How To Reverse The Effects Of GMO Foods

This is another post from my week last week at Autism One.  And once again, this is definitely a post that is relevant not just to those who have or know someone with autism but for everyone.  I am sort of freaked out by GMO foods the more I read and hear about them, and this is only part of the reason we try to do organic foods as much as we can.  The presentation by Bill Scheffler, who is from Pure Prairie, a farm near Chicago that provides organic and nutrient dense produce for local restaurants and farmers' markets.  They are opening a U-Pick operation this year, and I'm personally going to do my best to get down there to supplement the veggies I am not managing to grow.

What I loved best about this presentation is that it wasn't all doom and  gloom based.  Instead, Bill focused on what we can do to reverse the effects of what we're ingesting on a daily basis.  This is all evidence-based, and if you weren't ever sure how Round-Up and other pesticides used today work, this is great information.  Thank goodness we already love our berries around here!

Bill Scheffler, from Pure Prairie, at Autism One:
GMO foods are not an improvement.  This is DNA species crossing, and the plants don't react well to it.  It's like if you took some stray dogs or horses and put into your spare bedroom because you have an empty bedroom or garage, and therefore the problem is fixed.  The scientists don't bother to check to see what's going on in the house.  They say the protein is the same, etc.  Animals won't eat GMO grains unless they're really hungry.  To get animals to eat the GMO grains, they cover them in molasses. 

If you happen to see some squirrel food that is traditional (GMO) grain, try this experiment by putting some out for squirrels.  Then put out some GMO free popcorn. The squirrels will take the popcorn every time.  GMO foods aren't nutrient dense.  Field hybrid corn weighs about 55 pounds per bushel.  Popcorn (GMO free) weighs 75 pounds.  It's the missing minerals that makes this difference.

The pesticides used now aren't poisons.  Round-Up and all the others are chelators.  They go inside the organism and grab copper or another mineral.  Since these minerals are needed in the organism to function, the nervous system can't function in the bug so they twitch or in the plant so they can't function either.  But it isn't a poison. 

We use enzymes to turn things on and off.  The organophosphates hold the coppers; it's like I took the key out of the car.  I didn't break your car, but it doesn't work.  If you have a spare key, then it will work again.  The key is to take in the micronutrients - that's how you can overcome all the pesticides on our food and get our bodies working again.

When these foods go into us, they are low in minerals, and the pesticides will chelate a mineral in our bodies and deny it to us.  It's like disease by nutrition.  We need to supply the minerals to our body to get it working again.  Fortunately, the organophosphates are like sponges.  They have a limited ability to work.  Once the sponge is full, they stop working. So if we keep supplying our bodies with the nutrients, it keeps the sponges full so we have sufficient minerals for our bodies to function correctly.

Round-Up will grab manganese, iron, zinc, and copper.  Round-Up does not kill a plant; it weakens the plant so the disease kills it.  In a sterile soil, Round-Up won't kill a plant because there aren't any diseases.  Round-Up weakens us through malnutrition.  There are three growing points for a plant - the seed, the roots, and the tips.  Some of it goes into the body of animals that eat the grains or grasses, but most of it goes through.  That means it ends up going into the manure, so organic farmers cannot use manure compost/fertilizer anymore.  When a traditional farmer applies the manure, they're applying Round-Up on their soil, as well.  They won't see it in the beginning, but it will keep adding up and be visible.

If we eat the foods with the minerals of manganese, iron, zinc, and copper, our bodies can replenish these.  The preservatives and all the other additives added to food will be removed, as our bodies can differentiate.  Plants look for calcium.  If they can't find it, it will go for the next best thing, which is generally lead.  There is a lot of lead in our soil in Chicago, so we need to add calcium to the soil to keep the lead from being taken up.

What foods are high in these minerals?

Manganese is also called the seed of life.  When plants want to make a seed, they start with manganese and build out from that.  Strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, pomegranate, zucchini, tomatoes, etc.  Every seed has manganese in it.  If you want to supply your body with manganese, eat things with seeds in them.

Oats have all four minerals in them.  Oats have exactly what Round-Up takes out.  Oats have a high glycemic index, so our children might be sensitive to this.  When we eat our nutrients, the minerals are available to our body 10 times more than they are in your supplements/from a bottle.  They are ten times more powerful.  To supplement, look at kelp tablets, which are very concentrated.  You can also cook with seaweed - it contains 78 minerals.  Alfalfa has 60 minerals.  Comfrey has 43 minerals.  Kale has 20-30 minerals.  This does depend on the farmer, however.  It's more important to know your farmer than to buy organic.  So much organic food is low in calcium.  They haven't been taught nutrition and are just not spraying pesticides.  This is especially true for organic fruit growers.

How do you recognize nutrient rich foods?  The aroma.  They will also be heavier for their size - because of the minerals.  They won't be bitter.  If you have vegetables that are bitter that you're cooking, drizzle a tiny bit of molasses over it, and that will smooth out the bitterness.  You don't want to be able to taste the molasses - this is like dipping a fork and drizzling, and that's it.

The reason that preservatives and GMO foods and pesticides are hurting us is that they are damaging us through malnutrition.  We need chlorophyll, so keep up on our greens.  If the greens taste bad - they should be mild, even a little sweet - then use molasses right there in the pan while you're cooking them.

You can add 1 tablespoon of molasses to 1 quart of broth.  This will also make it far more nutrient dense and also adds a huge amount of flavor when you're making soups.  The molasses also makes it much richer.  Try it for chili or lentil soup or even chicken noodle soup.  Use the darkest molasses you can find.  A little maple syrup will work, too.

When fruits and vegetables are nutrient dense, the plants make their own food - it is mineralized sugar that make fats and essential oils, just like what maple syrup and molasses is.  The Omega-3 that fish have come from the cell walls of the chlorophyll from the micro-algae that the krill eat that then everyone else in the sea eats.  It's just concentrating the chlorophyll for us.  The fish don't actually make it themselves.  Same with the cows - the omega-3s come from the grass they're eating that gets concentrated.  The oils are made from minerals and sugars.  They are copper based enzymes that put these together.  Farmers need to make sure the plants have the raw materials they need to do this, and they need calcium to do this.

If our body has iron and iodine, then our body can make it in our liver.  This is another good reason to take a lot of kelp.  Leukemia is an extreme deficiency in these minerals.

Diseases don't run in the family.  Malnutrition runs in the family.  Families tend to eat the same things and the malnutrition for the same issues appears over and over.  Try changing the foods you eat, and look for the difference.

You can improve your digestion very much with the use of lemons.  It's the same as the acid in our stomachs.  The liver needs calcium to make bile to break down foods.  For generations now, farmers have been making low calcium foods (unintentionally, but still doing so).  To get the calcium up, one of the best remedies is hydroxyapatite, available at Whole Foods and elsewhere.  There is also a calcium orotate. 

If you want a food source for calcium, powdered milk is the best for calcium - it is calcium glycinate and will be in your body in 20 minutes.  It isn't a food, but it's a great calcium supplement.  Home gardeners who have blossom end rot in their tomatoes, put 2 ounces of powdered milk in a gallon of water 2 times a day, then spay your plants.  It will get rid of it quickly.  Here, the liver is not functioning and your bile is weak, so you aren't digesting well.  Take one ounce fresh squeezed lemon and nine ounces water, sip on that and it will help a lot, especially when you're eating a lot of fats in your food.

Raw fiber is good, as your body will pull gelatin from the fiber which will loosen bowel movements.

Because corn is self-pollinating, there are a lot of concerns about cross-contamination with non-GMO corn.  A lot of organic corn guys wait until two weeks after the other guys have planted their corn - maybe until June 1 so that your corn is tasseling when the conventional corn is finished.  This will help with the cross pollination.  There is a gene that is owned by a private corn breeder in Indiana that not allow foreign pollen to cross-pollinate with the sweet corn.  The sweet corn breeders have been using this for awhile to keep the conventional corn pollen off their sweet corn.  Other quality oriented plant breeders are working closely with him to make the genetics available to them so more can have the excluder gene - this is not a GMO, it is a natural occurring plant defense.
So what do you think about GMO foods and the pesticides used routinely?  Are you concerned?

How To Make Pots From Newspaper

I mentioned last week that while at the Autism One conference I had attended a great session about We Farm America where Seneca Kern talked about organic gardening.  The most fascinating part was making seed pots from newspaper.  It was amazingly easy and far more effective than I had thought it would be when he first started talking about it.

When I plant seeds, I can get them to sprout and grow - to a point.  It's the transplanting that I have a hard time with, and these pots solve that issue neatly.  You simply plant the newspaper, opening up the bottom just a little bit for the roots.  Brilliant, no?  I think, too, that having a larger initial pot will help develop the roots better so that they don't start to suffer as they get bigger.  I can't wait to test out that theory!

This couldn't be easier.  Even the wee ones were able to do it, and I love projects like this that can involve kids because they should know where their food comes from and that they can make a difference, too.  All you need for this is a can, some newspaper, and dirt.  Since newspapers now are all made with soy ink, you can use any newspaper so long as it isn't the glossy paper.  Sweet, no?

Step one is to rip the newspaper into strips.  You want to have a strip that is the length of a front/back page.  Rip or cut it a couple inches taller than your can.  I find I can get four good strips from a standard size newspaper, so I just cut it into quarters.

Gently and loosely wrap the newspaper around the can, leaving a little space at the top of the can.  If you wrap it too tightly, it gets hard to remove the pot from the can.  Trust me on this one.  You'll have an overlap of several inches on the bottom of the can, which is exactly what you want.  See how you don't have to have perfect edges?  This is the perfect project for me.

Fold down your edges into the center of the can bottom.  Start with where the seam of the pot is, to help it stay together later.  See how easy?

Once you have the bottom folded in, turn the can right side up again, and twist and push it against a hard surface to help get the bottom to stay in place the way you want.  This is just a couple seconds, and you don't have to push super hard.

Then, gently pull the new pot off your can.  If it comes apart a little bit, don't worry.  You can easily push it back into place, and it doesn't have to be perfect anyway.  Once you get the dirt in, and especially once it's watered, it will contain the dirt and seeds very well regardless of how sturdy it was initially.

Place your pot in something sturdy.  I used a disposable roasting pan simply because I had one handy.  You want something that is at least a couple inches deep for watering purposes.  I'm a little concerned about having something so shiny and reflective outside when the sun in shining, so I may place some extra newspaper around the edges showing so that the sunlight doesn't damage the plants, but use what you have.

Fill the pots with dirt all the way to the top.  Don't push the dirt down at all.  You never want to tamp down your dirt because you need and want the air, etc.  I used a small cup to get the dirt into the pots without making a massive mess.  It worked fairly well for me.  I would make a couple pots, then fill them, then make some more pots.  If I made too many pots without filling them, they started to tip and come open a bit without the weight of the dirt.  Once the pots are filled with dirt, you're ready to plant. 

Plant your seeds to twice the depth of the diameter of the seed.  That means it's a whole lot shallower than what I usually do.  Possibly that's another problem for me previously.  Note that I labeled my pots.  I need to know what I'm growing, and I know myself.  I'll never remember otherwise, and I want to ensure that when I plant my plot, I'm able to strategically arrange my plants.

Watering is super easy.  Again, because we don't want to have the dirt pushed down any more than necessary - or wash away the seeds accidentally.  Simply pour water into the bottom of the container you're using.  Depending on how many pots you have, you'll need a whole lot of water.  The newspaper will help to wick the water up the pots and keep them evenly watered - yet another benefit and bonus.  As your plants need to be watered going forward, you'll do the same thing; simply water the pan and the water will be absorbed from the bottom of the pots on up.

Once your pots are watered and the dirt is moistened, you'll want to remove the excess newspaper.  The newspaper wicks up the water really well, but any newspaper the isn't covering dirt will make the water evaporate faster.  Simply peel away any exposed newspaper.  As you continue to water your plants, the dirt will compact more, so you'll need to keep doing this every once in awhile.

Totally easy, right?  And green?  And amazingly effective.  I can't wait to see the impact of my garden once it's grown.  Thank you to We Farm America for sharing all this great information.  What will you plant?

Autism One: Organic Gardening - Get Growing This Season!

I am currently at the Autism One conference in Lombard – yay driving distance from my house! – and I again amazed by the amount of information available here.  There is absolutely no way that I can digest it all, but I’m doing my best to grab bits and pieces that I think can help me – and others – and trying to synthesize them into something that makes sense.  One of the things I love about the sessions I attend at Autism One is that they aren’t all specific to those who are interacting with others who have autism.  Many of the sessions are just generally applicable, which I think is awesome.  The first session I attended yesterday is exactly in that vein.  It’s all about creating an organic garden.

Now, I don’t know if you remember the garden that I attempted to create last year.  Let’s just say that it ended in epic failure.  I had two issues.  The first is that I was overwhelmed by the weeds currently existing (and still existing) in the area where I want to have my garden grow.  The second is that once my seedlings were large enough to transplant, I couldn’t get them out of the berry containers and egg cartons where I’d panted them.  Now?  I have a plan for the first one and the most awesome solution ever (in my not-so-humble opinion) for the second.

The presentation was given by Seneca Kern of We Farm America, an organization based in Illinois that creates organic gardens in homes, schools, and empty lots.  I love the concept, and I learned a ton from this.  My favorite quote came late in the presentation, and it really sums up the problems we face today.  “If the only animals that want to live near us are rats, pigeons, and squirrels, something is wrong.”  Sorta eye-opening, isn’t it?

From Seneca:
The power that lies in a garden.  Most society is based off the fact that we can grow food.  Now only a tiny fraction of people are growing food, and we're disconnected with it and do not know where our food comes from.  We can drive in the suburbs and see miles of corn and soy and think it's all good, but it's not.  Many people have heightened sensitivity to all sorts of things, especially chemicals. Growing our own organic gardens can help with this, plus it saves a ton of money and helps teach others of the value of this gardening.  It is the ultimate conversation starter.  Food is something we can sit down and talk about.

Kids come into the farm and have never seen a tomato or an eggplant or arugula.  Arugula isn't expensive - it's like a penny to grow.  It isn't elitist, so Seneca tries to teach people at the farm that there is no difference in what you can grow and what is at the fancy, expensive grocery stores.  You get to vote with your food.  It is a great way to build community and a foundation for economic sustainability.

He started an organization called We Farm America.  It is basically a way to get people to grow food in the easiest way.  We take a simple formula like a raised bed - get some lumber, some organic soil and some organic seeds and grow.  Permaculture is the idea that we can observe nature and then build systems that don't try to outsmart it but instead understand how to work together.  The main challenge is people - they are the hardest part in the city of Chicago.  Humans want their things in boxes; we want to make things this way even though in reality they aren't.

In order for us to get started in basics to get connected to the land, we have to accept that we need boxes, which is why we start with the raised beds.  The important thing is that the garden takes care of itself - we have busy lives, so they will put in an automatic irrigation system for the garden.  They also use organic compost to help avoid weeds and get really lush harvests.

If you’re starting a garden, a raised bed is the best way to start.  You can put a weed barrier at the base that stops the weed seeds - they can stay for 40 years.  If you don’t, as soon as you start to water your lush spot you will get "volunteers" in your garden, so the fabric barrier with stop that.  Put it down before you build the bed.  Start with a 4x8 foot bed.  Four feet is important to start because you have to be able to reach the middle of your bed.  You don't want to step on your soil or the bed.  You can reach the middle from each side with a four foot wide bed.  You have to protect your bed.  Put the wood around your bed to keep it separate from where you step.  When you step, it compacts the soil, and it makes it harder for roots to develop.

Thirty-two square feet will grow you two portions of vegetables per square foot per day in the peak season.  You square it off in one foot by one foot squares.  Most plants take only 30 percent of the water and sun in the spot.  Plant on tomato plant then lettuce around it - the lettuce helps keep the soil moist because it stops evaporation, while the tomato provides some of the shade that the lettuce is looking for.  It’s all about those symbiotic relationships.  In a square, you can plane one broccoli and 16 carrots.  Having the squares also allows you to do rotation. 

Be mindful of the systems that work.  Some plants like other plants around them, others don't.  Tomatoes and broccoli don’t like each other - it has to do with the chemicals they release, etc.  Generally, you don't want them next to each other, but you can skip a foot and plant it there.  Look up companion plants to see what to plant together.  You can look this up in the handbook at We Farm America's website.  You have to rotate – crops don't do well in the same spot each time; they deplete the soil or have predators that go after them.  Using a grid helps you track your rotations.  If you put in beans next season, the bugs attacking your potatoes will die and go away.  If you keep planting the same thing in the same place, you will have a degradation in your harvest as you go.  On that note, marigolds are a must in your garden.  They attract pollinators and also help keep away pests.  Think about perennials - strawberries and blueberries grow back every year. Try serviceberries that taste just like blueberries. You can definitely grow these in Chicago.

When building the beds, he uses wood from the Rebuilding Exchange.  It's wood that's being repurposed.  They haven't been painted or have chemicals, and they've been tempered, which hardens them and helps them resist rot.  Don't use pine or you will replace it every 2 years because it degrades too fast.  Don't use treated wood. Cedar works.  Fir may work, but he's never used it.  If you have to use pine, line it with plastic so the water can drain out - you need drainage.

You put down a weed barrier that is semipermeable - water goes down but not up.  Get a soil test before you start.  There is so much lead and arsenic and other things because of all the cars and planes and factories, even paint chips, etc. that infect your soil.  Go to University of Massachusetts, Amherst - for $10 they give you a kit for testing that results in a great set of info and recommendations of what to do with it.  Plant fava beans and sunflowers to get rid of heavy metals in your soil.

Watering is one of the most difficult things about gardening.  They put in a timer, which is great for those who have a busy schedule.  Set one in the morning and at night.  Watering in the morning is best because it's not hot.  If you're going to do it, water one hour after sunrise and one hour after sunset.  Doing it in the middle of the day is a huge waste of water because of evaporation.  There are 2 types of irrigation - poly tubing and a soaker hose or use a dripline.  He recommends using irrigation like this because it is easier on you and also because it provides a better way of watering for the plants.

If you have a rodent problem, put dog hair in the bed and around the perimeter.  It works really well.  Go to a groomer and ask for it.  It doesn't affect your plants, but the chipmunks, etc. have highly developed olfactory senses and don't like it.  You can also use pepper or chili flakes.

So many people never get to pull the vegetables out of the ground.  It's a great connection to your food when you see it right there.  Only three percent of food consumed in Illinois is actually grown in Illinois.  We have amazing soil, but it's because we grow for commodities here, for ethanol and partially hydrogenated soybean oil, etc.  We grow vegetables for industrial uses and not for consumption.  It's very inefficient, but it's easy to mechanize so we do it.  Other states around us grow substantially more food that they consume, but our food tends to travel very far.  You'll see Mexico, China, South Africa, California, etc.  How does it travel so far and still stay competitive in cost?  It comes from someone's wages and environment.  Traveling is gas and wages, the pollution and all the waste.

For rain barrels, go to delis or factories or car washes.  They get product in huge barrels.  They will give it to you for free.  You just have to get a biodegradable rinse to clean it.  It's much cheaper than the $70 barrels.

Putting your hands in soil releases endorphins.  It has the same effect as Prozac.  It makes a real difference - and so cheap.  Get your kids playing in the dirt.  There are also so many great microbes that you want to be exposed to for your overall health.  The electromagnetic fields from the gravitational pull is also very healing.  It's like walking on the beach with your bare feet.  It makes you feel exhilarated and calmed.  It helps to ground you.

I don't know about you, but I'm inspired.  This has solved my first issue - especially since I've discovered that We Farm America will actually come to my house to build my raised bed for me.  Ahem.  The second issue with the seedlings?  Well, I learned a pretty awesome trick for that, too, but that's another post.

You Are What You Eat

I firmly believe that what I feed myself and the wee ones has bearing on both our long term health and on our current moods and functioning. I know that when I feed Mister Man junk food or too much sugar or not enough protein - or just let him go too long without eating - he doesn't do well. We all get crabby, our brains don't work as well as they normally do, and our focus is gone. For him, especially, that's critical.

Add in all the things we hear all the time about pesticides and how animals are raised and the like, and it's enough to give me (more) grey hair. I started awhile ago buying organic fruits and veggies from the "dirty dozen" for our house. And I've definitely cut down on the meat we buy, although I still haven't gone fully organic on that. Chicken pretty much is, but oh the beef is so expensive.

Milk was my other area of concern, especially with all the added hormones. I can see puberty coming earlier and earlier to children around me, and I want to ensure that the wee ones have that pushed back as long as possible, especially for Mister Man - I want to ensure he's developed as much maturity as possible before those hormones wreak havoc on him.

Every time I looked at the price of organic milk, however, I flinched. I was buying a gallon of milk for $1.17 most of the time. A half gallon of organic milk was far more than that. I kept pushing it off, shuddering at the price differential. One day, I took a closer look at what I was buying for Little Miss. Because of her dairy allergy, she drinks rice milk (we don't do soy milk for a variety of reasons), and she gets organic rice milk because it's what's available. And I buy it because I have to. A gallon's worth of rice milk costs far more than the $1.17 I was paying for regular milk at the time and I wasn't flinching there. In fact, each 32 ounce container is only a quarter gallon. And it cost me $1.32 per container.

Suddenly the light went on. I'm not flinching at the price because in my mind, I have to do it for Little Miss's health. I have to do it for her. And really, it's the same for Mister Man. I do have to do it for him. And for us. I haven't bought conventional milk since that day.

I'm still struggling with many of the other purchases. I love that so many products are now readily available in organic versions, especially my frozen corn - thank you Costco. I buy organic for a lot of reasons, and GMOs are a big reason for me. (Yeah yeah, I would do better just moving to Europe, I know.) I'm pretty comfortable with most of what I'm doing right now, although I'm sure that will change over the years.

The one thing I really want to switch but haven't remains meat. What I really want to do is to find a local farmer and buy my half cow or pig from him. You would think that living near Chicago, it would be easy to find somewhere to do this, but I've found that it's surprisingly difficult. I still haven't found a good source that's a reasonable drive from me. It just isn't out there - or at least not well-publicized.

But I'm still searching. I have a friend who does cows from Indiana, and I'm hoping to go with her the next time she buys. When I go to a restaurant that talks in their menus about their locally sourced meats, I ask them if the farm sells to individuals or only commercially. Finally, I started reading the From Left to Write book for this month, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. There are some really uncomfortable bits of information about food, but at the same time, it's really empowering - and motivating - for me.

And I found the coolest website. Eat Wild is a site devoted to sharing information on pasture based farms across the US. When I searched Illinois, I was shocked by how many farms there were relatively near me. I hadn't been able to find these on my own, but it's truly inspiring. Most of those that provide the quarter cow (probably all we need) don't "harvest" until July, which was a bit of a downer. The options are out there, however, and I'm feeling good. I'm debating a drive out to Jo Daviess County in a couple weeks to spend the day with my family there and pick up some frozen beef from a farm while I'm at it.

It still isn't cheap. But I know where my meat is coming from this way. And it's less than the $13 per pound for organic ground beef I fainted over the last time I was at Trader Joe's. In fact, many were $4 per pound for the organic ground beef. As little as we're using red meat now, I can handle that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go investigate CSAs. I haven't belonged to one since Mister Man was a baby, but I'm feeling inspired. A little freaked out and overwhelmed, but I'm oddly ok with that. I know I can't do everything, and I don't expect that of myself. On that note, not everyone has the same opinions and beliefs about their food, and that's ok, too. Where do you fall on the organic train?

In the interest of full disclosure, this post was inspired by the February From Left To Write book club selection "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. I received a copy of this book for review purposes, but unlike other book clubs, we write a post inspired by the book rather than a review of the book. All opinions are my own, as always, and I received no compensation.