Nutritional studies

Charles said:

An oldie but a goodie

For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION

Eat and drink what you like.
Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

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i think it is both simpler and more complicated.
Whilst in Denmark, i was wandering around the northern coastline and tumbled into a rock obscured by the long grass. Upon closer inspection, it was an old graveyard, and every rock had the name, birth and death dates and their profession. All the people had died previous to the turn of the 20th century ( before 1900). The average age was about 90. Now these were good old salt- of- the earth, hard working on the land and sea people, not the people with extra.And I'm proud of my danish heritage but let me tell you it is the land of stodgy food. Up north there it was pork, rye, potatoes, and fish. that's what my dad and his mum grew up on.

What do we know?
1/ they had fish- not as much as Japanese or eskimos. cold water fish = good fatty acids. My dad loves his herrings and sardines.
2/ snowed under for several months- food was stored under an earth berm and dug out. Things that could be stored- potatoes, carrots etc
3/ Fermented foods were consumed as they have been all in cultures except the english (?1)
4/ there was no industrial agriculture, no chemical fertilizers, no chemical pesticides.
5/ what was grown on the farm was what was eaten. it was either fresh, fermented or stored in cold conditions. the farmer (my grandparents) had control over the way food was grown- and here it was with chicken and pig poo, legumes, crop rotations.

How is this different? now- food grown in skeletal soils, massacred with chemical salts and pervasive and persistent toxic chemicals.
soils depleted of mineral, organic matter and carbon ( humus), destroyed through constant tilling
people not eating fresh food, grown locally and in season. Not eating fermented foods habitually- made from your own vegies.

In cities we have lost our connection of where our food comes form. as 'civilised' man, we are blind in the land of potential.

I've seen the best, tastiest cherry tomato turn into the most watery, blandest saddest excuse for a vegetable when grown in commercial potting mix. Soil is the foundation. respect your food and the earth that your body is a part of.

I grow a lot of food here. Not a farmer, just a home grower, I prioritise the things we eat a lot of. Quality is a given, so rather than the exotic I go for quantity. For me that's grow all our potatoes onions, garlic, & brassicas all year, enough tomatoes every other year to make enough preserved tomatoes, sauce and paste for 2 years, the alternate years it's 2 years worth of jalepenos nom nom. peas to freeze, beans to dry etc. we grow leaves, radishes all year around, preserve, ferment and dry as much as possible from seasonal harvests.
The soil under my feet, that i own is the place in the world I have the most control over. i do not take this privilege for granted, and use it to grow the healthiest food- more so than I could find. Seed saved in this climate means adaption and plants will be able to extract maximum nutrition from there soils, in comparison to warmer climates.

We only get hard frosts and the occasional snow, so I can grow ( although they better be in by early-mid autumn at the latest) through winter, unlike much of the US
i think the way forward is learning the best from the past and applying with the best of technology. Not everyone can grow their own food but the sooner, as masses, we give half an educated f**k then the sooner change will be effected

apart from that whats not good for the body is often good for the soul so enjoy

Gypsi said:

I agree. Unfortunately the drought and heat nailed most crops this summer. I picked 4 red jalapenos and a tomatillo last week, I got 8 cherokee purple tomatoes in early June. but I took all my tomato plants out of their cages, laid them down in their raised bed and continued watering morning and night, so I still have living tomato plants, mostly heirloom and hopefully I will get a fall harvest. Probably plant broccoli this afternoon, and maybe brussel sprouts. Might do beneficial nematode application this evening. Have to do it when ground is damp

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it won't magic water out of the sky but have you thought about wicking beds? Before this place I was renting, and used old bath tubs for wicking beds. They are genius because they have good soil depth ( volume = temperature stability- increased soil ecology/ biology= better performing plants), are usually free or very cheap, and are very easy and cheap to convert. We plumb out the plughole, and have a U turn of which height terminates just above the water/ soil contact line. At the bottom of the U there's a removable screw cap for winter or very wet weather, sounds like this is not your problem. Can mulch top heavily with light coloured straw for heat reflection and moisture retention ( we get sugar cane mulch but what you can find) and as they water from the bottom up, plants put down good deep roots and soil moisture is more constant. yes i love my baths

We sit bath level on couple of concrete blocks, and put about 8-10cm 3-4 " of 13mm (1/2") gravel in bottom, then a layer of shadecloth, then another 5cm of chunky coir bark fibre, then the dirt on top of. The water overflow level is about the level of the coir. The coir is great, it stops dirt fines going down into reservoir level, and it's spongy consistency also I think helps transfer water and wick up to the dirt level. Place a 75-90mm diameter with cap fill pipe vertically, the bottom resting on shadecloth, pack coir around and fill around with soil to hold in place. Soil I load up with more coir ( chunky) , fine shell grit, any rock dust or fine rock can get, seaweed meal, trace minerals, old potting mix, compost, some clay soil. Soil that can hold moisture, buffer and cycle nutrients and physical properties that last, does not collapse in time. You might put more coir, peat moss, or even large size vermiculite in up to 5% vol for moisture holding- put vermiculite lower where you won't smash it up replanting and digging. I grow 6 capsicums or tomatillos in these, 4- 6 brassicas, 24 garlic, 20 onions, lots lettuce radish beets etc, 2 cucumber/ zucchini, or 2 tomatoes. The shade cloth just stops coir going into rocks, only relevant if you ever want to disassemble and reclaim constituents. When i lived in the desert we call Perth and also down in suburbs where we had a proper summer I loved growing in these bath wickers. If needs be, you can always pop some liquid fertiliser or seaweed down the fill pipe.

I still have 9 bathtubs even though I am investing in somewhat more stylish looking vegie garden. Baths look a bit fugly but functionally are excellent fit. Under/ infront of a couple I grow sedum ' autumn joy' etc, with alyssum ( which I love) at the base. Geraniums are a good size and tough enough too (geranium 'chris canning' bees love it, if you have enough water for it..). The sedum, when it's growing in summer, is tall enough to hide sides of bath. Alyssum gets hoverflies, ladybugs and ichneumon wasps in. I was going to make a succulent walled bath tub, weldmesh cage for the base, and fill up with scoria rock and growing medium, with a little scrunched up chook wire to help growing media stay vertically distributed, and grow sedums through the walls but never did it. Would take just a little engineering to prevent long side from bulging out, and leave a little room at top just under the bath top lip, for topping up as media settles. I might do it yet, I still like the idea. We also thought about making walls out of concrete fibre board when we ere going to incorporate baths into a geometric design but ditching them any year now... currently have garlic in 6 of them, and peas in two... talk is cheap...who can get enough veg space?

We are remodelling the wicking bed for the chicken yard, which although they don't spend much time in their yard, the current wicker is always well pecked down- just a bit of resilience for them. I will grow lucerne in the new one as our soils are too heavy to grow in ground here, and it's a good high protein perennial. anyway, we will make it out of slimline interlocking concrete blocks, with concreted in base. You can buy a water based, potable water grade bitumen, and you paint this allover the inside concrete walls and especially to make the water reservoir. You use strips of a lightweight geotextile over cracks, corners and areas of potential movement, painting bitumen under and over it it so the geotextile is impregnated. Dries to flexible, non reactive membrane.This is another way to do wicking beds without using plastic with all its VOCs and chemicals, and it is quite cheap On their current wicker, there is 10cm of growing room under the weldmesh floor that the chooks walk on to self serve so they can't scratch it out or pull up plants. Plants have 10 cm of growing room and 10cm metabolic vigour to rebound back with- an ongoing, self maintaining green pick, instead of a short, chicken - brutalising, high maintenance system. Chickens stand up and poo and it feeds plants. I just put some seaweed solution in reservoir once a year or so. If you go the concrete block path they can look good rendered or painted.

if you want to eat healthy..do the complete opposite of what our government tells you....I started researching all the medicinal plants on my property and it morphed into what foods are healthy or not...what an eye opener...basically the FDA and other gov agencies want you sick..why? because big pharmacy companies dont make $$$ on healthy people....look this up yourselves...once vegetable oil was introduced to replace lard and animal fat products to fry foods or used in foods, the heart disease in the USA went way up and keeps going, high amounts of sugar and alcohol kill your body, but yet look at all the fast food and desserts that are solid sugar....
your body NEEDS fats, the right ones from red meat and your body NEEDS real cows milk..but look at the push to fake almond milk or oat milk..all chemicals and the push to replace real meat with soy based fake meat, soy is the worse thing for people in large amounts... and the proof of the pudding is a fat obese sick USA population....getting worse each year...and exercise or being active has been replaced with sitting and watching video games while stuffing tons of carbs and sugar down your throat and then you wonder why your immune system is crap and you get sick all the time...
add onto that the over use of antibiotic soaps and sprays so people live in a antiseptic house with no germs to build an immune system.....