Category Archives: Food

The FDA hates Purslane

MSN takes a stab at the FDA in their “10 Best Foods” article:

Purslane

Although the FDA classifies purslane as a broad-leaved weed, it’s a popular vegetable and herb in many other countries, including China, Mexico, and Greece.

Why it’s healthy: Purslane has the highest amount of heart-healthy omega-3 fats of any edible plant, according to researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The scientists also report that this herb has 10 to 20 times more melatonin – an antioxidant that may inhibit cancer growth – than any other fruit or vegetable tested.

What makes a weed a weed? Or what makes it a “pervasive weed (the 7th worst, worldwide)” when it also is a nutritious food source?

Monkey Security

Farmers in Kenya are having a hard time sharing their land with wild monkeys:

Running out of options, residents are harvesting their crops early in an attempt to salvage what they can of this year’s crop.

Unfortunately, this only invites the monkeys to break into their homes and steal the harvested crops out of their granaries.

Even the formation of a “monkey squad” to keep track of the monkeys’ movements and keep them out has failed.

The BBC points out in their report that the monkeys are accused of harassing women and children and making offensive gestures.

While it makes for a cute tangent to the story, I am more curious about specific methods are being used to secure the crops. Stealing the grain from their homes? Are monkey-proof granaries really that costly?

Similar to the problem with livestock and wolves/coyotes in America, I suspect there is a lot of myth and hype about the threats that interfere with finding more sensible and lasting control solutions. At least the Kenyan government forbids killing the monkeys.

You say tomato, I say mutato

A man in Germany has become famous for showing that the norm is not normal:

Indeed, while they may be fun to look at, Westphal’s photos offer a subtle criticism of today’s culture of cosmetic surgery, the insistence on trying to make the food we consume — to say nothing of the way we look physically — conform to artificial standards of normality and beauty.

I think the ugly tomatoes taste the best.

Shame that in America some associations are trying to ban good taste in order to protect an artificial image.

Walk, Don’t Run. Drive, Don’t Walk.

Energy consumption and emission is the focus of this mind-bending, paradigm-shifting article in the Times Online.

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Similarly, it seems an airline mogul has been pointing out that beef eaters are a bigger problem for the environment than those who fly:

Michael O’Leary, boss of the budget airline Ryanair, has been widely derided after he was reported to have said that global warming could be solved by massacring the world’s cattle. “The way he is running around telling people they should shoot cows,” Lawrence Hunt, head of Silverjet, another budget airline, told the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. “I do not think you can really have debates with somebody with that mentality.”

Statistics are a funny thing, as everyone from Groucho Marx to Mark Twain has famously observed. The question is, however, what really impacts people in their daily life.

The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses. “This is a route which virtually nobody, apart from a vegan, is going to follow,” Mr Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce the carbon footprint. “Don’t buy anything from the supermarket,” Mr Goodall said, “or anything that’s travelled too far.”

And to think that kids who sat on the couch and ate bowls of cereal were derided for not keeping a healthy lifestyle. Little did we know they were really trying to save the planet…if you don’t count the marathon television and video game sessions.