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A new study by Newcastle University proves that organic farmers who let their cows graze as nature intended are producing better quality milk.

The proof is in the pasture.

Gillian Butler, livestock project manager for the Nafferton Ecological Farming Group at Newcastle University, who led the study says:

We have known for some time that what cows are fed has a big influence on milk quality. What is different about this research is it clearly shows that on organic farms, letting cows graze naturally, using forage-based diet, is the most important reason for the differences in the composition between organic and conventional milk.

So what’s the difference? Butler explains:

We’ve shown that significant seasonal differences exist, with nutritionally desirable fatty acids and antioxidants being highest during the summer, when the cows are eating fresh grass and clover.

Interestingly, the learning point here has more to do with grass and less to do with organics. The researchers also studied a low-input non-organic farm which grazes their cattle from birth to death entirely on grass. Milk from these farms also had significantly higher levels of nutritionally desirable fatty acids and antioxidants, which was a direct result of the extensive outdoor rearing and fresh forage intake.

Butler gives props to these “New-Zealand type dairy systems”, uncommon in the UK, and project co-ordinator Professor Carlo adds:

This paper is a major milestone in the project and clearly shows that if you manage livestock naturally then it’s a win-win situation for both us and them.

Amen, brother. Er, mooooo.

Organic milk is cream of the crop [via Culinate]

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has carried out research to find out people’s attitudes towards food and health. The results of the survey-based study revealed some interesting statistics. For example, only 2% of respondents were completely vegetarian, and 0% were vegan - who is the FSA talking to?! Ok, maybe that’s only relevant to me. More surprising was the decrease in concern about food issues:

There was a decrease in concern about healthy eating (in the broader context of major issues facing people today), about food safety at the general level (a decrease in the proportion either ‘very concerned’ or ‘concerned’ from 60% in 2006 to 57% in 2007) and also about specific food issues (e.g. the amount of fat, salt and sugar in food). There was also a decline in the number of parents who claimed to be trying to reduce their children’s consumption of fat, salt and sugar, compared to 2006.

Here’s another one that surprised me:

34% agree that it’s difficult to find healthy alternatives that taste nice.

That just makes me sad.

Some more interesting, but perhaps not terribly surprising, factoids:

• Eating healthily was less important for men than women (with respectively 55%
  and 62% strongly agreeing) and for 16-25 year-olds compared to all older age
  groups (only 46% of the youngest age group agreed strongly with this statement,
  compared to around 60% among each older age cohort).
• Women were also more likely to agree that they tried to encourage other people
  to eat healthily whenever they could (71% agreed, compared to 54% of men).
• Ingredients had less relevance to the 16-25 year-olds - only 28% of this group
  strongly agreed that the most important thing was to cook with high quality
  ingredients without additives or preservatives, compared to at least 45% of each
  older age group.

Wanna read more scary statistics? Check out the full report.

Attitude to health affects eating habits
Consumer Attitudes Survey 2007: UK Report

I’m not one for “memes”, but the latest thread about vices is kind of interesting. Quick To Fit asks:

What is your biggest health or fitness vice?

I wish I could say I never thought about vices. I wish that moderation were so ingrained into my soul that my indulgence of the odd treat was so rare that it could hardly be termed a “vice”.

The truth is, I think about vices a lot, more than I would say is “healthy”. And even though I’m fairly moderate about my vices, my thinking around them is anything but. But I’m skirting the question. What’s my biggest vice?

My biggest vice falls into two categories, both liquid: diet soda and alcohol.

Diet soda doesn’t trouble me as much as beer. I try not to drink it very often, and when I do, I don’t get too bent out of shape about “failing”.

When it comes to alcohol, however, I definitely have (or at least used to have) a horrible tendency to drink WAY too much. I’m a fast drinker, and can finish a pint at the same pace as my boyfriend. It may not seem like a big deal, but I’m about half his size, and half the size of most people, so it’s an effort not to drink so fast that I basically get drunk immediately.

The trouble is, I really like beer and wine. Especially beer. I think I have pretty good taste in beer, too. I’d like to drink it every day. I know, I know - studies have shown that small amounts of alcohol every day is good for the heart. But screw the research. For someone like me who’s done her time at the college watering holes, drinking every day is simply not healthy no matter how much or how little I drink. I don’t quite have the self control to limit myself to “just one”. So for me, one drink a day just isn’t healthy: I’ll only want more.

I’ve been pretty good in recent years about limiting my alcohol intake. But I still think about it all the time, and I still have to remind myself to slow down, drink water, and be moderate, every time I go to the pub. I miss the days when I drank without reservation - it was much more relaxing! But I don’t miss being a lardo who could never remember her Friday nights. Sometimes I wonder if I should just quit drinking altogether.

One of my favorite bloggers, Sally Parrot Ashbrook, left this comment on Get Fit Slowly, where JD also cited alcohol as a vice:

I was thinking just this morning about how my alcohol consumption has increased lately and maybe isn’t at a healthy point (not just how it relates to calories, but also emotionally). Then I was thinking, when you are utilizing (not necessarily abusing) a glass of wine or whatever to help you chill out a bit, and you decide to cut back or cut out alcohol, you have to figure out how else to offer yourself support for what the alcohol is offering you in your life. I’m intending to try yoga and a couple of other things; I’ve been thinking about it today. . . .

This made me think: If booze causes me more worry than relaxation, maybe I should trade it up for something else? The trouble is, there’s nothing that’s so ingrained in the social culture as alcohol (not in London anyway). And I want my social life to be relaxing. All too often the two collide and I’m left wondering where the happy medium is.

I’m hoping to one day be able to be around alcohol and not worry about this crap. The whole point here is to be healthy, and worry is far less healthy than alcohol (in moderation!).

I am supposed to tag someone else to post on this meme. How about NCN at No Calories Needed and Ali at The Office Diet?

The expensive way to NOT lose weight?

Are you a fan of 100-calorie snack packs? You may want to reconsider these little devils in disguise.

Some interesting research has emerged from the Journal of Consumer Research. Rik Pieters and colleagues at Tilburg University in the Netherlands have shown that diet-sized snack packs may actually cause people to eat more.

As published in Wednesday’s New Scientist:

They had 140 students watch TV - to rate advertising, they were told - and gave them either two 200-gram bags of potato chips or nine 45-gram packs. To activate “self-regulatory concerns”, half of the students were asked about weight issues and weighed in front of a mirror - all supposedly as part of another study.

Among students without weight thoughts, three-quarters opened their small bags and half opened their large bags. Both ate about the same amount. In volunteers primed with a diet mindset, however, just a quarter of students opened their large bags, eating half as many chips as the 59 per cent of students who cracked open the small packs.

Pieters thinks that people drop their guard around pre-proportioned snack foods and thinks other “health” foods may have same effect.

It’s always about willpower, isn’t it? I can see the appeal of these snack packs to people who have trouble with the WILLdebeast. How irritating that something that’s supposed to help us learn self-control actually hinders it.

Willpower or not, these snack packs are just spendy ways to buy processed food and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. If you’re trying to practice portion control, then what about nuts or fruit? You can figure out the right portions yourself and this way you’re LEARNING something rather than letting a big evil company do the work for you. They don’t care if you lose weight or not. They’re just in it to make more money. Sad thing is, they are.

Diet-sized snack packs turn off willpower [New Scientist]

If so, then the American Hiking Society is hosting a recipe contest for the best front country and back country recipes for their new Volunteer Vacation cookbook. Time is running out: deadline for submissions is July 31, 2008.

Submit your recipes with a photo and a short story about the Volunteer Vacation or outdoor excursion where you made your masterpiece (no more than 300 words please). Recipes will be tested throughout the summer and fall by volunteers across the country. Winners will be included in the cookbook to be printed in 2009 and the top camp cook will receive an Outback Oven from Backpacker’s Pantry.

It sounds like you can submit more than one recipe. I think I’m going to enter my recipes for mushroom and soybean stew, saag channa, and vegan chili. I’m just not sure if the latter two are “front country” or “back country” as they both rely on tinned ingredients. Any thoughts?

Are you a master backcountry chef?

Last May I featured Manjula’s Spinach Paratha recipe on the vegetarian carnival. Spinach parathas are an Indian flatbread stuffed with a spicy spinach filling. I finally had the opportunity to make these tonight and already I can’t wait to make them again. These tortilla-like parathas were surprisingly easy to make and I loved the cumin-spiked spinach. My only complaint is that I couldn’t get mine to puff up the way hers did in the video. This I blame on my lack of a cast iron skillet. I tried making a couple under the grill in the oven and they turned out more like pizza bases, but I still enjoyed them (this I did after putting out the fire that the grill set on some old cheese grease that was left in a pan - whoops).

After cooking the parathas, I put them in some foil and kept them warm in the oven. This had a bonus effect of softening the bread making them easier to fold up and wrap with yummy things like lentil dal with panch phoran. For you protein junkies, do you know what you get when combine the leguminous lentil with the whole wheat paratha? That’s right: a complete protein. Feast on that!

Manjula recommends serving parathas with yogurt and pickles, or filling them with cheese! Yum. Just like a quesedilla. Just don’t set fire to the grease.

For more paratha goodness, check out lolo’s Aloo Parathas at VeganYumYum!

Spinach Paratha [Manjula’s Kitchen]
Aloo Parathas [VeganYumYum]

If you’ve ever wanted to bake bread but were always too chicken to try, then please visit Jim Lahey’s article and give No Knead Bread a whirl. I’ve been baking bread this way for months and I swear it’s the best thing ever. Why? Because fresh homemade bread is like sliceable heaven. There is a certain beauty in its simplicity: water, salt, yeast and flour. That’s all it takes! This is whole, natural food, folks. No preservatives needed. All that hippy stuff aside, what really gets me baking are the flavor and the time. Jim Lahey’s recipe turns out a seriously delicious loaf of bread, and because there’s no kneading involved, it’s super quick to throw together (aside from the 18-hour rise time!).

I’ve made dozens of no knead bread loaves, and with each new attempt I usually try something new such as added seeds or different flour (I highly recommend Dove’s Organic Strong Wholemeal Flour). Last week I was feeling ambitious and went for a variation of the Seeded Sour loaf posted on Breadtopia.com. The loaf contains quinoa, millet, amaranth and poppy seeds, plus a bonus seed coating on the outside. I didn’t have sourdough starter so I used yeast. The resulting loaf had a nice texture and I discovered how much I love poppy seeds. The only think I’d skip next time is the amaranth in the seed topping - it was a little crunchy for my tastes. Otherwise, the seed topping is awesome and I think I’ll use it for all of my loaves because it makes it easy to get the dough out of the bowl.

To make sense of what I’m talking about, visit Breadtopia and check out their recipe and video. I highly recommend watching the video; I learned so much just by watching the baker handle the dough and manage the seeds. It also gave me extreme baker envy as he had all these useful tools like a dough scraper and a “proofing” bowl. The same page also contains three other no knead variations that might suit your fancy.

Tempting Textures: Quinoa, Amaranth, Poppy and Millet

Four-Seed No Knead Bread

30 grams rye flour
70 grams strong whole wheat bread flour
370 grams strong bread flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 1/2 tsp. quinoa
3 1/2 tsp. millet
2 Tbs. amaranth
1/2 Tbs. poppy seeds
1/4 tsp. yeast
350ml water
2 Tbs. yogurt

Seed Topping Ingredients:

1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 1/2 Tbs poppy seeds

Combine all dry ingredients (except the topping ingredients) and mix with the combined wet ingredients. Stir until the dough has the consistency of a shaggy ball, adding more water if necessary. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest in a warm place for at least 12 hours (and up to 24 hours. The dough is ready when it’s about double in size and spotted with big bubbles.

Give the counter top and your hands a generous sprinkle of flour. Turn the dough onto the counter. Pull the dough at either end to form a strip. Fold this strip into thirds (like a business letter). Give the dough a quarter turn and fold in thirds again. I’ll refer to these folds as “seams”, i.e., “right now your dough is on the counter, seam side up.” Cover with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

Oil a large bowl with olive oil. Add the seed topping ingredients in the bowl and swish the bowl around until the inside is covered in seeds. Put the dough ball into the bowl seam side down. Cover with the plastic wrap and let sit for 2-3 hours. The dough is ready when it has more than doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, remove the HOT pot and pour in a bit of olive oil. Swirl it around so that oil covers the entire inside of the pot. Now, take the bowl containing the dough and quickly turn it upside down over the pot so that the dough falls in seam side up. Cover the pot with a lid and bake for 40 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake another 5 or so minutes, until the loaf is browned and the seeds are toasted. Cool on a rack at least 45 minutes before slicing.

No Knead Recipe Variations
No knead Bread - Jim Lahey’s original recipe

You may already know that I’m bonkers for Bircher muesli. This week, I continue to spread the word over at Diets In Review. Check out the post for a little history lesson and a tasty recipe.

Here’s a snip:

In 1900, Bircher invented the now famous “muesli cereal”. His original recipe is vastly different from the sugar-coated, toasted muesli we typically find in the grocery store today. Instead, Bircher combined soaked oats, fruit and nuts with grated apple and lemon juice to create a naturally sweet breakfast cereal designed to energize and heal the body.

For any raw foodies in the audience, be aware that rolled oats aren’t raw (they are usually steamed before packaging). However, you can sub sprouted buckwheat or whole oat groats for a totally raw breakfast treat.

Read on for the recipe…

Veggie Breakfast Bircher Muesli [Diets in Review]

It’s a bad week for the Corn Refiners Association. First, the Center for Science in the Public Interest slammed the CFA’s PR campaign to convince susceptible consumers that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is “natural”. Now, a new study suggests that fructose-based sweeteners, including HFCS, may be worse for your health than other sweeteners.

Scientists at UC-Davis tested the impact of fructose against other sugars by studying 33 overweight individuals, half of which received a quarter of the their calories from fructose and the other half from glucose.

The findings show that both groups put on the same amount of weight, around 3.3 lb, over the 20 week experiment.

However, while those eating high amounts of fructose accumulated fat around their middle, in the glucose group extra weight was spread across the body.

Previous studies have shown that people with “pot-belly” fat are at greater risk for developing heart disease and diabetes.

Corn Refiners’ Ad Campaign Called Deceptive
Sugar from fruit ‘encourages a pot belly’

It’s no secret that I’m a dal fanatic. Rich in protein, low in fat, and very high in flavor, dal is one of nature’s perfect foods. It’s quick and easy to make and tastes like a dream. I didn’t think it could get any better than this, but Susan proved me wrong with her recipe for Cauliflower Dal with Panch Phoran. I love the way she describes this dish:

Sometimes a recipe comes along that’s so spectacular that you feel compelled to climb your way up to the top of the nearest alp and sing like Julie Andrews, giddy and overflowing with such love for the world that the power of your emotions threatens to send you skidding down the mountain on the backside of your lederhosen.

I can’t say I was singing, exactly, but the dal did make me extremely happy. The secret is in the Bengali spice blend called “panch phoran” (also spelled panch phoron and panch puran).

Panch Phoran is easy enough to make from spices readily available at most grocery stores. Simply mix equal parts of fenugreek, mustard seeds, onion seed, fennel seeds and cumin seeds. Make a big batch because I guarantee you’ll be using it again.

Here is a simplified version of Susan’s recipe. I’ve subbed the cauliflower with spinach and use tinned tomatoes instead of fresh.

Red Lentil Dal with Panch Phoran

Serves 6

250 grams red lentils (masoor dal)
4 cups water
1 teaspoon turmeric
olive oil
1 tablespoon panch phoran
10-20 curry leaves
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp minced ginger
400g tinned diced tomatoes
pinch of chili flakes (optional)
salt to taste
1 cup chopped spinach

Combine the red lentils, water and turmeric in a pot. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer until the dal is tender, about 20-30 minutes.

While the dal cooks, heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the panch phoran and curry leaves. As soon as the seeds start to pop, add the onion, garlic and ginger. Cook until the onion is soft (it should not brown). Add the tomatoes, cooked lentils, chili and salt. Cook for at least 10 minutes to allow the flavors to bend. Shortly before serving, add the chopped spinach and cook until the spinach is wilted.

Serve hot with basmati rice.