Category Archives: General

General information and musings

Sprouting Potential: Seeds and Beans and Grains, Oh My

This month’s e-newsletter from my local health food store, Nature’s Fare Markets, included an excerpt on how to easily sprout beans and grains. As this is something I’m hoping to do more of (especially if it’s as easy as they say), I thought I’d share the tips with you…

“Sprouting at home is an easy and cost-effective way to add enzymatically-active, highly alkalizing food to your daily routine. What should you sprout?

  • Amaranth
  • Buckwheat
  • Beans (all kinds)
  • Chickpeas
  • Lentils
  • Quinoa
  • Sunflower seeds (and more!)

How to Sprout in 10 Easy Steps

You can buy sprouting kits in most health food stores, but it’s just as easy to sprout at home using three readily-available household objects: a jar, cheesecloth and a rubber band. Here are the ten steps to sprouting:

  1. Rinse the seeds you intend to sprout well and pour into the jar (fill to 1/4 mark)
  2. Fill the jar at least 3/4 full of water
  3. Soak overnight at room temperature
  4. Pour out the water and seeds and rinse with fresh water
  5. Return the seeds to the jar
  6. Cover the jar with cheesecloth and secure the cloth with the rubber band
  7. Briefly turn the jar upside down to drain the remaining water
  8. Sprouts will begin to appear within 24 hours (give or take)
  9. Make sure the sprouts stay moist so they sprout fully by rinsing and draining them (as in step #7)
  10. Rinse your sprouts before eating.

Sprouts can be stored in the fridge uncovered for up to one week. Happy sprouting!

Credit: Excerpt from The Thrive Diet / Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide by Brendan Brazier

The Ripple Effect of Genetically Modified Foods

You’ve heard that genetically modified food isn’t good, but do you understand how it impacts you and the ones you love? If you’re feeling sick, there’s a good chance it may be your food.

Here’s a primer based on cold, hard facts…

Video from KarmaTube

“A (formerly) twinkie-lovin Texan and successful Wall Street analyst shares the story of one morning’s family breakfast that changed the course of her life, as well as (she hopes) the course of the American food industry. Realizing that her child was allergic to what she had considered safe foods, Robyn O’Brien put her analytical and research skills to work and discovered far more than she’d wanted to about what’s really in the foods we feed our families. This video will have even the hardened skeptics pondering whether their food habits need some tweaking.”

100% Natural and Sustainable

Construction is an industry with a lot of waste and environmentally negligent practices embedded within it (see Dan Phillips’s TED Talk).

Here, on the other hand, is a 100% natural and sustainable solution to a tricky problem in a remote part of the world. It’s pretty hard to argue with the brilliance of this solution.

Video from KarmaTube

Vegetable Oils – Friend or Foe?

I learned a bit about the value of quality fats in a brief nutrition course I took with Inspire Health last year. Knowing how critical fats are to our effective bodily and mental function, I’m a lot more careful about the kinds I put in my mouth these days. Here’s an informative article on that very subject that landed in my inbox the other day from Vreni Gurd at Wellness Tips:

Vegetable Oils – Friend or Foe?

The food guide tells us to cook with vegetable oils, yet after trans fats, they are the worst choice we can make.

Plant oils such as canola oil, safflower oil, corn oil, soy oil etc. are very reactive to oxygen, and go rancid when heated even at low temperatures. Once oxidized, these fats cause free radical damage in our bodies, which has been linked to cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

According to the animal research of Dr. Kenneth Carroll, “…the more polyunsaturated fats were in the diet, the more they were cancer promoting; and the more saturated fats were, the more they were cancer reducing…” Yet we are told by such organizations as the American Heart Association that these polyunsaturated oils are the healthy oils to eat and cook with.

In actual fact, we were only meant to consume vegetable oils by eating the nuts and seeds that they come in; the nuts and seeds also contain the antioxidants that prevent the oxidization of the fats.

Vegetable oils are refined with solvents and heat, making them toxic and rancid. Deodorizing compounds are added to cover up the smell, and voila – they will stay on the store shelf for months looking deceptively beautiful.

Even in their unrefined form, these polyunsaturated oils cannot be recommended even in salad dressings, as they are sensitive to light. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils are also most frequently turned into trans-fats, so pretty much any time you see any vegetable oils listed on an ingredient list in a packaged food or a recipe, you would be doing yourself a huge favour in the long run by not eating it.

The best fats for cooking are organic pasture-fed raw butter or ghee, organic virgin coconut oil, organic, pasture-fed beef tallow, and unrefined organic olive oil (low to medium temperatures only).

Sources:
Enig, Mary; Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer For Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol Bethesda Press, Silver Spring, MD, 2003.

Fallon, Sally and Enig, Mary; Nourishing Traditions, Revised 2nd Edition NewTrends Publishing Inc., Washington, D.C., 2001

Copyright 2005/2011 Vreni Gurd
Reprinted with Permission

The Good Old Days

Next time you’re tempted to reminisce on how perfect the good ol’ days were, remember this: it was once commonly believed that DDT is good for everyone.

A friend sent me a link to an old advert for DDT:

“The great expectations held for DDT have been realized. During 1946, exhaustive scientific tests have shown that, when properly used, DDT kills a host of destructive insect pests, and is a benefactor of all humanity.”

 

(Source: LiveJournal.com/Vintage_Ads)

Hmmm, what a great reminder that magic bullets are best evaluated with long term results in mind.

Read the entire ad (note a link at the bottom to the original black & white ad with the correct chemical company name).

How to Escape Global Food

Hey readers, LocalDelicious.com was mentioned in the Globe and Mail today! Way of the Locavore: Four Ways to Escape Global Food by Wency Leung offers ideas on how to go about local sourcing your food.

LocalDelicious.com was featured under Lesson 2: Start Small:

If you were to analyze the lifecycle of every grocery item you bought, you’d be paralyzed whenever you went shopping, says Liz Gaige, the Vancouver resident behind the website LocalDelicious.com.

“You don’t have to change your whole diet,” she says. “But if you just shifted 5 per cent of your grocery budget into eating more locally, eating more healthfully and … thinking about where your stuff’s coming from, it has this huge impact.”

Ms. Gaige says she’s always had an interest in “the artisan approach to stuff,” and has been buying her food at farmers markets long before it was popular to do so. She believes in supporting small, local businesses as a way of strengthening the local economy and building community ties.

But it doesn’t matter what your motivations are for dropping out, she says; every step has greater consequences. If you start buying organic meat, for instance, simply because you want a better-tasting option, that decision may also be better for the environment and more humane, she says. And once you start examining one aspect of your food, it becomes natural to scrutinize other parts of your diet. For example, if you consider buying organic, free-range eggs, you may soon find yourself buying organic, free-range chicken and other meats too.

“I never expected to be like a tree-hugger, but I kind of am just because of these small, incremental steps that I take,” Ms. Gaige says, noting that she grows some vegetables in her yard, and buys non-medicated meat and organic produce.

“I’m not going to agonize and spend my life freaking out about every food decision, but it’s about, on a greater consciousness, ‘Okay, what am I trying to accomplish here?’ ”

The online version is slightly expanded from the print version, so if you only read the newspaper you’ll miss some of the juicy parts. Check out the full article.

Look at the Label Campaign

There are many ways to support an Eat Local habit.

If you really want to go crazy, you can try a zero mile diet, a backyard garden. Or in some cases, the two block diet or the 5 ½ block diet (my choice, since that’s how far my community garden plot is).

More likely — and a lot less work — feeding your Eat Local addiction could be buying produce or preserves at a farmers market or craft fair. It might be supporting a local food retailer or buying via a CSA program (community supported agriculture) or food co-op.

Or even more simply, it could be as effortless as checking the label at the supermarket, and choosing products with a tell-tale red, Made in Canada maple leaf on the package.

Announcing the Look at the Label Campaign

Really, it’s not a big deal. You don’t have to sign a placard or worse, carry a placard. To be part of the Look at the Label Campaign, you just have to, well…look at the label. Find out how far your food has traveled to reach you, and choose options that are produced nearer to home. While you’re at it, you can look for additional benefits.

  • Look at the labels in the produce section to find out where your fruit and veggies come from, then choose the ones from closest by and grown with the best farming practices. Choosing items that are currently in season will help support your local farmers year round.
  • Read the labels in the bakery to find out which goods were made locally and which were shipped a great distance. If they’ve come a long way and have a long shelf life they’ll have had to be pumped full of preservatives. Real food, the kind with nutritional value, will rot. Pseudo food, does not.
  • Examine the labels in the sauces and canned goods aisles. I’ll bet you can find the lots of local sources for your favourite flavours amidst the dizzying array of options.
  • Check out the labels in the coffee and tea aisles. I can’t find coffee that’s grown nearby, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving it up! I can, however, choose locally roasted and/or fair trade beans that give farmers a living wage.
  • Definitely look at the label in the meat department. Nearby sources are good, organic and grain fed are even better. Meat and poultry are prime sources of secondhand pesticides, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Face it, eventually, we eat what they’ve eaten.
  • Be sure to check the label of eggs and dairy products both to ensure the animals have been raised humanely, and to be sure you know what you’re eating. For example, “frozen dessert” instead of “ice cream” on a label is code for “made with petroleum by-products,” which is just gross.

Michael Pollan said it best when he described his rules for buying food. If the ingredients are not something you would find in your grandmother’s pantry, don’t put it in your mouth.