permaculture

[venaurafarm <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 10/27/2012 4:22 PM, Toby Hemenway wrote:
> LL et al,
>
> Thanks for re-posting this. Getting nutrient-rich food is a
> challenge, as Michael writes, because 1) soil mineral content is hard
> to assess without testing; 2) we then need to test to see if those
> minerals are getting into our plants and 3) vegetables are generally
> not bred for maximum nutrient content, so it's hard to know which
> varieties are nutrient-rich. So, to get around these challenges, in
> addition to adding rock dusts, etc. to soils to up the mineral
> content, I've been recently converted to the diet philosophies of
> MD's like Joel Fuhrman and John McDougall, who have written books
> about a nutrient-rich diet. Their basic idea--and, duh, it was a
> lightbulb going off for me--is to eat large proportions of foods that
> have high nutrient to calorie ratios. That way, even if many
> vegetables don't have the highest nutrient content possible, you will
> still get plenty of nutrients (by nutrients, I mean minerals, amino
> acids, vitamins and co-factors, not calories from energy-rich carbon
> compounds).

And thanks for posting feedback! This time especially for the important 
dietary advice.

I am a believer; the Fuhrman & McDougall recommendations are accurate 
and applicable, ready to be used.

The primary theme: focus on eating foods with a high nutrient to calorie 
ratio. That says it all.

You will then seek varieties of nuts, vegetables, seeds and fruit with 
that characteristic and ones that have higher overall nutrient contents
than other varieties. What an important mission: find those foods and 
grow them or find sources that are practical to obtain for your use.
Example: unsulphured, unsweetened, natural dried apricots
Sources I know of: Trader Joe (California apricots, excellent) and Jaffe 
Brothers in California, mail order, also excellent and affordable even 
counting postage and they have other amazing dried fruit as well.

I must have dried fruit in my diet, prunes, peaches, apricots, raisins,
figs, dates, cranberries and cherries.

You can fill up on these things. Make a mix and soak in cold water until 
they swell up, even tastier.

Nuts: almonds, walnuts, pecans, macadamia, brazil, pine
Seeds: sesame, sunflower, pumpkin - All of these have important 
nutrients and oils, high in protein, high in fiber

Grains: rice, barley, rye, buckwheat, wheat, spelt, kenaf, corn,  oat

Beans: many varieties; try Peruvian pink beans - absolutely delicious
plain with salt and pepper (to cook: open 1 pound package, pour into 
pot, add water and a little garlic or onion and some oil, no salt; put 
lid on and cook until you can easily mash them into refrito texture - 
serve, eat and enjoy - no wash, no soak, just put in pot with water and 
cook; done in an hour or less, as easy as lentils - try french green lentils

Sprouts: hundreds of seeds can be sprouted: favorites: broccoli, radish, 
sunflower, buckwheat, alfalfa and more

Wheat and barley grass, juiced

Vegan cheese made from fermented seeds, i.e. sunflower

Kraut, kim chee, kefir, yoghurt for probiotics, also miso

Traditional Japanese macrobiotic diet.

Juiced vegetables and fruits.

Food combining for maximum nutrient absorption through maximum digestion 
for maximum health (see Victoras Kulvinskas food combining chart in his 
Survival In the 21st Century) - this may be important to those using the 
Fuhrman & McDougall advice.

You absolutely must have adequate protein in your diet day to day, and 
adequate fiber and probiotic intake (miso and/or kim chee)
If you eat meat, one small hamburger a day is enough

I think that if you eat a high nutrient/calorie ratio diet, pure foods, 
combined for maximum digestion and avoid animal products completely you 
will have all the energy you need: alternate seeds with nuts

> A huge proportion of the calories in typical diets--even
> health-conscious vegetarians--comes from low-nutrient foods like
> grains, dairy, oils, and fats. Those MDs have helped me understand
> that even supposedly healthy olive oil is complete junk food: tons of
> calories, no nutrients. Vegetables (meaning green and other colored
> plants, not grains and starches) have very few calories and lots of
> nutrients per 100 grams, while starches, oils, dairy, and meats have

It is good to cook leafy greens with oil (olive oil is best) because 
this process releases more nutrients in the greens - if you eat them in 
a salad raw then you will eat less of them but you can always make a 
grand mix of garden greens from lettuce to pak choi, to kale, 
chard,french salad mustard, mizuna, frisee, romaine and more even lambs 
quarters (mentioned in a previous post).

Make salad dressings in a blender with only vegetable and nut 
ingredients: almonds, carrots and sunflower sprouts, experiment with 
other ingredients for good flavor - add oil, salt, herbs & vinegar as 
desired but try first without them

> tons of calories but very few nutrients per 100 grams. So even modest
> amounts of  low-nutrient food will fill us up, because it's calories
> that give you that full feeling. And that makes it hard to get large
> amounts of nutrients. Even "healthy" eaters have high cholesterol and
> blood pressure from their low-nutrient diets.
>
> But these MDs say we should look at foods based on nutrients per
> calorie, not nutrients per weight, so we can get lots of nutrients
> without gaining weight or getting that "oh, I can tell I just ate"
> full feeling that most of us think is normal after meals--which is
> not how a nutrient-rich meal will make you feel, I've finally
> learned. Some numbers:
>
> Nutrient per 100 calories       Broccoli     Steak    Romaine Lettuce
> Protein                                    11g              6g
> 7g Calcium                                   118mg      2mg
> 194mg Potassium                              507mg       74mg
> 1453mg

This is all new and wonderful information!

If you must eat grains try them raw or sprouted or lastly, cooked.
Use food combining rules when eating grain: only one kind of grain at a 
meal, no acid foods in that meal, no oils and no protein, save the 
latter for a starch-free meal with oil and vegetables.

> and so on for all the minerals--meat is far less nutrient dense, and
> many veggies have more protein per calorie than meat. Grains are also
> fairly high in calories compared to nutrients, but much better than
> meat and dairy. And, what I didn't know before, is that we've been
> told vegetables don't have enough protein, but mother's milk is only
> 5% protein by weight, so if a fast-growing baby only  needs that
> little protein, an adult surely doesn't need more. We get far more
> protein than we need.
>
> So what these guys are saying is, eat huge quantities of colored
> veggies --a pound of kale is only about 100 calories--and then have a
> vegetable starch to fill up if you need to, and steer clear of oils,
> fats, sugars, and other totally empty foods. A diet in which most
> calories come from meat, dairy, oils, and even grains, has almost no
> chance of getting you enough nutrients. They also show conclusively
> that any more than 8oz or so of meat per week staggeringly increases
> the risk of all sorts of disease, which, being a confirmed carnivore,
> I don't like to see, but the facts are there in huge studies with
> good data.
>
> I don't know how well I'm communicating this--it seems more radical
> to me than this may look. There is a clinic near me in Santa Rosa
> where the MDs use this diet to treat live-in patients, and people
> show huge drops in obesity, diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol,
> and get off lifetime meds they took for those problems.
>
> I can't do this justice here, but for more, there is
> http://www.drfuhrman.com and his book "Eat to Live" which I highly
> recommend http://www.drmcdougall.com and True North Health Center in
> Santa Rosa, CA at http://www.healthpromoting.com
>
> This seems a good strategy to get good nutrition until we get good
> data on nutrient-rich plant varieties.
>
> Been doing this diet, with gusto, for two months, so it's written
> with the zealousness of a convert--
>
> Toby http://patternliteracy.com
>
>
> On Oct 27, 2012, at 2:04 AM, Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:
>
> > -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [SANET-MG]
> > Achieving High Nutrient Levels in Crops (was History of Organic
> > Agriculture slide presentation) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:02:39
> > -0400 From: Michael Astera <michael.astera@GMAIL.COM> To:
> > SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU
> >
> > Heide and all-
> >
> > The subject of minerals in organic agriculture is relevant to the
> > present controversy about nutritional content of mainstream vs
> > organic food crops.  If we can't readily (and convincingly) show a
> > significant nutritional difference between chemically and
> > organically grown food, perhaps it's because there isn't one.
> > Perhaps there isn't much difference because both are being grown in
> > less than ideal, mineral deficient, more or less imbalanced soils,
> > while the varieties being grown lack the ability to utilize the
> > full spectrum of nutrients or transform them into superior quality
> > food even if everything were available and in balance.
> >
> > Figuring out how to achieve high nutrient levels in crops has been
> > my goal for the last dozen years.  Finding a way to test for
> > nutrients at a reasonable cost, and finding data to compare test
> > results with, have been a necessary part of the search. For now,
> > I’m using the standard ag lab plant tissue tests, because for $50 I
> > can get results for 10 minerals plus protein N, and can compare the
> > results directly with the numbers in the older literature.
> >
> > Our older nutrient data collections are based on  minerals, fats,
> > carbs, and protein. The USDA's first real attempt in 1940 was
> > "Proximate Composition of American Food Materials", compiled by
> > Charlotte Chatfield and Georgian Adams. It is a small (6 x9), 92
> > page circular that lists values for water, protein, fat, ash,
> > carbohydrates, and calories. It wasn't until the late 1940s and
> > early 1950s that the USDA nutrient data started to include a few
> > minerals, and not until the 1960s did the data begin to include 10
> > or so minerals and some vitamins. There are a few pre-1940 tables
> > showing mineral content of foods, mostly from the UK.
> >
> > The tables I use for comparison today are from the USDA National
> > Nutrient Database for Standard Reference
> > http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964.  How many
> > years of data are averaged into that database is a good question,
> > but one can at least tell how their sample compares to USDA
> > averages.
> >
> > The numbers and percentages for minerals in the latest USDA
> > database are, perhaps surprisingly, not easy to equal or exceed
> > with average organic produce. I encourage anyone who thinks they
> > are growing nutrient dense crops to have them tested and see how
> > they compare with the USDA numbers.
> >
> > Many would be happy to know that their food contained the same
> > amount of minerals that food grown fifty years ago did, and mineral
> > content is where most of the past research papers on declining
> > nutrient content of food have put their emphasis. Testing for
> > mineral content is the least expensive and most accessible way I
> > know of to measure and compare nutritional value, for now.
> >
> > Heidi H. wrote: "how do we intentionally produce plants with
> > optimal nutrient content? Simply adding the "missing" nutrients to
> > the soil doesn't necessary produce the result we are looking for,
> > soil is way too complex for that."
> >
> > I agree that adding nutrients to the soil doesn't necessarily
> > produce plants with optimal nutrient content (more on that below);
> > but bringing the soil's mineral fertility into balance so that the
> > optimum amount of nutrients are in the soil and available to the
> > crops is not too complex or difficult.  The method shown in "The
> > Ideal Soil", based on the Albrecht ratios but conforming to USDA
> > NOP Organic rules, has been successfully applied around the world
> > over the past four years, in all climates.  If we know the present
> > mineral balance and CEC of the soil, moving it in any desired
> > direction is relatively straightforward and predictable, especially
> > in neutral or acid pH soils. A lab test will tell us how close the
> > sample is to a given “ideal” and we can calculate what needs to be
> > added to get there.
> >
> > All that to say, we do have a reference point for "ideal" soil
> > mineral balance that has been shown to work, and a way to get there
> > that anyone can use.  Application is simple, the results are
> > predictable, and generally the minerals can be brought into any
> > desired balance within a year or two.
> >
> > A bigger hurdle to growing nutritionally excellent food is that
> > our crops have not been bred to uptake minerals nor provide
> > optimal nutritional value.  They have been bred and selected for
> > appearance, disease resistance, uniform maturity, size, yield, and
> > shipping, handling, and storage qualities.  Like fresh flowers, our
> > produce has been bred to still look pretty when it gets in front of
> > the consumer, while our broadacre field and row crops have been
> > bred for uniformity and maximum yield for lowest input cost.
> >
> > No matter how biologically active, mineral abundant, and fertile a
> > soil is, if the plant doesn't have the ability to uptake the raw
> > materials or use them to fabricate the nutrients we desire, it
> > can’t and it won't. We need crops that have been bred specifically
> > for the ability to produce nutritionally superior foods.
> >
> > It wouldn’t be difficult to select for and grow crops with the
> > emphasis on nutrition and flavor along with appearance, yield, and
> > other qualities we have already shown we can achieve. They would
> > likely need to be grown in fully mineralized, biologically active
> > soils so the plants have all of the needed elements to reach their
> > full genetic potential, but we know how to create that soil.
> >
> > Once someone can show, unequivocally, that the food they grow or
> > sell has significantly higher nutrient levels than what others are
> > growing....the whole game changes.  A few organic producers
> > entering the market with crops of proven superior nutrient content
> > will set the bar higher for all.
> >
> > Michael Astera http://soilminerals.com
> >
> > (PS: I’m not an advocate of regularly foliar feeding nutrients to
> > crops or applying minerals in soluble form via irrigation, except
> > in alkaline or calcareous soils where elements such as Iron quickly
> > tie up in insoluble forms and become unavailable.)
>
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