Tag Archives: seeds

TIps on Using Peels, Leaves, etc.

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Seeds, Shells and Skins: Can I Eat Them?

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For many middle-class families, choosing to eat well is a financial decision as well as a health decision. When fast-food chains offer 99-cents meals and buying produce for a home-cooked meal can cost a lot more than one dollar, convenience and cost make fast food a colossal temptation. So how can you get the most out of your produce? Well, one way is to use all of the plant, instead of letting it rot or throwing a lot of it out. It may surprise you to discover that most seeds, skins and greens inside and surrounding a plant are actually edible. Here we will show you how to stop throwing money down the drain and maximize the potential of your produce.

Peels

How often do you throw away the peel of your oranges after eating the fruit? Did you know that you can use the zest to sweeten curries, salads and muffins? The same is true with lemons and limes. Lemon zest is great for adding a fruity acidity to meals and for heightening flavors. Lime zest is especially good in Latin cuisine. You can even make candied fruit peels by taking a lemon, lime or orange peel and boiling it in water with organic cane or coconut sugar.Skins

Most people know that you can eat apple or pear skins, but what else can you eat? Peach, pineapple and apricot skins are high in vitamin C and are safe for regular consumption. Watermelon rind is also really good for you. It’s very tart, but contains high amounts of the amino acid citrulline, which can boost blood flow, reduce blood pressure and promote overall cardiovascular health. Mango skins should also not be tossed out. They are high in antioxidants and phytochemicals. Peanut skins are also high in antioxidants and can improve cardiovascular health. Vegetable skins that pack a punch of nutrition include sweet potato skins, yellow squash skins and zucchini skins.

Seeds

Pineapple seeds are relatively small and can be eaten. When making a smoothie, many people will spit out the blackberry seeds. Resist the urge and you’ll reap the benefits from omega-3 fatty acids, protein, fiber, carotenoids and antioxidants. Watermelon seeds are also high in nutrients, including zinc, fiber, vitamin B, beta carotene, lycopene, iron, protein, phosphorus, potassium and unsaturated fats. Cantaloupe seeds have been enjoyed as a healthy snack in Iran and China for centuries. They are high in calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, copper, zinc, phosphorus, manganese, and vitamins A, B6, B12, D, E and K. Next time you roast pumpkin or spaghetti squash, save the seeds and toast them later.

Shells

Kids that are raised to eat healthily often enjoy picking peas from their pods, but did you know you can actually eat the pods? Snap peas and snow peas are both podded legumes that can be eaten whole. Broad beans and their pods can also be eaten whole. Almonds are another plant-based protein that can be eaten whole. When almonds are green and covered in fur, you can eat the whole thing, including the shell. Another protein that you can eat whole is the hemp seed. You can buy them shelled for a softer, nutty texture, or enjoy them whole and reap the benefits of the added crunch and fiber.

Greens

orange skin When people think of leafy greens, they typically think of the conventional lettuces available in the supermarket. Little do they know how many nutritionally-dense greens they are throwing away. The tops of carrots, sweet potatoes, celery and leeks are packed with vitamins and minerals.

You can easily save money by making a salad with these or adding them to a stew. Leek leaves help prevent oxidative damage to our cells. Carrot tops are high in vitamins A, B6, C and K and are loaded with minerals as well. Sweet potato greens are harder to come by in a grocery store, but if you grow sweet potatoes, eat the greens too.

Squash leaves are also often neglected. Celery greens are perhaps the easiest to incorporate if you love celery. That’s because the greens actually taste like celery too!

Stalks

On the flip side, many people will only use the greens on the ends of some foods and throw away the stalk. Parsley and cilantro are delicious greens that are used in many Latin and Mediterranean dishes. Unfortunately, the stalks are often thrown out when they also contain the same nutrients and flavors as the leaves. Broccoli and cauliflower are other examples.

People love the florets but are less enthusiastic about the stalks, which contain the same vitamins and minerals as the florets. If you don’t like the texture, soften them up by boiling them, steaming them or adding them to a soup or stew.

Wasting food is wasting money. Thinking outside the box can help you find new ways to get the most out of your food so you can save money and live better. What are some ways you have thought outside the box when preparing produce? Share your ideas below.

— The Alternative Daily

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Heirlooms? Hybrids? GMOS? Knowing Which is Which

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The Difference Between Heirlooms, Hybrids, and GMOs

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Know Your Produce – Perfect Produce Is Unnatural

There is nothing quite like the taste of a fresh fruit or vegetable straight from the garden. To the eye of the gardener, this vegetable picked ripe off of the vine is perfect. They nurtured it, carefully tended to it, and then finally, get to enjoy the fruit of their labors. However, compare this vegetable to one at the grocery store and it is suddenly asymmetrical, small, not candy apple red, and even has, gasp!, a brown spot.

To gardeners, this poses the question, “What is it about those grocery store vegetables that make them all so perfectly colored, perfectly big, and perfectly symmetrical? And, how did they become the standard of how a vegetable should look?” The truth of the matter is that they look perfect because they are unnatural.

In order to understand the differences between fresh produce from a garden and what you see on the average grocery store shelf, you’ve got to look far beyond what is apparent on the surface. In fact, it all comes down to the minutest material of the plant, it’s DNA. As we have gained an understanding of genetics, we’ve also learned how to manipulate the genetic material of the food we grow, for good, and for bad. Let’s take a look.

Peppers 1

Heirloom peppers grown in my garden.

Heirlooms

We’ll start with what’s natural, the way fruits and vegetables have been grown and propagated for thousands of years. It’s a very simple concept: you save the seeds of a fruit or vegetable with favorable characteristics, (typically color, shape, size, and flavor), and plant them year after year. Other than selecting which fruit or vegetable seeds to save, the seeds are in no way manipulated. The plants are allowed to open pollinate and ripen in their own time. Today, we refer to these plants as heirlooms. Since seeds from heirloom plants can be harvested and planted year after year, a farmer or gardener never has to purchase those particular seeds again. In a sense, it’s the ultimate sustainable agriculture practice.

Figure 1 Heirlooms

Figure 1. If an heirloom plant is allowed to open pollinate with other plants of the same variety, the seeds will produce a fruit identical to the parent plant. Source: Kerry Soltis

Hybrids

Heirlooms, however, like all things good and natural, are not perfect. They have a relatively small gene pool and typically lack disease resistance. As we began to learn more about the genetics of these heirlooms, certain varieties were cross-pollinated in order to create new varieties with disease resistance and traits that would enable them to grow in a wide variety of climates. In other words, rather than allowing the plants to open pollinate, two different varieties were purposely crossed to create a plant with specific traits, a hybrid.

Figure 2 Hybrids

Figure 2. If you cross-pollinate two plants, each with a dominant favorable trait, the resulting fruit will bear both of those traits. Source: Kerry Soltis

These sorts of hybrids are a great blessing to farmers and gardeners who live in hot, humid, or very dry environments. They enable more people to grow their own food, decrease their pesticide usage, and live more sustainable lifestyles.
The one major downfall of these hybrids is that their seeds do not necessarily result in plants that are identical to the parent plant, so seeds cannot be saved.

Figure 3 Punnet Square

Figure 3. This punnet square illustrates a cross between two hybrid plants. If you were to cross two heat tolerant, flavorful varieties, only half of the resulting plants would be identical to the parent plant. Source: Kerry Soltis

For a gardener or small farmer, growing certain hybrid varieties is not a bad thing, by any means. However, in the mid 1900s, the agriculture industry began taking hybridization to the next level by selecting for traits that would benefit their industry, and thus, their profits. Size, shelf life, high yields, and aesthetics quickly became the top priority for food production. Why not right? Who wouldn’t want large quantities of produce on grocery store shelves? It all sounds great until you realize what traits are compromised to get these varieties—mainly nutrition and taste. Researchers often refer to the decrease in nutrient content when high yielding plant varieties are developed as the Genetic Dilution Effect.

Studies have found that nutrient content in many of the nation’s main food crops have dramatically decreased over the last century. For example, the protein in wheat, barley, and corn has decreased by approximately 40% since the 1940s. The calcium in broccoli has decreased by more than 50%. Furthermore, since these hybrid plants produce high yields of larger fruits and vegetables, more nutrient rich fertilizers must be applied to support their growth, resulting in more nutritional losses. Raspberries, for example, when fertilized with large amounts of phosphates, will produce double the yield, yet their mineral content decreases by 20-30%. So essentially, our grocery stores are packed with an abundance of big, beautiful fruits and vegetables, but their nutritional value has never been lower. And don’t forget taste. Taste isn’t typically on the high priority list when it comes to creating hybrid varieties for mass production.

Figure 4 Hybrid Produce

Figure 4. When plants are hybridized for mass production, aesthetics, yield, and shelf life are often selected for over nutrition and taste. Source: Kerry Soltis

Hopefully it’s starting to become apparent that when it comes to perfection, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. That home-grown tomato with a little brown spot is probably starting to become much more appealing than those “perfect” grocery store varieties that lack nutrition and flavor.

GMOs

The scary truth is that produce manipulation does not end with these tasteless hybrids. Here in the United States more genetically modified (GMOs) crops are being planted each year. These plants are created using biotechnology. Techniques such as, splicing, microinjection, viral carriers, and bacterial carriers create plant varieties that could never occur naturally. These methodologies give food scientists the ability to introduce favorable genes of completely unrelated species into food producing plants. Unfavorable genes can now also be silenced. Many of these food crops, particularly corn and soy, are ending up in common food products. These food products are not required to be labeled as containing GMOs, so there is no way to avoid them other than buying foods with an organic label.

Not only is this process unnatural, it also has the potential to be extremely dangerous to our health and the environment. A frequently used method for creating pest resistant plant varieties involves artificially inserting a toxin carrying gene from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, into plant DNA. The resulting plants then produce that toxin, which in turn will kill the larvae of their pests. It is currently unclear how this toxin affects humans. In a similar process, soy beans are genetically engineered so that they can tolerate high levels of pesticide application. As a result more toxic pesticides are being applied to these crops.

We shouldn’t be messing with Mother Nature though; she’ll always find a way around our ingenious ideas. Since the onset of this mass pesticide use, superweeds and superbugs have emerged that have adapted to the pesticides, so that they are in no way effected by them. Unfortunately these superweeds and superbugs have the potential to spread into our natural ecosystems and severely disrupt ecological balances.

Figure 5 GMOs

Figure 5. DNA from a completely non-related organism is inserted into plant DNA so that it produces toxins, making the plant pest resistant. Source: Kerry Soltis

It’s all pretty scary stuff, especially when you consider that Monsanto, the major U.S. company behind all of this genetic engineering, has gone so far as to patent their genomic creations. Farmers who elect to plant GMO crops must sign an agreement that they will not save seeds. Even worse, as wind, insects, and birds spread the seeds and pollen of GMO crops, heirloom crops become contaminated with the GMO DNA. Heirloom farmers have no way of knowing that their crops have been contaminated until they plant the compromised seeds. Monsanto has such a stronghold on the industry that when this occurs the heirloom farmers are sued for infringement on patent laws rather than Monsanto being penalized for contaminating the crops of these farmers.

Consumers, gardeners, and local farmers hold the power when it comes to fighting back against food modification. If we change our perception of the perfect produce and begin selecting fruits and vegetables that are locally grown, nutritious, and flavorful, agriculture will have no choice but to respond accordingly. It’s Darwinism at the grocery store level. We get to decide what is fit to stock the shelves and what isn’t!

from:    http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/the-difference-between-heirlooms-hybrids-and-gmos/

 

 

Monsanto Looks to Patenting Conventional Crops

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Europe

Monsanto gives up on GM crops in Europe, pursues patenting of conventional crops

Wednesday, July 24, 2013 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer

 

(NaturalNews) The world’s most evil corporation, Monsanto, has announced it will cease trying to introduce any new genetically-modified (GM) crops into Europe following years of widespread public opposition to the controversial and untested technology. Instead, the multinational biotechnology behemoth will re-focus its efforts on controlling the conventional seed market in the European Union (EU), an outlandish move that proves the seed giant is still determined, in one way or another, to dominate global agriculture.

Monsanto’s President and Managing Director for Europe, Jose Manuel Madero, recently told Reuters in a phone interview that his company will be withdrawing all existing approval requests for new GMOs in Europe within the next few months. These include five pending approval requests for at least one new variety of GM corn (maize), as well as GM soybeans and GM sugar beets. As of this writing, there is only one GM crop, Monsanto’s MON810 maize, currently approved for cultivation anywhere in Europe.

No matter how hard Monsanto and various others in the biotechnology industry have tried in years past to force GMOs on Europe, the result has almost always been the same: failure. The people of Europe have repeatedly expressed loudly and clearly that they do not want to eat GMOs, and the European Commission (EC) has tended to align its approval process for GMOs with this public sentiment in mind. Thus, GMOs continue to remain largely absent from the European market, with the exception of widely-used animal feed.

“(The requests) have been going nowhere fast for several years,” says Brandon Mitchener, a Monsanto spokesman, about the company’s failed efforts to force GMOs on Europe. “There’s no end in sight.”

Monsanto: If we can’t force Europeans to accept GMOs, we will instead take over their conventional crops

This is good news for Europeans, of course, who will finally have the opportunity to rest a little easier as far as the integrity of their food supply is concerned — this is with the exception of GM animal feed, of course, which is currently imported into the country from places like the U.S. and South America at a rate of more than 30 million metric tons yearly, according to Reuters.

But what Europeans will now have to worry about, sadly, is Monsanto’s new pursuit of controlling their conventional crops. As we here at NaturalNews have been reporting on recently, Monsanto has been taking advantage of a little-known loophole in European patent law that allows the company to literally draw patents on natural crops like broccoli and green beans.

You can read more about this here:
http://www.naturalnews.com

“In the coming weeks, around a dozen new patents will be granted (to Monsanto), covering species such as broccoli, onions, melons, lettuce and cucumber,” explains the food freedom watchdog coalition No Patents on Seeds! about Monsanto’s new business approach. “Monsanto and Syngenta already own more than 50 percent of seed varieties of tomato, paprika and cauliflower registered in the EU.”

In other words, since it could not have its way with GMOs in Europe, Monsanto simply turned to the earth’s natural bounty and gradually claimed it as its own — and the European Patent Office (EPO) continues to facilitate this takeover of the natural food supply in Europe, mostly because the European people remain in the dark about what is actually happening to their agricultural system.

You can help fight Monsanto’s takeover of the European food supply by signing the No Patents on Seeds! online petition:
http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org

Pesticide Corps Mobilize to Back Monsanto

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6 Largest Pesticide Corporations Funding Effort to Try to Defeat GMO Labeling Proposition 37

25th October 2012

By J. D. Heyes – naturalnews.com

In what should probably surprise no one who has been following the Proposition 37 issue, a California proposal that would require the ingredients in all GM foods to be labeled, the so-called “Big 6″ pesticide corporations have become the movement’s main opponents.

Filings released this week by the California Secretary of State’s office denote that the world’s six largest pesticide corporations have become the six biggest contributors to opponents of Prop 37. In all, they have funneled in excess of $20 million to oppose the measure which, again, would require what should already be happening: the labeling of genetically engineered or modified food. The money has especially funded an aggressive, extensive ad campaign in recent weeks.

“Pesticide corporations like Monsanto continue to enjoy unfettered and unlabeled access to the market, while consumers are left largely in the dark,” said Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network. “Despite the best efforts of the big six to confuse and distort the issue, Californians have a right to know what’s in their food and how it’s grown.”

The Big 6 – Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Dow, DuPont and Syngenta – far and away dominate the global seed and pesticide markets; they are actively opposing Prop 37. In filings released recently, each of the corporations “made contributions of at least $2 million, with Monsanto’s contribution alone totaling more than $7 million,” said PAN, in a press release.

What do the Big 6 have to hide?

The opposition really wants Prop. 37 defeated. Including Big 6 donations, so far those committed to defeating it have ponied up in excess of $37 million; they’ve spent $19 million with Sacramento public relations firms and on aggressive television advertising and paid mailings to voters.

But why? Why are companies so opposed to openness and honesty when it comes to allowing consumers the right to know what’s in the GM foods they are buying?

The answer may lie in a comprehensive study released a week ago. According to Dr. Charles Benbrook, who conducted the study using federal government data, the Big 6 likely don’t want you to know that genetically engineered crops drive up the use of dangerous pesticides while they open more markets for them as well (as usual, “follow the money”).

Benbrook found that GM crops have “increased pesticide use by over 400 million pounds in the United States over the past fifteen years,” said the PAN statement.

“Increased pesticide use has led to greater and greater weed resistance. In turn, this has led to more applications of pesticides – as well as use of more hazardous pesticides – in agricultural fields, putting rural communities and farm workers at the greatest risk of harm due to pesticide exposure,” the activist organization said.

More pesticides, more chemicals, more danger

In addition to the use of more pesticides, the control over seeds has also benefited these giant biotech companies – at the expense, of course, of consumers.

“The Big 6 chemical and seed companies are working diligently to monopolize the food system at the expense of consumers, farmers and smaller seed companies,” said Philip H. Howard, an associate professor at Michigan State University and an expert on industry consolidation.

In all, Monsanto alone controls 23 percent of the world’s seed market, while Bayer controls 20 percent of the global pesticide market.

So what’s the big deal, really? Why should GM foods be labeled anyhow?

Probably the biggest reason why is because GMOs – genetically modified organisms – in general were not created by food or agriculture companies. They were created by Monsanto – the same biotech and chemical company that brought us DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange. Monsanto also marketed aspartame and created bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to infect milking cows that put pus into commercial milk.

That’s what the big deal is.

from:     http://wakeup-world.com/2012/10/25/6-largest-pesticide-corporations-funding-effort-to-try-to-defeat-gmo-labeling-proposition-37/

Soak those Beans…..

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Why You Should Soak Your Grains, Beans, Nuts and Seeds

Soaking Nuts18th October 2012

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

The prevailing nutritional wisdom nowadays is that whole grains and foods made from whole grains are better for you than anything made with refined white flour. But really, this is only a half-truth.What this mainstream nutritional dogma fails to take into account is that unless grains (along with beans, nuts and seeds) are properly prepared, these “healthy” foods can actually wreak havoc on your health.

Grains, beans, nuts and seeds have long been staples in traditional diets throughout the world for a simple reason: They can be stored for relatively long periods of time without going bad. This is because they are essentially all seeds. Each individual seed contains all of the nutrients and enzymes needed to produce a living plant, but remains dormant until the conditions for germination are just right.

What prevents seeds from becoming plants is something called phytic acid, a compound that inhibits phytase, an enzyme involved in the germination process. Phytic acid not only keeps seeds from sprouting — it also helps to protect them from predators. Its enzyme-inhibiting activity blocks digestive enzymes so that seeds stay intact as they pass through the digestive system of animals that eat them.

Phytic acid is considered an anti-nutrient because it binds to minerals like magnesium, calcium, zinc, copper and iron in the intestines, blocking their absorption and carrying them out of the body. Ruminants (cattle, bison, sheep, deer, etc.) are the only animals that possess phytase, which allows them to digest the phytic acid found in the cereal grasses they eat. In humans, consuming high levels of phytic acid — which often happens as part of a “healthy high-fiber diet”— can lead to digestive distress, mineral deficiencies and a whole host of associated maladies. Research has linked phytic acid consumption to anemia, bone loss, tooth decay, depression, compromised immunity and inflammation.

So how can we safely consume phytic acid-containing foods? It’s pretty simple — start the germination process by soaking (or sprouting) them. Soaking grains, beans, nuts and seeds unlocks theirs “life force” and activates phytase, which starts to break down phytic acid, while also freeing up vitamins, minerals and amino acids, making these nutrients more bioavailable. Fermenting grains (think sourdough bread) is another way to reduce phytic acid by essentially “pre-digesting” it.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of commercially available “whole grain” products are made with improperly prepared grains, which is something of a tragedy, considering that most people equate “whole grain” with “healthy.” In the case of someone struggling with digestive problems, for example, a traditionally fermented sourdough bread made with refined white flour is probably a better choice than the whole wheat bread sitting on a store shelf with “high-fiber” and “heart-healthy” claims all over the label.

Cooking alone is not enough to adequately reduce phytic acid content, a fact that our ancestors were well aware of. According to Sally Fallon, co-founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions, “our ancestors and virtually all pre-industrialized people only ate grains that were soaked or fermented.”

In general, the best way to significantly reduce the phytic acid content of grains and legumes is to soak them in a slightly acidic liquid for 12-24 hours and then to cook them. Nuts and seeds contain less phytic acid than grains and beans, and also contain delicate oils that can be damaged by heat, so simply soaking them for 2-12 hours is ideal. Your “slightly acidic liquid” could consist of buttermilk (soured milk) or spring or filtered water with 1 tablespoon of an acidic medium added for each cup. Ideally this acidic medium would be unpasteurized apple cider vinegar or lemon juice.

This beautiful chart (click to view full size) is a helpful quick guide to the ideal soaking and sprouting times for various grains, beans, nuts and seeds. To learn more about traditional methods of soaking, fermenting and cooking grains, I highly recommend reading Nourishing Traditions.

Soaking and Sprouting Times for Grains, Beans, Nuts and Seeds

About the Author

Mina is a natural health enthusiast, avid yoga practitioner and health freedom advocate. She has a passion for discovering and sharing strategies for achieving optimal health and longevity, and has spent the last eight years working in the natural health industry. In addition to researching health and nutrition, writing about the latest happenings in the natural health world and practicing yoga, she enjoys spending time in nature, meditating and making superfood smoothies.

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2012/10/18/why-you-should-soak-your-grains-beans-nuts-and-seeds/