Free Vegetable Culturing e-Book

Jenny, from Nourished Kitchen, has put together a beautiful e-book with some delicious recipes for cultured vegetables. You can access, "Get Cultured! Probiotic Food from the Nourished Kitchen" by clicking on the cover picture above.

I have big plans to try out a couple of them next week. Instead of waiting for my results, I encourage you all to try some yourselves! Let me know how it goes.

The Problems (and there's many) With Soy

Soy field encroaching on tropical rain forest in Brazil.

Soy is ubiquitous in our food supply. Processed foods are cooked in, made of, and plumped up with soy. If you think soy is a health food staple, you've been misled, along with millions of other people, by the soy marketing machine.

Soy is not a healthy food. It contains phytoestrogens that disrupt our hormonal systems. Soy lowers sperm counts in males and contains potent enzyme inhibitors prevent crucial enzymatic functions such as digestion and mineral absorption. Trypsin inhibitors in soy have been tied to pancreatic disorders and stunted growth. Soy consumption in pregnancy increases breast cancer risks in female offspring. The phytoestrogens in soy have also been shown to contribute to hypothyroidism and thyroid cancer and to inhibit iron absorption.

Soy is a cheap food that was never even considered edible until recently. Years ago, soy was only grown as crop cover, but now the soy industry is trying to convince us that it's some sort of wonder-food. The soy industry is a massive conglomerate with deep pockets. If you're curious as to how soy became so entrenched in our food supply, this article is well worth the read.

What about the argument regarding high soy consumption in Asian countries? Soy consumed in Asia is in much smaller quantities than you've been led to believe. And the soy that is eaten is typically fermented (miso, natto etc.). Fermentation breaks down many of the anti-nutrients inherent in soy.

Soy devastates our health and our land. Millions of acres of land have been mono-cropped to feed the soy machine. Farmers lose their livelihoods and the Earth forever loses fragile pieces of herself. That means millions of acres of diverse ecosystems, full of wildlife, plant species, and organisms are destroyed to make room for fields of soy. 91% of the soy planted in the US is genetically modified and that number is growing astronomically around the world.

Soy is commonly used in animal feed as a protein source (see, I told you it was ubiquitous)! This is just another reason to get to know your farmer. Find out if they're using soy in their feed. In the region I'm living in, soy is bountiful. I've been lucky to find an egg farmer open-minded enough to be willing to learn about soy. While her eggs were certified organic and pasture-raised, the organic feed the chickens were receiving had soy as the protein source. Our farmer has since switched to another formulation that is soy-free. Commercially produced animal products are all given soy in their feed ration because it's cheap. That alone should tell you something.

Happy, little soy-free egg.

The Weston A. Price Foundation has a very comprehensive page on their site with links to studies, articles, books, and other resources with factual information about soy. Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, Ph.D., have also written a thorough article siting independent scientific studies to bring you accurate information that counters the pervasive claims made by the soy industry, "The Newest Research on Why You Should Avoid Soy".

What can you do? Read labels, avoid food products and just stick with real food. Make your own snacks and treats and trust that anything you make with your own hands is bound to be infinitely better for you and your family. Most of all, arm yourself with knowledge.

H1N1 on Ontario Turkey Confinement Operation

The Turkey Farmers of Ontario are being mum on the recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus on an Ontario turkey farm. Well, we can rest assured that the outbreak wasn't on an organic farm, for if it had been, the TFO media machine would have been using it as fodder for their ongoing mission of ensuring no bird under their watch is raised outdoors.

Well, we know where the 'outbreak' did indeed occur. It happened in one of the turkey confinement barns housing 3,500 turkeys. This particular facility is owned by "Hybrid", a breeding company in Kitchener, Ontario.

Hybrid turkey breeding operation in Kitchener Ontario. See any turkeys?

These confinement operations are under very strict controls in order to give the immune-compromised birds an actual shot at living long enough to make it to slaughter. These are birds living indoors, under "high biosecurity conditions", including a "shower in/shower out" policy. They're pumped full of growth stimulants and antibiotics without real consideration for the affect it has on their, or our, health. Never mind the issue of genetic engineering. Hendrix Genetics, Hybrid's parent company, focuses on production and engineering of poultry and swine breeds by mutating DNA sequences.

Where is the common sense in all of this? Does anybody stop to think that a bird, by its very design, is intended to live outdoors? Our industrial models of food production have skewed our most basic understanding of growing and raising our own nourishment. Food is sacred, it is not a commodity.

Little hen perched in a tree.

It's acceptable to rear animals in an unnatural environment, feed them an unnatural diet, and keep them alive *just* long enough to make a little money, but, according to the Turkey Farmers of Ontario, it is NOT o.k. to let them outdoors. None of these confinement operation birds could live a few days outside without keeling over from some sort of little virus or bacteria. That should tell us all something. When I eat turkey, or any meat for that matter, it's from animals with strong, healthy genetics. Birds should thrive outdoors, soak up the sun, and eat all sorts of little buggy things. Let the TFO have their sick birds, but we deserve to have the choice to support a healthier model of farming.

H1N1 in breeder turkeys, urges farmer workers to get flu shot

By Helen Branswell Medical Reporter (CP)

TORONTO — A turkey breeding operation in southern Ontario has been hit by the H1N1 virus, the province's chief human and animal health officials reported Tuesday. It is only the second time turkeys have been reported to have been infected with the pandemic virus.

The outbreak likely poses no immediate threat to human health, and in particular should not have an impact on the safety of the food chain, the officials said, noting influenza cannot be contracted from well-cooked meat.

But experts do worry about the possibility that mutations could occur if flu viruses jump from one species to another and back again. And some also expressed concern that news of the discovery could turn some consumers off turkey, even though in terms of flu transmission people probably pose a bigger risk to livestock right now than the other way around.

"From my perspective as a veterinarian, I see the danger being to the economic well-being of the animal industry that's involved, and in food security - having food," said Dr. David Halvorson, an avian influenza expert at the University of Minnesota.
The finding was announced by Dr. Arlene King, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, and Dr. Deb Stark, the province's chief veterinarian, both of whom refused to identify the affected turkey operation.

But their efforts to shield the company turned out to be futile. An industry group, the Turkey Farmers of Canada, posted a news release on their website announcing the outbreak had been discovered on a farm near Kitchener owned by Hybrid Turkeys.
Later, the company confirmed the report. Dr. Helen Wojcinski, a veterinarian and Hybrid's manager of science and technology, said turkeys in one barn on one farm experienced a drop in egg production - the telltale symptom of influenza infection in turkeys.

The barn, which contained 3,500 turkeys, is under quarantine. Wojcinski said it is expected the outbreak should run its course in about two weeks, at which point a decision will be made about what to do with the turkeys.
The birds are not free-range, meaning they live indoors under high biosecurity conditions. Wojcinski said the most likely source of the infection was a person with access to the barn.

King said local health officials are interviewing 19 people who had contact with the operation, trying to determine who might have brought the infection in to the birds - and if anyone contracted it from them. So far one person has been identified as having had influenza-like illness, she said, though it's not yet known if the person actually had the pandemic virus. Nor is it clear whether the person's illness predated the outbreak among the turkeys or followed it.

King said the incident serves as a "clarion call" to poultry and other livestock workers that they should get vaccinated with both seasonal and pandemic flu shots in order to lower the risk of flu transmission to the animals with which they have contact.
"We want to limit the amount of circulation (of H1N1) in the human population for obvious reasons and we want to try to avoid or minimize the possibility of transmission between people and animals and back again," King said.

The finding was confirmed by the National Centre for Foreign Animal Diseases in Winnipeg, which compared amino acid sequences from three of the virus's genes to those of the pandemic virus, said Dr. Jim Clark, national manager of disease control for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's terrestrial animal health division.

Clark said the lab is currently trying to grow virus from samples taken from the turkeys to do a full comparison, but CFIA feels confident the virus that caused the outbreak is the pandemic H1N1.

The finding will be of keen interest internationally. While swine producers in a number of countries have reported finding the new H1N1 virus in pigs, the only other report of infected turkeys came from Chile, in August. Some experts have privately questioned whether that finding was real or the result of contamination of specimens.
Announcement of the outbreak comes just days after the publication of a study that suggested turkeys are not susceptible to the pandemic virus. The work, done by researchers in Italy, was published late last week in the online journal Eurosurveillance.

Well-known influenza researcher Dr. Ilaria Capua and colleagues at the OIE collaborating centre for infectious diseases at the human-animal interface in Venice tried to infect turkeys with the new H1N1 virus. The OIE is the acronym used by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.
Turkeys are generally very susceptible to influenza viruses and one would expect to see illness among birds if they became infected with a flu virus, Capua said in an interview Tuesday.

But while her team exposed turkeys to massive doses of H1N1 virus, they saw no evidence of infection in the birds. Nor did they find any evidence of virus in the lungs, blood or tissues of the turkeys. Capua said teams of researchers in Britain, Germany and the U.S. have also tried to experimentally infect turkeys, also without success.
She said a lot of questions need to be answered about the new discovery in Ontario, including whether the full genetic sequence of the virus matches the pandemic virus.
"Before we say that this virus can spill into turkeys or into birds, I would really make sure that it's the right virus. And that there's no possible concern about any human error or contamination and that all the internal genes have been sequenced," said Capua.

But unpublished work from Canada suggests turkeys can catch this virus. Clark said scientists at the National Centre for Foreign Animal Diseases were able to infect turkeys with the pandemic virus.

"Since we know that the genetic makeup of the virus does have some avian components to it, it's not surprising to us that we have a poultry flock - a turkey flock - that is infected," he noted.

Halvorson, who said Minnesota has seen swine influenza outbreaks in turkey operations frequently over the last 20 years, said the new pandemic virus is posing real challenges for livestock producers.
While the female turkeys used for breeding purposes have shown themselves to be "exquisitely" sensitive to influenza viruses of both swine and avian origin, there's never before been evidence of the birds being infected with human flu viruses.

"We've never, ever found that or suspected it of happening. So this is kind of new, you know," he said. "For both the turkey industry and the swine industry, it's quite new. How do you protect your animals from a human infection?"

Fermenting Veggies For a Happy Tummy

There is probably little that comes close to the ease and nutritional-punch of fermenting vegetables. Cultures around the world have been fermenting food, including meats, vegetables, and dairy for centuries. It's a wonderful way to increase the nutritional value of your food while also increasing its life span.

When vegetables are fermented, their enzyme activity increases and the food becomes a source of good bacteria. There isn't many opportunities available in our processed food diet that afford us the ability to increase the healthy bacteria in our bodies and yet, our health is critically tied to the health of our guts. Indeed, 85% of the immune system is located in the gut wall. Dysbiosis, or an imbalance of gut flora (the bad guys outrun the good), can lead to a myriad of health problems including autoimmune conditions, depression, inflammation, hyperactivity etc.

If this topic is new to you, I highly recommend the book, "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" by Dr. Campbell-McBride. It's a fascinating book that delves into the science of why gut health is so important and how it can be improved.

So, with that, I give you fermented veggies! This weekend I set aside about an hour to shred, salt, and pound a few different types. There's nothing easier than making these little jars of goodness. If you've never done it before, there's some great information in Sandor Katz's book, "Wild Fermentation". But, you don't need to wait to get started.

Easy Peasy Sauerkraut (Even My Little Sister Could Make)

• A head of green cabbage (keep it simple, make it all organic)
• A few carrots
• Fresh ginger, garlic and, if you like, some dried caraway and juniper berries
• Sea salt

To make sauerkraut, simply shred all the veggies and place it all in a big bowl (you'll want to use a non-reactive plastic, glass, or ceramic bowl for fermenting). Sprinkle on sea salt and work it all in with your hands, squishing and pounding as you go. You're trying to break down the vegetables as you work in the salt. The mixture should taste salty, but not overly-salty. The salt is going to pull out the juices and get those veggies fermenting so it's important to have enough to let it do its job. You should have a nice little flow of juices in your bowl. Pack the veggies in glass jars using a tamper to really jam them in there. There should be juice coming up at this point. You want the juice to cover the veggies. Put on the lid tightly, place on a tray (they will leak a bit), and leave in a warm place for 4-5 days. I usually use the top of my fridge in the winter, and just a cupboard in the summer.

You can give them a taste-test after a few days and see what you think. We prefer ours quite sour so I usually give it a week or so. Once they're done, store the jars in the fridge. That's all there is to it! Doing a few different types in one shot means weeks of delicious vegetables just raring to do some good in your tummy.

I prefer to use jars with glass lids so there is no reaction with the metal or BPA covered discs on the newer style of jars. This would be ideal, but not totally necessary.

Stay tuned for the best, authentic, Korean Kim Chee recipe I have ever tried (compliments of my dear friend Ruby).

Bacon O' Bacon, You Wonderful Thing

If you are lucky enough to find a butcher who is skilled in charcuterie AND uses meat from animals raised organically on pasture, you are one lucky person, my friend. I have had the distinct, mind-blowing, pleasure of eating bacon cured in a small smokehouse by my ultra-skilled farmer-friend, Richard. Sweet Hallelujah!

That stuff in the store, that wet-brined, over-salted stuff doesn't even compare(and I'm not even talking about the grocery store stuff, I'm alluding to the organic, supposedly higher quality stuff). I wish I could reach through the computer and place a nicely warmed piece right in front of you. Then, I would sit back and watch you cry for all of the moments you wasted doing anything, but eating Richard's bacon.

Maybe the picture can help you try to imagine.

Michael Ruhlman, the author of "Charcuterie" did a great interview you may like to read. If you don't have his book, I would highly recommend it. It's fun and totally possible to experiment with your own smaller scale projects. We made duck prosciutto last winter that was really easy to do and it tasted wonderful.