Hipster-farmer music: Bon Iver...even my music eats sustainably

Saw Bon Iver yesterday with all Justin Vernon's falsetto folk goodness. Stereogum has a great interview where he talks about eating really locally in Wisconsin:

I hunt for food and for the tradition. I do hunt every year but only during legal seasons. My family is not a hunt-for-sport kind of family...That's what it's mostly about: being outside in the quiet, and catching your meat the only true and honest way there is.

We do our own butchering, yes. We do send scrap meat and other things to a sausage place in Milwaukee, WI for fun stuff, like Cajun Brats or Venison bacon, but we do our own cuts. Last year I paid for a guitar repair with a shoulder roast. Gordy was jazzed, said he plucked some mushrooms out the back of his property and had the best meal of the year.

Scots Wha Hae

Why Some Like it Hot by Gary Nabhan is an interesting book focusing on human microevolutionary adaptations to diet and how eating traditional foods is healthier. Unfortunately, as some reviewers on Amazon point out, he gives Northern Europe the short shift. Undeniably, Northern Europe has churned out some pretty horrifying foods from semla to shortbread.

So does this whole "eat your heritage" thing just not apply to people from Northern Europe? Well, I think people just aren't going back far enough in history. Scottish Food in Season's Larder Page lists all sorts of foods that are really delicious and healthy. Venison, edible seaweed, shallots, kale, plums, tayberries, barley...doesn't sound bad to me. Actually, it sounds very close to the diet that I've found is best for me. Just avoid the prepared foods, which are a relatively recent invention, and the Scottish diet is just as admirable as the traditional Pima diet that Nabhan praises.

Now that offal is trendy, maybe I'll even start eating haggis.

Why I Hate Ethanol

Interview with my environmental econ/international trade professor, which is a great summary of the food vs. fuel situation.

Money quote: "Given the questionable environmental benefits of corn-based ethanol, the large diversion of corn from food/feed that it requires and the limited potential to rely on it to achieve meaningful independence from foreign oil there is a need to rethink our current policy efforts towards promoting its production."

Addendum to Eskimo Post

Addendum to this previous post:

The typical Western diet yields a net acid load estimated to be 50 mEq/d (148). As a result, healthy adults consuming the standard US diet sustain a chronic, low-grade pathogenic metabolic acidosis that worsens with age as kidney function declines (146, 149). Virtually all preagricultural diets were net base yielding because of the absence of cereals and energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods—foods that were introduced during the Neolithic and Industrial Eras and that displaced base-yielding fruit and vegetables (147). Consequently, a net base-producing diet was the norm throughout most of hominin evolution (147). The known health benefits of a net base-yielding diet include preventing and treating osteoporosis (150, 151), age-related muscle wasting (152), calcium kidney stones (153, 154), hypertension (155, 156), and exercise-induced asthma (157) and slow the progression of age- and disease-related chronic renal insufficiency (158).

Cordain, Loren, Eaton, S Boyd, Sebastian, Anthony, Mann, Neil, Lindeberg, Staffan, Watkins, Bruce A, O'Keefe, James H, Brand-Miller, Janette
Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century
Am J Clin Nutr 2005 81: 341-354

So, perhaps while many high-protein foods have a high acid load, the net acid load, which can be brought lower by eating fruits and vegetables, is ultimately what matters.

Eskimos and protein

Fanatic Cook: High Prevalence of Osteoporosis Among Alaskan Eskimos

I have the anthology Hunter-Gatherers: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on my desk because I'm doing a project on native diets.

Peoples of the far north, while interesting, aren't terribly relevant to debates about humanity's evolution because, in the scale of human evolutionary history, they haven't been there very long. They prove it's possible to survive on a diet of 90-98% meat, but that doesn't mean it's optimal. Unlike most hunter-gatherers, Eskimos have a high incidence of Osteoporosis.

However, Eskimos who are still following their traditional diet are still a lot healthier than most Americans. Unfortunately, most have now adopted a Westernized diet, which has led to high rates of obesity and diabetes.

It's theorized that the high rates of osteoporosis are caused by eating excessive amount of protein. Most illnesses in Eskimo populations, like diabetes, seem to be the result of civilization, but in this case, even pre-contact skeletons seem to be marred.

That said, skeletons from other societies that ate a diet high in both plant and animal foods are often remarkably healthy. This leads me to wonder if the real problem is the lack of plant foods, rather than the amount of protein.

From Kiple's A Moveable Feast:

...the healthiest ancient skeletal population turned up so far in a study of health and nutrition in the western hemisphere represents individuals living on Brazil’s south coast from about 1000 BCE to 1000 AD. Like so many of their North American counterparts, they enjoyed this good health because they remained hunter-gatherers –actually fishermen and shell fishers – who produced highly visible mounds while consuming a varied and protein-rich diet.

Another good example are the Ache of Paraguay. They eat an impressive amount of animal foods, but also rely on hundreds of plants.

De-Ramenizing in College

My freshman stable was those packaged fake-chicken flavored ramen noodles. When I missed dinner, I ate those, despite the fact that they really provide very little sustenance and tasted abominable. These days, just the smell of them makes me queasy.

So what am I supposed to do when I need a quick meal? Because of bad decisions and just plain stupidity, I live in a graduate housing room that is depressingly kitchenless. I have a microwave, a minifridge, and sink. At first I mostly ate out, but I've gotten a lot better at making the microwave do my bidding.

In last week's NYT, Mark Bittman wrote about microwave cooking. When microwaves first became popular, hundreds of cookbooks for them were published with recipes for everything from cake to steak. People realized pretty quickly that those things don't belong in the microwave and most of those cookbooks are now found in the bargain bin at thrift shops.

As Bittman points out, it does a decent job at steaming vegetables, but I eat most of my vegetables raw. He provides a recipe for a tempting chocolate pudding, but I'm not about to eat that for dinner.

When I first moved in I got the Kafka microwave cookbook, that while outdated, pointed out that fish cooks well, but good fish tends to be expensive in Central Illinois. The best local source of protein around here is eggs. Numerous local farms have free ranging chickens and you can get a dozen for about $1.99 to 4.00 depending on the farm and husbandry methods.

Early attempts at eggs in the microwave were a disaster. Most attempts were hard, discolored, or just plain unappetizing. Finally, I've come up with a decent method, mostly by not subjecting the eggs to much microwaving. I just boil water, drop the egg in, microwave for one more minute...and I have a pretty damn good poached egg.

Lately I've been eating a lot of soba, which are Japanese buckwheat noodles. Decently priced and with a better nutritional profile than most noodles, they can be served either hot or cold. Then cook quickly in the microwave without becoming mushy.

For a meal at home I serve them hot sauced and topped with grated carrots, poached egg and wakame. For a bento to carry to class they are great cold with the same type of sauce. For a sauce I usually use a base of miso and almond butter, mixed with tamari and a little vinegar until I get a nice consistency. Finally, I top with the Spice House Argyle Street Asian Blend. Delicious, and it only takes a few minutes. More protein, vitamins, and minerals than ramen, but with less carbs.



.5 cup organic buckwheat noodles

Sauce
1.5 tsbp almond butter
.5 tbsp miso
1 tsp raw apple cider vinegar
.5 tbsp raw black sesame tamari

Toppings
1 raw shredded local carrot or cucumber
1 poached local egg
some seasoning and seaweed

I mix everything together when eating.

These are ingredients I keep in my pantry, but I've made this at friends' apartments using cheaper ingredients like peanut butter instead of almond butter and normal soy sauce and vinegar.

EEE PC

Not to brag or anything, but I read that my EEE PC uses about the same amount of energy as a CFL lightbulb. Pretty impressive. It's also basically made me paperless since it's a lot nicer to carry than a bunch of paper notebooks and textbooks.

Small is beautiful. It uses a simple form of Linux instead of bloated Windows. I'm always finding a new use from a phone alternative (Skype) to an electronic recipe book small enough to not hog my kitchen counter.

I try not to buy new computers too often though because of the impact of manufacturing and later, recycling difficulties. So I like that it doesn't have a lot to break, like the CD drive that broke in my last laptop. Buying an external anything from a Lacie Harddrive for more space or a CD burner is a lot easier than replacing them inside a laptop. Plus an external hard drive is subject to a lot less heat stress, so usually they last a lot longer.