fermented foods and good bacteria

Looks like the mainstream is coming around to the fact that microorganisms are not only all around us but also all over our insides, and that that's not necessarily a bad thing (see Michael Pollan's recent article).  As a matter-of-fact, we are realizing now that bacteria are necessary to our gut health and a strong immune system.  So, antibacterial soaps and wipes and sprays weaken our immune systems because the lack of bacteria oversensitizes the body and removes the chance to interact with our environment; and doctors are becoming much more cautious in prescribing antibiotics for human consumption (now we just need the meat industry to come on board and stop feeding the animals preventative antibiotics, trace elements of which remain in  the meat, and which also end up in the water cycle, so ultimately this practice bites us in the behind).  The few times I was treated with antibiotics as a child our pediatrician stressed the importance of eating yogurt every day to replenish the gut bacteria destroyed by the antibiotics.  You may have read of the newest treatment for intestinal inflammations:  fecal bacteriotherapy, the deliberate injection of fecal bacteria from a healthy person to replenish a sick person's gut bacteria.

Turns out that most cultures have traditions of fermenting foods, foods that "turn" and develop lactobacteria, and when eaten regularly, keep replenishing our gut fauna naturally, foods and drinks such as yogurt and kefir, cheese, Sauerkraut and Kimchi, pickled vegetables (not made with vinegar but naturally fermented), beer and wine, cured sausage, sourdough bread and so on.  Consult Sally Fallons' anti establishment cookbook Nourishing Traditions on really easy recipes for fermented vegetables, as well as the new fermented food bible The Art of Fermentation from Sandor Ellix Katz.

Also refer to my recent post on loving your germs for a different facet of the same issue, and keep eating (raw milk!) cheeses, cultured butter, and all those other delicious fermented foods.

food, glorious food

Food is one of my favorite subjects because I grew up in food cultures.  For me food counts as "entertainment," as going to a concert or the movies might for someone else.  While foodies know that food is more than fuel, there is also more to food than the surprise of a clever new taste combination or the goodness of a sunripened peach in August.  Food provides us with energy in more ways than the obvious.  For one, there is the life energy we ingest with our food.  It is most vibrant in freshly plucked and raw foods, and least in processed foods because they are so far removed from their origins as something that actually grew in the ground somewhere sometime.  And with meats a consideration is how the animal was raised and treated, what it ate, and how it found its end.  This all finds its energetic way into our meal.

On the other hand,  food feeds the soul when enjoyed in a harmonious atmosphere and in company.  That kind of food experience literally nourishes us spiritually.  And it sure doesn't have to be fancy to be meaningful.  It can be a picnic, it can be an ethnic festivity, it can be a potluck, or an outdoor meal.  It's more about the overall experience, what goes with it - friends, the setting, the conversation.

Bon Appétit!  Guten Appetit!  Buon Appetito!

the meat quandary - last installment

That meat eating has become a potential ethical dilemma indicates a change in our awareness.  As we can see from the Inuit (who eat mostly fish protein) or the Masaai (who subsist mostly on the meat, milk and blood of the cattle they raise) on the one hand, and the Hindus, most of who have been vegetarian for a few millenia, there is a cultural context to any diet that arose in no small part from the geographical surroundings and inherent food potentials. As we have been struggling with the health implications of the big-ag industrial diet that makes for-profit "products," not food, (remember, they don't make this stuff for your benefit, but for theirs: $), and which are made out of geographical context altogether, we have wrestled with the "diet of the day" out of confusion.  The Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Paleo Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, and what not, have all been hailed as an epiphany at one point or another.

In my view diet has to be considered not only within an ethnico-cultural-geographical context, but also in the context of consciousness evolution.  What I mean by that is that a diet reflects our current understanding of things, our beliefs, our culture, our state-of-affairs.

I believe that it is perfectly ok to eat honey and eggs and some meat and some fish If we live in a context of respect and mutual benefit for all. Check out Sally Fallon's "Nourishing Traditions" for a well researched reversal on some of our common food myths.   Most important is to eat real food - the rest is up to your personal convictions, state of mind and stomach (listen to your body; when you exit a fast food place or a steakhouse and feel heavy and stuffed and as if you couldn't eat anything for the next 24 hours, maybe that food wasn't so beneficial for you).  Food should energize you, physically and spiritually.

Your views and diet evolve as you become better informed, mine continually do.  And if you believe from the bottom of your heart that a candy bar is really really good for your body  (not just to fulfill an emotional need), then it will be.

Please see installments 1. and 2. for the complete picture on the meat quandary.

the meat quandary - in 2 more installments

2. on eating produce Will Tuttle in his World Peace Diet, and the China Study, among many, are fervently advocating vegetarian and even vegan diets.  The two main arguments are that the industrial meat industry's carbon foot print, in combination with continually increasing demand for animal protein due to a still growing (and ever more affluent) world population, is disastrous to our environmental health (which it is), and that  meat eating contributes to, or causes, cancer and other civilization diseases (which it only does under certain conditions, some of which I mentioned in my last post).

Yet, the fact that the vegetarian/vegan movement is becoming so prominent points to a shift in awareness (of the abominable industrial meat industry, its contribution to global warming, and of the unhealthiness of industrial meat and cornfed beef).  Michael Pollan's famous advice to  "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" is good advice for most of us, indeed.

On another vegetably note, the basis for our existence is light, water and soil.  Produce is closer to light energy than meat is.  As we all know, plants grow through direct conversion of sunlight to energy.  When we eat plants we take in sun energy just one step removed.  When we consume meat, we are one step further removed from that light energy because we eat the animal that fed on plants that fed on sunlight.  And incidentally, humans don't usually eat predator meat because that is yet one step further removed from sun energy than meat from vegan animals.

However, as long as we keep subjecting our crops and soil to synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides (and killing the bees along with the birds in the process), and monoculturing our produce crops, and not demanding GMO labeling (which has already happened in Europe, Japan, Russia and many other industrialized countries), we are not achieving that much with vegetarianism/veganism.  We'll keep subjecting farm workers to the health dangers of working in chemically laced fields, big-ag will keep doing its thing with produce, Monsanto & Co. are still on the loose, and we are still ingesting mineral poor and poison sprayed food grown in depleted soil that had to be artificially enriched.  So, going vegetably must mean going organic/sustainable/biodynamic to have meaningful impact on body and environment.

to be continued...

the meat quandary - in 3 installments

1. on eating meat Humans have been eating protein forever, some ethnicities more of it, some less of it, depending on geographical circumstances.   Sustainable farming and animal husbandry have been practiced in conjunction since we humans became sedentary, using the animal manure as fertilizer for the crops, feeding the animals leftovers and scraps, and eating some (not lots!!) of them, all in a pretty balanced cycle.

The picture only became horrific in the last 50 years or so when we began to produce (!!) meat.  The plight of the animals in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), modern breeding aberrations, the realities of modern abattoirs and subsequent meat processing practices (documented ad nauseam (literally) in Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals) are nightmarish. One would not want to eat such meat!

The other problem is that the percentage of meat in our diet has reached addictive proportions with the decrease in meat prices, something that is not good for our body either (unless you were Inuit or Maasai, and then you wouldn't eat industrially produced meat).

Lastly, from an evolutionary perspective, increased meat consumption has been linked to increased brain growth (although I am thinking that our brains may not have grown in proportion with the increased meat consumption of the past 50 years, otherwise we might not be where we are at environmentally).

Dirt Magazine has a brief presentation on meat vs. produce in their May-June issue (article not yet online).  However, the two opinions are too simplified.  So please reserve judgement until you have read all 3 installments.

to be continued...

sacred agriculture

Agriculture is only about 10,000 years old and it has shaped today’s cultures fundamentally.  Agriculture enabled population growth and the population explosion of the past 50 years.  Agriculture is also what has brought forth culture as we understand it; it is specifically agriculture that enabled the development of the first great cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Agriculture was a new concept then, as we moved from a nomadic lifestyle and collecting our food through hunting and gathering, to settling down and harvesting food from the same surrounding area year-in and year-out.  The hunter-gatherer lifestyle permits nature to renew itself naturally, while agriculture, if not practiced wisely and in tune with nature, depletes the soil – and then what?

Agriculture is the unification of nature and man.  We exhibit our current disconnection from nature through the type of agriculture we have created – soil-depleting monocultures that require outside chemical input to produce food at the expense of environmental and human health.  However, the significant growth of the organic (funny -  until about 150 years ago all agriculture was organic), sustainable (better than organic), and  biodynamic (the best) agricultural movements demonstrates an emerging awareness of the deep connection between ourselves, nature and our food supply.  We exist as part of nature, not apart from nature, and strictly on the basis of light and water.  Without nature we do not exist. Sacred agriculture!

yum - raw milk

Our cats love the cream from the top of the milk.  Not only cats digest raw milk, which has neither been pasteurized nor homogenized, better than the processed version.  Many people, who are supposedly lactose intolerant, also have an easier time digesting milk the way nature made it.  The health benefits of raw milk versus its processed compromised poor cousin are tremendous.  Today was our milk pick-up day.  We take turns with a few other local families, coop style, picking raw milk directly up from the (currently) only dairy farm in Orange County approved to sell raw milk by the Department of Health.  So we actually get to meet the cows that provide us with our milk.

Personally, I love the cream on top even more than the milk.  On the photo you can see how much cream comes with a ½ gallon of milk, more than a cup.  I use it for making ice cream, deglazing, in quiche, and as a treat for our cats.

Yum - raw milk!

why eat organic?

The stale and narrow premise that what distinguishes organic from non-organic foods is simply their nutritional content is on the table again in today’s NY Times article by Kenneth Chang about a new megastudy to that effect.  But, as Sonya Lunder,a senior analyst with  the Environmental Working Group stresses, many who buy organic foods are aware of the complexity of issues beyond mere nutritional aspect. The nutrition debate leaves, as in the past, a whole host of other reasons why to buy organics off the table.  Besides ingesting less residual toxins from pesticides buying organic groceries, produce, meat and fish means choosing the health of the environment and biodiversity over sprayed monocultured fields, it means voting for the health of the farmworkers so they don’t get exposed to toxic pesticides and herbicides, in the case of meat and fish it means choosing not to ingest antibiotics and surface bacteria (another relevant article in today's paper), it also means voting against genetically modified plants and animals, and it means choosing the more humane tending to, raising and slaughtering of animals for meat.  Lastly, if buying from a nearby farm, choosing organic is linked to choosing local over global.

So, buying organics is a vote for a multitude of betterments, not simply a choice for more nutritious food.

perspective and pizza

There is nothing like a vacation to reset thoughts and priorities.  We need the perspective of comparison to differentiate things and set them in proper light. For one I understood during our recent vacation in Italy why the Italians think American pizza is hard to digest (something I read somewhere recently).  In the little  Tuscan village  of Radicofani in a humble outdoor lunch trattoria we had the thinnest possible pizza, like a sheet of crumbling paper, simply covered with some choice but rather scant toppings,  a few shreds of prosciutto,  some arugula, scattered pecorino shavings (no parmesan here), perhaps on a thin smear of tomtoey sauce.  Nothing like that thick yeasty crust we are used to with gobs of toppings (kitchen sink pizza, anyone?) and a gooey and heavy layer of cheese on top.

bulk produce shopping

My shopping logistics have changed drastically over the past 10+ years since I have shopped for more and more organics.  In order to get the best variety and price on produce I order every 4 weeks from Albert's Organics  through our food coop, through which I also get bulk groceries.  Getting bulk produce in huge loads all at once takes some getting used to. 

When my son was a toddler I belonged to a biodynamic working CSA.  When I’d return from my once-a-week work and harvesting sessions loaded with the freshest and ripest vegetables right from the field I got used to processing large amounts of vegetables since it was impossible to eat it all right away.  And I don’t mean canning (haven’t learned that yet), but cooking some, keeping some in the fridge, keeping some in the cool basement, and blanching and freezing some more. 

I keep the fruit in large bowls around the house, which looks so beautiful and abundant.  The fruit lasts about two weeks, bananas keep well and ripen slowly, but sometimes we end up having to sauté them slowly in butter (with a pinch of curry) for dessert (very good with vanilla ice cream, too), sometimes I make banana bread and muffins, and in a real pinch I'll freeze them (works just fine for muffins).  Some of the pears I roast in the oven, brushed with olive oil, salted and peppered (wonderful with blue cheese and some walnuts for dessert, or sliced on arugula salad (with goat cheese and honey), or simply eaten as a snack.  Apples keep, and if they start to go they get juiced with carrots.  The peaches are trickier because they ripen, and potentially go bad,  all at once – so I am envisioning peach jam, ½ organic sugar, ½  peaches by weight, slowly cooked on the stove top until reduced by ??? (I forgot, maybe by 1/3).  Since I am no canning expert,  I simply freeze the few jars (just finished the rest of some plum butter from last August).  Tuesday I got many pounds of plum tomatoes and decided to  make a quick sauce (onions, garlic, tomatoes, bay leaf, honey, balsamic vinegar) slowly simmered for an hour or so, then pureed, and voilà – several jars of sauce, which I froze (good for making homemade pizza or calzones, pasta of course, English muffin pizzas…).