Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

We had a lovely Christmas break. I'm back at work today, but no olds have peeped their heads into my office yet. I'm expecting a slow day.

I finally hunted down and purchased Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" about her family's year of purchasing only locally grown in season foods. As with all of her books, it is lyrically written and very engaging. It also features tidbits of information from her husband and college age daughter about their experiences.
I'm about half way through the book and it is certainly thought provoking. The family starts their local diet (in their case, I believe means foods grown or raised less than 100 miles away from their home). This means exotic fruits, like bananas are out. They begin their year around the time their asparagus begin to sprout. They plant a ton of food and base their weekly menus on seasonal items. They raise chickens and turkeys, both for eggs and meat. Here are some good quotes.

"North America's native cuisine met with the same unfortunate fate as it's native people, save for a few relics like the thanksgiving turkey. Certainly, we still have regional specialties, but the Carolina barbecue will almost certainly have California tomatoes in it's sauce (maybe also Nebraska-fattened feedlot hogs) and the Louisiana gumbo is just as likely to contain Indonesian farmed shrimp... We have yet to come up with a strong set of generalized norms, passed down through families, for savoring and sensibly consuming what our land and climate give us. We have, instead, a string of fad diets convulsing our bookstores and bellies, one after another, at the scale of the national best seller. Nine our of ten nutritionists (unofficial survey) view this as evidence that we have entirely lost our marbles. A more optimistic view might be this: these sets of mandates captivate us because we're looking hard for a food culture of our own. A profit-driven food industry has exploded and nutritionally bankrupted our caloric supply, and we long for a Food Leviticus to save us for the sinful roil of cheap fats and carbs. What the fad diets don't offer, though, is any sense of national and biological integrity. A food culture is not something that gets sold to people. It arises out of a place, a soil, a climate, a history, a temperament, a collective sense of belonging. Every set of fad-diet rules is essentially framed in the negative, dictating what you must give up. Together they've helped us form powerfully negative associations with the very act of eating. Our most celebrated models of beauty are starved people. But we're still an animal that must eat to live. " pg 16-17.

"At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them. Step one, probably, is to live on the land that feeds them, or at least on the same continent, ideally the same region." pg 20

Applying this attitude to our own lives, immediately, looks daunting. Facing a likely dairy allergy combined with an already diagnosed wheat gluten allergy for Bob, plus a wish to avoid meats on my part leaves little local food for us to eat in the winter months. I don't think an "absolutely only local" experiment like the Kingsolver family does would ever work for us, because the majority of Bob's food is rice based, and there are nary a rice patty within 100 miles of Kansas. However, with that in mind, I'm going to make an effort to eat seasonally, and locally whenever possible.

Another reason to avoid long distance foods? "Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. In addition to transport other fuel-thirsty steps include processing (drying, milling, cutting, sorting, baking) packing, warehousing and refrigeration. Energy calories consumed by production, packaging and shipping far outweigh the energy calories we receive from the food." pg 5. About 400 gallons of gas a year per person go to the food we eat.

The Kingsolver family starts a garden, as I'd like to do. I have a notorious black thumb. This past year Bob decreed that I was not allowed to purchase baby plants, but rather grow them from seed. Having wasted hundreds of dollars on good intentions but bad results in my past attempts. Last year, in about March or April I began my seedlings in the basement and by October I had one tomato plant with 4 tiny tomatoes. I kept my plants in pots and actually brought them inside before they produced any fruits. My peppers faired better, I had a variety of peppers during most of the late summer. Still, my first home grown tomato! And even thought they were diminutively sized, they were still delicious. This year I am going to start my seedlings much earlier (fairly soon, actually) and plant them in the ground when spring comes. The hot summer weather literally roasted my plants in their pots and they were always desperate for water. Obviously there is no substitute for ground growing. As I've 5 acres of land and beautiful terraced gardens left by former inhabitants (which have been overrun with brush since last being tended) I'll begin gardening this year again, with the best of intentions, in the ground.

I'd also like to set up a garden, fueled by grow lights on the wall of our house. I know this still uses fuel (the energy for the lights) but I'll bet it is less than having the plants arrive from California.

"Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packaging (e.g. square tomatoes) and a tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be mistaken, in practice for actual flavor... The odd notion of transporting fragile produce dates back to the early twentieth century when a few entrepreneurs tried shipping lettuce and artichokes, iced down in boxcars, from California eastward over the mountains as a midwinter novelty. Some wealthy folks were charmed by the idea of serving out-of-season (and absurdly expensive) produce items to their dinner guests. It remained little more than an expensive party trick until mid-century, when most fruits and vegetables consumed in North America were still being produced on nearby farms... In just a few decades the out-of-season vegetable moved from novelty status to such a ordinary item, most North Americans now don't know what out-of-season means." pg 48

"According to Indian crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy and canola." pg 49

I'd quote more, but I'll try to summarize her thoughts on the loss of heirloom plants instead, for the sake of brevity. Giant seed corporations genetically modify their plants to do all sorts of things. Most are modified with a "kill switch" which results in the plants inability to survive more than one year. Farmers who save seed, rather then buying again every year, are actively sought after and prosecuted. Plants are modified to react to chemicals (sold by the corporations who make the seeds) to do any number of things including kill caterpillars and survive herbicides like Round-up (also sold by the same company). Because the plants are altered in a lab, they are unable to evolve and adapt to local conditions, as heirloom plants do. Every year plants encounter new bugs, mold etc. that attack them and the plant evolves to meet that challenge. Because GM plants are not able to do this the fields they are grown in are basically sterilized with chemicals killing off natural flora and fauna that would enrich the ground and in turn the plants. Plants who are allowed to grow naturally develop anti-oxidants to protect themselves from pests. This in turn results in a more flavorful, healthy, good-for-you plant. Barbara's family visited a farmer who farms organically. One field he worked was previously farmed conventionally (with pesticides etc) they other was a new, virgin field. Even though he had been organically farming for 5 or so years the field grown on the pesticide side was noticeably more spindly and unhealthy. The always organic side thrived.

Heirloom varieties of plants self-evolved to survive in a local environment. Most heirloom varieties are being lost. Plants we eat are developed for travel hardiness rather than flavor. It is literally more difficult to enjoy today's grocery store plants, because (her example is asparagus) during it's travel the sugars are broken down (the plant attempts to continue growing) and what we purchase there is really nothing like what came out of the ground days before. Apparently you can trade and purchase heirloom seeds from "The Seedsavers Exchange".

And speaking of heirlooms, did you know the many varieties of poultry are also becoming homogenized? Fancy chickens and turkeys are very rare, being replaced by bastardized birds that can barely support their own bodies, much less survive in the wild. Barbara and her daughter raise some heirloom turkeys and chickens.
I am slowly gaining on the chickens argument with Bob. I don't understand why you would be squeamish about eating something you've raised. I think this is responsible eating. I am considering raising my own turkey for Thanksgiving. I've gone totally vegetarian, but I think this is responsible. If not a turkey of our own I'll get a locally raised one. I saw some signs up the street for locally raised turkeys. I've enjoyed cooking our Thanksgiving turkeys in the past two years and I'd certainly like to continue the tradition, despite an avoidance of meat of all other days.

While her book inspires commentary on just about every page, this blog is getting very long and is rather unlikely to be completed by anyone. However, one more really interesting thing I've learned.


Lactose intolerance is a common inherited condition in which a person's gut loses, after childhood, it's ability to digest the milk sugar called lactose. The sugary molecules float around undigested in the intestine, ferment and create gassy havoc. The effect is somewhat like eating any other indigestible carbohydrate, such as cardboard or grass. This is not an allergy or even, technically, a disorder. Physical anthropologists tell us that age four, when lactose intolerance typically starts, is about when nature intended for our kind to be wholly weaned onto solid foods; in other words, a gradual cessation of milk digestion is normal. In all other mammals the milk-digesting enzyme shuts down soon after weaning. So when people refer to this as an illness, I'm inclined to point out we L.I's can very well digest the sugars in grown-up human foods like fruits and vegetables... we just can't nurse. From a cow." pg 136-137
"But no animal is weirder than Homosapiens. Over thousands of years of history, a few isolated populations developed intimate relationships with their domestic animals and a genetic mutation gave them a peculiar new adaptation: they kept their lactose-digesting enzymes past childhood. Geneticists have confirmed that milk-drinking adults are the exception to the norm, identifying a deviant gene on the second chromosome that causes lactase persistence. (SNP C/T13910). This relatively recent mutation occurred about ten thousand years ago, soon after humans began to domesticate milk-producing animals. The gene rapidly increased in these herding populations because of the unique advantage it conferred, allowing them to breast-feed for life from another species." pg 137

Among norther Europeans this gene appears in 86% of the population. Only 1/3 of southern Europeans have the gene. Far Easterners do not have the gene. About 50% of African Americans can drink milk. People have developed many ways of treating milk to reduce or eliminate the lactose in it. Through the process of making cheese much of the lactose is broken into the easily digestible lactic acid. However, modern quick cheese we purchase at the grocery store is not made in a way that reduces the lactose. As such, Barbara began making her own cheese. Apparently this is quite easy and is cheaper. Although it is technically illegal to make cheese in your home for human consumption (weird law!). But, by making your own cheese you can guarantee that it is made with local milk and you can control the amount of lactose left in it. You can buy cheesemaking equipment here. A very solid cheese, such as an ages cheddar will have almost no lactose.

So with Bob, and the imminent dairy problem we face, we have two courses of action. Because of the damage gluten does on his intestinal villi it is possible that he is just allergic to lactose, or that he just doesn't have the SNP C/T13910 gene. Or, quite possibly he is allergic to casein (as previously discussed in another post). Casein is shaped remarkably similarly to gluten and I believe (from the hearsay of the Internets) will result in similar damage to his gut. A poor-mans solution is to go off of all dairy for 2 weeks and then introduce some aged cheddar into his diet and see how he fares. If he is sick, it's the casein. If he is not, it's the lactose, which is an allergy imminently more easy to handle. A lactose allergy means we can still do cheese, butter, ghee, yogurt and other handy things for cooking. A casein allergy means no dairy.

I have no idea how to apply every change to my life in the ways I'd like to. With Bob's food allergies a diet of completely local food is farfetched. However, there are many reasons for choosing local foods whenever possible, and choosing seasonal foods. Not only does it save precious resources, provide more nutrients, but it also keeps your money in our local economy, in the hands of the farmers I see in my office every day. I'd like to try to raise more of my own foods, an can and freeze in the summer.