Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pat Meadows <pat@meadows.pair.com>]

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 09:58:23 -0600, you wrote:

>
>http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html is a must read, folks.

Very interesting, thanks.  

However, I'll be petty about it, because I disagree with him
on a few points.

This statement is erroneous:  'Likewise, you can’t eat
unprocessed wheat.'  You most certainly can, and I often
have.  

Wheat kernels (wheat berries), unprocessed, can be cooked
(boiled) and eaten like rice, and they are very nice.  If
you're willing to grind them just a little, you can have
cracked wheat that cooks faster.  But even the whole wheat
kernels are eminently edible.  You could sprout them too, if
you want to, and eat the sprouted wheat grass.  But let's
say that sprouting is 'processing' them.  You can still eat
the whole wheat kernels; the only processing required is
threshing them and cooking them.

I think the following statement is inaccurate too:

'Still, these livestock do something we can’t. They convert
grain’s carbohydrates to high-quality protein.'

We can certainly get the protein we need from grains, if we
also eat complementary proteins (legumes being the obvious
choice, dairy products another good choice, and there are
others).  We are then 'converting grain's carbohydrates to
high quality protein'.

It's perfectly possible to be healthy and enjoy a long life
while eating NO animal foods whatsoever:  I only need point
to the Jains in India - for many hundreds of years, many
Jains have been both vegan and healthy.

I'm neither a vegetarian nor a vegan, but it irks me to see
inaccuracies like this and detracts from an otherwise very
interesting article, IMHO.

Pat

 
-- 
Gardening in northern Pennsylvania.  

Eat local food, change the world for the better!