What’s My Story?

Have you been (virtually) attending the FREE Real Food Summit?  Three videos a day from real food gurus… I’m learning a lot! Hop on board if you haven’t yet; I think it’s still going until Sunday. I discovered through the Real Food Summit email today that Dr. Cate Shanahan, author of Deep Nutrition and Food Rules, is soliciting stories from people who have gone low-carb and ended up with fatigue problems. (Well, I discovered that after I curiously followed the link to her “Low-Carb Poop-Out contest,” and I admit I was expecting something quite a bit weirder!) Everyone who leaves a story is entered to win autographed copies of her books!

I’ve been struggling with some pretty extreme fatigue lately after trying to make low-carb work for a while (part of the reason for my shameful posting frequency… which I do truly intend to improve), so I offered my two cents. It would be nice to win the books, but I would’ve left my note without any bribery at all, because I love that she’s doing this!  You hear a lot of low-carb success stories in the online alternative health community, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who didn’t become a beautiful superhero on low-carb. I think real foods are probably a more universal answer, in an ideal combination that varies for each individual. But Dr. Cate does endorse a low-carb real foods diet in her books, so it’s nice that she’s open about the fact that some (many?) people do experience problems. Maybe she’ll figure out the answer so we can all experience Sisson-like levels of success!

For now, I’m pretty jazzed about RRARF (from Matt Stone of 180 Degree Health’s Diet Recovery ebook)… I summarize the general concept a bit, below, if you haven’t heard about it.  It seems to be helping me more than anything has in a while. Have you ventured into the scary upside-down world that is 180 Degree Health, yet? In the past I always found Matt’s writing style very off-putting, because he really pulls no punches when insulting diets that he doesn’t agree with (which is all of them, actually), and diet is such a sensitive subject for so many people. But I guess that’s okay, because his target audience is people who’ve gotten completely fed up with whatever eating philosophy they’ve been following. I’ve gained a few pounds, but I’m okay with that for now because I feel a lot better. I’ll keep y’all posted on my progress.

Anyways, I figured I’d copy what I wrote on Dr. Shanahan’s site, since I originally got into this whole Real Food / WAPF / Paleo thing because of my health issues, but I haven’t really talked about them in depth on Farmpartment yet. She asked 5 questions and I’ve answered them below:

1)  Sex, age, height, weight on starting low carb, current weight.

Female, 23 yo, 5ft 4in. My weight fluctuates a lot, but tends to stay within 125-135 lbs, with an upward trend in recent years. Currently at the high end, about 133.

2) When did you begin low-carb and why (for weight/other health issue) and did you do Atkins, South Beach, Paleo or other and when did you start having problems?

I started Primal-style low-carb about 2 years ago, for health reasons. I suspect most of my health problems are caused by long-term chronic stress. I was a high achiever all through school (my parents say I would cry over a B in elementary school). In college, I chose a very difficult type of engineering for my major. Didn’t have a social life or any extracurricular activities, averaged about 6 hours of sleep, and rarely exercised. I remember realizing that I felt guilty any time I relaxed or did something fun, because I “should be working.” On top of all the mental/emotional stress and exhaustion, I also started really dieting for the first time to get rid of the bulging tummy that has plagued me since I was a kid. I ate conventionally “healthy” – skim dairy, artificial sweeteners, high-fiber cereal, LOTS of coffee… And skipping meals very, very frequently. I’d occasionally binge guiltily on peanut butter – probably my body screaming for some fat/protein! Looking back, I can’t believe I ate so little for so long. I did lose weight (though I kept the dang belly), but that’s when my health started deteriorating. Obvious hormonal issues – my periods were sometimes heavy and lasted for weeks, and sometimes were absent for months. I had seasonal allergies for the first time in my life, got sick all the time, and had a chronic cough for about a year. I had three kidney stones in two years. After a very stressful study-abroad trip to Brazil I returned with eczema, IBS, awful GERD, unexplainable lethargy, and a new tendency towards anxiety, crying jags, and random emotional outbursts. I had always been healthy and very even tempered, but now I felt so sick and completely out of control and it terrified me. That’s when I started low-carb. I’ve never been one for calorie trackers, so I don’t know my exact carb count or anything, and I’m sure it was far from consistent. But I started using animal or coconut fat for all my cooking and went grain-free. Occasional cheats – bread basket or chips & salsa at a restaurant, corn tortilla, birthday cake, etc. I’ve never been a fan of beans or potatoes so I wasn’t even tempted by those. So my main carb source was small amounts of dairy (plain yogurt and cream in my coffee). I also started some traditional food practices like making bone broth, kombucha, and sauerkraut.

3) Please outline your problems the more you can share, the better. If you sought advice from a health professional what was the advise and did it help?

Low carb was great for a while – I felt better, and I loved how much my hunger was decreased – now when I skipped meals (frequently still), I didn’t even feel it. I only lost a couple pounds, but most was off my tummy, so I was happy. GERD, eczema, and energy levels also vastly improved at first. But about a year in, I started having reflux after small cheats, and soon even after good home-cooked Primal meals sometimes. My IBS symptoms never got a lot better, but at this point they started to worsen, eventually becoming pretty debilitating. My energy levels became less consistent, and the mysterious lethargy became more and more common, especially after meals. My eczema also returned with a vengeance, on my lips of all places – ow! I thought it was because I had relaxed a bit more on my LC eating, so I decided to go full-on strict Paleo (no more dairy, far less fruit, no more cheats!) until my wedding to lose some weight and hopefully feel a lot better for the big day. Unfortunately, I didn’t lose any weight, and experienced only modest improvements in my symptoms. Then I started trying a bunch of eliminations to see if I was allergic to anything, always with a low-carb framework. I tried avoiding eggs, dairy, nightshades, nuts… I had to stop eating at restaurants altogether because I always felt terrible when we ate out. Everything got worse – eczema, headaches, runny nose, IBS, nausea, acid reflux, anxiety, foggy brain, dizziness, and extreme fatigue and depression. Didn’t help that I started my first Real Job and quickly realized that I hated it (still do) – more stress, yay! At one point I just threw up my hands and ate “like a normal person” (i.e. McDonalds and pizza) for like 3 weeks until my (very concerned) husband made me stop. Then it was back to low carb, as clean as I could get, and trying desperately to get it to work for me again like it did the first time. I was miserable, sick, and never wanted to do anything. My husband started to gently suggest seeing a therapist for my depression.

About a month ago I was in the middle of doing Whole30 and getting really frustrated when I finally read that crazy heretic Matt Stone’s ebook (Diet Recovery), and it struck a chord. (For anyone who’s unfamiliar, his theory is that any kind of restricted eating lowers your thyroid function / metabolism, which can be confirmed by tracking your waking temperature – I discovered that mine is consistently in the mid 96′s. This causes all sorts of widespread mischief in your body, since your metabolism is kind of a big deal. This problem is exacerbated by any other stress you might be under. His “rehab” program for sluggish thyroids / metabolisms is called Rehabilitative Rest and Aggressive Re-Feeding (RRARF), and it’s just what it sounds like. You basically eat a ton of real food to create a “nutritional superabundance” and give your body all the tools it could possibly need, and you get as much sleep and rest as possible to encourage healing.) I figured I had nothing to lose, and if he was right, I’d end up with a much stronger digestive system, rather than a list of foods that I had to avoid, which was really the best-case scenario with my previous approach. I’ve been doing RRARF for about 2 weeks, focusing on carbs since that’s what I’ve been restricting – sprouted/fermented grains, dairy, soaked beans, potatoes… And eating as nutritionally dense as I can in general. And oh my gosh, I feel so much better! My energy levels are steadily rising, I’m not depressed anymore, I haven’t had acid reflux for a week, and my IBS is finally, FINALLY improving. We ate at a restaurant last night and I felt 100% fine afterwards, which is incredible. This morning I found myself humming and doing a little dance while I made breakfast (whaaat?)!

My theory now is that it was all about stress for me, and that any sort of restricted diet was too much for my body to handle so it just broke down. I was high-carb/ low-fat originally, so the first low-carb/ high-fat diet gave my body what it needed at that point. But now my body seems to need carbs. Hopefully, RRARF will work as advertised and I’ll continue to improve, and then I can just eat an unrestricted real food diet, and trust my body to know what it needs – as in, eat whatever sounds good, as long as it’s a real food, and stop when I’m full. That’s certainly an appealing thought. I have gained a few pounds, but at this point I do not care at ALL as long as I continue to feel better (which is… good I guess?). I’m of course concerned that I’ve always held so much weight in my middle, so I hope that I’ll creep towards a healthier fat distribution once I’ve held a healthier hormonal profile for a while, but we shall see. Maybe if I continue to feel well I can eventually try lowering my carbs again to slim down.

4) If you provide blood test results, please put them into context of by providing dates and information on what your diet was like and what your problems were at the time. Same for medications particularly blood glucose/blood pressure/thyroid/other hormone/anti-depressants/sleep aids. Please include any adjustments made, why, and what the effects of the adjustments were.

I honestly avoid doctors, and being so young I haven’t had a lot of blood-work done. My gyno ordered a basic panel for the first time at my last appointment (was doing dairy-free Paleo at the time, I believe), but they’re in the process of updating their online system and I can’t view the results anymore. Everything was normal though, I think my total cholesterol was high-ish. I don’t take any medications.

5) Highlights of your family history, ie obesity, auto-immune diseases, hormone problems particularly thyroid.

My dad’s brother has Type 1 diabetes but otherwise everyone on his side is fairly healthy – both grandparents are alive, minor complaints but no metabolic syndrome and doing great for a couple in their eighties. Dad has always been active and slim, and is currently healthy as a horse, aside from lower back pain and a bad knee. There’s some heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis on my mom’s side, and her mother died of Alzheimer’s, pretty early-onset. Mom’s got similar digestive and fatigue problems to mine, actually – her lifetime GERD has progressed to Barrett’s Esophagus, unfortunately, which is excellent motivation for me to get mine under control. I introduced her to Paleo when I started down that road, and she’s actually doing great with it! She’s lost a ton of weight and seems to have a lot more energy now. She does a combination of SCD and Paleo, and she’s encouraging my dad and brother towards that style of diet, so we’ll see how they do!

A Debate With My Brother (Part 3)

Have you read Part 1 and Part 2 of this epic saga?  The final part is here…

Me, after way too much time spent gathering sources:

Sure!  I won’t just send you organic farming stuff though, because I don’t think the current large-scale industrial organic farms are getting it right either.  They’re really just chemical-free copycats of the unsustainable agriculture system we know and love, and they won’t hold up any better in the long-term.  I’d love to see an even more sustainably-minded system, and (through my research for this email; thanks lol) I have learned that what I’m thinking is pretty close to permaculture, or maybe “beyond organic.”  The idea is to design a biodiverse web of plants and animals that work together to produce lots of food with less (human) work and (approaching) zero external energy inputs.  And I also think that personal gardens are much more important for the future of food production than most people give them credit for (think Victory Gardens during WW2, which were producing 40% of America’s fresh veggies by 1944!), Any degree of independence from the industrial food system can only be a good thing for one’s budget and health.  So don’t focus totally on “farms” when you’re thinking about sustainable agriculture!

But first off, organic farming.  In a 30 year side-by-side study of organic vs. conventional farming (corn & soybeans) in Canada, organic outperformed by leaps and bounds.  Organic matched conventional yields (and exceeded them in years of drought) while using 45% less energy.  So it can be done.  I’ve attached the full text of the study.

http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years

I came across this blog post last week and thought about our conversation.  Not an academic article by any means, but pretty much what I was saying in my earlier email.  At the end of the post is a list with a lot of examples of very successful organic / beyond organic / permaculture ventures. The first link, about “greening the desert” in Jordan, has a broken embedded video on it, but I found the organization’s website and it’s got lots of info… interesting concept that could help a lot of people in arid climates.  And of course the list includes Polyface Farm, (that link is to a different article, interview with the farmer) made famous by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (read that, if you haven’t, that’s what got me started on all this hippie-dippie-real-food business in the first place).  Definitely worth a watch is the BBC documentary… the old lady in the second part of the video is adorable!  And it’s a good primer about agriculture’s heavy reliance on fossil fuel, and about concepts like soil health and permaculture.  One dude with a permaculture “forest garden” claims a similar setup designed for maximum yield could feed twice the people per acre as current conventional farms.  

Nice piece about the importance, and endangerment, of dirt… He loses me at the composting toilet, though

http://odewire.com/50849/the-joy-of-dirt.html

Nutrient decline in modern crops; doesn’t really mention it, but this is a great argument for growing your own veggies from heirloom seeds.  

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Nutrient-Decline-Industrial-Farming.aspx

Another problem with heavy pesticide use:  pesticide-resistant superweeds.  Yay!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?_r=1

“The American Farmland Trust estimates that farmland is disappearing at a rate of 2 acres per minute.”  This means that we must produce food more efficiently, and we must encourage more biodiversity, to reduce the risk of a large percentage of our food supply being wiped out at once.  We also must become less dependent on cereal grains, which require large open spaces, in favor of more space-efficient crops like climbing varieties, tree nuts, and even well-managed livestock (which should also become less dependent on cereal grains, for many reasons), which can use different levels of the same space.  Grow upwards, not just outwards!

We can do meat better, too… “A cow that weighs 1150 pounds live will produce a dressed carcass weighing just 715 pounds. From that 715 pounds, 146 will be discarded as “fat, bone, and loss.”“  Much of that 146 pounds is far from inedible; organ meats are far healthier even than muscle meat, fat can be rendered and used for cooking, and bones can be used to make bone broth.  We need to relearn how to enjoy eating “nose to tail.”  (I’ll admit, I’m still working on that one.  I started making bone broth – delicious and easy, by the way – and then stalled out when I discovered that I don’t like liver.)  My source for that link is this MDA article that’s talking about the global feasibility of his Primal diet in particular.  Good points, with a focus on livestock rather than plant foods.

Yeesh, I can go forever on this stuff.  I should start a blog or something, I apparently need an outlet.

Okay, in response to your resources…  As for the first and second ones, it doesn’t seem to me like an argument against organic agriculture in general, just an argument for continuing to introduce industrial agriculture to developing countries.  My concerns are concentrated at home, and I’m far from an expert on third-world agricultural situations.  So I’ll just say that this guy is probably right, when it comes to feeding developing nations.  No one system will work for every environment, and there are many places that need high yields NOW, faster than the time it would take to develop an organic solution that’s both sustainable AND high yielding in that specific part of the world.  Organic agriculture is far from perfected, so anyone who thinks that we should try to export our current organic system to starving countries is simply myopic.  But that doesn’t mean that we should abandon the concept of organic here, where we are far from starving (on the contrary, Americans waste 40% of our food). Develop organic / perma / sustainable agriculture in the first world, then bring it to the rest of the world.  But anyways, I’ll also say that I remain suspicious about the long-term cost of this technology for the farmers, both financial and environmental.  And I remain confident that there is a “green” solution for these places, it just might take a lot of smart people to figure it out and teach them how to implement it.  But we’re not funding that, and lives take priority over “sustainability” and “greenness.”  And his calculations about mass devastation occurring if everyone converted to organic rely on livestock being fed cereals from off-site, which is absolutely a bad and unnecessary idea.  Also, I love to hear about conventional farming’s strides toward sustainability, but I just don’t think it will ever be enough without a significant mindset shift.  But yeah, I definitely support farming aid over food aid any day.  Teach a man to fish, etc.

As for the third one, I am aware that an industrial organic apple will have the same nutritional value as an industrial conventional apple.  They’re both bred for traveling well rather than nutrition or taste – in fact, they’re probably the exact same variety of apple – and they’re both probably about a year old by the time you buy them from a supermarket (I would have a source for that, but I can’t find it.  I’m not just making that up though.  Yuck, right?).  And I’m not even all that concerned about pesticide residue in non-organic produce because yeah, it’s minuscule and probably not all that harmful compared to the toxic load we encounter throughout our day – car exhaust, personal care products, coworker with the flu, etc. (although I might still err on the side of caution if I were pregnant or in poor health, or for feeding little kids).  If I buy organic, it’s because I feel like I’m voting with my dollar for a system that’s ever so slightly better than the one we have now.  I should really vote with my dollar for farmer’s markets and humane meat directly from the rancher and such, but I’m lazier with my actions than I am with my words.  The rest the third article highlights the fact that the current large-scale organic model (which is really just a slight tweak to the current conventional model) is flawed.  I absolutely agree!  As I’ve said, we’re not getting it right with organic right now, either; we need a massive, radical shift in how we approach food production if we’re going to get to where we need to be.  But I think organic made its slight tweak in the correct direction so I’m more willing to give them my money.

BONUS:  Yeah, I tend to suspect that global warming is not the terrible problem that some people think that it is.  This is one of my non-hippie views (I do have both, promise lol).  If you look at planetary climate trends, they’re up and down all the time.  I’m sure we probably are contributing to the current rise, but I doubt we even have the capability to affect any catastrophic damage.  I’m not concerned.  I don’t think we need to make reducing emissions or finding alternative energies a priority because of global warming, but hey, if we figure out some truly efficient alternative energy because of all this panic, that would be great.  All the “green” energies that we’ve got now are pretty crappy though.  Like ethanol, it’s idiotic; we need don’t need to pay subsidies to farms that grow more corn, and if we must grow more corn, we might as well eat it instead of wasting a bunch of fossil fuel to make it into “green” fuel 

Me again, about an hour later:

Ooo, this is a good one about meat, too

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation

Brosepph, having either decided that he agrees with me, or that it’s too much trouble to keep talking about this:

Yep, using 5% of the corn crop for corn ethanol just means we’re starving folk in third world countries b/c we’re a net exporter of corn (which is also why you can’t argue that America should accept reductions in crop yields for organic produce, b/c we feed the world).

Glad to hear you’re on the skeptic side of the AGW debate–earns you a pass in my book for your lefty views on ag policy. The more I’ve learned about the issue, the more I think the warmists are full of it. Not a good sign for society when you come to the conclusion that practically the entire scientific community is doing nothing but confirming their biases and engaging in groupthink…

So I never really got much of a satisfying response to my rant.  But I had a lot of fun formulating it! 

What do y’all think about permaculture, sustainability, and beyond organic?  Is it the future, or is it a pipe dream?

A Debate With My Brother (Part 2)

Have you read Part 1?  Start there, or this won’t make a lot of sense.  Ready?  Okay, diving back in…

Me (Recognizing that there is just no stoppin’ me now):

(Please note that I intended for that essay to remind everyone to ponder where their food comes from, maybe grow a little lettuce plant in a pot, maybe choose some grassed meat over CAFO meat because everybody here can afford it.  Didn’t think this would turn into a debate on agricultural policy but now that I’m on a roll….)

Eh, I’m not the type that believes all GMOs are from the devil or anything, I think that sort of science can help a lot of people.  The scaling up of agriculture is absolutely a positive, I’m just uncomfortable with how it’s being done.  Inventions like that strain of golden rice are the sort of thing that I don’t think should be patented and controlled by anyone.  I’m being idealistic, of course, but this is just something that bothers me a lot.  I just discovered via good ol’ Google that the first wave of GM seed patents are due to run out in a few years, so I hope that some of those plant varieties go the way of Aspirin:  public domain and cheaply available.  That could start to dig farmers out of the hole.  

I suspect we just won’t agree on the long-term sustainability of the monoculture system in general, though.  Sure, ag scientists are developing new technology every day, and they’re keeping far enough abreast of soil depletion that the ground will still yield… But there’s still net depletion taking place.  You can’t withdraw money from a checking account indefinitely without putting at least an equal amount back in, even if you’re only taking out pennies.  Veggies have healthy vitamins and minerals in them, everybody knows that… and they get those nutrients from the soil that they grow in.  Every time a farmer harvests a bunch of corn from his field and takes it to market, part of the soil’s nutrients get trucked away from the farm along with the corn.  Chemical fertilizer replaces part of the phosphorus or potassium or nitrogen that was taken out by the last round of crops…. so you test your soil, see what’s missing, and buy the right fertilizer to put it back in.  The previously-mentioned ag scientists are hard at work refining the testing technology and the fertilizing technology, so that they can detect & remedy more nutrient deficiencies, but they haven’t yet reached the point of 100% replenishment.  Besides, even if they did, the farmer still has to shell out for fertilizer every season.  Wouldn’t it be great if they didn’t have to?

It’s not even just nutrient deficiencies, either; those are the symptoms of a larger problem.   The root cause is that the dirt is dead.  Healthy soil needs microbial activity, beneficial insects, and a constant influx of organic matter to be broken down and used by these friendly buggies.  If soil is alive, this microscopic & insect community can maintain a fertile chemical composition without much help.

Consider a typical industrial monoculture farm that grows soybeans using the latest ag science. They might have 100 acres of soybeans, all with the exact same genetic composition, all requiring the exact same nutrients from the soil to grow, all susceptible to the exact same diseases.  They pay for the soybean seeds, they pay for pesticides that will kill everything but those soybean plants (including beneficial insects and microbes, by the way), they pay to get their soil tested, they pay for the fertilizer to replenish that soil.  They harvest and sell their produce and then do the exact same thing the next year.  (Hopefully they at least rotate to a different crop, I don’t know how commonly practiced crop rotation is in conventional farms but that would help the soil recover a little bit from season to season.)  The farmers don’t have to be well-educated, they can employ migrant workers and pay them next to nothing, they’re completely dependent on the system that supplies them with the seeds, pesticides, soil testing, and fertilizer.  If any link in that chain fails, or if one of those diseases that all of their soybeans are susceptible to comes along, they’re facing either drastically reduced yield, or no yield at all.  Not only would they not know how to solve that problem, but it would most likely be completely impossible for them to solve it even if they did know.

Contrast that with a well-managed small farm that grows a variety of crops & raises a variety of animals, again using the latest ag science. Each acre might have many different varieties of plants, chosen to compliment each other (like the Native Americans’ Three Sisters: corns, beans, and squash, where one gives to the soil what the other takes away).  They pay for some of their seeds, probably, but if they’re lucky they don’t pay for all of them, because they’ve been able to save seeds from the previous season’s harvest without infringing on anyone’s patent.  They don’t need chemical fertilizer, at least not as much, because they’ve been using their animal and plant waste to make compost, which keeps the soil’s microbiological community alive & thriving. (Speaking of animals, they’ve been raising their cows, chickens and pigs on grass, instead of buying hundreds of tons of corn that’s shipped across the country from an industrial farm.  Grass is free, if you keep the soil healthy enough to grow it.  And then they don’t have to pay a service to truck away the manure, either. And their animals aren’t dependent on expensive antibiotics.  Win-win-win.)  At the harvest, they save a portion for seeds to plant next year, and sell the rest.  These farmers must be very well-educated in responsible husbandry of the land. They are capable and independent, and know how to solve problems for themselves if they occur.  (Another idealistic fantasy of mine:  they are highly respected professionals, and they make a decent living).  If a disease comes along and decimates their broccoli, they can still recoup part of their costs by selling their tomatoes and carrots.  They’ll take a hit in profits and they’ll have to buy broccoli seeds the next year, but they probably won’t starve.  And realistically, their broccoli is probably genetically diverse enough that they’d only lost like half of it.

You don’t believe that organic can feed the world, and at this point I think you’re right.  But I don’t think that industrial can feed the world either, not in the long term.  So both systems need a good deal of help from ag science.  In the first system the science helps large corporations help farmers… but in that system the farms require massive energy inputs in terms of seed, chemicals, fossil fuels to produce the chemicals and transport them, etc.   In the other system, ag science helps farmers help themselves.  This system’s goal is to create biodiverse communities that can grow closer to closed-loop ecosystems the better the science gets.  Ideally, a perfectly managed farm would only require enough outside inputs to run the equipment and transport the produce once it’s harvested.  Which system do you think ag science should be focusing on as the more sustainable option? (And which system do you think they’re being paid more to focus on?)

Broseph:

Uncle, uncle! Drowning in a roiling sea of text…

The next day Broseph, not content with surrender, started an Epic Link War:

Send me a few resources on organic farming. I’ve included a few resources opposed to organic farming below (as well as a bonus lecture on climate skepticism, which is an issue of primary importance to any discussion of ag policy. I am interested to hear your position on that, as well):

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/attention_whole_foods_shoppers?page=0,0

http://remnantculture.com/?p=965

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/organics-footprint

BONUS:

http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/file/0005/559049/20111031MattRidley.mp3

Your dear brother, Broseph

Are you excited to see what I found for him?  You’ll have to wait for Part 3!    In the meantime, weigh in with some comments… 
How do you feel about organic farming, GMOs, permaculture, and the “green” movement?

A Debate With My Brother (Part 1)

So my younger brother, a Political Science major, is real big on starting debates about everything (maybe not generally, but at least “real big” compared to the rest of my very confrontation-averse family).  He’s also of the uber-conservative Republican persuasion, and as such he’s not real big on hippie-dippie stuff like organic food and alternative energy.  Now, I mentioned that my family avoids confrontation, and I am probably the most extreme of the lot.  I  hate disagreements.  It’s very, very hard to get me to argue about anything unless I feel incredibly strongly about it, and also feel like the discussion is likely to accomplish some change in the other person’s opinion.  Furthermore, I’m not very good at arguments (lack of practice, I’m sure); or more accurately, I’m not very good at conveying my point of view.  Communication is not my strong suit – feel free to make some engineer jokes, here.

That said, my brother recently managed to find a topic that I am (apparently) absolutely willing to argue about:  sustainable agriculture.  We had an email exchange on the topic, and I actually enjoyed it; imagine that!  I don’t think he enjoyed it quite as much as I did.  In fact, this debate was what convinced me to start a blog, because as long as I can write about it instead of talking about it, I can just go on and on about stuff like this for ages.  I figured that I might as well find an interested audience for these sorts of rants, rather than forcing them on my largely uninterested IRL friends and family. 

I thought I’d include our conversation here, since I spent so much time finding sources and such    It’s split into two three parts, because as I said, I can go on and on.  And I did.

Me (to several family members):    

Excellent essay on food production / ethics, love it.  Reached the end and felt like sending it to everybody I knew; y’all will have to do lol  ;)

My Brother, hereafter “Broseph”:    

“Those using noble-sounding rhetoric are seldom judged by the consequences of their ideas.” -Thomas Sowell

Berry’s ideas are fine for the individual. They spell disaster for a society, however, esp. for the unprivileged.

Also, producers are not quite as manipulative as they are made out to be. You cannot succeed in business if there is no market for your product. People have not been brainwashed to purchase food from agribusiness–they purchase it because they prefer it to other possible alternatives.

My Mother (a.k.a. The Reason I Am Kind Of A Hippie):

People purchase that food because it is what is available at the local grocery stores (convenient).  What used to be at the local grocery stores was grown more locally and less processed, etc.  They also purchase all the prepared meals (chicken nuggets, etc) because it is convenient.  Just like the author was saying.  Some people today are lazy (and uneducated) about their food choices.  Plus, with both parents working or single parenting, no one feels like they have time to cook from scratch.  It would be great to start educating children in the schools about how to grow and prepare more natural, nutritious food.  

But, even so, some people might make better choices if better things were available to them at their local grocery stores.  Like in [My Hometown], Tom Thumb has started carrying way more Organic stuff because people in [My Hometown] are more educated about things and have requested that– and have enough money to purchase it.  They had survey cards when they started remodeling a few years ago where they asked shoppers what they wanted them to carry and what changes they could make (and they occasionally still ask).  Whole Foods only goes into affluent neighborhoods for a reason.

Still, lots of “underprivileged” people garden and grow their own vegetables and are healthier for it.  They can even use city land (community gardens) in some cities if they don’t have land of their own.  [My Hometown]‘s Community garden encourages giving the produce to charity because our residents are well off enough to do that, but [Nearby Big City] has some community gardens that are available for people to cultivate for their own use.

When I was reading the first part of this I was picturing the people in WALL-E sitting in the chairs and being fed and entertained.  About right.

Dad and I are in the process of making a vegetable bed in the backyard — yea!

It does seem idealistic, Broseph.  But the point is for individuals to at least try to make a little difference by making educated choices.  If enough people did that, maybe there would be some good changes.

Broseph:

Economies of scale = lower prices. Lower prices = more purchasing power, esp. for people at the bottom with limited resources. I’m not saying we should *not offer* organic foods if they are competitive, but we should *definitely, definitely* NOT penalize agribusinesses–which help the poor–to advance some ill-thought organic crusade, which would be regressive. We have practically eliminated hunger in this country. You can thank industrial-scale ag for that.

Me, beginning to make this into A Whole Big Thing:

Industrial-scale ag is not sustainable in the long-term though; it’s killing the soil. The current system of planting repetitive monocultures constantly depletes the same nutrients from the soil, without ever truly replacing them.   Chemical fertilizers only concern themselves with the three basic chemicals that plants need to survive… but in this form they have a super short half life, plus all the micronutrients that should be in our soil are never replenished.  This isn’t just a theory either; industrially-grown vegetables and fruits have been shown to have fewer nutrients than the same plants grown in healthier soil.  

And monocultures mean less genetic variety, which leaves acres upon acres of crop susceptible to diseases. Surely you don’t support giant international monopolies… Monsanto, anyone?  Because that’s what has boosted them to their current domination of the market:  they’ve engineered disease-resistant strains that will only work with their fertilizer and their pesticides.  The problem is, with companies like that controlling intellectual rights to every major crop nowadays, the conventional farmers are at the bottom of the bottom.  The system barely allows them to make enough money to survive, while those at the top are thriving.  They have to buy new seeds every year rather than saving part of their yield (which they can do if they grow heirloom varieties), they have to buy the fertilizer and pesticide that works with the new version of the seed, and they have to accept next to nothing for their crop once it’s harvested.  Cheap produce may benefit many poor people, but it’s devastating the poor people who grow it.

Plus, the patent-protected varieties may not be heirloom, but they can cross-pollinate with other varieties of the same species, and transfer the engineered genes to the offspring.  Monsanto has a track record of pursuing legal action against small farmers whose crops have been tainted with the genes.  Not only do those farmers have an infestation of plants that they don’t want and can’t get rid of without buying Monsanto’s herbicide, but they end up bankrupt from legal fees.

These are just the American farmers, who have options when their farms go under.  Did you hear about all the Indian farmers that are committing suicide when their GM crops fail?  250,000 in the past 50 years.  Sure, that wasn’t Monsanto’s intention.  And those farmers probably should have done more research on the amount of water needed to grow cotton in their area.  But suicide is the last recourse of the hopeless, and nothing destroys hope more than complete dependence on someone else for your livelihood.  That’s what the current system is: farmers as helpless pawns of the market.  The current organic model isn’t perfect either, but at least it puts some power in the hands of the farmer and allows them to make a profit.  If done intelligently, it can potentially improve the soil over time, rather than steadily depleting it. 

I don’t think we need to make produce cheaply available by slashing its cost at the producer; that won’t work for much longer.  Maybe we need to do it by encouraging more young people to become farmers and educating them about how to do it more responsibly.  Maybe instead of allowing cities to sprawl so much, we should just prioritize farmland more.  Maybe instead of heavily subsidizing industrial crops like wheat and soy and corn that are processed into oblivion and tossed into every boxed food in the store, we should start subsidizing independent farmers that grow nutrient-dense produce like broccoli and beans and tomatoes so that those foods become affordable for low-income families.  I don’t know the ins and outs of what would make that possible, but I feel like it can’t be impossible, and it would be healthier on so many levels.

But whatever, I mostly liked what he said about being more connected with the origin of our food.  I think that’s a major problem for Americans and would promote health more than all the Play 60′s and My Plates combined.  Encouraging community gardens doesn’t require changing the whole agricultural system, and it would be a step in the right direction.  I personally think they need to start putting gardens in elementary schools, especially in low-income areas, and teaching kids where food comes from.  At the very least, more people can grow a little herb garden on their windowsill.  :)

Broseph, who has now become offended:

The only people who support monopolies (which can only stay monopolies through government rent-seeking) are statists and the owners of monopolies, so no, I do not support “international monopolies,” although I do support agribusiness in theory (not necessarily all in practice–you’d have to work in their PR department to claim that).

Industrial-scale ag will not ‘kill the soil’ in the long-term, because farming practices are not static over time. In a free market, people innovate past problems, and landholders will do whatever is necessary to ensure that their soil is fertile enough to produce crops, or else they will have to buy new land or go under (property rights ensure some level of sustainability). You’re thinking way too far inside the box on this one.

As for GM crops, you fail to mention strains like the recently-discovered variant of golden rice that will multiply rice production by a factor of three. These aren’t sinister products–that strain will save innumerable lives in SE Asia and around the world.

Monsanto’s questionable business practices aside (no one likes the fact that corporations exploit the legal systems of undeveloped countries, but it happens), the scaling up of agriculture is a net positive. It goes back to the principle of “creative destruction.” Small farmers will undoubtedly lose jobs, but the net benefit to society and the poor will be calculated in what is saved–lives and billions of dollars in purchasing power.

Let’s consider the share of income households from different countries spend on food:   U.S. is lowest because of large-scale ag (strong currency and higher incomes play a role as well, but that should only further convince you of the importance of the free market, which has enabled those factors). Or let’s consider the last time in U.S. history when most food was produced by small farmers.

“Encouraging more young people to become farmers” will increase the share of income Americans (and people worldwide–we are a net exporter of food) pay for food. That’s just a fact.

We agree on eliminating ag subsidies, though! Those have got to go (although my opposition exists for different reasons…).

Stay tuned for Part 2, in which Sh*t Gets Real, and Part 3, in which References Are Thrown About.

This post is shared in Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade!  Head on over for more countercultural food talk!

In Which I Confess an Addiction (Ginger Bug / Apple Soda)

I’m developing a serious addiction to fermenting things.  It started as mere curiosity, piqued by my initial research into traditional foods, which grew into an innocent desire to attempt to ferment something (with every expectation that it would fail horribly).  I hung around my favorite real-foodie blogs for months on end, wistfully soaking in stories of homemade yogurt and lactofermented pickles, convinced for some reason that such things were hopelessly beyond my capabilities and/or patience.  But one fateful day, I happened to make a rare trip to Whole Foods right after reading about how to grow a SCOBY with store-bought kombucha.  I saw the kombucha in the refrigerated section, and I decided to try it, just this once.

I don’t have any brewed up, so here’s my ugly ol’ SCOBY.

Ah, kombucha… my gateway ferment.  Soon I had developed a pretty good process for brewing kombucha, but I couldn’t stop there.  Once I had experienced the tangy taste of success, more experimentation was inevitable.  I ended up with about ¾ head of red cabbage left over from some recipe right before I needed to be away from home for a couple of days.  Rather than leaving it to shrivel up in the fridge, I figured I’d at least give that poor cabbage a shot at deliciousness.  So I shredded it, threw in some salt, and set it up using this method… and to my great delight, it tasted a little sour when I got back to check on it a few days later.  I left it for a few more days, and it became my second successful ferment:  beautiful, crisp, hot-pink sauerkraut!

Never have you seen a girlier batch of kraut!

I don’t think I actually believed that cabbage + salt could produce something that tasted like anything besides salty cabbage.  It fascinates me because it seems so impossible!  My fermentation habit grows stronger with every success.  I really want to try homemade yogurt next… Or pickles…  Or sourdough bread…  (It’s okay, though.  I can stop anytime I want to.)

So anyways, when I stumbled across this post a couple of weeks ago I just had to give it a go. It’s another one of those impossible recipes; ginger + sugar + water = something bubbly, somehow.  And it has the cutest name!  And it sounds really easy!  And it doesn’t have any exotic or expensive ingredients!  Also, Husby might actually be happy to drink a homemade soda (he is a very good sport about sampling stuff that I’ve left sitting on our counter for days to grow bacteria on purpose, but he generally leaves the rest for me… for some reason.  )

I won’t repeat the ginger bug starter instructions here because she does a great job of explaining it (and it really is that simple).  Make sure to leave the skin on your ginger when you cut it up, because that’s where the little buggies are.  I chopped up a bunch all at once and kept it in the fridge, to make it easier to feed every day.  This is the sort of thing you’ll end up with after about 10 days:

Ginger bug! Cute, right?

It doesn’t look like much, but when you open it up, it’ll fizz to let you know that it’s ready!   The ginger bug post that I linked to has itself a link to an apple ginger soda recipe that uses the ginger bug with freshly juiced apple & ginger.  Now, that sounds delicious, and if you own a juicer you should totally try that, and report back to let me know that it is indeed delicious… but I do not own a juicer, nor do I plan to get one while I still occupy a kitchen that’s roughly the size of a walk-in closet.  So, I whipped out my Easy Button:  7 cups boring ol’ store-bought apple juice, ½ cup ginger bug (just the liquid)… then I waited for three days.

Here are the results after three days of sittin’.

Yummy apple soda!  Well, apple drink, really… it’s not very bubbly at all.  But that’s probably because I used such a big bottle.  It’s still very tasty… Basically apple juice, but a lot less sweet and with an interesting tang to it.  Husby’s opinion:  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

Good enough for me!

Of note:  The bottle was originally filled all the way to its neck, but we drank that much of it before I got around to taking that picture.  Pretty good endorsement, I’d say!

Also of note:  It had a white skin on the surface when it was done fermenting, which kinda reminded me of a new kombucha mother.  Definitely wasn’t mold or anything, though.  So don’t freak out if you try this and get something similar.

This post is shared on The Nourishing Gourmet’s Pennywise Platter Thursday! 

Internet Travel Guide (3/21/12)

This is a fun little bit of news.  I don’t worry too much about stuff like this, because realistically there are many powerful pieces of legislation floating around that have never been (ab)used to their full potential, and probably never will be. But there’s a little part of me that wants to move out into the wilderness somewhere and become self-sufficient, just in case everything goes to hell one of these days. I don’t have a problem with Obama; I think he’s got good intentions.  But vague and far-reaching language like this opens a door that makes me nervous.

Melissa offers an excellent reminder that generalizations don’t serve us well with respect to diet (or anything else, really… although that itself is a generalization, I guess). Digestion is a complex process that will be different for everybody (or every body). It’s important – and encouraging – to remember that “a sick person can react to ANYTHING. And a very healthy person can tolerate a lot of terrible things.”

Have you tried soap nuts for your laundry? If you’ve got sensitive skin, you totally should. And if you do, and you’d like to know when they’re “done,” here’s a helpful tip! I’ll be trying this… next time I get around to doing laundry.

Erin says, ” When I first started cooking from scratch, it didn’t seem too hard. I gathered my ingredients and followed the recipes. But then one day it hit me: I wasn’t buying processed, pre-packaged meals anymore, but I was using processed, pre-packed ingredients to make my ‘from-scratch’ meals [emphasis hers].”  …Yeeeeaaaah. I can relate to that. I’ll probably keep relying on convenience foods ingredients a lot of the time, but I’m totally going to try some of her easy from-scratch ingredients! First up: creamed soups and spice mixes. (I already make homemade chicken broth; I’ll do a post on that soon)