How Eating at Home Can Save Your Life

By Mark Hyman, MD, via the Huffington Post

The slow insidious displacement of home cooked and communally shared family meals by the industrial food system has fattened our nation and weakened our family ties. In 1900, 2 percent of meals were eaten outside the home. In 2010, 50 percent were eaten away from home and one in five breakfasts is from McDonald’s. Most family meals happen about three times a week, last less than 20 minutes and are spent watching television or texting while each family member eats a different microwaved “food.” More meals are eaten in the minivan than the kitchen.

Research shows that children who have regular meals with their parents do better in every way, from better grades, to healthier relationships, to staying out of trouble. They are 42 percent less likely to drink, 50 percent less likely to smoke and 66 percent less likely to smoke marijuana. Regular family dinners protect girls from bulimia, anorexia, and diet pills. Family dinners also reduce the incidence of childhood obesity. In a study on household routines and obesity in U.S. preschool-aged children, it was shown that kids as young as four have a lower risk of obesity if they eat regular family dinners, have enough sleep, and don’t watch TV on weekdays.

We complain of not having enough time to cook, but Americans spend more time watching cooking on the Food Network than actually preparing their own meals. In his series, “Food Revolution,” Jamie Oliver showed us how we have raised a generation of Americans who can’t recognize a single vegetable or fruit, and don’t know how to cook.

The family dinner has been hijacked by the food industry. The transformations of the American home and meal outlined above did not happen by accident. Broccoli, peaches, almonds, kidney beans and other whole foods don’t need a food ingredient label or bar code, but for some reason these foods—the foods we co-evolved with over millennia—had to be “improved” by Food Science. As a result, the processed-food industry and industrial agriculture has changed our diet, decade by decade, not by accident but by intention.

That we need nutritionists and doctors to teach us how to eat is a sad reflection of the state of society. These are things our grandparents knew without thinking twice about them. What foods to eat, how to prepare them, and an understanding of why you should share them in family and community have been embedded in cultural traditions since the dawn of human society.

One hundred years ago all we ate was local, organic food; grass-fed, real, whole food. There were no fast-food restaurants, there was no junk food, there was no frozen food—there was just what your mother or grandmother made. Most meals were eaten at home. In the modern age that tradition, that knowledge, is being lost.

The sustainability of our planet, our health, and our food supply are inextricably linked. The ecology of eating—the importance of what you put on your fork—has never been more critical to our survival as a nation or as a species. The earth will survive our self-destruction. But we may not.

Click here to read the rest of this article on HuffingtonPost.com

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Rooftop Gardening – For Sale or for Help?

An article posted in City Farmer News on Dec 29, 2010 tells of the latest success story in using a growing source of food production. Rooftops.

For several years now we have been reading of rooftop farms from small to large that have boasted huge yields. The produce from these gardens are used to feed who? If even some were dedicated to feed the homeless, with excess stored over for winter it would go along way to helping the down trodden. Regardless of whatever reservations society at large has toward supporting a population of hard core street people, there are others who due to foul economic times have found themselves on the streets despite doing what they can to support themselves. We have all, at one time or other needed a helping hand.

I remember years ago hearing the phrase 'a hand up, not a hand out'. Despite the more positive intentions of this idea the fact remains there are increasing numbers of people in need of food and rooftop gardening can go along way towards helping.

Can there be existing government subsidies redirected towards this form of food production? If the white house can have a 'freedom garden' why can’t cities all across the nation have 'handles gardens'?

This rooftop garden, on the campus of Trent University in Ontario Canada, has been in operation for the last ten years supplying fresh food to a university café.

Rooftop gardens have been sprouting up from Singapore to New York to Milwaukee serving CSA’s, restaurants, farm stands, grocery stores, but I have not found one instance where food is being grown to feed the homeless.

If you know of one please let me know. I would like to see them become more numerous.

Every year we are all urged to donate to food banks why can’t we donate time, money, space etc to raising food on a community garden on a rooftop?

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Aren’t we all Homesteaders

Homesteading brings to mind the great American land grab of the late 19^th century. It was a federal program that allowed if anyone lived on an abandoned piece of land for a given length of time and as long as they improved that land, it would become theirs.

Urban Homesteading is the term to describe the back-to-the-land movement, indicating, quite accurately, that some people have drifted away from ‘the land’ and are just now beginning to return to it. It is an endeavor that should be applauded, especially in light of the fact that there is no ‘free’ land to be had.

The definition I found on Path to Freedom website says this about urban homesteading: a suburban or city home in which residents practice self-sufficiency through home food production and storage. They refocus the movement away from the sole property of urbanites to encompass those of us who have been getting back-to-the-land long before it came into vogue.

These days the definition has been upgraded to mean social responsibility. Carrying the idea of self-sufficiency a step further to include reducing one’s carbon footprint, we begin to see how much more important being a ‘homesteader’ is. By adopting an off-the-grid sustainable lifestyle we ‘homesteaders’, urban, suburban and rural, can collectively make huge strides towards protecting our planet and our way of life.

Gardeners, no matter where they live, are self-sufficient to some degree by the very fact that they grow their own food, and that’s gotta count, right?. Baby steps will lead us to eventually adopt more self-sufficient ways which in turn will lead us to even more self-sufficiency and then to less reliance on huge power plants, mega super-markets, and massive transportation routes, resulting in less pollution. Gardeners, whether we call ourselves homesteaders or eco-warriors or simply gardeners, are among the vanguard of protecting our planet.

In this regard, we are all Homesteaders. It’s a label we can all be proud to wear.

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Minnesota Dept of Ag Steals People’s Milk

 This is outrageous. The USDA says we are not entitled to choose our own food.

At a time when we need more small farmers the corporate ag folks are criminalizing it.

Video from Permacultura & Regenerative Design News.



  

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CAFOs Are Killing Us (NAIS Sucks)

clipped from kjpermaculture.blogspot.com Susan Blasko is a cancer survivor twice over. She now incorporates local farm fresh foods into her diet in her on-going quest for health. She was selected at random to speak at the USDA Listening Session on NAIS (National Animal Idenification System) that took place in Harrisburg, PA this month. Here is the complete text of her remarks. The fact that I am here at all should be an indication to you that the truth is dawning at last on the general population. For many years your department has been trying to force NAIS on us. What part of “NO” don’t you understand? Yes, the eyes of the public are being pried open by the undeniable, inescapable truth: that the aim of the National Animal Identification Scam is to put small farmers out of business so that big-ag can be the sole provider of the world’s food; that the food your department approves is making us sick and sterile that CAFOs are the origins of foodborne illness that the USDA is fully prepared to use force to implement NAIS

Bravo! Ms Blasko hit them where they cannot ignore her. But they probably will anyway because someone is going to make money from the NAIS.

She speaks for millions when she lists the seven ‘inconvenient truths’. What the USDA and Ag Dept are doing in unconscionable.

I don’t know how many of you understand the dire situation our food system has been put in, but Ms Blasko’s remarks will gone a long way to informing you.

Please read, for a better understanding of how to protect your health and the health of your loved ones.

Ms Blasko says: ‘I am deeply troubled by what I’ve learned about NAIS. Not only is it expensive, intrusive, discriminatory, and deliberately hostile to small farmers; it is downright unconstitutional. Go back to the drawing board. Stand up to big-ag and industrial food processors’.

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Advice to Overhaul Food Safety System Goes Unheeded

It seems various studies conducted since 1949 have called for the integration of all federal food safety activities into a single, centrally unified framework. In 2003 the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council issued Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food that again highlighted needed improvement to achieve a science-based food safety system.

In 1998, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council issued the report Ensuring Safe Food from Production to Consumption, called for integration and overhaul.

Food borne illnesses plagued consumers long before the FDA’s existence. The FDA dates to 1906 out of the Food and Drugs Act and was primarily concerned with regulating domestically produced and distributed foods and drugs.

Many say the FDA is being stretched to its limits, and the increase in the number of food safety issues bear this out. There simply are not enough inspectors to adequately protect us. Yet the FDA keeps claiming that everything is just fine. President Obama, along with the rest of us, is not buying it. In his own words: "I think the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch them, so we're going to be doing a complete review of FDA operations," Obama told Matt Lauer during an interview broadcast on NBC's "Today" show.

The major reason why this broken system has gotten so broken is because it polices itself. In fact, the Peanut Corporation of America, responsibility for the latest salmonella outbreak claims it was considered in top shape by private investigators.

One of the private inspectors “gave the plant an overall superior rating,” the peanut company’s statement said. “The other rated the plant as ‘meets or exceeds audit expectations (Acceptable-Excellent) ratings.’ ” How could this be? Very shortly after these glowing reports eight people died and 600 others were sickened by product coming from this very same plant.

Reports from ex-employees tell of filth, a roof that leaked rain water which drained all the filth from building materials on its way into the building. Holes were reported in the peanut bags which were obviously caused by rats.

This salmonella outbreak is just the latest, and it represents the full-scale breakdown of a patchwork food safety system.

Some members of Congress are calling for and writing laws to split the FDA into two separate entities. In my opinion this is just a band-aid. Something to give the appearance that Congress is addressing the problem. What needs to be done is to hire more inspectors, develop a more comprehensive program and schedule of inspections and give the FDA the ability to immediately halt operations.

One interesting idea comes from a blog called ‘Dad Talk’ and I immediately found it to have some merit. Create a Citizen Food Corps. To add another layer of inspections. The CFC would be made up of concerned Americans, trained in safety and inspection at the hands of whatever food agency emerges from the ashes.

The key to success of would be to allow unannounced inspections to food plants around the nation complete with photographs. This is our food, we have the right to be able to walk into our nation’s kitchens, as it were, and inspect what we are going to eat. Such transparency would quickly draw attention to problem food makers. Companies that receive a bad report or refuse access to CFC inspectors would face immediate investigation by professional food regulators.

The corporate upside to being inspected more often would lead to a renewed trust in America’s food supply. This alone should be motivation enough for this idea to take flight.

The number of people who have died from trusting food processors is unacceptable and preventable. We have been calling for something to be done for decades. Dont you think something should finally be done about it?

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Vegetables are less nutritious than in past

How many of you home gardeners think fruits and vegetables we find at the supermarket have fewer nutrients than what we grow at home? Without even peeking, I’m pretty sure all of you raised your hands.

Those vegetables and fruits at the supermarket are grown by big agriculture and those of us who grow our own avoid supermarket produce as much as possible.

A report in the February issue of the Journal of HortScience, says produce in the U.S. not only tastes worse than it did in your grandparents' day, it also contains fewer nutrients - at least according to Donald R. Davis, a former research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. Davis claims the average vegetable found in today's supermarket is anywhere from 5% to 40% lower in minerals (including magnesium, iron, calcium and zinc) than those harvested just 50 years ago.

Davis does admit the science of testing has improved over the years, and earlier results may not have been as accurate as they are today, and many of these vegetables travel quite a bit further today before they are put on display at our local supermarket, meaning they are older before they reach the consumer.

Just like the general population of humans, today’s vegetables are getting larger. But this doesn’t mean we are getting more nutrients. Most of this increase in produce size is in “dry matter” (90% of which is carbohydrates) spurred along by soil chemistry. Perhaps some of this “soil chemistry” is getting into out bodies and this is what is helping us to all ‘super-size’ our bodies. Scary thought. Also, selective breeding is favoring larger vegetables but for some reason they just are not getting a proportionate increase in nutrients. My feeling is that it is because of all the chemical fertilizers used to increase the farmers productivity.

In the good ole days, everything had to be fed with organic matter because the ‘miracle’ of chemical fertilizers didn’t appear until just after WWII.

Another factor concerning the use of chemically increasing the size is that vegetables are grown faster today, allowing farmers to get their produce to the consumer quicker. The downside to this is the vegetables are not given enough time to absorb nutrients. These are the vegetables whose seeds are being selected to grow the following years. Before long, the nutrients have been selected out.

These arguments backup the necessity to grow organically and to select and save heirloom seeds.

Monoculture farming practices - another hallmark of the Big Ag industry - have also led to soil-mineral depletion, which, in turn, affects the nutrient content of crops.

More than three billion people around the world suffer from malnourishment and yet, ironically, efforts to increase food production have actually produced food that is less nourishing.

Fruits seem to be less affected by genetic and environmental dilution, but one can't help but wonder how nutritionally bankrupt veggies can be avoided. Supplementing them is problematic, too: don't look to vitamin pills, as recent research indicates that those aren't very helpful either.


Further reading:
The Incredible, Edible Front Lawn
Saving Seed
Saving Seeds
Why should we save seed
Heirloom Seeds
Seed Savers Exchange

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Hydroponics in the City

The frontier of agriculture is the urban setting. This trend is borne out of necessity for economic reasons and environmental reasons as well as for our health. Apartment buildings, rooftops, and vacant lots across the country are becoming important avenues of bringing fresh fruit and vegetables to those who otherwise have very limited access.

This photo is of an operation at the California State Polytechnic University, where the future of hydroponics – a method of cultivating plants in water instead of soil – is getting a second look as a viable option to bring farming into cities, where consumers are concentrated.

Most of the reasons for establishing urban hydroponic farms are already known to us:
to lessen the environmental cost of shipping produce from farms to cities (the routes some foods take to reach your table is extremely wasteful and downright ridiculous)
to slow down the loss of wilderness for farmland
help control the risk of bacteria along extensive, insecure food chains (we have all read horrific tales of recalled food due to contamination)
brings food closer to inner-city areas where fresh food is less available
to help feed an ever-growing world population

Hydroponics has benefited from nearly three decades of NASA research aimed at sustaining astronauts in places with even less green space than a typical U.S. city so we are gaining a lot of knowledge on the subject. Some cities are putting that knowledge into action.

In a New York City schools program run by Cornell University, students grow lettuce on a school roof and sell it for $1.50 a head to the Gristedes chain of supermarkets. Cornell agriculturist Philson Warner, who designed the program's hydroponics system, said his students harvest hundreds of heads of lettuce a week from an area smaller than five standard parking spaces by using a special nutrient-rich solution instead of water.

The numbers have some researchers imagining a future when enough produce to feed entire cities is grown in multistory buildings sandwiched between office towers and other structures.

Columbia University environmental health science professor Dickson Despommier, who champions the concept under the banner of his Vertical Farm Project, said he has been consulting with officials in China and the Middle East who are considering multistory indoor farms.

Hydroponics is universally recognized as a sustainable production method and it has a strong reputation for high quality, “clean, green” produce. Russia, France, Canada, South Africa, Holland, Japan, Australia, and Germany are among other countries where hydroponics is receiving attention.

However, the expense of setting up the high-tech farms on pricey city land and providing enough year-round heat and light could present some insurmountable obstacles. Also, the systems commonly in place today, such as HID lights (high intensity discharge), are extremely inefficient.

Currently, hydroponics is used for relatively few food crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, herbs, cucumbers and lettuce. Tree fruits do not lend themselves to hydroponics. Most vegetables are cheaper to grow in soil as are grains, beans and potatoes.

There are alternatives to hydroponics: ProMedica Health System network of Ohio, used a Toledo hospital roof to grow more than 200 pounds of vegetables in stacked buckets filled with a ground coconut shell potting medium. The tomatoes, peppers, green beans and leafy greens were served to patients and donated to a nearby food shelter. When the project resumes in the spring, the hospital plans to expand into at least two community centers in economically depressed central Toledo, where fresh produce is hard to come by.

As our population grows, and land and water become more scarce, and we reject the obscene expense of raising animals for food (along with all the associated health and environmental dangers), we are going to rely more on urban agriculture to help feed us. Whether hydroponics will become the most viable option remains to be seen. But there is no doubt that urban agriculture is a growing trend.


Further reading:
Urban Agriculture
Urban Agriculture and Community Gardening
Center for Urban Agriculture
Dangers of Meat Consumption
Meat Alternatives
Urban Gardening Help

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Permaculture: A Revolution in Food Security

This is a topic I posted on one of my other blogs at “Are We Green Yet?”. I feel the subject is topical enough to post here as well. I was going to rewrite it to take out some of the political aspects of it but reconsidered when I realized that a little politicizing is good for gardeners now and then. And after all many of us are part of the new food revolution, so here goes.

A new term has entered our lexicon, peak oil. What the everyday consumer is supposed to envision upon hearing this term is that the world has already extracted half of the planet’s natural oil resources and from this moment on the rate of production has entered a terminal decline. What this means to us of course is that the price of oil will only go higher due to its increasing scarcity and our ever increasing population size and our continued dependence on fossil-fuel-burning industry. British Petroleum (BP) claims we have not reached this ‘peak’ point while other oil companies say we have. And the debate continues without any clear way of knowing if we have reached peak oil because no one knows exactly how much oil is available under the planets surface.

Personally, I don’t know who to believe because I am not an expert, so I, like the rest of us, am at the mercy of those who are, or claim to be, experts. I do, however, believe we should aggressively research alternative energy sources no matter how much oil remains to be extracted. The longer we wait to actually adopt an alternative energy source(s) the more money we are throwing at big oil who clearly have no real interest in pursuing an alternative to using their product and the more environmental damage we are doing to the planets surface, air and water.

In the meantime, while we watch our government drag its feet in setting token and ineffective attempts at environmental policy while agribusiness and oil executives suck every dollar out of our pockets, there is a movement underway that has, unwittingly, been developing for years by individuals covering a wide spectrum of people who call themselves home gardeners, urban farmers, weekend garden ‘hobbyists’, and lately, locavores.

Permaculture and the increasing desire to become self-sufficient and sustainable is a lifestyle whose time has returned. Farming communities survived quite well for many, many years before we became industrialized and traded our independence for the convenience of having such things as: out-of-season fruits and vegetables every day of the year, and someone else to grow and can our foods.

With the emergence of recent issues concerning food safety, food and gas prices, genetically modified food, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation of food over great distances, and food freshness and quality, more and more people are becoming painfully aware of the dangerously vulnerable position we are being forced into. The continued reliance on agribusiness, government, big oil and even financial organizations to provide for our daily necessities is in jeopardy.

I am convinced that communities everywhere need to create local, sustainable, community gardens to supplement each individuals home gardens for the purpose of creating community food surplus in case of national emergency. I realize I may sound alarmist, but our nations cupboard is bare.

I recently discovered a group based in Nevada City, California, called Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy. APPLE is a grassroots group striving for a more self-reliant, sustainable local economy (as opposed to global economy that the world’s money changers are pushing for). They produce locally what they consume locally, as much as possible. It is an intuitive idea that I believe many people have been craving as an answer to our need for food safety and community activism. It is a means of re-establishing our own control over what we eat and how it is grown.

They have produced over 100 videos, they call them conversations, featuring everyday individuals who adopted permaculture and have taken the step towards sustainability in their own yards. Be sure to watch #51 “An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability” and #100 “Suburban Permaculture with Janet Barocco and Richard Heinberg”.

One such video, entitled “How Much Food Can You Grow in Your Yard?”, shows an urban lot, measuring 75’ by 125’, in Port Townsend, Washington. The home owner, Judy Alexander, takes us through her self-sustained property re-educating us on how it is possible to grow enough food to sustain your family and have excess for neighbors, friends, or community storage.

Whether you agree or disagree with the narrators assessment that we have reached a peak of human innovation, information, wealth and health, check out the videos for some very educational insight to what it can be like to regain our independence and get back the satisfaction that being in touch with land brings.

There are of course many other groups out there creating their own sustainable eden. One of my personal favorite experiments in permaculture is taking place at the “Little Homestead in the City”. They call themselves eco-pioneers living a homegrown revolution on a sustainable, real-life original urban homestead. They have set an excellent example of how anyone can create an environment that reaches out to the community at large and can therefore inspire others fulfill their own need for independence. It truly is a revolution.

Our dependence on oil is becoming more and more expensive in terms of cost of extraction and production which gets passed on to the consumer, and in the cost of damage to the environment in terms of exploration, extraction and burning of oil which is felt by everyone. We are being forced to accept higher food prices as the result of short-sighted use of food crops for the production of bio-fuels instead of using non-food crops. In our rush to sever ties to foreign oil we are made to believe that the only immediate answer is to damage the environment further by increasing the number of offshore oil wells.

Through the use of the internet and our increased access to each others gardens and skills, through blogs and websites as educational tools, we are all becoming more empowered to take the course of our future into our own hands, to grow our own food, and share the excess with neighbors in an attempt to get this food revolution off the ground.





Further reading:
Instant permaculture for the suburbs

Are we running out of oil?

Why peak oil is probably about now

Permaculture Institute

Homesteading Today

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Lawn or Food?

Lawn grass is the largest irrigated U.S. crop. "Even conservatively," notes NASA researcher Cristina Milesi, "I estimate there are three times more acres of lawns in the U.S. than irrigated corn."

That equals approximately 128,000 kilometers. Keeping all of that grass green requires about 200 gallons of fresh, typically drinking-quality water per person per day.

With the rising costs of groceries, homeowners are turning more and more of their lawn into vegetable gardens. From around the country garden centers have reported increased sales in vegetable plants and seeds. Red Barn Garden Center in Dellwood North Carolina has been part of the gardening scene for 35 years, and owner/manager Karen Collins says there are at least 15-20% more people raising vegetable gardens this year. This harkens back to 20 years ago, during another fuel price increase.

First-time gardeners are citing several reasons for getting started, and experienced gardeners are using some of the same reasons for expanding their backyard plots. Some reasons given are:

To reduce food costs

To grow food they know is safe, as long as you choose organic fertilizers over chemicals

To get exercise and have a hobby, especially baby boomers who are retiring

To get a wider variety of food than available in stores, more flavorful than industrially raised food

Burpee seed sales have increased greatly in the past three years says George Ball Jr., president of W. Atlee Burpee & Co., a leading national provider of seeds based in Warminster, Bucks County.

In the United Kingdom, vegetable gardening is on the rise, thanks to an increasing distaste for factory foods and a desire to limit “food miles.” Citizens are becoming more concerned about the distance food has to travel and the carbon emissions that result from a lengthy shipping process. Fresh vegetables grown in backyards or small parcels of leased land, called allotments, are considered more environmentally friendly.

This spring, The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported a substantial increase in vegetable seed sales. The country’s Horticultural Trades Association showed a 31% increase in sales of vegetable seeds and a corresponding 32% decrease in sales of flower seeds.

The book “Food Not Lawns,” by Heather C. Flores is helping to support a movement for homeowners to replace parts of their lawns to grow vegetables. Unfortunately, some cities and townships still have archaic codes stipulating that trees and grass should be the primary elements in front yards. “Renegade” gardeners are bucking the system and the trend is beginning to take hold. Edibles make more environmental and economic sense. Irrigation costs are going toward something that can be consumed, rather than simply admired. Front-yard produce also makes eating healthy more affordable and accessible. Who can argue with that?

Over the past several years, according to a 2006 National Gardening Survey, interest in vegetable gardening remained relatively steady. U.S. households growing vegetables ranged from 22 to 25 percent. Sales of vegetable seeds decreased in 2006, while vegetable transplants saw a slight increase. Organic food sales increased 38.4%, according to consumer research company Mintel International. The company projected that sales of organic foods will increase 71% through 2011.

With higher food and fuel prices (mainly in transportation costs) along with food safety issues as top reasons for growing your own, homegrown veggies are beginning to look like a lot more reasonable alternative to supermarket offerings.

No matter the reason for the increase in new gardeners, I wish to extent a hearty welcome to all of the new comers and to those who are converting flowers to vegetables. Perhaps we will see an increase in the number of blogs to help feed our voyeuristic tendencies.

Sources

Southeast Missourian

GreenBeam Pro

Cortez Journal

Bluefield Daily Telegraph

Asheville Citizen-Times

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Saving seed can get you sued

I don't mean to get too political here in the garden blog world but Monsanto is getting too invasive and the more we all know about it the better, in my humble opinion.

Here is an article, written by Tom Philpott of Grist.org, about Monsanto's latest tightening of their iron grip on our nation's food supply.

This is scary stuff and the implications of Monsanto's future influence on the home gardener should not be overlooked.

Please read, if for no other reason than to cast light on how a multi-million dollar biotech firm is suppressing our farmers right to save seed.

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