Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Marie McHarry wrote:


> > On 9/8/06, Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com> wrote:
> > <<People who can't keep
> > dairy animals or use dairy products, for whatever reason, should eat two
> > servings of deep-green leafy vegetables each day.  I'm sure if you
> > consult the nutrition tables, you'll see there's no other natural way to
> > get enough calcium. >>
> >
> > Millions of Chinese have been getting enough calcium for thousands of
> > years. That may change now that they're eating more meat, but if you
> > keep your protein intake down to maintenance levels, you don't need
> > nearly so much calcium. I'd recommend looking at the traditional
> > Chinese diet.
> >
> > Marie
> > _______________________________________________
> >  
>  
I've heard that too.  There's also speculation that the Dairy Advisory 
Board plays a great role in setting the RDA for calcium.

Speaking of whom, who's threatened by garlic mustard the most?  Cattle 
apparently aren't objecting to it, but you see, it makes their milk 
taste like garlic.  This is the prime source of the hysteria over it.  
But it's easily eliminated by tillage, if only the dairy farms today 
weren't overgrazed monocultures.

I've looked at the numbers again, and a non-lactating adult would 
probably get about half the necessary calcium from caloric staples, 
making it necessary only to have one daily 4 oz. serving of some magic 
bullet veggie like dark-colored greens (or four times that many green 
onions or some combination thereof, like the cilantro-green onion pork 
filling for wontons).  But if you look at the RDA for teenagers and 
children, it's twice that.  Can you picture getting a kid to eat 3/4 
pound of kale or spinach a day?

I think we've stumbled onto something interesting.  I heard once that 
babyfood per se is unknown in Asia, and children just breast-feed until 
they're able to eat adult food, which is always chopped anyway, or 
things like soft tofu and rice gruel.

I wonder which flavoring kids prefer in their mid-winter ravioli, garlic 
mustard sauerkraut, or the usual smelly, cabbagey kind.

In answer to the question, "why not look into the Chinese diet?" I can 
only say that countless Asian staples will not grow here because of the 
cool climate: peanuts, sesame, soybeans, not to mention rice.  Actually 
I retain hope for growing all but the latter in greenhouses, once we've 
got it all together, but there's still zero data on that.  So my point 
is, since nature is against us anyway, you can imagine how much I love 
hearing that I can't grow something because of someone else's 
inappropriate land management practices.  In the case of filberts, 
they're the most practical way of getting vitamin E, just as garlic 
mustard is the most practical way to get enough calcium.  Maybe we could 
eat ashes for our calcium.  I'm fed up.  I'm not going to be controlled 
like this, over some imaginary stinky-milk calamity that *might* happen 
(if garlic mustard could ever survive through a dry summer), nor over a 
botanist's desire to live in a natives-only dream world.

Bill
S. Oregon coast