Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Review #2

Welcome back to the second part of my review Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Interesting vegetable information:

* yellow/orange/red vegetables contain carotenoids which protect against cancer.

* green/yellow plants contain phytosterols which block cholesterol absorption and inhibit tumor growth.

* blue/purple fruits contain phenols which are age defying anti-oxidants.

Some of that is not new information to me but when I correlated it with the recent information I found about the difference in levels of nutrients in organic vs conventionally grown fruits and vegetables, I can't help but think that it is really important to eat organic. Sure you can pop vitamins, but wouldn't a steady course of natural, alive nutrients be better?

According to the book, thousands of phytochemicals have not been studied or named yet. They have so many varied roles which are fine tuned fuel for our bodies. God is awesome isn't He? He created things perfectly. We messed that up in so many ways. A head of broccoli contains more than 1000 phytochemicals.

The follow is helpful in knowing what is in season when:

1. Leaves - spinach, kale, lettuce and chard (April/May)

2. Heads of leaves/flower heads - cabbage, romaine, broccoli, cauliflower (May/June)

3. tender young fruit set - snow peas, baby squash, cucumber (June)

4. green beans, green peppers, sm tomatoes (July)

5. mature, colorfully ripened fruit - beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers (late July/August)

6. large hard shelled fruit with developed seeds inside - cantaloupes, honeydew, watermelon, pumpkins, winter squash (August- September)

7. root crops


This fits under the WHAT? category: We export 1.1 million tons of potatoes each year. We import 1.4 million tons of potatoes each year.

Transporting 1 calorie of perishable fresh fruit from California to New York takes 87 calories worth of fuel.

I don't want to go off the deep end and be reactionary, but the statistics are a bit alarming and I am surprised that I never really gave a lot of thought to my food getting to my table before. As Christians I think we have some responsibility to be good stewards of what we have. And I think that applies both to what goes into the body God gave us and to the resources like oil that we are using from this earth.

In recent years, I think what has been alarming to me is meat. First, we have noticed that regular hamburger puchased from the store has very little flavor, no matter what the fat content. We were really surprised to find a big difference in our grass fed beef! We have had the same experience with our chicken.

Having worked in pediatrics during the 1990s when there was the big ecoli break out after eating Jack in the Box hamburgers I have been very cautious with meats in general, raw meats in particular. One of the patients at our clinic died after eating at the Jack in the Box down the road from my house. It is a horrible way to die. And he wasn't the only one. My step Mom loves to eat raw hamburger, she has done it all her life, though now that she is in a nursing home, I doubt that she has been allowed to continue. A lot of people think it is ridiculous, stating "I've eaten rare meat all my life." But people don't realize what a difference there is in what is in our grocery store now compared to even twenty years ago.

Kingsolver touched on that in her book. Animals who are raised for the market are generally raised at CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). Animals are packed in tightly standing in their own excrement and some never see the light of day or breathe fresh air. Okay, I am not a "tree hugger" and I'm not vegetarian, but it makes me sick to think of what happens to these animals. Besides the poor treatment of the animals and crowding, there is increased pollution from the excrement. CAFO animals create 16x the fecal content of people each year, waste that needs to be dealt with. Whereas, pasture fed animals distribute their waste over the land, adding nutrients back into the soil, building it back up. The third adverse effect is that because of the crowding, the animals are stressed, weak and sickly and so they are fed with antibiotics. There was a time when no farmer worth his salt would have butchered sick animals for food. Today about 75% of antibiotics used in the United States are used for CAFO animals. That is a huge amount. That leaves 25% to be distributed between domestic animals, small farms and people. Still with this high usage, testing shows that 70% of supermarket chicken has campylobacter or salmonella. The high use of antibiotics is just producing antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

And she didn't even cover the usage of hormones in meat production animals! This is what initially started our natural meat purchasing because we have two young daughters and a son that we are concerned about. Children are entering puberty sooner and sooner. In my parents' generation it would not be unusual for a girl to begin menstruating as late as 14-16 years of age. In my children's generation it is not entirely unusual to begin at 7 or 8! Isn't there something wrong with that?

I know that most of you, if you have even read this far, might be tuning out about now. It used to be that information like this was shared by people who lived in school busses with many other people! lol But, I think now that we have been sleeping on the job and a great number of things have been happening which directly effect our food, our health, our children's futures. I am still absorbing some of this information. I do live in the real world. I do know how difficult some of these changes are to impliment and how unpractical they seem. But they are important. There isn't a single one of us, when given the chance would say, "Here Johnny, it's time for your cancer inducing chemicals, come to the kitchen!"

So, in part three, I want to discuss ways that we can implement this knowledge into our daily life.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Review

As I wrote in a couple of my Wellness Wednesday posts on my Stitches of Grace blog, I have been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver and her husband Steven L. Hopp and daughter Camille Kingsolver. As the cover flap describes it, it is part memoir and part journalistic investigation. Interspersed are recipes and seasonal menus that the reader might find helpful in their own efforts. If you would like to read more from their perspective, I recommend visiting their website Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which contains the recipes from the book along with other resources in local eating and sustainable food. Some of the resources from the book I have provided in my links sections at the left. This is still a work in progress, so if you find anything inappropriate or not working correctly, please let me know.

First, I must say that the information really is NOT new in her book. Much of what she wrote, my Grandmother shared with me in the 1970s. There is up to date information on genetically modified food and seeds as well as how commodity crops have damaged our food supply, our health and even potentially the economies of poorer nations that buy our excess. If you are already aware of the food and seed situation, organic gardening and sustainable living, this book will probably be redundant. Personally, I think I would have enjoyed it more if she had shared more memoir than food culture evangelism. However, I can understand her passion about this topic after working hard at it for a year and certainly lending her "celebrity" status as an author to this cause couldn't hurt. Her ideas are quite liberal and she has a Masters Degree in evolutionary biology, but that is only mentioned briefly in reference mainly to animal and plant health selection. It really does not interfere with the whole concept of the book.

With that introduction, or warning, I would like to proceed with some gleanings from the book.

* This generation of American children is the first generation to have a shorter life span than their parents.

* The Government promotes increasing fruit and vegetable consumption, but continues to subsidize commodity crops and not fruit and vegetable farmers. In fact, the Farm Bill, really "kills" the small farmers.

* After WWII, there was an excess of ammonium nitrate from explosives. This was made into fertilizers after discovering how it made the crops grow.

* Because of this, commodity crops increased after WWII. A commodity farmer, generally growing corn and soybean, needs large acreage to run at full force in order to make their efforts profitable because they make a miniscule amount per acre, compared to small farmers.

* Commodity farming produced excess. This excess had to be put to use somehow, since the government was paying for it. (I do not think this was an evil plan as some do. I think it was the consequences off poor planning and foresight as well as incomplete knowledge of how altering Creation would effect us.) A secondary industry developed, producing items such as High Fructose Corn Syrup, Soy oil used in "everything" and feeding corn to cattle to fatten them (this is unnatural for them and they would not do this on their own). It fattens cows and it is fattening us too!

* $10 Billion is spent on advertising foods to kids every year!

* Food travels an average of 1500 miles to reach us. This uses a lot of petroleum fuel.

* Vegetables lose flavor and nutrition because of transport.

* If every US citizen ate one meal (any meal) each week composed only of locally and organically grown meats and produce, it would reduce our country's oil consumption by 1.1 barrels a week! I found this astonishing!

* The main barrier between ourselves and local food culture is attitude, not price.

* While we are not the only country to each processed foods and foods from all over the world, primarily other countries eat what is local to them. The French eat French food, the Italians eat Italian etc.

* When we eat food only when it is in season, we eat it at its best taste and nutritional value.

* Most of us no longer know when certain items are in season because most thing are available in the supermarket year round. But if compared a food in its season to one grown out of season in a hot house, you will likely taste a huge difference. Just think how great your home grown tomatoes taste!

* Fruits and Vegetables are now bred to be indestructibe in transport, not to have the best taste. Heirloom varieties of produce are ones that Grandma and Grandpa grew in their garden and that neighbors used to share seeds with neighbors. (Soon I will have some heirloom links up as I want to explore this further!)

* Humans have historically eaten some 80,000 plant species but now 75% of all human food comes from 8 species and this is quickly narrowing down to three genetically modified species: Corn, Soy and Canola.

* Plants are now viewed as patentable properties, not God given gifts.

* 6 companies - Monsanto, Syngenta, Du Pon, Mitsui, Avanti and Dow, now control 98% of the world's (not just US) seed supply. (Is anyone else concerned about many of these being HUGE chemical companies?!)

* Plants are genetically modified to resist Roundup so that they can spray the crop and it will survive but the weeds will die. (Have you read the warnings on a bottle of Roundup lately? Did you know that you are eating it with your food? I didn't!)

* Monsanto owns the patent on this genetically modified seed. Surprise! It also owns the patent on Roundup.

* The Government does not require genetically modified food to be labeled as such, so unless you are purchasing food that is from a known source or marketed as being non-modified, you are eating genetically modified foods every day.

* Traditional farmers raised many crops of both animals and plants because crop failure was inevitable. Modern farming places all its eggs in one basket, thus there is an increased need to control the outcome, preventing tragedies like the Irish Potato Famine.


This is the end of part one. I will continue in part two. I am sorry to break this up, however, it is important to spend some time off the computer each day! lol In addition to giving further insights from the book, I would like to discuss practical ways of applying this information to our own lives without going overboard.