Nutrition

August 10, 2007

Food is good

There’s an implicit pro-agricultural biodiversity message in a recent statement by the American Dietetic Association. These seem to be coming think and fast at the moment, by the way: we nibbled an earlier one a few weeks ago. The latest one, which I heard about — belatedly — via the Center for Consumer Freedom, takes a swipe at “pseudo-experts” that either demonize or anoint individual food items in their bully campaigns:

[N]o single food or type of food ensures good health, just as no single food or type of food is necessarily detrimental to health.

That’s why it is always sad when a food crop leaves the agricultural repertoire, and why it is important to find out why it did so.

August 9, 2007

Fish prevents malaria

Tilapia is good for you in more ways than one.

August 7, 2007September 21, 2007

Lactose persistence

More on an agrobiodiversity-related bit of human diversity, for a change.

August 7, 2007August 7, 2007

More on school gardens

A brief summary of edible schoolyards in the US, with useful links. A couple more links that I snagged over at Desertification. A new book on Gardening with Children and an article about how teachers in San Francisco are using gardening, with a video. Desertification has also published a comment on the subject as a full post, which seems like a neat bit of recycling.

August 4, 2007August 5, 2007

Buckwheat musings

Greetings from Nairobi. I’m here for a week’s rest and relaxation, which does not of course preclude blogging! Anyway, what I wanted to write about has nothing to do with Kenya. Or at least I don’t think buckwheat — our subject this evening — is grown here. It all started a week back when I went up to Lucca, near Pisa, for the weekend. That included a lot of eating, of course, and one of the dishes that particularly struck me was a main course composed of a thin tortilla-type thing, folded up, and filled with a nice sauce. I can’t remember the name of the dish, but the tortilla was made of “grano Saraceno,” according to the menu. I hadn’t heard the name, but a little snooping confirmed it to be buckwheat. A rarish crop in Italy, but nevertheless the basis of some interesting traditional recipes. Now, I knew a little about buckwheat, but next to nothing about its nutritious relative, Tartar(y) buckwheat. And I certainly didn’t know that there’s an easily de-hulled variety of this crop called rice-tartary which promises to be a boon to breeders. Nor that you can emasculate the flowers with hot water, which could also be useful if you’re trying to make crosses. I should eat out more.