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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

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]

Thank you, Lifehacker, for introducing me to The Bicycle Tutor, a website that shows you how to fix just about any kind of bike problem.

Run by a photography enthusiast and serious bike geek, the site offers plain-English tutorials in both hi-res video and full text. The streaming videos are free to watch on the site, but you can buy QuickTime videos for a buck or two to load on your iPod and bring out to where the work is. It’s a good bookmark for everything from changing a flat to replacing your chain rings.

I so need to watch the How To Tune Up Your Bike video.

The Bicycle Tutor [via Lifehacker]

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]

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time: make up baggies of ready-to-make lentil soup for easy peasy dinners, especially at the campsite. Luckily, Diet Blog has me covered with some excellent directions for How to make Soup in a Bag.

The article includes a few bonus recipes for lentil soup, split pea soup and quinoa soup! So stop spending money on spendy store-bought soup mixes and check out the article for some soup ideas that’ll save you money and taste way better than that Knorr stuff.

So what is “Soup in a Bag?”

Simply put, it’s all the ingredients you need for a big (or small) pot of soup. Although summer is right around the corner, you might not want to have the stove on for hours and hours. For this reason, I’ve included some soup recipes that won’t take you too long to cook.

The best part of this is that you don’t have to dig in all of your cabinets the next time you want to make soup; you’ll be able to just pull out a proportioned bag, add a few fresh vegetables, and you’re good to go.

How To: Make Your Own Pre-packaged Soups [Diet Blog]

A little over a week ago, JD at Get Fit Slowly announced that he was starting the “one hundred pushups” training program. Loads of people have followed his lead and I think I’m inspired to join them.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any resistance exercise, over a year, in fact. Since I I quit the gym, I’ve been swimming, cycling and walking up a storm. And though I’ve been meaning to work in some sit-ups and pushups, I never quite got around to it. I optimistically hoped that swimming would keep my upper body strength up to snuff, but this morning I learned otherwise.

I set off to do my first pushup, body raised off the ground, straight as a board. I lowered myself down and encountered a bit of a surprise: it was really hard to push myself back up. I was shocked by how difficult it was.

I know I have more pushups in me. I’m not sure about 100 - this isn’t a numbers game, after all. I’d rather be able to do a few pushups with good form than a whole bunch of jerky, pointless excuses for pushups. The “one hundred pushups” program seems like a good place to start. So why not?

More blogging about 100 pushups:

• MizFit, who has a great video that demonstrates how to do a pushup
• Dave at Geek-Fitness
• Shauna The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

Anyone else got pushup fever?