Colin Campbell on the Flawed/Failed Strategy of the NIH

It's awesome to witness the macro-views of Dr. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study and Emeritus Professor of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell. In this Huffington Post piece, he calls on the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the "most prominent biomedical research institution in the world," to establish an Institute of Nutrition -- amazingly, not one of its 27 existing institutes is dedicated to that subject!

Is that amazing? The "National Institutes of HEALTH" has 27 institutes and centers that deal with everything except the connection between food (nutrition) and health.

In his piece, Dr. Campbell explains why this is needed: the "genome project" has been a failed exercise in promoting health. It serves other purposes, but its hoped-for ability to reverse major diseases by genetic manipulation has produced no results. Rather, laboratories like Dr. Campbell's, and others', have shown that nutrition has the power to suppress genetic tendencies toward disease. Yet this is being totally overlooked, if not ignored, by the NIH and other mainstream medical institutions.

He concludes:

As for health professionals who claim they cannot convince patients to change their dietary practices, this is not surprising when the professionals themselves are not educated in this field and are vested in a strategy that is the antithesis of good nutrition. It is time we recognize what nutrition can do and a good place to start is to establish an NIH Institute of Nutrition dedicated for this purpose.

What a Great Way to Eat!

Great second-week update -- with beautiful pics, recipes, and nutritional info -- on the "Healthy Librarian's" three-week test of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's "no oil" vegan diet. Seeing the pics of this food, and the positive results as noted by the Healthy Librarian, makes one wonder why everyone doesn't eat this way all the time.

Dehydrated Tomatoes

The influx of tomatoes (mine and from the CSA shares) has created the opportunity to dehydrate plenty for use during the winter. Here's a tray of slices ready to go into the dehydrator with a dusting of five different spices:

Here are the spices—all tomato friendly—that I sprinkle on the tomatoes: (L to R) garlic powder, dulse flakes, sea kelp seasoning, basil, and garlic and herb.

Because the dehydrator mats are perforated, allowing lots of spices to fall through to the counter, I put down waxed paper beneath the trays to catch the overflow spices:

I then pour the spice mix into an empty spice bottle to use next time. (When I get a large enough empty container -- like the garlic shaker in the picture above -- I'll go ahead and make a mix of all the five spices to use when dehydrating tomatoes or preparing things like hummus or pasta sauce or as a potato or pasta sprinkle.)

My dehydrator has five shelves, but there is a larger model that has nine shelves. Here are three shelves of tomato slices ready to dehydrate, the second picture showing all five shelves:

The dehydrator has a thermostat that controls the temperature of the circulating warm air that dries out the food. The goal of dehydrating is to dry the food slowly (at a low enough temperature) so as to preserve the enzymes -- usually 115 degrees F. or less. I usually set the thermostat at 95 degrees.

You can see in the above picture that the tomato skin (on these half-dried tomatoes) is very much evident on each slice. As anyone who has cooked tomatoes knows, tomato skins come off when heated, separating from the meat of the tomato creating a not-so-desirable effect. And it will happen when these dehydrated slices are mixed into, say, a hot pasta sauce that is cooking. To prevent that from happening, I add the dehydrated slices last -- turning off the heat, putting the tomatoes in the pasta sauce, then covering the pan. The heat and steam in the pan will soften and hydrate the tomatoes but not so much that the skins separate off the slices. Before serving, the tomatoes can be folded into the sauce and they will be soft enough to mix in.

Beautiful Beagles

Thanks to vegan.com for the link to this great video:

Bionic Bikers

The Radio Shack professional bike team hired Dr. (Ph.D) Allen Lim away from another team (a reported $500,000 contract) to handle the riders' performance development (nutrition, performance output, recovery, etc.). One of his major emphases is the connection between core temperature and performance—the hotter the riders get during a race, the more their performance suffers.

To monitor the riders' core temperature during a race, before each day's stage in the Tour de France (going on now) they swallow a tiny "thermometer" contained in a small capsule. The thermometer transmits their core temperature to the team car that follows the riders. When a rider's temperature starts to rise too far, Lim will use the team radio to remind the rider to take in more fluids, or drop back and pick up an ice pack which he drops down the back of his jersey, or pour more water over the top of his head while riding -- all of which can help lower the rider's core temp and increase his output.

The team members also wear a light headband at night when they're sleeping that transmits sleep patterns (brain waves) to a monitor that records their "quality of sleep" during the night. As the three-week tour progresses, nightly recovery becomes increasingly important to the next day's performance, so sleep is critical.

Sounds like Radio Shack is getting their $500,000 worth -- I guess.

Craft Day

Last Saturday I took the materials for a couple of craft projects and paid a day-long visit to Columbia. Before Ellen, Arianna, and I worked on the crafts, we all visited Daniel at the Farmer's Market where he has sold home-brewed compost tea every Saturday morning for the last four months. UrbGard Compost Tea (short for Urban Gardener) has been an experimental, entrepreneurial venture to test the market for compost tea. There was a lot of educating involved as not that many folks are familiar with C.T., but he always sold a few gallons. A few shots of Daniel's "booth" at the market, explaining C.T. to customers, and the girls helping bottle up more tea:

Back home, the girls and I decorated watering cans. I brought them each a blank can with plenty of paints and markers and they did a great job decorating them:

The girls used their digital cameras to record their artwork for posterity:

And, yes, the watering cans worked even better after being decorated:

We took a break before the next project, during which Arianna beat me soundly (even with Daniel coaching me) in a game of Spit:

The next craft was using a product we called "gimp" when I went to summer camp 50+ years ago—plastic coated threads that can be braided into necklaces, bracelets, lanyards, and other indispensable objects d'art. I haven't made these since 1960 or so and was amazed I could still remember how—and that this product was still available at craft stores. The girls caught on quickly and were soon churning out all manner of beautiful items.

This is a lanyard I made out of gimp at church camp as a kid, which I somehow have held on to. The hook provides a starting place for the braid (we would attach the hook to our tennis shoe laces to start braiding) and served to hold wooden name tags, small crosses carved from cedar or braided from gimp, or whatever. Note the psychedelic green and orange color combo—shades of the 'Sixties:

To start the girls' braids we attached the hook to a drawer handle:

(Thanks to Jen for this pic and several others:)

And to Ellen for this one!

And a little home movie to conclude a great day of fun stuff:

Doesn't Hurt to Dream

Saw this little beauty for sale near my house today: a 1950 Ford N8 tractor, complete with bush hog (for cutting grass). I've always loved these little Ford tractors. They seem to be a perfect size for a hobby farm—a way for little boys in their sixties to play in the dirt. I'm thinking about it . . .