It seems that Usain’s Bolt’s Olympic success is down to yams. That would be sweet potatoes?
Later: Nope, the yams in question are, in fact, yams. See comments.
Nibbles: Horse milk, GMOs
- Marketing Indonesian horse milk as a nutraceutical. Good luck with that.
- Nick Cohen on Prince Charles on GMOs: “Like Marie Antoinette, he sees the poor as happiest when they have their place in a natural order, with royalty at its head.”
Nibbles for the road: Baobab, Breeding, Gardening, Earthworms, Taro, Pollinators, Llama, Trees, Chili peppers
- More on how the baobab is coming to Europe.
- Review of breeding for nutritionally improved crops.
- Book on the origins of British gardening.
- Earthworms “modulate the competition between grasses and legumes.”
- ACIAR publishes book on taro pests in the Pacific.
- UNEP launches global pollinator conservation initiative.
- Unusual use for livestock fetuses.
- “And she grows more than 100 types of trees…“
- “Along the equator, without access to refrigeration, you could be dead pretty quickly unless you can find a way to protect yourself against the microbes you ingest every day.”
Nixtamalize this!
Nixtamalization is unquestionably a good thing. Without it
…maize is a much less beneficial foodstuff, and malnutrition struck many areas where it became a dominant food crop. In the nineteenth century, pellagra epidemics were recorded in France, Italy, and Egypt, and kwashiorkor hit parts of Africa where maize had become a dietary staple.
So the question is, why hasn’t alkaline processing been introduced to Africa? Or perhaps it has, and my ignorance is showing again; but if so, why hasn’t it been widely adopted? Ideas, anyone?
Organic shmorganic
So is organic better or what? Not, according to the latest salvo in the debate. Last March a report from the Organic Trade Association in the US said that organic produce had on average a 25% nutritional advantage over the “normal” stuff. But now Prof. Joseph Rosen at Rutgers says in a report for the American Council on Science and Health that the previous study was flawed and the advantage disappears when you compare like with strictly like. That may well be, of course, but a recent paper shows that there are other benefits of going organic. The ecological footprint of organic Tuscan wine was found to be half that of a conventionally-produced tipple. No word on the relative health benefits.