Rebuild from Depression Blog

"Will cooking rice reduce the phytic acid? Should I soak it before I cook it?"

I get this question fairly regularly and some inquisitive Googlers have landed here with this question.

My concern with makeup lies in its ingredients. We know that to some degree our bodies do absorb the chemicals we apply to our skin. The Environmental Protection Agency has an interesting article on its website called the "Dermal Exposure Assessment." They review studies of skin absorption using mice, rats, and other unlucky lab animals and discuss the factors that increase absorption rates. Factors that increase our skin's absorption of toxic chemicals (or beneficial skin treatments for that matter) are the following:

It's hard to find a grain-free dessert that fits the "cake" category, but this is a good one. For this recipe I use grandma's glass pie plate but one of the newer small ones would work too. The whole process is pretty forgiving.

We made this cheesecake as a "birthday cake" back on Frederick's "half birthday" over three years ago. We celebrate half birthdays in this family because my sister and I were born 18 months apart and rather than breed birthday-envy among siblings, my parents developed the half birthday concept. And as far as I'm concerned, we should all have as many birthdays as possible.

It is harder to meet your daily requirements for nutrients today than it was sixty years ago. Perhaps you've heard. For about a century now the U.S. Government has collected data on the nutrient content of food. Since about 1940 researchers have collected data on specific micronutrients like iron and vitamin C rather than macronutrients like protein and calorie content. What researchers began to report on in the 1990s is that compared to the 1940s, food in the 1990s seems to have lower levels of micronutrients.

One study from 2004 performed a systematic analysis of changes in food nutrients. The authors examined 43 garden crops - fruits and vegetables you grow in your garden. They did not look at meat, milk, or tree crops such as nectarines or almonds.

Over that fifty year period, values for protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and ascorbic acid declined. Food in 1999 had about 85% the iron content of food in 1950 (Davis et al. 2004). (Data on zinc and magnesium was not available over that time period.)

What we do not know from this food nutrient data is the key question - why has there been a decline in nutrient values?

So there's this reality show called "10 Years Younger." The concept is this: bring some frumpy housewives in for a makeover. Stick them in a glass box on the sidewalk and ask passers-by their age. Ask before and ask after the makeover.

Before the makeover the average age is typically fifty-something. Actual age is forty plus or minus three years. Give them a makeover and they suddenly look thirty. (This is based on the two episodes I saw -- sorry for the lack of research but we don't have television service.)

A week or two ago I reported that a study found alcoholic drinks such as tequila as high in antioxidants. I suggested we make our own brew to boost the antioxidants in our diet. My preferred "brew" is a drink called water kefir. Missy asked about my water kefir process.

The trick is going to be finding the grains. There are internet communities where people share them.

Those who know me know that I am a big fan of liver. In fact, liver is a depression buster food and probably in a class of its own providing in large quantities every depression-fighting nutrient in my book except for magnesium. Most foods make the list because they excel in one or two nutrients or in Omega-3 fatty acids. Not liver. It could nearly be your replacement for a multi-vitamin/mineral complex.

I live in a fairly isolated mountain community on the edge of one of California's most productive agricultural counties. Local agriculture news here is often national news as a result. But I was still surprised by a press release that hit the news yesterday.

Lindsay Residents Find Pesticide Contamination in Their Bodies

The full press release is here. The local ABC affiliate reported on it as well.

Pest Expert David George Gordon who nominated the larval honey bee in our own Pest or Dinner Contest will be one of the highlights this weekend of the annual Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

You too can learn to cook caterpillars, pillbugs, grasshoppers, larval bees, and other pests that may or may not make an appearance on this blog.

Why spray them with pesticide when you can eat them for dinner?

I've got two other events competing for my drive time this weekend, but I am tempted to get buggy nonetheless. With a free pass to just about every science museum in the country and a couple of hours in the car, Frederick and I would have a blast. We'll see which event wins out.

And while we're on the topic, I'll be starting the second contest "Rock Group or Depression Buster?" some time in May. Read the concept at the end of this post. And sorry, but others have already beaten you to "Captain Beefheart" and "Meatloaf" which I will post when the contest opens. Send in your entry at anytime.

The search for grazing dairy cows landed me out in the Pixley countryside earlier this week. With a family history in the community, you would think that nothing would surprise me. The west side of Pixley, out in the alkaline flats, did surprise me a bit.

First, you should know that the whole west side of the southern San Joaquin Valley naturally has high alkaline soil. Take a bunch of salt and sprinkle it in your yard and you'll get some sense of what grows in high alkaline soil. (You know, don't really do that because you'll pretty much kill everything that's there.)

Driving through the alkaline flats is much like driving through a desert, without the beauty of the desert plants.

We travel through orange country a couple of times a week. Porterville, Terra Bella, and Lindsay produce a whole lot of oranges. Lindsay is the location of a pesticide drift study released last week. Before giving up conventional oranges in light of the apparent pesticide drift, Frederick and I made some orange ice cream.

Henny Penny is three years old and one of two hens left from our first batch since we moved to the mountains. She's taken to sleeping outside of her hen house lately which doesn't bode real well for her.

For dinner tonight, would you rather eat a tarantula or Cheez Whiz®?

Sunday at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Eat-A-Bug author David George Gordon chose the tarantula.

Apparently a reporter once asked him, "What is the strangest food you've ever eaten?"

"Cheez Whiz," he answered.

"What is in Cheez Whiz anyway?" He asked the audience.

I think it's a good question.

I love cats. I really do. When I was growing up, we were the family with "all the cats." We didn't have numbers worthy of a health department call, but we had a fairly sizable number particularly during the spring kitten season.

My love for cats and my motherly instinct made me want to invite this kitten inside the other day. He was purring and he looked like he needed a friend. When I opened the door for a picture, it looked like he would have come inside. I closed the door.

This, my friends, is a bob cat. It is a jumbo cat without a tail. It is not as big (and thus not as dangerous as a mountain lion), but I wouldn't want it living in my house or on my deck.

I used to see my multivitamin and mineral as good nutritional insurance. It certainly is a form of insurance, but there can be consequences with taking your daily supplement blindly.

The folic acid fortification program in the United States provides us with a very good example of why supplementation willy-nilly can have perverse consequences.

People do not get enough folate in their diets and a low folate status is associated with birth defects like spina bifida. Since many women do not plan their pregnancies and many who do plan them do not consume enough folate in preparation, the USDA decided to fortify grain-based foods with folic acid in the late 1990s.

Nearly a decade later, researchers are trying to determine the effect of this food fortification program. Neural tube defects like spina bifida are on the decline, but cognitive problems are on the rise in the elderly.

It appears that you can get too much of a good thing under certain circumstances.

Whole chickens are a great dinner choice. You get the first meal, the leftovers, and then the soup from the broth (that may have still more leftover meat).

For our family with three adults and a child, we usually cook two chickens and enjoy various parts for the better part of a week.

Lately my mom has been experimenting with this Latin rub, courtesy of "Uncle Fred" (her brother). It's easy and tasty.