Rebuild from Depression Blog

In my book I discuss the importance of dietary nutrients in fighting depression. We need to add them to our diets. But the flip side of the coin is that we need to preserve the nutrients we have. We need to avoid activities that will require more nutrients. Stress and toxic exposure, for instance, can actually deplete our body of nutrients. A previous version of the book had an expanded section on structures and an entire chapter was dedicated to "food structures." We have cut this area out of the book to keep the book focused on food nutrients, but it is still an interest of mine and may be another book at some point. In researching that part of the book, I intended to include research on the microwave - does microwaving our food affect its nutrient content?

There is research on nutrient loss in microwaved food. The loss is not much greater than other cooked foods and it may be less in some cases. But what I hoped to find more studies on is whether the microwave does something really sinister to food. I've wondered about that for years and heard a lot of rumors.

There is Hans Hertel's swiss study as reported widely on the internet by Tom Valentine. Although Tom Valentine lives on the central coast here in California where I vacation regularly, an email to him about the study got me nowhere.

There have been discussions on message boards about microwaved water not supporting life. These discussions increased about a year ago when a grade school student did a microwave-related study for a science fair. Here results were posted by her grandmother here:

http://www.execonn.com/sf/

I was intrigued. I decided to replicate the science fair project. I have much less patience, however, than a student preparing for a science fair. I took a much quicker path to determine if microwaved water supports life: I sprouted sunflower seeds.

I used four waters: boiled, warmed tap, warmed distilled, and heated microwaved water. (Why all the waters? Why not.) I cooled them all to about 105º Fahrenheit and soaked ¼ cup of sunflower seeds in each for eight hours. I left the remaining water out at room temperature and used it to rinse the sprouts. After the eight-hour soak I drained the seeds, put each of the four samples in a mason jar, and let them sprout. I rinsed the seeds about every twelve hours with their respective room-temperature water.

Yes, I realize the sloppiness in the design elements. But I figure it would be like the pregnancy test I took with Frederick: the first one I gave a passing glance and went back to sleep. When I noticed a line two hours later, I took another test. I was not sure that I administered it properly, so I did another and another until my administration of the test might as well have been for an Olympic trial. Then I went to the hospital for a real test. So you can fix sloppiness with later trials if you find a reason to do so.

I found no reason to do another test. All seed samples sprouted nicely. In the picture below, the microwaved sprouts are on the left and the warmed tap sample are on the right.

As the microwaved sprouts were coming along, I wondered why the science project results would have turned out as they did.

"Mom, do you think she microwaved the water in plastic?"

"Yes, of course. Everyone does."

"Really?"

I am so microwave ignorant that I could not imagine microwaving in anything but glass. And as it was I had to walk into a neighboring house to get our microwaved water sample.

Notice on the science fair site that she has updated it with information that the water was microwaved in plastic.

I see another sprout experiment in our future.

Monday morning a week or so ago marked butcher day. I left home early and drove about two miles to meet up with Dan and Ted.

Dan's family has been in this area for over a century. His family owns a lot of grazing land in the area which he leases to area ranchers. Dan's land is particularly good for grazing because he has water rights to the area creeks and diverts the water to his pastures so that his land is green when everybody else's land is tan or brown. He owns a few head of cattle and calls me when he has an extra. I purchased a steer from Dan to help stock our freezer.

Ted was already there when I arrived on Monday, driving his white truck with the license plate "dead cow," towing a trailer with the beef industry bumper sticker.

Ted is a freelance butcher who slaughters two to three animals a day.

I hired Ted to slaughter the steer and deliver it to the meat locker for processing.

Nature provides some cheap and simple ways to increase the minerals you are absorbing. Grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds contain a mineral inhibitor called phytic acid which can be reduced if you prepare your food intentionally. Soaking, fermenting, and sprouting are some of the most effective techniques.

In the case of beans, many of us soak them anyway before cooking. But you can learn more about the optimum water temperature and soaking time for beans on the article about beans and phytic acid.

For breakfast porridges like oatmeal, you can soak them in advance, quicken the cooking time, and increase the minerals you will benefit from. Read more about grains and phytic acid.

For a more general overview, read an excerpt from Rebuild from Depression on phytic acid. (Scroll down to "Phytic acid and mineral loss.")

And if you still want more, I have an ecourse on phytic acid in food. The opt in box on this page has been out of commission (which may be why I've had about 100 people view it in March with no people signing up.) It should be working now. If it's not, give me a holler. Thanks to Amylee for the heads-up.

In my search for a pillbug recipe for our contest "Pest or Dinner?" I contacted David George Gordon, author of Eat-A-Bug. Not only does he have an entry to the contest I will be posting soon, he has recommended that if we are going to eat insects to fight depression, that we look for the organic variety.

He states:

A word of caution about collecting and eating pest bugs from one's kitchen. There is always the risk of unintentionally eating minute doses of poison in the process, as man of us use some form of over-the-counter pesticide in our homes. Over time, those small doses can add up- a process known as bioaccumulation- and pose a serious health risk

And I'll add that it's not just our kitchens we should be concerned about. Be sure to harvest your pillbugs from an organic garden. Collect the carpenter ants from an organic tree or from an attic that has not been sprayed.

Our bodies use nutrients to remove toxins from our organs and tissues, so it would defeat the purpose to use pillbugs as salad toppers if those pillbugs came from a lawn or garden that is sprayed heavily with pesticides and herbicides.

I am told that I use the word too much. And for the first time this week my son started using the word. "Mama, why are you ...?"

"Well, you and I can talk about it, but I don't want you to ask anyone else that question because it might hurt their feelings." The conversations proceeded, linked back to previous discussions about other physical differences, and ended with the dramatic conclusion that it's a lot worse to be boring.

But this is where I get into trouble with my use of the word.

A medical doctor called me the other day with a wake up call.

"You really exaggerate your weight in your book."

It is the job of medical professionals to hound you about your weight, so I have never had such a discussion with a medical professional. After all, I'm the one who had to have my 20 week ultrasound at 22 weeks so that the baby would be more developed when those sound waves started on their very long journey from the ultrasound device on my skin through all of my "stored energy" to the baby inside my uterus. That was the last conversation I had with a medical professional about my weight. (Well, actually, I've had quite a few since, but none so memorable.)

"Your descriptions are funny, really, but for someone who doesn't know you, they will get the wrong impression. You know, you really are not..."

She gave a slight pause.

"...fat."

Annell read the book back in the fall for the first time and mentioned something in passing about the topic. We were never able to engage in the subject, but I assumed she was going to ask when I'd lose all of the damned weight. She did not meet my expectation, apparently.

I felt very defensive. "Come on! Don't yank my chain! I am too!"

But I know what she meant.

I have what my grandpa would have called "a high class problem."

It's not a health risk really, though any doctor doing her due diligence would tell me to lose twenty or so. Some of those charts we all despise would want to cut me in half.

A high class problem
I spent the first couple of decades of my life not using the word at all. Perhaps avoiding the word and eating plastic cheese would also help avoid the problem.

Then the next couple of decades I focused on taking back the word, overusing it to blunt its impact. I didn't even flinch when my son asked me about it, nor when his friend used it to describe my backside. "No truer words have ever been spoken," was my response.

But it's a new day with a new focus. If I make that word part of my identity it does bring more importance to it as a descriptor and it makes no distinction between my case and someone with a medical problem. And frankly, if we all didn't pay so much damned attention to it, there would be fewer medical cases out there. Fellow yo-yo dieters understand what I mean.

There is actually an interesting memoir on this topic written by Richard Morris called A Life Unburdened. It makes the point that having beneficial fats and nutrients is critical to optimal health. Richard, who did have a medical problem weighing in at 400 pounds, makes the point that we try to avoid that word by avoiding food. But the irony is that our bodies hang on to its reserves if it is not getting the nutrients it needs. Richard's before and after picture are inspirational.

Rebuilding
As I rapidly approach a new decade of my life, my focus is on building. After eating non-fat bagels and plastic cheese in my 20s and then facing major depression, my focus for the last few years has been on eating actual food. What is amazing is that as I've started on my five acres of "yard work" in rugged mountain woman mode, I have put on muscle with a speed I have never witnessed. That's apparently why body builders eat all of those protein bars. The funny thing is that a steak works too.

I reported back in February that I acquired a steer from a local rancher ear-marked for my freezer and I hired a butcher to do my dirty work. I observed the slaughter and provided pictures. Who knew there would be a Part II to the story, but you might consider this experience if you are buying a steer and don't know what you are doing.

On Friday we picked up half of the steer to deliver to friends in southern California. This should have been easy and routine.

Let me start with a little background. Just five years ago when I was in the middle of full-scale major depression and eight months pregnant, I did not eat beef. I had not eaten beef for years "for health reasons."

Almost two years ago now we bought our first live steer to fill our freezer and when the processor called to ask about the cuts I said "I'm very sorry, but I just don't know very much about beef. Can you help me select the cuts?"

She was very polite and obliged.

We ended up with a whole lot of round steak which I do not now recommend, but the good outcome there is we have some very good round steak recipes should you find yourself in a similar position.

This time our focus in making the order was on improving the cuts.

"More ground beef" was a primary theme.

In the process of all of this instruction, we failed to say "and we're splitting the steer with friends."

And so if you are reading this and think "wow, that kind of stupid doesn't happen every day," you need to understand that we are a little behind on the learning curve.

The meat processor called Sander to ask "what do we do with this steer?"

Sander, who is a few steps behind on that same curve primarily because he had nothing to do with the prior steer said "put it in lockers."

He told me about a week later that the steer was in the locker.

I thought it odd but decided it was a detail we could deal with.

Splitting the Hard Way
So Friday was the day we would pick up one half of the steer to deliver to friends. The really good thing that happened Friday was that I was so tired that my mom decided to go to the meat locker with me. That was certainly the luckiest decision of the week and perhaps the month. We filled the car with coolers because this meat would be sleeping in Bakersfield before its drive to the Los Angeles basin the next morning. We headed to Exeter.

The second bit of luck was that I was far too tired to drag all of our bedding to the Laundromat for spring cleaning. (If you've managed to miss this particular on-going saga, we've been without a washing machine for the better part of the winter, which was implicated in part in my case of poison oak.)

I had planned to pick up the meat, make a quick stop at the Laundromat, switch cars with Sander (who would be driving the meat to Los Angeles), and bring home all of the wet bedding for the clothes line.

I was too tired for laundry. Thank goodness.

We showed up at Exeter Meats and said "we need access to the lockers because we've got a steer we need to split."

We encountered "looks." They were polite but they were concerned.

"We could have split it for you. You will have to split it in the locker, we can't bring the drawers out."

My mom and I walked outside for some air and to hatch a plan.

"Do not stand in the sun, Mandy, you will sweat and the sweat will freeze in the locker."

"I need one last bit of warmth before we go in there and it's not hot enough for sweat."

(But I could feel the tiniest bits of sweat forming on my skin. Mothers know these things.)

"Mom, you're going to be the accountant and I am going to load the meat."

Hundreds of pounds
I gave her a list of the cuts we needed. It included fifty-one packs of ground beef and probably upwards of 100 packages altogether. "But you'll have to handle ALL the packages to get those 100, Mandy."

"Let's get started then," and we forged ahead.

As fast as I could handle each piece and as quickly as my mom could account for it, we flew through the lockers. "Ground beef, ground beef, ground beef, sirloin tip, ground beef..."

We came out once for air and circulation control. When I felt my fingers again, we went back in. The gentleman who gave us access to the lockers checked on our progress and seemed a bit surprised.

Later my mom said "they thought we'd still be sorting at closing and that they'd have to help us finish up."

We were in at 2 p.m. and closing was 5 p.m.

One package of shanks and a New York steak were the last in our search, we consolidated the lockers, and we left the artic air for the car. Then, of course, we had to get all of those packages into the coolers.

We ran out of cooler space, returned some soup bones to the locker, and put all of the organs and packages labeled "beef feet" into a box we covered with our winter clothes. It was 3:30. The folks at the locker seemed pretty impressed (though this impression is all in the context of that whole initial impression which couldn't have been very good).

We stopped at a nursery on the way into town for some summer garden vegetables and worked at finding space in the car for them.

"I'm really glad I didn't bring all the bedding."

My mom looked horrified at the thought.

We managed to squeeze Frederick into his car seat.

Dead Steer
"Mama, what's half of a steer?"

"You know what beef cattle are. This one was a boy and a family is going to eat it. They just didn't want all of it."

"Are they alive?"

"What? The steer? No. It's dead."

"No, the people who are going to eat it."

"Yes, of course they are alive. This steer is their food. It will help keep them healthy."

I smiled and wondered if his question was the result of all of our discussions of death lately (having lost a solid baker's dozen of people this year) or whether he is planning to join PETA.

I am told that the whole adventure ended at the La Habra Children's Museum over peanut butter and honey sandwiches, courtesy of our friends. They report that the barbecued hamburgers later that night were a big hit.

We do not own a gun cabinet. We do not even own a gun. I don't want this blog post to scare you off prematurely.

Sander and I are educated, liberal young people who have served Democratic Party candidates at various points in our lives. Sander worked for Madeleine Albright and I volunteered on the Dukakis campaign back in 1988. I think I still have the t-shirt. That's pretty darned liberal.

We even still pretty much vote along those lines for lack of better options.

I attended Santa Clara University, was educated by liberal Jesuits, and celebrate my fifteenth reunion this spring.

Something happened to me along the way.

You hear about this when you are in college: college students are liberal, but once they earn money and have an interest in the current social structure, they become conservative.

It seems to be happening here slowly, but it's not a money issue.

For Sander it seems to be about security and making sure his family is safe. For me, it is about making sure my family is well-nourished.

And it is in that context that the discussion of the gun cabinet came in.

I was standing in the kitchen just last week when Sander said "I am going to buy a gun. Scott and Dean are helping me select one."

I picked my jaw up off the floor and asked why the sheriff and the postmaster were helping him buy a gun. He went on about types of guns and about the gun cabinet he has selected before he finally said "I want to have a gun in case we have a snake on the property."

Frankly, I am the one who has been talking about learning how to shoot, but it's because I want to learn how to hunt. If we had a snake on the property, I'd call Scott, Dean, or our neighbor Hans who shot a snake in his garden last summer. That makes a lot of sense. I would beat the snake with a stick before I'd call Sander.

"But you don't know how to shoot."

"You need the gun cabinet and gun first to learn how to shoot," he explained.

"No, you need to borrow a gun to learn how to shoot. And I think you are missing a very important point that purchasing a gun cabinet is an opportunity to purchase an antique gun cabinet. Why are you looking at new furniture on line?"

I was granted two weeks to find an antique gun cabinet, so if you have a lead, please email me because my two weeks is about up. (Hopefully he isn't paying a whole lot of attention to his deadline.)

I actually thought I saw an antique gun cabinet just days before when I was shopping for an antique pickle crock. The owner looked like a card-carrying NRA member, so it made sense he would have an old gun cabinet.

I returned to ask about the price of the crock. At $50 for a dinged up pickle crock, I decided to turn my attention to my other need.

"Did I see a gun cabinet in here last week?"

The owner was not in. The woman behind the counter with long gray hair and a peasant skirt hand-embroidered with flowers did a bit of a double-take and said, "I don't think so."

She had that tone.

Her response was a real wake-up call for me.

My God, how we've changed.

I used to eat tofu burgers and now I eat hamburgers - the kind made of actual beef.

I did not see that change coming.

The steer parts that are in my freezer right now came from an animal I saw slaughtered in February.

I did not see that change coming.

In college, I was always a bit of a peasant since I came from an agricultural area and was even a card-carrying Future Farmer of America. (Actually we may not have had cards, I really don't remember, but you can see on this FFA history that I was very good at improving my homestead even back then.)

But in college I became a social scientist and went on to get a Ph.D., like all good Jesuit-trained students do.

As I plan I go back to my reunion in May for the first time since college, I wonder if they will let me in.

My guess is that there will be the liberals who turned conservative, the liberals who became Jesuits and are still liberal, the liberals who still work in the Peace Corps, and conservatives who were always conservative.

I may take a poll to see how many liberals or former liberals have a gun cabinet.

Apparently we will have one soon.

Our focus in examining food is misplaced. We spend a whole lot of time discussing what food is not rather than what food is. Today's news provides a good example.

Should you eat beef in pregnancy? A study about to be released in the journal Human Reproduction says you shouldn't eat too much. A pregnant mom who eats a lot of beef will expose the fetus to the pesticides and hormones used in beef production. This exposure will lead to a low sperm count in boys.

The study was based on recall data - women reported their eating patterns to their grown sons (who were the actual study subjects) who reported them to the research team. Sons whose moms ate over seven beef meals a week had a 24% lower sperm count, so report the secondary sources. (Give me a nudge if you have the original study.)

In response to this article, consumers may either choose not to buy beef at all or to buy organic beef (since the feed is produced without pesticides and growth hormones are not used). But both of these choices would be coming from the wrong frame of mind, in my opinion.

Let's buy food for what it is rather than for what it is not.

Buy Organic?

What does organic certification guarantee us? It makes guarantees about what the product is not: the cattle did not receive antibiotics, they were not given growth hormones, and their feed was not grown with pesticides.

We are not necessarily buying a more nutritious burger. Organic beef makes no assurances about nutrient levels. In fact, the organic label itself was not designed with this criterion in mind.

Furthermore, the difference between the organic and non-organic steer is not as great as you might imagine. In many situations, beef calves are kept with their moms, grazing on grass, until weaning age. Then they graze on more grass. (In our area that grass adjoins the Sequoia National Forest.) Finally, they are transported to a feedlot for finishing where their lifestyle becomes much more controversial. (The whole grass part may be a bit idealized based on weather and, of course, cows make their way to the dinner table at some point too and their stories are different. But the point is that you can find ranchers whose practices fit with the ideals of the organic movement.)

When you buy organic beef, you are paying a premium on that three month finishing period. And guess what? That three month period reduced the level of beneficial fatty acids in your steak.

If you want to avoid the non-organic grain feed and the growth hormones that concern consumers today, the cheaper way to do it is to buy a steer from a rancher before it is finished. It's the same steer. It just won't be as juicy. But it will have a slightly higher level of Omega-3 fatty acids, including DHA which is critical for the developing brain of the baby. To me, that feature of the steak is worth paying more for.

You May Actually Need Beef in Pregnancy

One problem with the news article about beef in pregnancy is that it makes no mention of what beef is - it is a food filled with nutrients that we need in pregnancy.

In fact, beef is a "depression buster food" because of its nutrient density. One key nutrient that makes beef stand out is its iron content. I have included a figure below of the depression-fighting vitamins and minerals in beef. Iron does not look all that impressive in the figure but what this figure does not show is that iron in beef is one of the most absorbable forms of iron you can eat.

There are many tricks you can use to improve your iron status with plant-based foods and I outline them in some detail in my free e-book on iron-rich foods. But when you see women who have struggled with low iron suddenly get energy boosts when they eat a steak, you have to wonder if some of us do actually need red meat.

For the many women who are iron-deficient in pregnancy, beef may be a key tool to recovery. The effects of too little iron are widely documented. These effects should concern you more than the beef study in the news.

Still Going to Avoid Beef?

So you see the beef in pregnancy study and decide not to eat beef in pregnancy. What are you eating instead? There are many paths to a nutritious diet, but most beef replacements are not going to get you there.

I used to eat "burgers" made from peas and corn. Peas have some nutritional value but nothing compared to a burger.

There are even more meat replacements on the market these days but many are made with soy beans. Soy is loaded with nutrients on its face but the nutrients are not as easily absorbed by our bodies. Read the excerpt from the book on phytic acid for more information. Soy also has high levels of natural hormones that have been implicated in reproduction problems in growing boys. So if this study scares you, soy probably should too.

If you choose to avoid beef, replace it with something that has a solid nutrient content. Lamb is a good choice. More exotic game like bison and elk would be good as well. To examine the nutrient content of other foods, the USDA food database is one place to look.

What Food Is

We all need to reduce our toxic exposure. The air alone in our part of California has led to very high rates of asthma. We are exposed in many ways to environmental toxins. When our livers process toxins, they need B-vitamins, zinc, and magnesium (depression-fighting nutrients) to do so. Toxic exposure can aggravate depression simply by using up our depression-fighting nutrients (though they may have an independent effect on depression as well).

Food is not your biggest source of toxins, but food is your only source of B-vitamins, zinc, and magnesium. Beef in particular is a very good source of B-vitamins and zinc. We need these nutrients if we are going to grow babies and if our bodies are going to be able to process toxins effectively.

So I do eat beef because of what it is. It is a meat packed with depression-fighting nutrients. In fact, the meat fills my freezer and is a good complement to the many other foods that I eat. The beef is not certified organic but you could have found the steer grazing in the middle of paradise just two months ago. It's a good option for people who want to circumvent the beef production system or for people like me who know a guy with an extra steer.

We try to reduce the processed foods we consume in this house. Fresh, whole foods come with all of their nutrients intact. They have not been cooked at high temperatures, extruded, canned, or frozen, all of which will reduce the nutrient content to some degree. But the irony in my kitchen is some of my kitchen practices that are probably much harder on my food than are some of the commercial processing techniques.

As you spend your valuable time cooking your food so that you ensure an abundance of nutrients in your diet, consider some of these cooking techniques that will be much easier on those foods than some of your current practices.

Increasingly people are learning about the benefits of grass fed beef. Grass fed beef is more lean, it has higher levels of the beneficial fats CLA and the Omega-3s.

Grass fed beef is pretty much as the name implies. Steers eat fresh growing grass in open pastures. Many steers that hit the supermarket are grass fed until their last three or four months when they are sent to a feedlot to be "finished" on grain. They get fatter and the nature of their fat changes. Grass fed and finished beef moves from the pasture to slaughter. He is never fattened on grain and the nature of the fat is never changed.

When a steer is finished on grain, the level of depression-fighting Omega-3 fatty acid declines, Omega-6 fatty acids increase, and, in general, the health benefit of the steak or burger declines as well.

"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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

All milk comes from a farm, but a recent study uses the term "farm milk" to distinguish between milk bought at the grocery store and that obtained from a farm directly.

A large-scale study in Europe has collected detailed food intake data from families along with medical histories. What is different about this data collection compared to that done in the United States by the USDA is that researchers made a distinction in where consumers are getting their milk and dairy products.

They examined "farm kids" and their rural counterparts not on a farm and they examined children in Steiner Schools compared to other suburban children. Steiner School families apparently tend to have a holistic approach to health and medicine.

Diet news always gets my attention. Not because I'm on a diet. Not because I do such things as weigh myself. I don't do those things anymore. But I do still read about them. :)

A specific beneficial fatty acid called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is associated with weight loss, according to the May 2007 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of CLA-weight loss studies and found that with 3.2 grams a day of CLA, people lost about one fifth of a pound a week compared to the control group. With 52 weeks in a year, that's just over ten pounds in a year. At just under $15 a month, that is $200 for ten pounds. It's the best deal in town if it works in your case.

I am a big believer in using heirloom varieties to grow our food. They tend to be higher in nutritional value and it is cool to be able to save your seed. I am also a big fan and member of the "Eat Local" movement that is sweeping the country. It's a crazy thing when something as simple as a strawberry gets shipped all over the place and I end up buying an import to California when other local strawberries were exported. But that's a whole other story.

My desire to eat heirloom produce and my desire to eat local came into conflict this week when I passed a fruit stand with this sign:

September is the Eat Local Challenge sponsored by the San Francisco-area Locavores and tracked at the Eat Local Challenge Blog.

A month-long eat local challenge is a big effort for most people. That's why I've always felt like a bit of a cheater when these challenges come along. Most of our food is local anyway. It's just how we've been living here before the Eat Local Movement had a name or made national news. Our diet is not 100% local but it can be without a lot of effort. We are in the foothills above the most prolific agricultural region in the world. What we don't grow at home or buy from a local cattle rancher, we can find pretty easily.

So I thought it was time to step things up a bit. This year for 2007 Eat Local Challenge in September:

Healthy brains need Omega-3 fatty acids research continues to tell us. Omega-3 fatty acids can not only alleviate our depression, improve our mental acuity, but also help us avoid sliding into dementia or developing Alzheimer Disease as we age.

An April 2007 editorial in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition calls longer-term studies on the effectiveness of Omega-3 fatty acids in light of the fairly compelling evidence that fatty acid intake improves cognitive functioning.

I described in July my plan for participating in this year's Eat Local Challenge. I planned to forage all of my own food here in the Sequoia National Forest. The exercise, air, and sunshine are just what the doctor ordered.

It was a good plan. Back in July my biggest fear was that the bobcat would have eaten all of our hens and I would have no eggs. In fact, we have five hens. I could live on eggs and garden produce in a pinch, no problem at all. (It's good to have food options in case the whole foraging plan goes to seed.)

Our hens produce an assortment of egg colors because we chose a variety of hens with that outcome in mind. There are few things more beautiful in my opinion than a variety of eggs in a bowl ready to be eaten.

I was browsing the store the other day and found this company that sells two types of organic eggs -- one white and one brown. The brown is packaged in what is probably a higher-cost plastic egg carton. I could not resist but buy both. I paid about thirty cents more for the brown eggs.

When I got home I took this picture of the cartons and then cracked one egg from each carton into the same dish. Lo and behold, there was no difference in the yolk color.

It's the yolk color that matters, not the shell color.

Hens grazing freely on weeds and bugs will produce eggs with darker orange yolks. The Omega 3 eggs from hens fed flax or fish meal will also have darker yolks. The higher Omega 3 content will improve your Omega 3 levels.

Don't pay thirty cents more for brown eggs unless you really like the color. But you might consider spending a buck or so more on eggs that actually have more color in their yolk.

I went to the supermarket the other day and spent $70 on almost nothing. Foods prices are climbing with fuel prices. If we want good food, we are going to have to start getting creative. One easy way to start if you haven’t done so already, is to join or start a food co-op.

There are companies around the U.S. that are distributors of foods and they will sell them to you at wholesale prices if you make a minimum order. Minimums are typically in the range of $500.

What you need to do:
1) Find a company near you who will sell to you.
2) Acquire the catalogue.
3) Do a pantry analysis with their catalogue in hand.
3) Find enough friends to meet the minimum order
4) Place your order
5) Pick up your order, sort it, and distribute it among friends

Find a company

Here is a list of companies in various regions of the U.S. If you know of a similar company in or out of the U.S., leave a comment.

• United Buying Clubs, Eastern and Midwestern United States
• United Natural Foods, Incorporated, in certain parts of the United States
• Azure Standard, Northwest United States and Southern California

  Call the company and ask about minimum orders and pick-up locations.

  Acquire the catalogue

Lamb and mutton are popular foods around here and very easy to access. Most commercial lamb is raised on grass, as are these here near Earlimart California. Most don’t get to vacation next to an electrical facility as these girls and boys are doing.

Lamb is on the list of depression buster foods for its high vitamin and mineral content. It also has a favorable ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids, much like grass fed beef does. Mutton did not make the list, but it’s pretty good fare too and easy to find in some ethnic grocery stores.

I watch for sales on lamb at the supermarket. You might keep your eye open too.

My son tells me I work too hard. My numb shoulder and neck agree.

The generation above me tells me to "enjoy them while they are still young." That too makes a whole lot of sense.

What I have been trying to figure out is how to work on projects for this blog and have a lot of fun at the same time. In the spirit of having fun and working on food politics, my son has created some politically-inspired artwork posted at The Ethicurean. We call them "Pollan Paintings" because they come from my discussion with Frederick of Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Three of a series of four are now on the site:

Children of the corn
Chicken Little at Magic Mountain
Sequoia National Pork

In honor of meeting a Monsanto representative at the World Ag Expo this week, we are working on a little Monsanto series at the moment.

Today isn’t actually my birthday but we did have the cake today. My birthday was Sunday and I would have posted my thoughts on that grand day had I remembered it was my birthday. My sister called at some point to wish me a happy birthday and I said “Whoa. It’s my birthday.”

My dad arrived later and I asked “Wasn’t there something you came over here to tell me?”

He pondered the question, chuckled, and said “Did I miss it again?”

“No, now is your chance.”

You might have guessed that birthdays are not the biggest of events around here. This birthday was different, however. Between writing paragraphs on an article, my mom and I cried our eyes out over what may be my best birthday news ever.

Best birthday present

[I've been busy running around and working on organic dairy politics article. Valentine's Day found me at the World Ag Expo in Tulare. I wrote this essay for The Ethicurean.]

Last week marked the largest proportion of climate change naysayers gathered in one place since Dick Cheney walked into an empty room. Volunteers at the entrance to the World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, screened people as they presented their ticket.

“Do you believe in global warming?”

“It sure is cold out today. I should have brought a sweater,” I answered dutifully. I didn’t mention that it was strange that I could survive without a sweater in mid-February in the first place. I kept my answer as simple as possible. The deception worked, and I was allowed into the expo.

The World Ag Expo is the meeting place of industrial agriculture. Around 100,000 people visit the show every year to shop for tractors, irrigation supplies, carousel milking machines, cow vitamins, pesticides, herbicides, Posilac, teat dip, farm security systems, buildings, shade covers, and methane digesters, just to name a few items.

The show made it easy for folks to register their animals under the National Animal Identification System. I intended to quiz the NAIS reps about my legal requirement in registering my hen, Henny the Huge, or the bobcat that ultimately killed her, but I spent too much time talking to the Monsanto and AFACT people. Next year I must attend all three days.

I am always amazed at the technological advances in agriculture on display at these events. It is an astounding thing, for instance, how much milk you can squeeze out of a dairy cow using technology. Some of the innovations are good, some not so good — but they are impressive nonetheless.

Fill’er up on downer cows?

Continue reading at The Ethicurean

If you read even a smidgeon of this blog you know I am a big fan of beef. I lamented a few weeks ago over the increase in the pathogenic E. coli 0157:H7 in beef. It caused me to pass up an In-N-Out burger which would have been the first fast food burger in my diet in five years. (So you see that the pathogen is doing at least a bit of good work in this household.)

On Friday a friend suggested we go out for burgers at a local cowboy restaurant here in Sequoia National Forest. (I call anything a “cowboy restaurant” that has knotty pine paneling and a lot of people wearing cowboy hats and boots.) I was tempted. Unlike the In-N-Out option, with this burger I would have at least enjoyed the time with a friend and the ambiance of a cowboy restaurant. Had I gotten sick it wouldn’t have been nearly as regretful as getting sick at a fast food place.

Obsession?
All of this pondering about E. coli makes me wonder: Is this my new obsession?

For a person with a history of mental health problems, the obsession part of all of this is probably much worse than the bacteria. I know I must move on and yet the news is being made at my doorstep.

The pathogenic E. coli 0157:H7 is found most commonly in beef and dairy cows. When the cattle poop, the bacteria may end up in manure lagoons and on range land. We have so many dairy cows in the area that their own “emissions” contribute to our poor air quality. For every dairy cow, there is probably a beef cow or steer as well. Because of the sheer volume of cattle poop, I expect I could throw a stone in any direction and hit a colony of E. coli 0157:H7. I live in the belly of the E. coli beast.

To fuel my obsession, the Bakersfield Californian reported a few days ago that lettuce implicated in a 2006 outbreak was contaminated right down the road from here. Dairy cow poop helped fertilize the fields. A few hours north are the spinach fields implicated in other 2006 illnesses. A two hour drive from here is the raw dairy implicated in yet another 2006 outbreak.

My only solace is that I am not the most obsessed. A California Senate Select Committee on Food-borne Illness met today to discuss food safety. E. coli obsessive people like Bill Marler testified. (He does earn a living from his obsession which makes his obsession far more rational than mine.)

Channel the obsession

Mom has been gardening up a storm and wrote the following about tomatoes:

Some heirlooms show up in nurseries this time of year, but not many varieties. After several discouraging years of hunting, I decided to mail-order several varieties. Being able to order one of each variety allows us to taste-test and determine our short-list.

From past garden adventures we know that green zebra, pineapple and purple Russian are sure winners. We also know that IF we can find these tomatoes at the farmers’ market, they are selling for about $4 a pound. Shoot, we eat a couple of pounds in one meal!

Heirlooms still have great flavor and interesting colors. The hybrids are developed to be heavy producing, easy handling money-makers. I go for flavor and looks! You will, too, when you find the varieties that fit you palate.

With heirlooms we also have the opportunity to collect seed. Most heirlooms remain true, even when planted near other varieties. That is probably the only reason we still have heirlooms!

Now these tiny mail-order plants have arrived about a month too early, in the middle of April. Spring is late in stabilizing here in the Sierra Nevada foothills, witnessed by last week’s brief snow.

Our solution:
We put the plants into 4-inch pots with good soil and placed the pots under a small greenhouse cover. The plants joined some seedlings of tomatoes from our own saved seed of last season. This is so much fun…almost addictive.
The greenhouse cover was a gift from my brother when he moved to a home that had a full greenhouse set up. Before his gift, I used simple solutions like rigging up some temporary sides to the tomato shelter, then covering it with 4mil plastic. Both solutions work well.

Temperatures are finally becoming more stable and the soil is warming, so we will move the tomato guests into the orchard to grow beneath some young fruit trees. Lots of sun there. And, tomatoes are sun-lovers.

I’m already thinking about some of the dishes I’ll put together with those tomato treasures. Nothing is more beautiful than chunks of Green Zebra, Red Mortgage Lifter, and Yellow Pineapple tossed together with crushed garlic, olive oil, a bit of vinegar, ribbons of basil, and crushed sea salt. Oh my!

I’m rounding out my first trimester and I am ready to eat burger. It’s great that my food needs and Memorial Day weekend have coincided. The grill is ready for the season and the burger is thawing. The biggest question is whether we'll have to fight the rain to get to the grill. There is always the stove top.

The burgers for the weekend will not only be good, but they will also be local. This beef was brought to us by a steer raised about two miles from here, on land with year-round pasture.

Since the steer was finished on grain for only a couple of weeks, it tends to be very lean and a little more tough than the burger you would find at SaveMart. We add a lot of onion to the beef and call it good. My mom has experimented with a bunch of different hamburger approaches with this beef, but I find that many taste more like meatloaf. I like a more pure burger taste myself even if (or even because) the grease doesn’t drip down my cheek.

I think I’ll have about five burgers today, one for me and about four for the baby of course.

More on beef:
Vitamin and mineral content of beef
Omega 3 fatty acids in beef
Moroccan beef recipe

I haven't spent more than a half hour in the kitchen (at any stretch) for months. Pregnancy exhaustion and now a baby makes it difficult. The little bit of a freezer stash I had is long gone. My secret weapon (mom) will be on the road a lot in April and May, as will be my husband. I need a plan and I need it quick because I am reaching that ravenous stage in the pregnancy-postpartum cycle of eating anything at all and lots of it.

Below is my top five list for the food desperate. Note that the list contains no frozen pizzas. I suppose we all have our own limits when it comes to "desperate."

(1) Shrimp cocktail.
Use frozen cooked shrimp. Thaw it. (1 minute plus thaw time)
Make a cocktail sauce with ketchup and wasabi to save some cash. (2 minutes)

(2) Bone broth.
Season with an herb seasoning. Salt.
Eat with a couple of eggs for breakfast. Eat for lunch.
Put soup bones in a crock pot. Simmer overnight. Strain. (2 minutes to strain, another 3 minutes to clean up all of the fat from the strainer and countertop if you spill).
Resimmer the bones another couple of times. (See mom's instructions on making broth.)

Egg drop soup.
Use your broth and instead of eating the eggs on the side, add scrambled eggs to the broth. (Crack eggs, scramble, then add to hot broth and stir.)
Season with an herb seasoning. Salt to taste.
Add rice noodles for a great treat.

(3) Green salads.
These can be quick if you're organized. Keep protein toppings on hand. My favorites are boiled eggs, salmon, crab, and shrimp. I always add some sort of nut for crunch as well, usually pine nuts.
Rinse lettuce, tear, spin if you have a spinner. (2-3 mintutes).
Cut tomatoes, avocado, and other produce. (up to 5 minutes)
Use the salad dressing recipes and mix your own oil and vinegar. (1 minute)
Put together salad.

(4) Scrambles.
Morning, noon, or night, it doesn't get easier than a scrambled egg dish. Scramble them in leftover vegetables and you're in and out in ten minutes.

(5) Fish eggs on rice.
When money is more available than time, this may be my favorite: salmon roe (or any sort of roe) over rice. Prepare sushi rice, which is soaked in advance of cooking, and add some soy sauce and wasabi for a great treat.

That's it. I expect my mother would be appalled about my lack of depth, but she too has been spotted lately eating shrimp cocktail. Of course that may be because she loves it.

The hens should begin to lay soon and I plan to fill the freezer with quiche and frittata to add to the egg theme in my top five list.

We seem to do pretty much everything around here pretty big and that includes buying meat. When we buy beef or lamb, we buy the whole animal and hire a butcher to do the deed and another party to cut and package the animal. We eat well for many, many months, save trips to the store, enjoy filet mignon, and have friends who invite themselves over.

Every time we do it we end up in this discussion about how much grain to feed the animal in the last few weeks. Omega-3 fatty acids decline as grain feeding increases, but gosh, it's hard to coordinate a steer's and a pasture's maturity to end up with an animal that is fattened from grazing alone. We usually give the steer some grain in his last days, but we end up with a pretty lean end-product nonetheless. The lean nature of the product is a key reason grass fed beef is not a high Omega-3 food, contrary to some writings on the Internet.

Some time back, I wrote about our freelance butcher Ted and the adventure watching him butcher a steer, pictured below (I Met My Meat). If you are thinking about buying a live animal, you might benefit from some of my mistakes. If you are interested and don't know where to start, your best bet on price is to hook up with a small rancher who has a few extra animals but does not market to the high-end grass fed beef market. You might find them at a farmer's market, probably selling something other than beef. If I were looking here, I'd hit some area cowboy restaurants and talk to the guys drinking beer. Minimally, I would get to chat and drink beer, so it's all good.

Somehow, I've now got a powerful craving for a burger.

Technorati Tags: grass fed beef, Omega 3, hamburger, puppy

We seem to do pretty much everything around here pretty big and that includes buying meat. When we buy beef or lamb, we buy the whole animal and hire a butcher to do the deed and another party to cut and package the animal. We eat well for many, many months, save trips to the store, enjoy filet mignon, and have friends who invite themselves over.

Every time we do it we end up in this discussion about how much grain to feed the animal in the last few weeks. Omega-3 fatty acids decline as grain feeding increases, but gosh, it's hard to coordinate a steer's and a pasture's maturity to end up with an animal that is fattened from grazing alone. We usually give the steer some grain in his last days, but we end up with a pretty lean end-product nonetheless. The lean nature of the product is a key reason grass fed beef is not a high Omega-3 food, contrary to some writings on the Internet.

Some time back, I wrote about our freelance butcher Ted and the adventure watching him butcher a steer, pictured below (I Met My Meat). If you are thinking about buying a live animal, you might benefit from some of my mistakes. If you are interested and don't know where to start, your best bet on price is to hook up with a small rancher who has a few extra animals but does not market to the high-end grass fed beef market. You might find them at a farmer's market, probably selling something other than beef. If I were looking here, I'd hit some area cowboy restaurants and talk to the guys drinking beer. Minimally, I would get to chat and drink beer, so it's all good.

Somehow, I've now got a powerful craving for a burger.

Technorati Tags: grass fed beef, hamburger, Omega 3, puppy

I was strolling through some of the old content on this blog and discovered that I have apparently blogged about a good number of food science tidbits. The book Rebuild from Depression (coming this summer, really) has several chapters discussing food science. Here on this blog you can find a sampling. One great thing about a blog instead of a book is that I can include pictures more easily. Pictures of course mean graphs (or visualizations if you want to get fancy).

You will find a number of tidbits on the effects of grass feeding on meat and dairy:
Grass fed beef: An Omega 3 super food? (Two graphs!)
Beef liver and Omega-3s in grass fed beef (Graph included!)
CLA in dairy products (as a function of time on pasture) (Graph included!)

There is some good wisdom on Omega 3 and seafood:
Best Omega 3 food sources: Fish and seafood (Two graphs!)
Wild fish: Benefits and what to look for
Grass fed beef: An Omega 3 super food? (Two graphs! One graph on the Omega 3 content of fish)

Read about Omega 3 eggs and the ratios of Omega 6s to 3s in vegetable oils (Graph!)
Read the whole Omega 3 roundup: Omega 3 and depression.

There are a number of profiles of specific foods, but be careful, most came from a crazy contest:
Beef (Graph!)
Beef liver (Graph!)
Squirrel (Graph! Yes, a graph for squirrel!)
Blackeyed Peas (Graph!)
High iron foods (Graph! It includes caterpillar! Yum!)

Check out soy and phytic acid. Graph!

There are some general articles on "nutrient loss" as well. The most fascinating is "Nutrient Loss in the Food Supply" on the decline of nutrients in fresh produce over the last half-century. You can also read about all of the nutrient loss in your own kitchen due to cooking techniques.

Enjoy the tidbits. Feel free to re-post the graphs on your website if you have one attributing this blog.

Technorati Tags: B vitamins, beef, CLA, dairy, depression busters, eggs, fat, fish, foods that fight depression, grass fed beef, iron, liver, Omega 3, seafood

It may be the beginning of a large archive, the graphs at FoodGraphs.net. You may recognize many of them -- most made their appearance first here on the Rebuild Blog. My business specialty is graphic display of data and this food graph archive ties my two interests together nicely. Bloggers should feel free to use the graphs with attribution.

FoodGraphs.net

Our summer garden has gotten a late start and we are an hour away from a produce market. Earlier this week we ran out of produce and stood around scratching our heads about what to eat. Salmon sounded good and we have some frozen, but salmon with what? Scallops sounded real good too. We could put on rice but since I am passing up the grains this season, I would just be chasing garlic and butter on a plate with each tender scallop.

What to eat?

The garden did have a solution: It is an abundant producer of the high Omega 3 weed edible plant purslane (which I wrote about last summer in a similar predicament).

The little "leaves" on the succulent-like plants make a great stir-fry and are particularly good in scrambled eggs.

Technorati Tags: eggs, Omega 3, scallops, salmon

I have been checking out the blog and finding some tidbits I had forgotten about.

It is easy to make a lot out of the loss of nutrients in processed food -- we likely are not getting all of the nutrients we need if we eat primarily out of packages of ready-to-microwave food. But what about the nutrient loss in our own kitchen? I wrote a list of suggestions you can use in preparing your fine food to help get a larger portion of the nutrients out of it. Some of the suggestions from "Nutrient loss in your kitchen" are: Don't overcook, braise don't broil, cut in larger pieces. Follow the link if you are interested in reading more.

There is also a pretty interesting way to maximize the nutrients in your diet and that is by purchasing heirloom vegetables. I wrote about nutrient loss in the food supply, describe food composition data collected in the 1940s and 1950s compared to that collected fifty years later. Vegetables are less nutrient-dense today than they were fifty years ago. The likely culprit is the new hybrid varieties of vegetables.

Technorati Tags: heirloom vegetables, nutrient

Last week the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition announced a study, a meta-analysis, of the research on the nutrient content of organic and conventional produce. The authors found no difference between organic and conventional, but they did limit their inquiry to the narrow question of food micro-nutrients. They did not examine pesticide residues or the impact of pesticides and herbicides on the environment.

As you probably know, major news outlets covered the story as did a whole lot of bloggers. Here's one and another and another. The Organic Center wrote a rebuttal.

Not to be outdone, I thought I'd offer my response in video:

"I sure hope conventional produce has the nutrient content of organic..." on YouTube:

Here are two of the graphs used in the video, both archived at FoodGraphs.net for your use:

The "pesticide pee" study is available online.