A study of the Tsimane, an indigenous group of foragers and farmers inhabiting a remote area of the Amazon lowlands of Bolivia, has determined that mothers who are more knowledgeable about plants and their uses tend to have healthier children. According to this summary of the results, Dr Victoria Reyes-GarcÃa, one of the co-authors of the study, pointed out that “globalization threatens this knowledge to the extent that formal schooling and jobs in emerging markets devalue folk knowledge and provide access to products not made from local resources, but without providing adequate medical treatment substitutes.” I’ll have to find the original paper, because what the summary doesn’t say, and which it would be great to know, is whether better ethnobotanical knowledge translated into more diverse family gardens and more diverse diets.
Millet beer
Via Timbuktu Chronicles, a great description – with photos – of how they make millet beer in Mali.
Traditional vegetables update
We finally managed to get up to grandma’s farm at the weekend, so I was able to checkup on my vegetables “experiment”. The photo shows (from the left), two varieties of Amaranthus the seeds of which I got from a market, a variety of Solanum, and a population of Amaranthus derived from seeds we collected from weedy plants on the farm. The Solanum is not doing so well so we weeded it thoroughly and made sure it was taken care a bit more, in particular through watering. The local Amaranthus population is lagging behind the market seed, but doing ok. One of the market varieties (white seeded) is doing better than the other (black seed). We’ve got one harvest off these last two already. Let’s see how long they last.
Peppers fight flab
It seems that capsaicin, the stuff that gives hot peppers their zing, prevents immature fat cells developing into the fully-fledged sort. At least in laboratory experiments – but at levels not unlike those found in the stomachs of people who’ve just eaten a Thai meal. So, rather than jogging today, I’m going for a curry.
New tomatoes promise better nutrition
The World Vegetable Center rounds up its work on tomatoes in a recent feature. A new cherry tomato released in Taiwan promises three to five times more beta-carotene than currently available varieties. But, I wonder, finger ever on the pulse, is it the right sort of beta-carotene? Is it the trans form or the cis form, so much more readily absorbed? Either way, the new tomatoes are more than merely sources of vitamin A precursors. They are also higher in citric acid and ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and the higher levels of vitamin C make more iron available when the tomatoes are cooked with mung beans.