Did anyone else read the hilarious statement put out by our Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of State for why the U.S. has pulled out of the World Health Organisation?
Continue reading I’m Sorry, WHO? What? Huh?Category Archives: Food and Nutrition
New Year, New Earth
This was the name of the summit I attended last week, hosted by Ecoversity. The focus: permaculture. It was three full days of information, so I won’t go into detail on what all was covered, but I was surprised to learn how adamant each of the speakers were about WHAT permaculture means.
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MAHA Food Guidelines
Ok, I’ll be honest, I’m annoyed with this current administration. Annoyed is an understatement. Today I’m feeling petty. So I’ve decided to look at the nutritional guidelines put out by the folks at MAHA (Make America Healthy Again, for those of you who decided to go off grid after November 2024).
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Do You Know What a Food Desert is?
At first, you might hear the term “food desert” and assume it has more to do with the environment’s ability to support crop growth. Not to worry, humans have made an impressive commitment to growing produce and livestock in unlikely places – often to the detriment of said environment.
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Health and Wellness v. Medicine
There is a great deal of conversation happening these days surrounding health and medicine, thanks to a new faction of influencers who have rooted themselves in the MAHA movement (a Trumpian health campaign, Make America Healthy Again). Much like the MAGA movement, it is fueled by misinformation and emotions. As someone who believes in the power of blending eastern and western medicine together, I find someone like RFK Jr. to be a danger, as he seems to prefer blending science with pseudoscience to sell his ideas, so…let’s talk about some of these spaces of health and wellness (and since it is a bit longer of a post, I’ll break it out into four sections).
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My Favourite Podcasts
This is a bit of a deviation from One Health and my usual posts, but I just wanted to confess something. I’m a podcast junkie.
I love learning about new stuff and topical formats have always been my favourite. Also, lately, I can’t take another second of news and current events. It’s nauseating and my brain needs a detox. I actually feel that political current events might be rotting my brain.
So, whenever I need a break, these are my go-to podcasts!
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Eggplant!
- Origin
- Modern Cultivation
- Impact
- Nutritional Profile
- Dietary Concerns
- How to Eat it
- Recipe: Stuffed Eggplant
Origin
This was a little easier to parse out than the broccoli origin story. Turns out, wild type aubergine originated on the eastern parts of Africa1 (notably, from Kenya to South Africa) and spreading outward towards the west. In a single event, however it made its way to India and East Asia where the cultivated strains predominately begin. This certainly explains why there are so many amazing dishes featuring eggplant/aubergine at Ethiopian restaurants, as well as Indian and Chinese restaurants.
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Protein: How Much is Enough?
I am not a vegetarian or a vegan or pescatarian or anything. I hate labels. They confine us into a box and if you stray a little, then people love to comment on it. My eating style varies and I have good days/bad days and good weeks/bad weeks. In the winter I really struggle, succumbing to the scourge of seasonal affective doom and gloom – plus, I think we are all just hairless bears, refusing to hibernate as we ought to do. My point is, I don’t ascribe to any diets or self-proclamations that would limit my options.
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Broccoli!
- Origin
- Modern Cultivation
- Impact
- Nutritional Profile
- Dietary Concerns
- How to Eat it
- Recipe: Roasted Broccoli
Origin
Broccoli is a member of the cole crops (also known as cruciferous vegetables), all of which are derived from a singular species known as Brassica oleracea L.. This includes kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and cabbage and each of these foods share a genome with the wild type, Brassica. As with so many things, it’s difficult to prove exact origin of species, especially when it involves human cultivation and migration; however, most studies indicate Europe, broadly, as the birthplace of these Brassica plants. Very little evidence indicates Asia as a potential origin and within Europe there is a slight divide between the UK and Greece, but there is stronger evidence for the rocky shores of England. There is a fascinating paper that uses linguistic terms for “broccoli” in various ancient cultures to help identify the origin that some of you might be interested in reading. In the end, broccoli is just one form, or cultivar, of a group of plants that has been selected for it’s specific geno-/phenotype that gives us what we, today, call broccoli.
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Welcome & Let’s Eat!
I’m not sure if I consider myself someone who LOVES FOOD. There are foods that I love, sure, and I do enjoy trying local cuisine when I travel. The joke always was that we travel to eat when we lived in Germany. It isn’t as though you couldn’t find any good food where we lived, but they definitely liked to “germanize” the ethnic foods and tame the spice level. It was actually amazing when we found a Thai place in Wiesbaden where “scharf” (spicy) really meant SPICY.
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