Increasingly we’re hearing about how local, seasonal food is richer in nutrients than canned or out-of-season produce that’s been shipped in from afar.

UT Southwestern Medical Center nutrition experts say we can be even more deliberate with our menu choices by choosing seasonal fruits and veggies that offer specific health benefits.

Their tip today: Eat fresh melons in season — and that means late summer in the US — to get a boost of potassium. That mineral can help athletes and those suffering from high blood pressure.

“Melons like cantaloupe and watermelon are particularly high in potassium,” says Lona Sandon, assistant professor of clinical nutrition at UT Southwestern and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. “One fourth a cantaloupe contains 800 to 900 milligrams of potassium, roughly 20 percent of the recommended daily value.”

Two cups of watermelon contains nearly 10 percent of the daily recommended value, she adds.

And after your melon fix, look to an array of dried and fresh fruits and veggies to pump up the potassium, such as dried apricots, avocados, figs, kiwi, oranges, raisins, dates, beans, potatoes, tomatoes and even grapefruit are other good sources of potassium.

Potassium works to lower blood pressure by helping regulate body fluids, providing a balance with sodium. To find out more about why potassium from natural sources is superior to supplements, see this article from Med India.

UT Southwestern, in Dallas, notes that adults should get 4,044 milligrams of potassium from food and beverages each day, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Thinking of heading out to your friendly farmer’s market to celebrate the start of summer? Here are some tips to help you maximize the experience.

COME EARLY

Get there as soon as the market opens … the bigger the market the more customers there will be … vendors are in a better mood than we’ll be later in the day …

BRING YOUR OWN BAGS

All vendors have bags but with the exception of the odd paper bag vendor (they cost vendors more money than plastic, so fewer have them) you’ll be toting home thin plastic bags.

BRING CASH

All vendors take cash, many take checks and none take plastic. Few Farmer’s Markets have ATM’s conveniently nearby, so cash is king.

DRESS COMFORTABLY

Dress as though you’ll be on your feet for a period of time, because you will be. Dress for the weather: it’s usually chillier in the morning so layer. If it’s an afternoon FM wear a hat and comfortable clothing. Shoes are especially important: not flip-flops or clunky boots. You’re there for comfort, not fashion. All too often we see people come to our windy seacoast New Hampshire hilltop market in October shivering in shorts and a thin jacket. What were they thinking? And parking is often inconvenient so think about walking back to the car with armloads of groceries; it’s not a supermarket so there are no carts or baskets.

DON‘T RUSH

Relax, enjoy yourself! When you get there take some time to walk around, see what’s what and who does a nice job of displaying their goods, who looks serious and who looks like an amateur. Depending on the time of day and the weather, get a drink and something to nibble on while you cruise. Eating as you go is key to how much you buy: if you’re hungry you’re apt to buy more food than you need. If you’re not so hungry you’ll buy in proportion to your needs.

PICKING THE BEST PRODUCE

It’s all fresh, so the rule of thumb is to pick the produce that most appeals to your eye. I’ve set out 30 pint boxes of berries and had customers stand there agonizing over which box looks the best. No point telling them they’re all the same because to a customer they’re NOT all the same. If it’s something you have chosen then you feel you got a bargain it tastes that much better. If you have a particular need for a smaller amount than you see ask for a smaller amount … you’ll usually get it. If not, go to another vendor.

A tip on corn: if the stalk (cut) end is moist and white, it’s fresh.

We all need to start eating closer to home, and with all due respect, I don’t mean down at the corner KFC.

I’m talking about finding fresh, locally grown produce for home cooking. Do we even need to list the reasons? Buying local food cuts down on polluting “food miles”, bypasses refrigeration trucks, supports local farmers and puts nutrient-rich foods on our plates.

But unless you grow a lot of your own food, how can you distinguish what came from your friendly local farmer in Illinois (or Texas or California) from what came from a rain forest-encroaching big-Ag operation 2,000 miles away?

Increasingly, grocery stores are helping us get smarter about food. They are labeling produce as local, organic and “conventionally grown”. Recently, I found myself bathed in info at a large Whole Foods Market. There I gaped before a mouth-watering, six-foot-high tower of neatly sorted cruciferous and root vegetables, squash and herbs stacked and organized according to the Dewey Decimal system. There were many signs. Some of the food was local, some was organic, and some, but only some, was local and organic. And because experts say that choosing organic is important, and also that choosing local is vital, I thought my head might explode.

That same week, I found myself at a farmer’s market being handed green beans that were supposed to be local. But it didn’t seem quite possible that they actually could be…unless they’d been planted very early…in a greenhouse. Maybe they meant loco?

It’s not always so easy, greenies. So how do you nail down what’s local?

Obviously, you can grow some of your own — it’s guaranteed local. You can join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) network. You could lurk at your farmer’s market and eavesdrop on people who appear knowledgeable and drug-free. And you can learn the seasons. It needs to be in season to be local, and if it’s local it is certainly in season. See a tautology! This will only trip you up when someone ships apples from Washington to sell in New York, which harvests apples at the same time. Because of our complex food system, this sort of thing happens regularly. At least you can compare apples to apples.

If you want to skip the Farmer’s Almanac portion of this learning process, go straight to this great resource: The Natural Resource Defense Council’s Local Food database. There you can type in your state and the month and pop up a list of produce that a shopper could reasonably expect to see harvested somewhere in that state at that time.

In Illinois, by late May, for instance, you could expect to find: Asparagus,Cabbage,Cherries, Greens, Leeks, Lettuce, Onions, Peas, Radishes, Rhubarb, Spinach, Sprouts, Squash, Strawberries.

But in Texas, in late May, look for a fruitier selection: Blackberries, Blueberries, Cabbage, Cantaloupes, Carrots, Cucumber, Grapefruit, Herbs, Honeydew Melon, Lettuce, Mushrooms, Nectarines, Onions, Oranges, Peaches, Pears, Peppers, Potatoes, Summer squash, Sweet Potatoes, Tomatoes, Turnips, Watermelon

And so on. Happy May.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

You’ve already heard about how curcumin, or turmeric, may help reduce your chances of getting Alzheimer’s, a disease that is virtually unheard of in India where this spice turns up in a lot of dishes.

Today’s news brings another reason to eat your turmeric-spiced curry: It may help reduce the size of your tummy. Researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University found that mice fed high fat diets that were supplemented with curcumin gained less weight than a control group that was fed a high fat diet without curcumin.

The scientists warn in a news release that they don’t know if the results can be replicated in humans. What they observed, however, was that the curcumin seemed to inhibit a process known  as “angiogenesis” that helps grow fat, which would appear to be applicable to larger (get it?) life forms as well.

Curcumin is a polyphenolic or “multi-phenol” meaning it is derived from plants, in this case, a root plant that belongs to the ginger family. This news, and the recent studies showing turmeric guards against Alzheimer’s, appear to place it among a growing list of plants that boast protective antioxidant qualities, such as grapes and garlic, sweet potatoes. broccoli and tomatoes, to name a few.

Green activists often advocate a ‘greener’ diet, high in fruits and veggies, because it carries a lower carbon footprint; the livestock industry being more resource-intensive.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which helped fund the curcumin study, recommends a diet high in high-fiber grains, plants and vegetables, though Its food pyramid, revised in 2005, has been criticized for having dumbed down the issue by trying to show the right food proportions visually and moving away from recommending specific serving amounts of each food group. It is due for another update in 2010.

The Centers for Disease Control hosts a webpage touting the benefits of fruits and veggies, where people can type in their basic demographics to get a recommendation for how much plant food they should be getting in a given day.

Mohsen Meydani, DVM, PhD, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA, was the lead author of the curcumin/mice study, published in the Journal of Nutrition.

Meydani and colleagues studied mice fed high fat diets for 12 weeks. One group was received 500 mg of curcumin per every kilogram of food and the other other group was fed no curcumin. The mice ate about the same amount of food, indicating that curcumin did not affect their appetite.

But mice on the curcumin-supplemented diet did not gain as much weight as the control group.

“Curcumin appeared to be responsible for total lower body fat in the group that received supplementation,” said Meydani, who is also a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, in a press release.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The bunnies are bountiful in our backyard this year; they’re large and prolific. They’re rabbits.

So it was with an eye out for trouble that we installed the garden this past weekend. This is a second veggie garden, which we put in to test the Evo Organics handy-dandy Weed Free Garden Watering Blanket.

This intriguing product claims to block out weeds (the blanket covers the ground, like mulch only better) while supplying the plants with an efficient, water-conserving, drip-line irrigation system.

I’ll admit, I’m really sucked in by the promise of no weeds and significantly reduced water use (up to 80 percent less water according to the package claims) but leery. Drip line irrigation is more efficient, but this much more? We’ll find out. I’d be happy with a 50 percent reduction.

So now, if the bunnies don’t like tomato and pepper leaves (I don’t think they do, but please send email if you know otherwise) Jed and me’ll be growin’ some food for the young ‘uns. We’ve planted Romas, some other tomato varieties, some Mexican peppers and bell peppers. And we’ve got room to grow in this 8 x 10 foot patch.

I’ll update you as we go. And we’ll talk with the Evo Organics folks. The installation was not difficult by the way; the hose line slipped out of the blanket once or twice, causing Jed to mutter under his breath and stomp off briefly. But after threading the hose back through, it was smooth going. Really. A piece of cake. Here are the pictures:

First step, begin with a ph test (this comes with the Evo Organics kit). Ours found that the clay soil was ok, acid-wise. So we didn’t amend anything.

Discerning diners would probably not find this much of a topic for dinner discussion, but back in the fields where their broccoli is grown, fungus can stop a good crop cold. Most farmers apply fungicides to deal with the problem, but fungicides, a subset of pesticides, can kill beneficial organisms and cause environmental damage in the course of attacking the problem invader.

Fungicides, like other pesticides, also can wind up growing better fungus as the disease adapts to fend off the poison. The fungus becomes resistant to the pesticide, and creeps back ever-more resilient. Which requires more chemical treatments; which can increase resistance; requiring more treatments…

To try to break this cycle, researchers in Canada have been developing new “green” fungicides that are less environmentally damaging because they go in for a targeted kill. This surgical approach plays off the plant’s own defense strategy by attacking the fungal infection as it ramps up to break through the plants defenses. Effectively, the new eco-fungicides, called “paldoxins,” disrupt the fungus’ response to the plant.

It works like this: The plant reacts to the encroachment of the fungus, and puts up a barrier of defenses; the fungus reacts by hitting those defenses with its own chemical reaction.

The paldoxins or anti-fungal agents intervene, rendering the fungus unable to hit back at the plant.  Instead of dropping a bomb – the old way — which can damage the plant and the beneficial organisms that assist its growth, they go in for a guerilla attack, selectively disrupting the fungus’ ability to fight through a plant’s defense mechanisms.   The researchers refer to these agents of targeted destruction as “inhibitors of fungal enzymes” (a term that we non-chemists will thankfully not be tested on).

The benefit is clear — the surrounding landscape is not harmed by paldoxins. Also, in theory, the fungus has been outwitted and should not develop defenses to thwart this type of intervention.

These developments could help save row crops, in addition to produce, according to a press announcement about the findings, released at the 237th meeting of the American Chemical Society over the weekend.

“Conventional fungicides kill constantly,” said study leader Soledade Pedras, a chemistry professor at the University of Saskatchewan. “Our products only attack the fungus when it’s misbehaving or attacking the plant. And for that reason, they’re much safer.”

Not everyone will be convinced. We’ve been down a similar path with other types of pesticides, specifically those that tunnel into a plant’s biology, working from the inside out to thwart pests. But those types of pesticide/plant interventions are different in a key way — they aim to alter the crop plant itself through genetic modifications.

This approach confuses the invading pest, without interfering with the biology of the crop plant, which appears to be a truly safer; plant-preserving, instead of plant-altering approach.

Pedras’ group has developed six synthetic versions of the paldoxins and successfully tested them in the lab on crucifer plants, including rapeseed plants and mustard greens. They plan field tests on other crops, including grasses such as wheat, rye, and oat which are more difficult to protect with fungicides.

The study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the University of Saskatchewan.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

It seems that the iconic American wide, grassy lawn, which has lately been encroached upon by rock beds and strips of native flowers designed to cut down on watering, is undergoing more surgery. It is now giving up real estate to another pursuit: Homeowners are claiming portions of their lawns for produce production.

Landscapers have noted the emergence of these small scale agricultural endeavors, with a new survey by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) finding that about 20 percent of residential landscape architects report they are replacing part or all of traditional grass lawns with food/vegetable gardens.

“Not only do you benefit from fresh produce, but these gardens offer lower maintenance time and utility costs compared to turf grass while substantially increasing the sustainability of a home,” said ASLA President Angela Dye in a news release. “Plus, there’s nothing more convenient or sustainable than home-grown food.”

Actually, it’s not so sustainable once it gets inside. Munchkins and others gobble it up.

Thinking of digging in? The ASLA advises that you “don’t spend a dime on mulch when you can reuse your leftover leaves from the fall” and suggests using nitrogen-rich grass clippings as a mulch and weed suppressant atop the veggie bed.

The trend tracks with earlier findings by the National Gardening Association that growing food is a growing enterprise.

For more info on sustainable garden design see the ASLA website.
Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Experts have been arguing about it, and you probably wonder every time you fork over an extra buck or two for a chemical-free pack of tomatoes, apples or strawberries.

Does organic taste better?

Some say yes. Some say no difference. It’s a bitter debate. Lots of folks swear that conventionally grown fruits and veggies, after being splattered with pesticides and gassed for long haul transport, mutate into bland poseurs, lacking the zest, character and even texture of their no-pesticides cousins. My palate tends to agree — some of the tangiest food turns up in my organic co-op basket, though it could be partly because the food is in season locally.

But who cares what we think! We’re highly evolved creatures with crowded brains, and relatively poor olfactory and gustation receptors. Recognizing that we weren’t the best taste testers, Cook’s Den took this vital green issue to someone who really knows his greens: Hammy the Hamster.

Guess what Hammy (a vegetarian despite his name) picked?

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media