How can we ever expect to be healthy when we’re shunning the foods our bodies are built for?
Modern Forager gets on a soapbox.
Cereal varieties screened for nutritional benefit
You may remember the obsession we developed here last summer about diversity among crop varieties in nutritional composition in general and glycemic index in particular:
Good measurements of characteristics such as GI for specific, named and recognizable varieties, whether the products of modern breeding or traditional farmer varieties, would be really valuable for lots of reasons, not least to add substance to claims that diversity of diet in and of itself is good for one.
Well, our prayers are being answered. Foodnavigator has a news item about the “Healthgrain diversity screen.” Researchers
grew, harvested and milled 150 wheat varieties used for bread making and 50 other grain varieties — oats, barley and rye — over a one-year period in Hungary. The grains originated worldwide…
They then measured “the components known to play a role in prevention of cardiovascular disease and type-2 diabetes,” including tocols, sterols, phenolic acids, folates, alkylresorcinols and fiber components.
Only one site and one year, and 150 are not that many compared to the tens of thousands of wheat landraces and varieties in the world’s genebanks, but you have to start somewhere, and “the Healthgrain diversity screen has generated the most extensive database currently available on bioactive components in wheat and other smallgrain cereals.” Should be a great breeding resource.
Jean-Christophe Glaszmann awarded prize
Jean-Christophe Glaszmann, an agronomist and expert in genetics, has just been awarded the prix Jean Dufrenoy, the French Academy of Agriculture’s highest distinction. The award was made in recognition of his work on the genetics and genomics of plant species of interest for the tropics.
Nibbles: Radishes, Fungi, Genomics, Bagel, Eels, Barack Hussein, Pomegranate
- Vavilov does radishes.
- “How would you describe the smell and taste of a fresh white truffle?“
- “The gene … is in an identity crisis.”
- “The basic roll-with-a-hole concept is centuries old.”
- “He slid her gently into a nylon sack and hung her from a scale on which she clocked two kilograms, then slid her out and into the V of a varnished plywood measuring board, where she lay quietly, like a metre-long slab of tenderloin.”
- “Activists” buttonhole Obama.
- The Afghan pomegranate to hit supermarket shelves.
Fruit trifecta
Again I nibble, and then belatedly decide — spurred by Jeremy — that the stories deserved better. Yesterday served up three juicy fruit tales from around the world. First, how ancient mulberry trees are being cut down in Iran because of their connection with local superstitions. While, from half a world away, comes the story of how fruit trees planted centuries ago by the guardians of a different superstition are being sought out, documented and preserved. Go figure. And, finally, yet another story about saving the English apple, in the tradition of the East Yorkshire Federation of Women’s Institutes and the Prince of Wales. I don’t know what it is about the English apple, but lately it seems to have been out of the news rarely if at all. Moral outrage, no doubt: Something Must Be Done!
But in fact the fruit salad is not quite finished yet. Because after I had finished gently nibbling the above I came across another succulent morsel, in the shape of an article about Maryland farmers trying to move out of one vice — tobacco — and into another — wine. Actually what interested me most about that story was the support the farmers were receiving from local government:
The Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland started a grant program in 2005 that splits the cost of new vines with growers, which was the financial push many needed. This year, the St. Mary’s County Board of Commissioners invested almost half a million dollars in a cooperative winery on the Leonardtown Wharf.
No doubt our neophyte Maryland winemakers would complain stridently if something similar was done in South Africa, say. Or am I being unfair? Maybe, but what would Mexican chili pepper farmers say if the tax incentive for their Arizona brethren were to come through?