Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

On that first point. There seems to be a growing consensus these days that
just eating a wide variety of whole foods, fresh as possible and including
some meats, is the safest way to get the nutrition we need. This book of
Michael Pollan's I've been recommending shows how nutrition "experts" have
stumbled from one fad to another under the pressure of politics and
lobbyists and still don't begin to understand the complexities of human
nutrition. He calls it "nutritionism" - the notion that if we just identify
all the nutrients and put them in, then somehow we'll have all we need.
Independent studies show otherwise. He points out that traditional diets in
many cultures make people far healthier than the so-called Western diet
most Americans fall into. In that view, computer programs to calculate
nutritional needs and food is taking nutritionism to an extreme. My
suggestion is buy him a copy of In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/29/2008 at 9:23 AM dcoda@volcommunity.org wrote:


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/29/2008 at 9:23 AM dcoda@volcommunity.org wrote:

>Greetings,
>
>First, a story you may find interesting...we have a small intentional
>community located in the wilderness and our top priority is reaching
>food self-sufficiency (alongside preserving endangered plants). We have
>a new member...he's a physicist from M.I.T. who had everything going for
>him career-wise but he saw the state of the world and determined that
>the most important thing he could do was to learn how to grow food, and
>grow it, and do all he could to encourage others to do the same. He's
>attended the biointensive workshop given by Ecology Action and is
>currently developing a software program to calculate how much of any
>given food one needs to grow to meet nutritional needs. Its not done
>yet, but getting close. We are not in complete agreement about what
>those needs are however. His work is based on "One Circle" which orients
>towards providing enough nutrients to avoid illness/death from
>nutritional deficiency and much of this is calculated by calories. The
>theory being that if you get enough calories, you'll get enough protein.
>I maintain that there are many other nutrients we need to achieve
>optimum health. There's a difference between RDA values to just stay
>alive, and what we need to  feel great and ward off myriad diseases.
>I'll probably help him work that into his program somehow, probably not
>until a 2nd version comes out though. I'm sharing this story primarily
>to give an example of just how important food may become to people.
>People will discover that food is more important than salary and
>prestige. By the way, he was married twice and both women held high
>positions in the EPA. He doesn't think much of the EPA's efforts on the
>planet's behalf. 
>