Nutritional Value of Food

Many people today are storing food against hard times. We’re buying storable grains, canned fruits and vegetables, dried fruits, vegetables and meats, and freeze-dried storable foods as well. This is only prudent. I lived in an upstate New York city that was prone to huge snowfalls and ice storms. When a storm blew in, you might be stuck in your house for days on end. You had better have some food and water stored for those times.

And it isn’t hard to store food up against bad times, whether it be a winter storm, hurricane, a job layoff, another depression. Even folks without very much money can buy cans of food here and there and keep it on hand. Ditto with water.

But there is something else about food that people need to be aware of. And that is, today’s food holds less nutritional value than food did decades ago. Due to modern big business agricultural methods, the soil is no longer mineral-dense. As the quality of the soil has declined, so has the nutritional value in our foods.

In my research I found a couple of articles that explain this issue well. Of course, I’m biased toward organic farming methods, herbs rather than pharmaceuticals, traditional folk remedies rather than high-priced, intrusive allopathic medicine practices, whole, real, God-made foods rather than processed, chemical crap posing as food, etc. If you’re a reader of this blog, you should be aware that I’m not at all impartial about this. Just something to keep in mind.

If you are interested in the nutritional value of your foods, stored or otherwise, then do read all of the following articles. Interesting reading, to say the least. However, I’ve pulled a couple of pertinent quotes that get the point across.

The first article is called Human Health, the Nutritional Quality of Harvested Food, and Sustainable Farming Systems by John B.Marler and Jeanne R.Wallin

Food grown in nutrient deficient soil lacks the nutrients needed to keep people healthy. Studies reveal that the nutritional values in food have declined significantly over the past 70 years. The declines in the nutritional values in food have been attributed to mineral depletion of the soil, loss of soil microorganisms along with changes in plant varieties.

Without adequate nutrition from food, we become susceptible to disease. Simply stated … a lack of nutrients leads to malnutrition … malnutrition leads to disease. Wellness stems from eating nutrient rich, flavorful food. A critical need exists to provide assurance of the nutritional values in the food we eat.

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According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Americans typically lack a sufficient amount of the minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium and the vitamins A, C, D and E needed to maintain good health. As an example, calcium is essential for the formation of blood clots, the transmission of nerve impulses, as a metabolic cofactor to release energy from macronutrients, for maintaining a rhythmic heart rate and controlling concentrations of substances on differing sides of cell membranes throughout the body. Mild calcium deficiencies can cause heart palpitations, insomnia, irritability, nerve sensitivity, muscle twitching, mental confusion and a feeling of depression.

Serious calcium deficiencies can lead to bone loss, a common health problem. Other mineral deficiencies lead to a host of well documented health problems. Without adequate nutrition, especially minerals, research has shown that people develop chronic health conditions. More and more nutritional studies have linked many of today’s most prevalent, life threatening chromic diseases – diabetes, heart disease, stroke, obesity, high blood pressure, macular degeneration, bone loss, dementia to nutritional deficiencies. Research is finding simple nutrition may eradicate many of these common conditions as it has with scurvy, pellagra, beriberi and others. The simple truth may be that susceptibility to disease is linked to either toxicity or nutritional deficiency. Increasingly, scientific research has shown that the secret to life-long health is good nutrition.

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The decline in the nutritional quality of food has been linked to production methods that result in soil degradation or the “mining” of soil fertility. Globally, the Green Revolution of the past 50 years has resulted in the use of large amounts of petroleum based, synthetic fertilizers to increase productivity. To increase yields, a vast over-application of inorganic, synthetic nitrogen has been applied to farmland. This over-application of labile, inorganic nitrogen stimulated the soil microbes and resulted in the destruction of the natural balance of carbon reserves in the soil.

With the destruction of moisture holding carbon, soils have lost the ability to grow healthy plants and to hold moisture. Along with losing the ability to hold nutrients, the bio-availability of minerals for plant growth has been significantly decreased as a result of the accelerated withdrawal of minerals from the soil without corresponding additions.

The second article to take a look at is A Sharp Decline of Nutrients in Our Food

Vital vitamins and minerals have dramatically declined in some of our most popular foods, including potatoes, tomatoes, bananas and apples, the analysis reveals. Take the potato, by far the most consumed food in Canada. The average spud has lost 100 per cent of its vitamin A, which is important for good eyesight; 57 per cent of its vitamin C and iron, a key component of healthy blood; and 28 per cent of its calcium, essential for building healthy bones and teeth. It also lost 50 per cent of its riboflavin and 18 per cent of its thiamine. Of the seven key nutrients measured, only niacin levels have increased.

The story is similar for 25 fruits and vegetables that were analyzed.

And just one more article, Taste, nutrients decline as size of crops grow

Donald Davis, a senior researcher at the University of Texas, did some of the most illuminating research into the disappearing nutrients.

He compared Agriculture Department figures on nutrient content for 43 common fruits and vegetables.

Davis says historical data spanning 50 to 70 years show apparent declines of 5 percent to 40 percent or more in minerals, vitamins and proteins in groups of foods, especially vegetables.
Higher-yield crops also decrease the concentrations of cancer-fighting chemicals and anti-toxins -- known as phytonutrients or phytochemicals. Food scientists have identified the benefits of only a few of these.

"We are beginning to understand how valuable these phytochemicals actually are," Davis said. "We can only guess what the loss of these from high-yield farming will mean to the health of the consumer."

So yes, if we value our health, and we'd better, we need to focus on the nutritional value of our foods, and ways we can increase the nutritients available to us by certain, simple techniques. In my next few posts, I'll be discussing these techniques, but I'll provide a short list here:

1. Make bone broths for a mineral-rich, nutrient-dense soup base.

2. Sprouting seeds

3. Lactic fermentation

4. Tonics: rejuvelac, beet kvass, fermented herb drinks, etc.

These things all increase the nutritional value in the basic foods, or they make the available nutrients more available for your body to use. Besides producing good flavor and attractive foods, these techniques all "kick it up a notch" "BAM" as Emeril says.

If readers out there know of other methods, please let me know in the comments. I'd like to learn as many ways of making our foods even better for us as I can. These are only the ones I've thought of or discovered in my reading. I'm certainly willing to learn more, so please do comment. Thanks,

HM

Bone Broth for Nutrients You Can Use

Yesterday, Fred and I went to the Amish farm as we usually do. As we came in the kitchen, we found Lydia and the girls getting ready to can some chicken they had just butchered. And in a big pile on the table were bones, lots and lots of chicken bones.

Hmmmmmm. Now, Fred's in his eighties and a child of the Depression, and I'm a thifty type and I looked at him and saw that we were both thinking the same thing.

So after our greetings and letting Lydia know what we needed that day, Fred asked what they were planning on doing with all the bones. Lydia said she'd hadn't thought about it--probably toss them.

"Can we buy the bones from you, Lydia?" asks Fred.

"Well, no," says Lydia. "But you can have them if you want."

See, these bones had already been cooked once. Lydia had already gotten her use from them, but there was still bits and pieces of meat on the bones and they'd still be good for bone broth. Which is another way of saying that even if you've cooked your chicken or beef or whatever, save the bones for broth.

Bone broth is very good for your health. Here's what Sally Fallon, author of the cookbook and encyclopedia on traditional nutrition, Nourishing Traditions, has to say:

Science validates what our grandmothers knew. Rich homemade chicken broths help cure colds. Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons--stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.

So we took the bones home, or rather I did for I'm the one with the stock pot. I put the bones into cold water, added a couple heads of garlic, an onion quartered, some onion skins and other veggie bits I keep in a bag in the fridge for broth-making, parsley and other herbs and a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. The vinegar is important as it helps extract the minerals from the bones. The chicken bone broth has been simmering on the back of the stove for almost 24 hours now. About time to finish it off, which is merely straining it, cooling it, and putting it in appropriate containers.

This bone broth will go to Fred, for an all out attempt to get his elbow healed by the next time we have to go to his doctor. He's sick and tired of that cast on his arm. Well, I'll probably keep a quart of it for soup-making purposes, but he can have the rest.

The broth smells lovely. It smells like home, like health, like all good, simple things. And it will do wonderful things for a soup. You can't beat it. In a pinch, if I don't have any broth in the fridge or freezer, I'll use canned chicken or beef broth, and a decent bouillon cube (non MSG for me) if I have too, but you really can't beat homemade stock or broth for flavoring a soup or sauce.

It's great to know that this very simple cooking technique can give you such great health benefits as well as provide potent flavor. Peasant societies and all of our grandmothers knew what was best all along.

You used to be able to get critter and chicken bones from the butcher just by asking for them. These days you have to buy beef or lamb bones--they get packaged and sold with the meat. And that's a shame, but hell, I'll buy them. Or sometimes get lucky and stop by the Amish farm after they've been butchering....

For a couple of great articles that can explain the health benefits of broth better than I can, check here and here. You'll be glad you did, especially if you start making broth yourself.

HM