Category: Cooking

Posted on

The glut of bugs in your gut

A long article on The Why Files discusses changing attitudes to the human gut flora:

These critters, mainly bacteria, vastly outnumber the cells in our bodies, and we are utterly dependent on them. Bacteria make vitamin K, essential for clotting blood. As they do in cows, bacteria play an essential role converting our food into usable chemicals. And bacteria form a complex barrier against invading pathogenic microbes.

The realization of which has led to an explosion of proper scientific work on probiotics ((“Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host,” according to the WHO.)), formerly confined to the lunatic fringe.

A springboard for the growing interest, Huffnagle ((Gary Huffnagle, professor of internal medicine and microbiology at the University of Michigan Health System.)) says, was a discovery by Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University, who found that bacteria “can talk to the epithelial cells that line the GI tract, which can turn on different genes depending on who is living nearby.”

What’s the connection to agrobiodiversity? More from the article in The Why Files:

Probiotics can be taken in supplement pills, or in many cultured products, such as yogurt, cottage cheese, tempeh and kefir. It’s not clear which mechanism is better, says Sanders ((Mary Ellen Sanders, executive director of the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics.)), who consults to the dairy industry on microbiology. “Often probiotics are incorporated into the production of a food product, but we don’t really have a good sense of how important that might be. During the fermentation of milk into a dairy product, they may … produce organic acids or peptides that contribute to the health effects of a probiotic yogurt, but unfortunately there is no good research to sort out the benefits of a fermented dairy product versus a dry supplement.”

So microbial agrobiodiversity doesn’t just result in a huge range of delicious products with strong niche market potential. It’s also good for you.

Posted on

Coffee wild relative voted among top 10 new species

Here’s a cool idea. Apparently the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists get together regularly and pick the top 10 new species described in the previous year. They’ve just announced the 2008 picks, and they include a crop wild relative. It’s Coffea charrieriana, a caffeine-free coffee from Cameroon. It was named after “Professor A. Charrier, who managed coffee breeding research and collecting missions at IRD during the last 30 years of the 20th century.” And with whom I had the privilege to work some years back in the early days of the African Coffee Research Network. Congratulations to all concerned.

Posted on

Nibbles: Biodiversity loss, Mapping, Mongolia, Ag origins, Polynesian voyaging, Hybrid fruits, Apricots, Bedouins, Donkeys, Chile, Cuba

Posted on

So much, much more than a weed

According to self-described “cultivator” David Randall in The Independent, it’s going to be a bumper year for dandelions in the UK.

Yet not everyone is clapping their hands with glee. According to reports in less ecologically sensitive newspapers, keen gardeners and lawn obsessives see dandelions as trouble, blemishes to their idea of contrived perfection, the removal of whose deep taproots can rick the sturdiest of backs. To them, dandelions are the enemy, insurgent forces of nature, forever pushing aside the “real” garden flowers, and taking over. They are thus condemned, in that most loaded of horticultural terms, as “weeds”.

This word, to those of us who have been gardening with dandelions for years, is not only wrong, but hurtful. Taraxacum officinale, as we cultivators call it, is a much undervalued addition to any plot. Not only do its golden rosettes brighten the dingiest corner, but you can use it to construct a salad, make an acceptable table wine, or even, when it runs to seed, tell the time. And you can’t say that about all those bloody purple alliums of which Chelsea’s show gardeners are so fond.

Quite right. Dandelions have a long history of use in medicine, yes, but also food. Although they do take some preparation. And of course there’s wine too. All this, plus an interesting taxonomy, and an endangered endemic relative. What more can you ask for? Weed indeed.