The reason more Americans may be prone to allergies

by DanO

In recent years, there has been a huge jump in the number and severity of people who are suffering from allergies of all manner and sorts. Even young children are now becoming more susceptible. The reason for some of the suffering may be due to increased levels of stress or other environmental factors, but I feel there may be more to this puzzle then meets the eye. Consider the following statement by Michael Jacobson, executive director of CSPI, who said at a Washington press conference, "Sugar consumption has been going through the roof. It has increased by 28 percent since 1983, fueling soaring obesity rates and other health problems. It's vital that the FDA require labels that would enable consumers to monitor—and reduce—their sugar intake." Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University also added that "Because sugary foods often replace more healthful foods, diets high in sugar are almost certainly contributing to osteoporosis, cancer, and heart disease. It's high time that the food label informed consumers of a food's contribution to a recommended limit for added sugars." Nestle was managing editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Diet and Health.

I would add one more item to that list; allergies.

Let me build my case in this manner. The last one hundred years has seen a paradigm shift in the foods that Americans prepare and eat. Back in the early 1900’s, while there were soda pops and some canned goods, the vast majority of food we ate was fresh off the farm. Following are menus extracted from Aunt Sammy's Radio Recipes Revised, Bureau of Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture [Government Printing Office: Washington] 1931

"Dinner menus for February
Scalloped oysters, five-minute cabbage, pickled beets, jellied fruit; Lima beans in tomato sauce with crisp bacon, mashed rutabaga turnip, lettuce with tart dressing, fruit, chocolate drop cookies, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, scalloped parsnips, turnip greens, pickled cherries, Washington pie..

"Dinner menus for April

Cheese soufflé, spring onions on toast, browned parsnips, olives and radishes, rhubarb Betty, pork chops, savory cooked lettuce, parley potatoes, chili sauce, jelly roll; fresh beef tongue, wilted dandelion greens, fried potato cakes, banana pudding...

"Dinner menus for July

Cold sliced meat, potato salad, rolls, peaches and cream, iced coffee, tea, or chocolate; fried or broiled chicken, new potatoes, peas, currant jelly, strawberry ice cream, vanilla wafers; broiled ground beef on toast, lima beans, fried tomatoes, Spanish cream...

"Dinner menus for October

Scalloped onions and peanuts, spinach, hot biscuits, catsup, lemon pie; cold boiled ham, succotash, carrots, cold slaw, green tomato pie; cream of vegetable soup, oven-toasted bread, grated cheese and lettuce salad, apple sauce, hot gingerbread; roast chicken, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts or some other green vegetable, crabapple jelly, peanut-brittle ice cream, sand tarts..."

As you can see, if when you dined out back then there were a lot of vegetables, a little meat and almost no processed sugar. Today, the average Americans diet has changed 180 degrees. Most of us eat nothing but processed foods that come in cans, boxes or though the window of a drive-thru. How are these foods different from back then? Well, they have had all the enzymes that were active in the natural food killed and they often have some form of processed sugar added to them. (I’ll leave out the horrendous levels of salt for another time).

So, in short, I believe the real cause of so many people becoming sensitive to outside irritants like pollen is really connected with a growing intolerance for sugar in our society. Let me explain this in very simple terms. The human body is an engine that is designed for one thing; to eat food. Everything else it does is of a secondary nature from a biological perspective. It was also designed this way over millions of years and is adapted to a basic agrarian diet consisting of natural foods found in nature. This is pretty much the status quo even up into early 1900’s when most Americans were raised in rural settings and ate locally grown produce. There were no large grocery stores that carried twenty thousand different processed items. It was pretty much a meat and potatoes existence if you get my meaning. The important point being that the amount of processed sugar (as opposed to natural sugars) in the average person’s diet was very low. Then, almost overnight geologically speaking, we began to consume almost exclusively, foods that were not ‘natural’. Foods that required our organs of digestion like the liver and pancreas to take up the slack in the form of increased enzyme secretions that were needed to break down the food into substances that the body could assimilate. A young healthy body can should this burden without problem, but as we age it does become a problem and the process of breaking down what we put in our mouths gets harder and harder to do well. Add to this a greatly increased consumption of processed sugars and what you have is a digestive system that becomes increasingly dysfunctional. So much so, that there are undigested fragments of sugar and food particles (toxins) getting past the intestinal wall and so on into the blood system every time we eat. Once there, the immune system is forced into overtime to deal with it. It’s as though each time we eat the processed food that so many of us do, we poison our bodies a little and stress the immune system. Over time, the immune system itself begins to get a little ‘flaky’ and starts to overreact. It even reacts to stimulus that it did not react to before. In this case we are talking about a heightened immunologic response that causes up to feel just like we have a cold. Only it’s not a cold at all, it’s our immune system crying out for help!

Carrots have been a real surprise for me!

Carrots have proven to a real surprise to me this last year. I’d never planted them before because I’d heard the tiny seeds were finicky and difficult to germinate. I also figured the soil had to be super soft and free of rocks for the roots to grow into straight and true carrots. Well, that turned out to be a load of bunk. Now true, I planted a variety called Short and Sweet which is a variety that is meant for heavier soils and also true, I did not always get the honkers you see in the grocery store. But, so what! I have been overjoyed with two facts. One, they are super easy to grow. And, once they do germinate they are a breeze to car for. (More like weeds than anything else). In order to beat the germination deal, I simply waited for a week in the spring when I knew it was forecast to be overcast and rainy. I then planted the seeds being careful to give them good spacing. I then covered the soil where they were shallowly planted with a bit of damp newspaper. Voila, I was done! A week later when I peeked under the paper, here are all these little dudes poking up out of the soil. From that point on, I just made sure to keep them watered and before I knew it, that fall I had more carrots than I could eat! Oh, and number two! I found that carrots over winter very nice in the soil as you can see in the pictures. They taste fantastic and they are a nice surprise when nothing else is growing yet.

Nutrition: In order below is the description, grams weight, ounces, raw calories, calories from fat, sodium, cholesterol and carbohydrates from the serving you see pictured.


Carrots 123 4.3 50.4 2.0 84.7 0.0 11.7

The Advantages of Growing and Eating Beans

For some time now, I’ve made beans (both the green variety and dried) a part of my regular diet. I’ve grown Kentucky Pole Beans every year for the past twenty years in my home garden. They’re and easy plant and raise and since the pole version can go vertical they don’t take up a lot of space in my small garden. The dried versions like the Great Northern Bean are cheap to buy and store for just about forever. I love to eat them in recipes like Bean and Ham Soup.

Other than the taste, which I love, beans have a lot going for them. They belong to the Fabaceae family which are legumes and have had a very long history of human consumption. As far back as six thousand years ago they were grown regularly and eaten when meat was in short supply. When you combine beans with rice you are getting all the essential amino acids (see my article on this) that are needed to sustain life. The protein is considered a great substitute for meat.

Beans also supply a large dose of dietary fiber. A cup of cooked navy beans provides 46.6% of the recommended daily intake for fiber. Soluble fiber forms a gel-like substance in the digestive tract that combines with bile (which contains cholesterol) and ferries it out of the body. Beans are also able to help moderate blood glucose levels which can be important for anyone with this concern.

In a very interesting study that examined food intake patterns and risk of death from coronary heart disease, researchers followed more than 16,000 middle-aged men in the U.S., Finland, The Netherlands, Italy, former Yugoslavia, Greece and Japan for 25 years. Typical food patterns were: higher consumption of dairy products in Northern Europe; higher consumption of meat in the U.S.; higher consumption of vegetables, legumes, fish, and wine in Southern Europe; and higher consumption of cereals, soy products, and fish in Japan. When researchers analyzed this data in relation to the risk of death from heart disease, they found that higher legume consumption was associated with a whopping 82% reduction in heart attack risk!

This year I will be planting Great Northern Beans for the first time in my garden as part of an experiment to see just how productive they are. I plan to include them in my book concerning Survival Gardens that will be coming out next year. This book will be dedicated to things the average person can do to grow their own food and survive in times of global collapse.

Just How Big a Garden Do I Need?

One question that arises from time to time concerns the amount of space needed for a garden to be considered productive or self supportive. While I’m not sure what the answer is to that question, I can possibly shed some light on what you can expect a given plot of ground to produce. From there I’ll try and relate this to what it would take for an average adult to live ‘off the land’ as it were.

For starters I’m only going to consider standard row gardens. While you can get great production out of a raised bed garden, you’re still limited to some extent by material costs, custom soil blends, etc. A row garden is something most people can construct with only modest expense. For our example we will take a look at a garden plot that is 104 feet square or a quarter of an acre in size. I’ve attempted to draw a diagram that is to scale and show an average sized ranch style home with a quarter acre plot out back. As you can see, it is a substantial area for a garden.

From information I have gleamed on the internet plus data that I collected from my own efforts last year in my garden (I have raw data if anyone wants it), I’m confident that a harvest of about half a pound of produce per square foot can be realized. (Maybe a little less or a little more depending on the nature of what is planted and on how the season turns out). That would translate out to about seven pounds (7.3 to be exact) of produce from a quarter acre per day assuming that you were able to can, freeze or store all of what you grew and then parceled it out over the course of the year.Note a quarter acre plot would be about 104 feet square.

Now if we accept this fact and next focus on the caloric content of the produce, we would find that some vegetables are low, some medium and some high in the number of calories you get from them on a per pound basis. At the high end would be potatoes that can approach a calorie per gram or 453 calories per pound. At the low end, say lettuce for example, you are getting hardly any calories. Maybe ten to twenty per pound grown.

So, if you happen to be an average sized adult and your daily caloric requirement is 1800 calories per day, that would translate out to a yearly need of (1800 cal x 7 days per week x 52 weeks per year) or about 374,400 calories that you would need to eat each year. Now, assuming an average of 7.3 pounds is produced per day in a quarter acre plot at an overall average of 200 calories per pound, you would get (7.3 x 200 x 356) or 512, 640 calories. That’s more than enough to live on even assuming some spoilage and loss to critters.

March 2010 Garden update

Here it is still the middle of March (the 18^th) and my raised beds are in full swing. (Do you think I’m trying to rush things a bit)? But, I’m not really. The soil in my beds which is now over eight years old is in very good tilth as they say. Even though there is moisture present, I can still pretty much work it with my bare hands. Even the earthworms are up and about! Like them, I got my hands dirty running them through the loose friable loam that is guaranteed to perk up even the stodgiest old cougher like myself. The last week has been very overcast, cool and damp (read as depressing) which was just perfect for the lettuce and radish seeds that were planted out earlier but not so good on the emotions index. When I checked them early today they were gamely poking up out of the soil raring to go. The sun, which was out in full force today, didn’t hurt either. So, seed packets in hand, I went ahead an planted four square feet with bush beans each spaced about 5 inches apart. Sown in between were radish seeds that will act as markers (and reminders) that something is planted in that spot. The radish seed of choice for me is Cherry Belle. It’s available in a packet for under a dollar at Garden Centers like Home Depot in Branson Missouri. The bush beans were from last season and my feeling is if they succumb to a late frost then I’ll just replant. Sometimes I get lucky. What can I say?

After managing to get some bean seeds into the dirt, I went ahead and repaired a section of lumber that had rotted over the course of a few seasons. I’m using boards I’ve found after a recent flood rather than going out to purchase new. They’re free and I’m recycling after a fashion. I replaced about six linear feet this time and still need to replace a four foot section on the end. During one of my hikes in the woods by the rivers edge, I’ll keep an eye out for something that will work. It just kills me to use fresh lumber what with the cost they run these days and all. If I run out of used wood, I’m thinking of switch to rocks and stones which are plentiful along the river down here in southwest Missouri. It’ll be hard work, but since when is that a bad thing? (One of the benefits of a raised bed that has stone walls is the ability of the sun to heat the stone during the early days of spring and then, once the sun has gone down, keep the soil warm for a good period of the evening hours).

So, right now I have the following plants either seeded or growing actively out back; romaine lettuce, potatoes, chives, parsley, bush beans, onions and carrots (from last season). That’s a pretty durn good start for the year by my way of thinking. Inside, I have a tray of peppers and lettuce that was just seeded along with a small plastic pot that will contain early basil. In the front mini-cold frames, I have lettuce both that is growing and lettuce that is being harvested. Earlier this morning, I dug up some carrots from the bed and they will be steamed this evening as part of my dinner. That, my friends, has gone a long way towards making me feel better. Now, for tomorrow, I hope to get the lawn mower in shape for the season of grass cutting that lies ahead. Not as much fun as playing in the dirt, but you have to take the good with the bad, I guess.

Soil Structure and Its Effect on Plant Growth

One of the major tenants of garden lore that is mentioned but rarely talked about in detail is the need to pay attention to garden soil structure. Too often a beginning gardener becomes disappointed with their early efforts, not because of anything they did, but rather due to some shortcoming in the soil they planted in.

Plants require certain type of soil to grow well in. Plain dirt dug up in the back yard may or may not cover all the bases, so let’s take a look at some of the key characteristics to look for in a good as opposed a poor soil. Let’s start by taking a look at what makes a soil suitable for growing crops. Soil that is of the right overall composition or mix is termed soil that has good tilth. Let’s explore some characteristics of tilth.


Basic Soil Composition

In the most general of terms, a soil can be broken down into two components: solids and spaces. The solids would be composed of things like minerals, sand and organics while the spaces would contain air and water. Now, about ninety percent of the solids could be further broken down into three classes or types; sand silt and clay which are really just rocky minerals divided up according to their size. The remaining ten percent is composed of organic material and it is this material that is vitally important to the future health of your plants. It’s also the one thing about soil that you can easily do something about! Included in the organic part are latterly billions of soil microbes that directly participate in the breakdown or decomposition of organics and then often aid in the transport of nutrients to the plant roots. We call decomposed organic material humus and it is the health of the tiny microbes that are what really matter. Good microbe populations equal healthy plants. The presence of humus in a soil is what gives it that great smell.

Air spaces constitute or make up about 50% of the volume of a healthy soil so they are very important also. In the spaces you will find both air and water. Yes, roots require air to breath and if the spaces become compacted such as is seen from over tillage, you will get terrible results. The plants will latterly die for lack of air and water. The moral of this story is that once you get your soil in good condition, please don’t ever walk on it or do anything to compact it!

A Closer Look

Now that we see that soil is both spaces and solids, lets take a little closer look at how the solid part can be put together. Remember when I used the word tilth? Well, good tilth depends on the overall mix of soil texture, structure (or aggregation), density, drainage and water holding ability. This is influenced greatly by the exact proportion of clay, sand and silt that make it up. To the right is a chart of how different soils are made from varying the composition of these three basic ingredients. When you first look at it, you might be a little confused. So, what’s the best soil? Well, the answer is not to think so much as what is best as it is to think in terms of avoiding any extremes. So, if your soil is somewhere in the middle of the chart that’s good. If it’s tending towards one of the corners, then you might want to consider some soil management techniques that could apply depending on your circumstance. If you have small raised beds like I do, then you can always buy bags of different kinds of soil to alter the structure. If, on the other hand, you have a large backyard garden, this might not be a viable alternative. The good news is that almost any soil can be improved by the addition of compost. That will be subject of a future blog.

Lettuce seed germination research!

Here is a piece of information concerning lettuce seed germination I came across some time ago.

In related research, plant physiologists wondered why people have trouble with seed germination of lettuce in their vegetable gardens. They knew that seed germination was very high in Petri dishes in the laboratory.

It turns out that in lettuce seeds, unlike barley, a critical step in triggering seed germination is photo-activation. The seeds need to be exposed to light in order to germinate. I hope you are wondering, immediately, how germination responds to photon flux and wavelength of light!

Lettuce responds well to very low photon fluxes...it is not a photosynthetic process!

The wavelength of light is critical. The seeds germinate well in white light, but also to single "colors"...particularly red light (660 nm). On the other hand, far-red light (730 nm) strongly reduces lettuce germination.

It took a long time to identify, isolate, and characterize the photoreceptor. It is called phytochrome. Phytochrome exists in two different chemical forms: Pr and Pfr. Phytochrome in its Pr form absorbs light maximally in red wavelengths...hence Pr. Phytochrome in its Pfr form absorbs light maximally in far-red wavelengths...hence Pfr. The name of the form of phytochrome is determined by the color of light it absorbs maximally. What made characterizing phytochrome difficult was the fact that the two forms interconvert. As Pfr absorbs far-red light, it changes chemically into Pr! Similarly, Pr absorbs red light and changes chemically into Pfr.

If you think about how you might analyze a pigment (as you have done several times in lab!), you generally put an extract into a spectrophotometer and measure absorbance of a wavelength at which the pigment maximally absorbs light. With phytochrome, this is almost impossible...the light you would use to measure it, causes it to change to the other form! It is elusive!

Back to the lettuce, obviously the garden problem is planting the seeds too deep (in the dark!). Without light to photo-activate seed germination, the seeds fail to germinate to their potential. In the dark, the ratio of Pfr to Pr determines whether each seed will germinate. If exposed to red light, the phytochrome is all converted into Pfr and the seeds germinate. When the seeds are exposed to far-red light, the phytochrome is all converted into Pr and the seeds fail to germinate. Obviously the active form of phytochrome is Pfr.

Sure signs of spring!

Around the middle of March it might seem to many of us living in southwest Missouri that winters hold will never go away. But, if you look carefully, you will see that things are a growing in spite of her cold embrace.This serves as a great reminder for gardeners that this would be a good time to sow Cole crops or any cold hardy plant for that matter.

In my front yard are two such signs. Daffodils and Forsythia are both getting ready to burst forth into flower! Now while neither of these plants look very impressive right this minute. You just wait! Sometime next week the temperature will climb into the sixties, the birds will be singing and these guys will come out in all their glory as early (and welcome) emissaries of better times to come. In my neck of the woods you will see a lot of yellow (the aforementioned Forsythia) pink and white (dogwoods) and daffodils of course!

My only problem with this time of year is the thought of cutting the grass. I can already discern little clumps of green growing here and there. I've always wondered why someone hasn't invented a use for grass clippings! The shear biomass that is produced each year must be staggering. For my part, I never bag my clippings. I have a mulching mower that cuts the grass blades up really fine so they decompose and add nitrogen to the soil. I've never had a problem with thatch buildup by doing this and my lawn looks great!

Cold Frame Update for March 14, 2010

On February the 27^th, I planted by broadcast method a few Little Caesar romaine seed along with an equal amount of Cherry Belle radish seed. Both were from packets that were purchased last spring. As you can see, as of March 14^th, they have germinated well and are on their way. The temperatures during the day have been in the middle forties to low fifties while the nights have fallen in the thirties. But, the cold frames have done a good job of protecting the young seedlings from harm.

On this date, I also broadcast a small amount (about one tablespoon) of fertilizer in both frames. I used a NPK (Nitrogen Phosphorous Potassium) mix of 13-13-13 which should give the young seedlings in Cold Frame #1 and the established lettuce plants in Cold Frame #2 a boost. As a side note, when I finish harvesting the lettuce from the small Cold Frame #2, I plan to spread a little finished compost from my compost pile of kitchen scraps out back. I do this to try and insure an even pH balance is maintained. This frame will then be given a rest and will just be used to hold starter trays through the rest of the cool spring days. As warm weather approaches, I’ll broadcast a small cover crop of hairy vetch to help replenish the soil. By doing this, I will help benefit my fall planting of lettuce there.  Note: The small pot in between Cold Frame #1 (nearest) and Cold Frame #2 contains garlic plants. They are destined for the raised bed out back in  week or so.

Yes, I also need to re-caulk the window frames. They are over twenty years old and have performed well late in life. They were donated to me by a friend, Stephanie O’Neal back in 1995 and were pretty old back then. Since that time they have been repainted a couple of times, but now the window panes are falling out because the old caulk has deteriorated so much. Still, they have performed their function very well. A good motto to live by is to re-use and re-cycle whenever possible. Nature has done a great job of this for millions of years and it works really well.

My Chicken Wire Spud Enclosure Thing

When Mr. Basil Got Hitched to Mrs. Tomato

At some point in the hazy past, a marriage occurred between two unlikely denizens of the soil. My friend the basil plant somehow managed to win the affection of the beautiful tomato, a fruit that was at once time thought to be deadly.

Basil came on the scene relatively early in this history of man. It was first noted in India over two thousand years ago where the seeds soon spread to places like Egypt where it was used as one of the embalming herbs in mummies. In ancient Greece it was thought as a cure for the bite of a dragon called a basilisk and so perhaps that’s where it got is modern name.

The tomato, on the other hand is thought to be native to North America. The first records of its appearance were in Aztec records dating about 700 A.D. It got introduced to Europeans in the 1500’s and became an accepted addition to southern European tables from that time on. However, in the northern part of Europe, the wealthy thought it to be poisonous for two reasons; one, it resembled the wolf peach and two, by the effect it had on flatware. Let me explain a bit more about that. It seems that well to do people in that time used flatware made of pewter, which has a high-lead content. Foods high in acid, like tomatoes, would cause the lead to leech out into the food, resulting in lead poisoning and death. Poor people, who ate off of plates made of wood, did not have that problem, and hence did not have an aversion to tomatoes. The first written mention of the tomato in Italy was in 1544; it was often fried and eaten with salt and pepper. This is essentially the reason why tomatoes were only eaten by poor people until the 1800's, especially Italians. Gee could pizza be far behind?

The answer to that question is yes, exactly! What changed in at that point in history was the mass immigration from Europe to America. With this movement came a large blending of cultures. Many Italian-Americans ate tomatoes and brought that food with them. But also, and perhaps equally as important, was the invention of pizza. There is no pizza without tomato sauce, and pizza was invented around Naples in the late 1880's. And so the love affair with the tomato began.

Only in recent times was it discovered that when you bring basil together with sliced tomatoes or in sauces you have two flavors that were just made for each other. So, there you have it. The story of a beautiful, if poisonous lady who married a dragon slayer. A tale for the ages.

Seed Storage and Germination Testing

First and foremost, you will need to protect the seed from any extremes. No high heat or high moisture allowed please. I like to store my seed in airtight plastic containers in the bottom of the fridge. This places them out of the way and insures they will stay nice and cool for the months that have to go by from one spring to the next.

Each little seed is actually a very tiny, but complete plant that is enclosed in a seed coat. The coat is tough and hard and protects it until conditions become right for growth. This usually happens in the early spring when the soil gets above 50F and moisture is then allowed to soak into the seed itself. When this happens an enzyme is activated that helps bring the tiny plant out of hibernation and back into an active growing state. But, how can you tell if the seeds you have left over are still viable? No one wants to spend a lot of time and effort getting seed planted and watered only to find out weeks later that they were not viable!

The best technique I have found requires just a few common items from around the house; a plastic baggie, a paper towel and some water. Just use enough water to get the towel damp but not soggy. Place a few ‘test’ seeds onto the paper towel and then fold it over so the seeds are covered on both sides. I usually place ten test seeds on the towel. Next place the seed into a baggie and seal it. You can place your ‘germination chamber’ anywhere where the temps are warm but also where it will be out of direct sunlight. Then, just wait a few days, check every 24 hours to see if germination is occurring. Seeds like spinach, lettuce and radish will germinate very rapidly, say in a few days at most. Other seeds like tomatoes or pepper will take a week or longer. But, if they are viable you should see most if not all sprouting at some point. The number of seeds that germinate is important to consider. If you get less than 50% then you should think about buying some new seed packets. If it’s over 50% then you should be able to get decent crops from the balance of the packet. Now, following are some suggested storage times for common garden vegetables. It’s important to remember that some seed, for whatever reason, will not store well;

1-2 years – Corn, Onion, Parsley, Parsnips and Peppers

3-4 years – Asparagus, Beans, Peas, Beets, Cabbage, Carrots, Squash and Tomatoes

5-6 years – Cucumbers, Lettuce, Melons and Spinach

So, when you think you’re ready, get those packets out and start testing!

Yes, Potatoes can be considered a survival food!

The Skinny on Potatoes!

I’m not sure exactly what a ‘skinny’ is but it sounded good so I used it in this blog. First and foremost, we need to establish one thing right off the bat. There are actually two kinds of potatoes out there. The good potatoes and the bad potatoes. You need to be able to spot the bad ones as quickly as possible! They are out to get you and your plans for a healthy lifestyle. Geesch!

The good potatoes include those that are baked or boiled. Period. They will continue to stay pretty good too if you don’t try lathering them with margarine and salt prior to eating.:) The bad potatoes are pretty much any fried spud. This would include, but is not limited to, hash browns, French fries and potato chips. (In other words, three forms of potatoes that some of us absolutely crave. I’ve never understood how the Creator made everything we like to eat pretty much bad for us. I’m sure there are exceptions out there, I just can’t think of one right this minute).Note: Artwork is from Jeffrey's Art Blog

So, what makes the fried version so harmful? Well, besides having extra fat (oil) added to them, potatoes that are fried as chips or French fries can contain a substance called acrylamide. This is a toxic substance that forms in starchy foods when they are processed or cooked at high temperatures. There is currently little information about, and poor understanding of, how acrylamide is formed in some foods. It appears, though, to be produced naturally in some foods that have been cooked or processed at high temperature and the levels appear to increase with the duration of heating. The highest levels found so far were in starchy foods (potato and cereal products). Too bad, so sad! So, anyway, acrylamide has been shown to cause cancer in lab animals, but we don't know exactly what levels of acrylamide exposures are dangerous for humans. So, don’t freak out quite yet. If you apply enough of anything, you can turn that thing into a cancerous or harmful agent! As Henry David Thoreau once said, “All things in moderation.”  (Actually I think it was some Roman proctorate named Terance, but that would be another tale). That thought, though, appears to be pretty much the ticket on most fried foods. You can eat them from time to time, just don’t make a regular thing of it!

OK, we all got that straight? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to enjoy a boiled potato with some BBQ’d Chicken. What’s that you say?

My Spring into Taters!

I’m not sure if anyone else got outside into a garden on March the 6th, but I did. The temperatures in southern Missouri got up to the mid sixties and that was enough to motivate me to amble into the back yard and begin what has become a ritual every year. Getting the raised beds ready for another season of great veggies.

Now as a gardener, my spatial aspirations are really quite small. I have just three little raised beds that are about four feet by eight feet in size. Last season, however, this sixty four square feet of growing space produced about fifty pounds of edible produce. (I know that's true because I actually weighed every bit and have the results available in a data file should anyone be interested).

On this date, I worked the soil in each bed to loosen it up a bit and then went ahead and planted some leaf lettuce seed I had left over from last year. I also planted a bit of radish seed as a marker and about 6 broccoli seed for the hell of it. I’ve never had much luck growing broccoli from seed. Even when I have gone to transplant, I’ve had poor luck. I think the climate is just not quite right here in southwest Missouri for them. They also take up quite a bit of room and when space is at a premium that can be a problem.

My biggest foray, this season, will be the great potato growing experiment! You see, I have never planted potatoes before and am a little nervous about making mistakes. My usual thing is to make every mistake possible and then some day I'll be an expert...at making mistakes! But, that's never deterred me. So, at the local grocery store, I managed to violate a potato growing principle right off the bat. I purchased ‘non-certified’ seed potatoes that will, in all likelihood, rot or become diseased the first chance they get. Well, maybe not. Anyways, they certainly look the proper part. They've got little shoots growing here and there. They're also pretty dirty.. The crate they were in said they were Kennebec seed potatoes. I’ll assume this is a good potato to grow in Missouri. When I got the checkout counter the young girl asked me if that was the best I could do. I just smiled and told here that last potato crop had evidently failed. I still don't know who was pulling whose leg. You know it’s funny how you can be really old and yet totally naive or young and very world wise.I tend to fall in to the former rather than the latter.

So, tomorrow is Sunday and the weather is supposed to hold tight for one more day before its forecast to get wet for much of the rest of the week. I’ll use this time to finish up with surface preparation and then when it get rainy outside, I plan to make a trip to a local garden center to stock up on seed and additional soil.

Updates to come!

Potato Planting Time is Nigh!

As spring gets ever closer (it’s March 5th as I write this), it’s time to begin thinking about those first vegetables of the gardening season. Potatoes are among the best vegetables to grow and they should deserve your consideration. As a died-in the-wool gardener, I’m hoping to get a few seed potatoes from the local market this weekend. The Home Depot where I live in Branson Missouri seems a good bet.

I have my trusty soil thermometer ready to go. As soon as soil temperatures reach about 50°F, seed potatoes can be planted. Currently, the temperature where I plan to plant is at 49F. Some gardeners use cold frames or high tunnels. Not me! I’m going for the close to the house plan this year. I just need to be careful to protect the young plants from freezing temperatures which can still happen at any time. (Note: If you are planting in the open field, you will need to wait 2-4 weeks before the last frost in your area).

Once I get my seed potatoes, I plan to pre-sprout them for a couple of weeks before planting. This will give them a boost for earlier and maybe larger production ratios. Pre-sprouting is accomplished by placing the potatoes in a warm room (>50°F) until sprouts are observed on the tubers. You also will need to consider using indirect, medium light to form tougher sprouts. These will have a higher chance of survival. That’s the theory anyway.
Note that you can plant either seed pieces or the whole potato. If the seed stock is small (size of an egg or less), whole ones can be used. Larger seed potatoes can be cut in slices having 2 or more eyes or buds per piece. (Since the potato is a root crop, the soil needs to be loose and friable for good growth). The optimum pH is around 5.5 to 7.0.

Speaking for myself, I prefer to plant potatoes on a raised bed that keeps the soil both warm and well-drained. Just make a 6” deep trench and plant the seed pieces or whole tubers about 12” apart. Cover the seed with 2-4” of loose soil. When the potatoes sprout or when they get a few inches above the soil, then rake some additional soil into the trench, making a small hill. Compost can be added and mixed with the soil prior to planting, or some may apply about an inch of compost after the potatoes have emerged from the soil. Take your pick. The nice thing is that this hill method of potato culture provides more than enough soil to form well-shaped tubers while preventing them from being exposed to sunlight that can make them green and inedible. Yuk!

As always, I will do updates through the growing season.

Do Microwaves Ovens Really Kill Bad Bacteria?

This morning while perusing the fridge in search of something to eat, I spied some chicken and rice that was in a Tupperware container. Problem was, how long had it been in there? I couldn’t remember. But, I thought, I’ll just make sure to ‘nuke’ it really well in the old microwave. That should kill any bad bugs that might lurk somewhere within. The trouble was, I was wrong.

One study, by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was published in The American Journal of Epidemiology. It looked at a salmonella outbreak after a picnic where dozens of people ate reheated roast pork. Of 30 people studied, all 10 who used a microwave oven became sick, compared with none of the 20 who used a conventional oven or skillet.

Another study, in the journal Epidemiological Infections, looked at six people who contracted salmonella at a buffet after eating a dish consisting of chicken and vegetables. The scientists found that the food had been heated in a 500-watt microwave oven for five minutes before it was consumed — which apparently was not enough.

The problem, studies show, is that microwave users often ignore recommendations like stirring and rotating food for even cooking and checking its temperature once done. You have to hit somewhere between 160 to 170 degrees Fahrenheit to make sure that the bad guys have all bit the dust. (Note: Salmonella is one of the toughest to kill. The rate at which these bacteria are destroyed depends on temperature, species, acidity (pH), and humidity. Ten minutes at 65°C (150°F), or less than two minutes at 70°C (160°F), are both about as effective as an hour at 60°C (140°F). These times and temperatures are sufficient to kill 99.9999% of a particularly heat-resistant strain (S. senftenberg), in custard. At any given temperature, the proportion of surviving bacteria killed in a given time is constant: it takes one sixth of these times to destroy 90% of the bacteria; one third of the time to kill 99%; half the time to kill 99.9%, and so on. A lethal dose may be as few as 500,000 bacteria.)

So, the answer is no! If you have leftovers that you suspect may be a little old (more than a few days). Throw them out! But, if you do decide to take a chance… then at least make sure you reheat them over the stove and that you get them over the 160 to 170 mark.

The Actual Cost of Produce at the Grocery Store

I though it might be interesting to take a look at the actual cost of certain vegetables I pay for at the grocery store. I was amazed to find that no one seems to be tracking this sort of stuff. At least I couldn’t find very much on the internet.


So, I’ve elected to try and track what I’m paying at a local chain store for select items. The list will include the following; Broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, peppers, green beans and Bell peppers. I think this list is representative of some of the stuff I like to grow in the garden each year.


My purpose in doing this is to provide a record of produce costs and to see where I want to concentrate my growing efforts. I’d like to grow veggies that cost a lot and perhaps save a few bucks in the process. I’ll try and append monthly updates to this blog over the course of a few months to get a feel for the average cost of each item in the list.


All costs will be expressed both in the unit in which they were purchased (a bag of potatoes) and in a cost per pound. So, a head of lettuce that might go for $1.39 per head will be also expressed in its true weight. This will allow an ‘Apples to Apples’ comparison as it were. Finally, wherever possible, I plan to buy the produce that is packaged in the cheapest manner. This means buying a 5 pound bag of potatoes rather than each one individually. The only cravat is that I will keep the proportions consistent with what an average family would purchase. In other words, I’ll confine myself to buying a head of lettuce as opposed to a crate of lettuce just to try and save some money. (Anyways that much lettuce would just rot away before I could eat it all).


So, for the beginning of the month of March, 2010, this is what I paid for vegetables at a chain store in southwest Missouri. If, anyone in another part of the country wants to post their costs in the comment section please feel free.