aspect of the issue of cancer is environmental factors. Factors that are have been grossly underestimated and under-regulated. The Panel’s report is called REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER RISK: What We Can Do Now.

It is almost shocking how straightforward the report is about the harm caused by the chemicals and environmental factors of daily life. We are so used to hearing measured responses to “possible health risks” associated with much of the stuff we are exposed to and taking these risks seriously in a consistent way can even make you feel a bit like a paranoid wing-nut. But now there is enough evidence and acknowledgment of that evidence prove that efforts to avoid plastics and pesticides are not wacky…but there is the disappointment, that yes, it’s as bad (or worse) than you thought. So yes, it’s an overwhelming report, but in all reality it’s a refreshing report because it finally puts these causes of cancer out in the open, and asks that be addressed. It is something that everyone should read which you can do in this pdf.

The report should be read so that as many people as possible know the harm of the exposure to these chemicals so that these chemicals will stopped being used. Rather than having choices about what products we are exposed to, these products, given the evidence, should be banned. Then no one can make the wrong choice.

The Pesticide Action Network sent out an e-mail to ask for support for  language in the Safe Chemicals Act that would give EPA more power to regulate persistent chemicals. You can contact your Senator through PAN here.

as this Washington Post report points out:

The panel said the country needs to overhaul existing chemical laws, a conclusion that has been supported by public health groups, environmental advocates, the Obama administration and even the chemical industry.

The current system places the burden on the government to prove that a chemical is unsafe before it can removed from the market. The standards are so high, the government has been unable to ban chemicals such as asbestos, a widely recognized carcinogen that is prohibited in many other countries.

About 80,000 chemicals are in commercial use in the United States, but federal regulators have assessed only about 200 for safety.

Chapter Two of the President’s Cancer Panel Report is “Exposure to Contaminants From Agricultural Sources”  It opens with this uplifting observation:

The entire U.S. population is exposed on a daily basis to numerous agricultural chemicals.  Many of these chemicals are known or suspected of having either carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting properties. chemicals.

It goes onto explain the dangers of chemical use in agriculture to all of us, most especially the people who get their livelihood from the food system. Unfortunately the consequences of these chemicals are not limited to cancer. The other recent report that reveals the impact conventional agriculture on our bodies and brains is an investigation by a team of scientists from the University of Montreal and Harvard University, published in the journal Pediatrics, which found a connection between exposure pesticides and the presence of symptoms of ADHD.  Lead author Maryse F. Bouchard of the University of Montreal Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center says:

Our study found that exposure to organophosphates in developing children might have effects on neural systems and could contribute to ADHD behaviors, such as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.

All this brings up that mantra of “Don’t panic, buy Organic”, which is more true than ever before. But again, it raises the issue of why this country has allowed this to be a choice. Sure we’ve carved out a market for those who are willing and able to pay the full cost of sustainably raised food but the remainder is too many people still being exposed to toxins, including those who paid to avoid it. We need to move beyond an organic certification to a certain market and apply those standards to all food. There is not enough evidence to prove that avoiding chemicals and feeding the people of the world are mutually exclusive goals, and remember that saying so sidesteps the issue that conventional farming isn’t feeding the world successfully either.

We are certainly in a better spot politically than we have been before to take these chemicals out of our system, and the more that people are aware of what is causing these diseases and disorders and choose, as much as possible to support practices and products that avoid them the better.

You can read more about the Organophosphate (OP) Pesticides addressed in there study here. You can also take a small action to, again through the Pesticide Action network, sign a petition to the EPA to ban Chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide.

I guess the message for now is, Be optimistic about Organic- choose it until you don’t have to.

I admit that the choice for the video below is weird because Don Imus is not well respected since his many rude remarks, and he and his wife (Deirdre Imus) are friends of Sean Hannity and all their media is through Fox, but that doesn’t change the fact that I agree with Deirdre’s approach and her information and that ultimately she is doing good work on these issues. It’s always good to look at common ground among often divided groups.

                          

Over the past few months I’ve changed my relationship with these sourdough beasties I’ve befriended to leaven and flavor my baked goods. I’ve both expanded the amount and variety of goods that I can make with them and I’ve let the little things be warm and active for longer periods. That is to say by keeping my sourdough active I’ve been forced to bake more with it and have thus figured out new and varied breads that can be made as sourdough.

The whole point, for me, of baking with sourdough is to use a biologically diverse population of microbes to populate the dough I make to allow a slower rise through fermentation. This process is active and alive and breaks down the stuff in wheat that is hard on human digestion (gluten) or makes other things (like minerals) inaccessible through human digestion (phytic acid)

Percentage of Phytic Acid

Time (hours)
—- Yeast Fermentation
___ Sourdough Fermentation

For more than you probably want to know about phytic acid and the extra measures you could go to to eliminate your intake of it go here.

The fact that phytic acid is in all foods that are originally seeds (grains, nut, legumes) and that it binds to certain minerals and nutrients in the body and essentially flushes them out, doing the body little good, is a fact that is not debated. What the impact is of the amount eaten on the body’s overall health is not agreed upon. But just think of how many seeds we eat: wheat, corn, soy, nuts. Since these foods are present in practically every meal, I like to error on the side of caution and avoid the anti-nutrients as much as possible. Here is a nice outline of why a sourdough ferment of grains is good for health (In fact that blog, just linked to, is one I’ve just discovered, and it full of great sourdough recipes. I haven’t tried any yet, but plan to…check it out!)

So that’s the motivation in trying to replace as many baked-goods as possible with their (I think more delicious) sourdough versions. Once you get beyond artisan crusty bread loafs from a good bakery it is hard to find an array of true sourdough items. Even if you find something that is “sourdough” that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the flour has gone through a minimum four hour ferment, a lot of sourdough is added as flavor.

As usual the best control over health, quality, and taste is just to make it at home, not to mention the saved plastic packaging and inexpensive ingredients which may make the cost of the homemade lower (though it depends on what you were buying). Below are some of the snacks I’ve put through the sourdough process. And I should mention that the recipes for these lovely eats all come from the same book, Wild Bread by Lisa Rayner. For the most part I like her recipes, but she is vegan so she often suggests Earth Balance over butter which to me is a very unwise substitution. It just boggles me that one can be so into natural and whole foods but prefer a product that requires a laboratory to make and comes in plastic over one that can be made and eaten out in a field.

In addition to getting a new book that expanded my sense of what I could do with my sourdough, I also starting using it (the starter) a bit differently. First of all I started a whole wheat starter from my white one, so now I have two (The whole wheat is local from Massa Organics!) I keep the whole wheat one dryer (or stiffer, or to get technical, at a lower hydration- 75% which would be 3/4c water to 1c flour. 100% is an even one to one.) I also stopped putting the starter in the fridge after use. I keep some in the fridge for back up, but I keep the active one warm and fed…that way, when I want to bake I don’t have to back track the time it takes a cold starter to get going. If you keep your refrigerated tarter fed consistently you can get it going in 8hrs but it’s hard for me to remember to do so if I don’t see it. (Ofen it would be a two day process just to be able to use the thing…) Rather than get the out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem, I leave them out, which reminds me to feed them, which gets me to bake.

Crunchy whole wheat crackers:

There are fewer and fewer aisles in the grocery store I even go down at all and the cracker/cookie aisle is one of them. Even if natural or organic it’s still just plan old cooked wheat (or popped rice) and it just doesn’t do me much good. But crackers are great! For homemade hummus, tuna salad, or a sharp raw cheddar. If you already have made your own pizza dough, crackers are just as easy.

These are a 100% whole grain cracker  The recipe uses only 6oz of starter plus 8oz of any combination of tasty flours you might have such as rye, spelt, kamut. (I’ve used various mixes of wheat, rye, spelt as that’s what I tend to have on hand. The majority of the dough has been wheat though). (Also added is 2 Tbs olive oil, 1/2 tsp salt, and just under a half cup of water.)

After the dough is mixed and kneaded into a stiff ball it can sit for a few hours. (Lisa Rayner says you can let it sit for as little as 20 minutes, but that time frame doesn’t really do the fermenting job. I just let it go until I notice it being bigger…about four hours.) The dough is rolled as thin as you can manage onto a floured board and/or on parchment paper without going beyond the point that you can lift the strips onto your baking sheet. I had tried baking just the rolled out dough, figuring I could just break it into crackers after it cooked…but it ended up too uneven, not crunchy in the middle and burnt on the edges, so it is worth it to cut and cook strips…they can be a very rough cut.

This is a good opportunity to train your nose to when something is done. The crackers should be checked after five minutes and rotated and shaken around. They should get all the way to a nice caramel brown…but the tipping point to burnt is quick…so keep a careful eye (and nose!) I added Celtic sea salt and sesame seeds to the top before cutting the dough…lots of possibilities with toppings.

Everyone has these nostalgic foods from childhood that they just can’t help feeling great when they eat them. I am all for having good emotional memory with food…but often the actual substance from the past isn’t really all that great (in taste or health). I grew up in a very whole foods lacto/ovo/fish vegetarian household that didn’t include really any junk food. I could be easily motivated to do something if it involved some sort of illicit food…like a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin (though we still got it without the bacon/sausage). So, I’ve taken this childhood reward and made it the kind of thing I still want to eat.

The dough is the standard “artisan dough” in the Wild Bread book with a whopping 20 oz of starter, just about 7 oz of starter under 3 oz of water and 1.5 tsp of salt. This mixture rises in a bowl, then gets rolled out and cut to rise again as muffins.

Then the fun part! The muffins like fat pancake on a lightly buttered griddle. I ended up cooking them longer that this photo shows. In order to get them cooked through they should have a decent amount of color on both sides.

Then I cooked up an egg. This trick above doesn’t really work all that well, maybe if the ring was oiled better. The other option might be to make bigger muffins. I break the yoke after it cooks for a bit so it isn’t too drippy for the sandwich. Add some raw jack cheese, oblong fried potato cake not included and I certainly earned it!

Below shows the basic loaf bread I’ve been making on a weekly basis (give or take). It’s the same dough as the English muffin. I use a mix of my whole wheat and white starter and use either fresh ground wheat berries (also from Massa Organics), or fresh ground spelt, or just Massa’s flour which is ground fresher than anything else you can buy. This is a pretty similar recipe as the Nourishing Traditions loaf made in this post, but you can see how it’s lightened up a bit. This has to do with an even wetter dough and also a double proof, once in a bowl and once in the buttered loaf pan.

It’s a pretty nice, go-to whole grain loaf for toast and snacks. But I am pretty excited about trying this one from the recently discovered Wild Yeast Blog. I think something even lighter would do us better for sandwiches (the bread below is pretty limited to open-faced, which are delicious. Two pieces at once would be a mouthful)

This bread is a sourdough “quick bread” in that it is made from a batter and is not kneaded. But no, it isn’t quick.

A few words on the time it takes to make these baked goods: This point is related to one of Michael Pollan’s new food rules that you can eat junk food, just make it yourself. When you cook at home you can control ingredients and you don’t have access to the kind of processing or additives that happens on an industrial scale. You also find that “junk foods” take a long time to make and are energy intensive, versus simple whole foods. As I write this post I am actually taking a week without dairy, sugar, or grains. This is just a just an opportunity to eat really simply and avoid foods that can be harder on digestion than others.

I think taking a break from anything you eat a lot of is probably a good idea…seasonal variation does this with fruits and veggies and even some meats and certainly pastured eggs, but the constants can be…well just that. Really milk and grains would be more seasonal in a more locally-based food system.

I don’t know if I would go as far as saying the foods that you do the least to are the foods we should be eating. That essentially would be advocating a raw diet. I do think human digestion needs some careful processing to break down cellulose and other compounds we don’t have the stomachs for. But it is true that many of the foods you can eat “whole” are good for you and the more “whole” you eat a food the faster it is to eat it. An apple can be picked and eaten right at the same moment. Meat- well a life is made and raise and then killed, but after that it’s pretty much eaten as is. Bread on the other hand, even good, whole grain, naturally leavened bread goes through a number of steps. This isn’t a hard and fast rule by any means but the point is if we limited our baked-good intake to sourdough bread we made at home, we would probably eat a lot less bread and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

So, I’m happy to have created a system with bread that is rather self-limiting and happy to be taking a bit of a break…but also really happy to get back to baking soon. This bread below could be adapted into any number of quick bread loaf pan recipes like banana bread. I’ve just done this cinnamon raisin version and it’s lovely, moist, sour and delicious. I am pretty sure it could also be adapted into muffins, which is an experiment I am excited about and will certainly share. I’ve never seem to come across a true sourdough (that is, fully fermented) muffin recipe. I think it might involve some baking soda…but well see. Stay tuned.

                          

Scientific American Magazine published a short piece in their latest issue that addresses the recent studies that have taken a more critical look at this (apparently) confounding relationship between dietary cholesterol, blood cholesterol, saturated fat, heart disease, and overall health including body mass. As history and the current health of those still eating traditional diets would have us understand saturated fat is just not the culprit they thought. Instead these studies have shown that carbohydrates are problem.

The finding joins other conclusions of the past few years that run counter to the conventional wisdom that saturated fat is bad for the heart because it increases total cholesterol levels. That idea is “based in large measure on extrapolations, which are not supported by the data,” Krauss says.
…
One problem with the old logic is that “total cholesterol is not a great predictor of risk,”
…
Although the subjects on the low-carb diet ate the most saturated fat, they ended up with the healthiest ratio of HDL to LDL cholesterol and lost twice as much weight as their low-fat-eating counterparts.

While I agree that sugar and white flour should have a very different role in our lives than it currently plays (celebrity cameo for occasional special times rather than the lead) it is a bit frustrating to have one evil replaced by another. It seems like our puritanical roots make us have to have something to burn at the stake and we are unable to be satisfied with or have the attention for an explanation that involves an understanding of the quality and quantity of food and the importance of balance (I didn’t say, “moderation in all things” which is the favorite comment section posting of those annoyed at the dietary contradictions and prescription). But humans have never lived with just “good things” and no “bad things.” This is food, not a moral tug of war. As long as it has gone through minimal and/or careful processing and is in the right quantities and qualities, we can use it all.

How the general, non Scientific American Magazine reading, public is going to learn about the redemption of sat fats was the other concern of the article…meaning mostly, will the FDA change its recommendations/pyramid to reflect these findings? And they responded by saying, in so many words, not if it involves losing political contributions:

Right now, Post explains, the agency’s main message to Americans is to limit overall calorie intake, irrespective of the source. “We’re finding that messages to consumers need to be short and simple and to the point,” he says. Another issue facing regulatory agencies, notes Harvard’s Stampfer, is that “the sugared beverage industry is lobbying very hard and trying to cast doubt on all these studies.”

This Scientific American Magazine article provides a great defense for whole foods that have not been tampered with to fit a new idea of health. The winner in this (besides us) is butter.

The categorization of butter as a healthy whole food has significance on this blog, because it was in this post, from almost two years ago (!), that I found the Weston Price Foundation and moved to a next-level way of eating that involved avoiding most things in packages, eating pretty much no white grains, and few grains that haven’t been soaked/fermented/sprouted. I also REALLY cut out sugar. This whole change really just sprung from the fact that butter is so lovely, so many lovely healthy people eat/have eaten it and it seems so much simpler and more pure than anything created to replace it. Also, no one can really make a dishonest amount of  money from butter and this fact seemed to warrant trust and loyalty through all the contradictions and food technologies that are supposed to be better than what we had before.

And butter has stayed true through it all hasn’t it? Despite its modern maligning, we have more health problems related to diet than ever before. So, no  “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” we don’t know better. But maybe we finally are starting to again.

“If you reduce saturated fat and replace it with high glycemic-index carbohydrates, you may not only not get benefits—you might actually produce harm,” Ludwig argues. The next time you eat a piece of buttered toast, he says, consider that “butter is actually the more healthful component.”

                          

Americans apparently are showing deficiencies in vitamin D and there are myriad findings for the implications of these deficiencies and apparently just as many ideas about what to do about them. The most common suggestion seems to be upping the RDI and encouraging medical practitioners to give patients who seem to have deficiencies and/or issues that are now being connected to deficiencies high doses of vit. D supplements. The second solution is to increase the vitamin d in the food supply, already vitamin D is put into whole milk and also some orange juice. So this would increase the vitamin D intake of those who consume those foods, whether or not they have deficiencies.

I take issue with both solutions and here’s why. Vitamin D is only found in a few foods, and my inclination is that there is a reason for that. Most of our vitamin D is synthesized through exposure to the sun, and to avoid getting too much of the nutrient steroid hormone the body starts to block the synthesis process when we get too much (hence the darkening of the skin). These two facts seem to say, vitamin d is important but it’s not something to have in excess. That said, clearly our consumption of this nutrient steroid hormone would be in decline since so few of us now have livelihoods that bring us outside and even when we aren’t working, much of our time is spent under roofs. Then, even for those who do go outside there is that pesky dark and cold part of the year that makes it even more difficult. We also consume far fewer vitamin D rich foods, like organ meats, fish, and eggs.

I’m sorry if this seems too obvious, but instead of raising the consumption level of vitamin d to levels that the human body has maybe never experienced we should probably just increase our consumption of naturally vitamin D rich foods as was traditionally done, in the winter and spend some time outdoors when it’s nice out. This follows a very sound and traditional pattern of labor and consumption, meat and indoor activities in the winter, lots of veggies and sun in the spring and summer and fall. Why would supplementation be necessary since we have historically gotten what we need from food and being outside?
I guess it is this kind of controversy that draws me to premise of the research of Dr. Weston Price and the information put out by the Weston A Price foundation. The first question of his research was “is disease inherent?” He saw so much disease in his dental practice- in the mouth and beyond- he was moved to find out if this was just the plight of humanity or an expression of something wrong but preventable. So he looked for people in the world without disease and then looked to find out how they got to be in that lucky state. Dr. Daphne Miller did the same thing in her book. She found people who lacked certain chronic diseases and then looked to their traditions (mostly food traditions, but their lifestyle as a whole as well) to find out how they maintained that level of health. Miller and Price did not isolate a substance and call it a cure, though they did identify powerful foods (raw milk and raw milk products, cod liver oil, nopales, fermented foods, whole fats) that when eaten in their natural/whole state along with the regular traditional diet contributed to remarkable overall health. The research I have come across of sources of vitamin D may discuss co-factors (things the body needs to use something else) but never looks at the whole food. Complexity of a diet, maybe there is more to vitamin D rich foods than just vitamin D?
The lack of attention to traditional foods is a problem in general for health research and specifically the supplement solution this research often leads to, particularly through the food supply- putting substances in other substances where they don’t necessarily belong. (I talked about this before here, and it doesn’t seem beneficial) Maybe, just maybe, the world works the way it does for a reason and there is a good explanation for why milk doesn’t have vitamin d (human or cow). Not to mention orange juice. I think many would agree that our limited understanding of such complex processes might not lead us to the right conclusions and that we need a better point of reference for guiding what we put in our bodies than isolated scientific studies. If you feel like you need a reminder of how little we know about the body, check out the Human Microbiome Project.

I found this article interesting for pointing out the flaws in much of the research supporting increased D supplementation. They also have some useful observations of the role of money and industry in these recommendations, particularly the excitement over increased D fortification by those who produce the supplemented products and the concern that supplementation continues only in their foods so they can maintain that market edge. (A note about this article: the authors of that site have a particular understanding of the role of Vitamin D in the immune system and the relationship with pathogenic bacteria that the they suspect are responsible for chronic disease. Now, their whole theory is currently on the fringe and flies in the face of much research to date about immunity and particularly about vitamin d. But most research dealing with the role of microbes in our body is currently fringe because it is something we know so little about, and most of it flies in the face of what is currently known about such things as human development, physiology, immunity, and nutrition. But it makes sense that if we don’t understand something that makes up 90% of our cells we probably know very little about all that stuff over which that 90% has influence. Again, check out that Human Microbiome Project)

My general conclusion from looking into Vitamin D is that the problems and benefits of the hormone isn’t the hormone per se, but everything the hormone is involved in. And we know very little about all that, so what is our point of reference for understanding what the body needs beyond this limited reductionist view? The Weston A Price foundation can turn people off because the information is often self-referential and can seem too scrupulous or the recommendations too impractical. These are  fair assessments for the most part, but what I appreciate about their information is that they use traditional wisdom and foods in their whole form as a guide for what works and why. This practice doesn’t fit in with scientific method, but what if it did? What if, in addition to clinical trials, health researchers had to find out what the role of the substance they are researching was in traditional and healthy populations and then work from their on how to best utilize that substance for modern health issues. Vitamin D researchers might then see the role of the other fat soluble vitamins in balancing out the toxicity potential since they are often found together in foods. There might be better connections made with the role of fat in the diet and cholesterol in the body when looking at how the body makes and uses the hormone D. We might have avoided the low-fat craze if there had been a requirement to take into account fat in the diet of healthy people around the world.
The issue, as always, is that food as medicine in the traditional sense isn’t a very profitable enterprise. If it were, vitamin deficiencies of any kind would force us to look at what worked before the deficiency and to return to that practice. Instead of encouraging the sale of more pills, the National Institute of Health could support funding for outdoor education and workforce requirements for taking lunch breaks and walking/biking to work. Such suggestions may not seem practical, but at least we know they’ve worked for humanity thus far.

Photo Copyright. Mother and Father. 2009. HODGES & CO. all rights revealed

                          

The best of these interviews so far has been with Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdek Kouddous on Democracy Now. They tell him at the beginning that their “food rule” for him is “no sound bites” and he plays along (probably eager for the chance to elaborate really). Even if you have read his books and/or heard him talk, and he does do a lot of repeating, as I guess is necessary, this interchange is worth watching. As he does in the other interviews, he really brings together the complexity of the food culture with clear ways out of many of the tangles we’re in but he goes a bit deeper than the rest and seems a bit more forthright.

My favorite point is his mention of the feminist/labor issues around food and how processed food and classic feminism went, unfortunately, hand in hand due to the need for more income and less entrapment of women in a domestic role. I think this questions gets to the heart of our daily food life; who cooks for us, why don’t we cook ourselves, why don’t we prioritize the time and money to eat well? I really feel that addressing these questions and making changes that align with our heart-of-heart values with the answers can be really empowering, healing, and have great impact on the world.

My least favorite point is his use of the word “fat” as if there is one category and none of the members of that category have any distinction. I know he understands this because he is very current on the research on the role of fat in the diet. People generally understand that there a “good fats” and “bad fats” so he could just at least say “bad fats” but he could take it a step further and separate out whole, traditional fats from industrial oils. He does this already with meat. There is no such thing as meat as one category- there are animals that are eaten that have completely different diets and nutritional profiles even though they are technically the same animals. He explains that he eats less meat than he used to and he eats different meat than he used to (only grass fed for beef for example). I wish he would make the same distinction with fat. He mentioned that school lunches are so deplorable because it is the disposal method for surplus cheap food and because the meals have calorie minimums not maximums. He says the meals need to have less fat- well school lunches have low-fat milk, but we know that’s not really the best choice in terms of providing whole food. So schools have followed the low-fat mantra, but are still terribly unhealthy. He doesn’t really mean that they need less fat, they need less of the processed foods and chemicals that are contributing to disease and obesity in children, which is not whole milk- it is soda (which he does mention), and highly processed carbs, and industrial fats. I wouldn’t change much about what he said, and I don’t think he should bring down the ease with which he communicates by bringing this up in such a way (as I do), but it would help his message stay consistent if he would at least make a careful distinction in this regard.

                          

Increasingly we seem to learn that there is mainly only disadvantage in the heavy processing and even the fortifying of foods. The more we learn about what whole foods have to offer, the more we seem to figure out that our refined-then-”enriched” versions are weak or even detrimental in comparison. A recent study of folic acid fortification shows flaws in the thinking that a vitamin is a vitamin is a vitamin no matter what the form or context.

Whole grains and greens are rich in folate, a B vitamin which has shown to be protective against colon cancer and other bowel issues and is just generally important for overall health. Folate deficiencies also cause fetal neural tube defects and thus pregnant women are urged to take a folic acid supplement. Folic acid is the supplement form of folate, and (doctors urging aside) does not impart the same positive results for cancer risk and whole-food derive folate. In fact as a recent NY Times article outlines, folic acid enriched foods may increase cancer risk.

This particular study lucked out with an easy control group (nutritional studies are difficult because control groups are hard to maintain) for folic acid consumption because Norway do not enrich their food with it like we do here in the US (lucky for the researchers and the Norwegians too apparently)

Turns out that folic acid enriched foods, mainly grains and cereals…um eaten particularly by children, increase cancer risk. So…no advantage there at all.

(Careful readers will note that the study of B vitamin consumption was originally aimed at understanding the relationship between B vitamins and heart disease, not cancer. In the previous post, on sick ancient Egyptians, this relationship was brought up as the likely cause of ancient cardio problems as the Egyptian Elite ate refined grains and were deficient in B vitamins that keep in check an amino acid that breaks down cell walls (which cholesterol goes in to fix…) I will not be at all surprised if the findings for b vitamins supplements (versus the stuff in whole foods) fails to show an impact on heart disease, but that will not be a good enough reason to discount the relationship until they look at food in the form it should be eaten. Maybe a start in the right direction to show the relationship to cancer)

Okay, so food in its most whole form provides all the nutrition we need without the fiddling from food scientists. Lesson: Avoid food with health claims and stick to those that have no package at all. That said, there are ways to “enrich” whole foods yourself and that is by pairing them with foods that help your body absorb all the goodness. And yes, this point loops back to the point about good fat and it being important and not causing heart disease.

I recently read author Nina Planck’s Real Food, What to Eat and Why. Of all of the points she made, I think the rundown of the usefulness of good quality whole fats in the diet was the most important. So I am just going to quote her verbatim: You can keep this all in mind with any catchy “holiday health hints” or such that tell you not to eat your turkey skin or eat low-fat dairy.

Eating protein with fat makes nutritional sense, because all food, and protein in particular , requires fat for proper digestion. As we saw with “rabbit starvation, without fat in the diet, digestion fails and you starve, but not for lack of calories. What is true of meat is true of all fat-and-protein pairs. They go together. Consider, for example, two near-perfect foods: eggs and milk. Both foods are a complete nutritional package, designed for a growing organism’s exclusive nutrition, and must contain everything the body needs to assimilate the nutrients they contain. The fats in the egg yolk aid digestion of the protein in the white, and lecithin in the yolk aid metabolism of its cholesterol. The butterfat in milk facilitates protein digestion, and saturated fat in particular is required to absorb the calcium. Calcium, in turn, requires vitamins A and D to be properly assimilated, and they are found only in the butterfat. Finally vitamin A is required for production of bile salts that enable the body to digest protein. Without the butterfat, then, you don’t get the best of the protein, fat-soluble vitamins, or calcium from milk. That’s why I don’t eat, and cannot recommend, egg white omelets and skim milk. They are low-quality, incomplete foods.

In each classic pair, fats help the body assimilate, use, or convert essential nutrient.

Fat and protein
Roast chicken (with the skin)
Eggs (with the yolks)

Fat and vitamins
Vitamins A, D,E and K are fat-soluble, eat them with fat

Fat and Beta-Carotene
Buttered carrots
Collards with fatback
Spinach salad with bacon
Flank steak with arugula
Beef with broccoli

Saturated fat and Omega-3 fats
Fish with butter or cream sauce

Saturated fat and calcium
Whole milk
Yogurt, cheese, and sour cream made from whole milk.

Each new piece of research reminds me that the most we should do with food is grow it in healthy soil, and prepare it in a way that our bodies can best use it. For some things that means raw (like dairy and fruit), eaten cooked or raw with some useful fats (like most veggies and meats), or fermented (particularly cabbage and other meant-to-ferment veggies as well as grains, ie sourdough, and some legumes ie soy)

Here are some particularly delicious whole meals:

                          

Or, at least that’s the irony the media was presenting. How could a disease that is linked to modern vices of fast food, smoking, and a sedentary lifestyle be found in ancient people?

The answer is pretty clear, in that heart disease is more often described (at least by Dr. Weston Price, if not others) as a disease of civilization. Old or new, doesn’t matter.

Here might be why: Whole foods are pretty fool proof health-wise. Processed foods, while tasty, break up the pairings that the body needs to process the food effectively.  Once consumed, these products can be damaging to the whole system, but they are luckily not too easy to come by for most of the world throughout history…unless you have slaves to mill you lots of white flour, or live in modern America with cheap oil and low wage jobs.

This is to say that heart disease might be better characterized as a disease of cheap labor.

For some reason many of the reports I read last night suggested that we don’t know a lot about what Egyptians ate, though that doesn’t seem to be true as they kept great account of daily life through writings and art. We know, for example, that servants ground flour, the more refined the better for the upper-classes. None of the coverage thus far has mentioned this fact, they seem to just put out there that we know Egyptians ate beef, goose, and lamb, all, they point out, fatty foods. I hate to think this will be used as more fodder against healthy traditional fats, when refined carbohydrates clearly had a large role to play in the diets of these deceased elites. (I also read that they fed the chaff and bran from the wheat to livestock, so they may have also suffered the consequences of grain-fed beef)

(Why they point first to fats, when Egyptians arguably invented bread, is beyond me, but this shows the bias against fats in discussions of health. Refined grain has been linked to heart disease because it lacks Vitamin B which help to regulate a certain amino acid(homocysteine).  It is hypothesized  that when this amino acid (homocysteine) is out of whack, it can break down cell walls…which cholesterol then comes in to fix…thus we blame the firefighter for the fire. (from Real Food: What to Eat and Why, By Nina Planck) This is just one of the many ideas about why we have heart disease)

When you have to grow/raise/process/cook all your own food, there isn’t really time to make things fancy, or overly refined. To eat like a peasant doesn’t necessarily mean to be undernourished with low-quality food (although it certainly has meant that for some throughout history) I see eating like a peasant to instead be the antithesis of eating like a king- depending on others, who get too little pay, to process food to a point that it is too rich or refined to eat everyday. Kings can get away with it only to a point when it catches up with them.

Maybe its our democratic foundations, but the modern American food system has made it possible for all our people to eat like kings, relying on underpaid workers to provide for refined palates. It goes without saying that this is catching up with us as well.

One of the co-authors of the study speculated “perhaps atherosclerosis is part of being human.” This is a sad conclusion since plenty of groups throughout history have thrived with an absence of chronic disease. They avoided processed food and the social/environmental/health consequences that go along with it.

I was happy to see that I was not alone in my reaction: see some kindred comments here.

                          

The first was a goodbye to Nancy’s whole milk yogurt. (sigh) I love Ken Kesey, I love Oregon, I love their containers. What I don’t love   is explained in the letter below that I sent through their website. I’ll let you know if I get a response.

Unless they can prove some careful way of preparing their powdered milk I will stick to Straus, which uses just whole milk and cultures.

Dear Nancy’s,

I am confused about discrepancy between the statements on your whole-milk products and your website which denounce the use of thickeners and your ingredient list which has non-fat milk powder as an additional ingredient to whole milk and cultures.

After years of eating your yogurt I have now switched to Straus Yogurt, who has nothing in their whole milk yogurt but whole milk. I eat whole-fat products because we need the fat to absorb the calcium and other nutrients and because low-fat products are processed foods which I stay away from. A main ingredient of low-fat foods I am interested in avoiding is powdered milk, used often to add body and flavor to a depleted product. Milk should not be subject to high heat as it damages the fats. As explained by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food “powered milk contains oxidized cholesterol, which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol.”

So, why on earth do you add powdered milk to your whole milk products? And even more confounding, why do you say in multiple places that you only use “pure milk” or that “Because we take the extra time to fully culture our products, they are naturally thick and creamy. We never add ingredients that are meant to stabilise or thicken dairy products.” While non-fat milk powder isn’t artificial, it is still a processed food that hardly qualifies as pure. You may be following the letter of your statements but not the spirit.

I have shared the switch to Straus yogurt on my food blog, www.mindtomouth.org, and would welcome your comments if you care to explain the reason that you use non-fat milk powder and whether or not you have an explanation as why its use is consistent with your statements about not adding thickeners and only using pure milk.

Regards,

Sage

Okay, the second one is tricky, and honestly I don’t feel like I’ve gotten enough good information to make a really informed decision about the use of this product. But I feel like the lack of consistent information is what has made me decide to just avoid it.

I was attracted to agave because it is cheaper than maple syrup and, honestly, I was being well-marketed to. Lots of natural processed foods had agave on the label and that made them easier to buy (like ketchup or cookies). I was eating it on waffles and yogurt (Nancy’s whole milk at that point…).

The Weston A Price foundation recently published a piece about agave in their journal that explained agave’s high fructose levels as just as detrimental to the body as the High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both were explained as subject to industrial processing and should be avoided. You can see that report here (its a pdf).

But I don’t like to just follow WAPF blindly, and after looking into the brand I bought (Madhava) it seemed like there might be two different products, the syrup from the Blue Agave, same as tequila, and the syrup from the Salmiana agave, and two different processing methods, Blue agave using heat and possibly chemicals to extract the syrup and the Salmiana syrup is apparently processed using ” gentle enzymatic action”.

So the controversy actually gets a bit weird and comes down to two or three people with known and unknown special interests. There is not a lot of neutral information about agave and quotes from various sources (health blogs etc) about its production seem too come back to the same two sources (see articles below). The biggest problem I couldn’t solve is whether or not agave contains starch. That seems like a pretty straight forward inquiry.

Natural News published two articles that cover the question of the quality and healthfulness of the syrup (everyone agrees that it is not a traditional sweetener as the process for extraction was developed in the 90’s, and I think this is ultimately why WAPF is opposed).

One, the anti-agave side, is written by Rami Nagel and based on information largely from this guy Russ Bianchi (who has some company, adept solution inc. that has no website…). Nagel was the co-author on the WAPF article which is also dependent on a good deal of information about  agave processing from Bianchi. (It was a bit frustrating to see a lack of more rigorous fact-finding on the part of WAPF who I depend on for reliable information, just goes to show to always check out multiple sources).

The other article is a rebuttal to Nagel’s piece written by the owner of Madhava. He seems to know Bianchi personally and have some negative feelings about the problems Bianchi’s opinions about agave has caused to the industry. His information is convincing, but vague- things like “enzymatic processes” are not explained in a functional way, so it leads me to feel there is more marketing involved than education.

At this point the whole thing became too much. I tried to parse out whether or not what I had been dripping on waffles was really going to hurt me, which seemed to come down how bad high level of fructose are for you, which seemed to come down to starch. Again, this could not be verified as there was too much conflicting information. The most consistent info did seem to come down in favor of agave, particularly on the glycemic index measure (which I think is misleading because it only looks at glucose, not fructose). I decided that just on the basis of it being a new process and a weird three-guy controversy I was just going to avoid it. (Not to mention the politics involved, and use of indigenous land and labor…)

Ultimately, I decided to put my mouth in charge and when I really really tasted the agave it just seemed a bit too intense. So raw honey and maple syrup it is. There is a positive side to these good sweeteners being expensive- forced moderation. I think that the taste-test is the ultimate lesson because many foods, not just agave, are mired in controversy (traditional fats for one) and it just doesn’t seem worth precious time to get caught up in the back and forth on the ever un-verifiable internet. I know that Straus tastes better than Nancy’s and Agave tastes processed and super sweet.

I think having good information about a product provides us with a much needed limit in choice when it comes to packaged food, but just a quick glance at the back of a product is revealing- if you need to research it, it is probably best avoided.