Why Middle School Band Concerts May Save Your Life

3.5 weeks until Opening Day of the Bellevue Farmers Market. Meanwhile, as we limp along on our storebought, heavily-processed, packaged-in-plastic food, we need all the help we can get. Therefore, I'm happy to report that, the elementary- or middle-school band concert you've been dreading--I mean, looking forward to--might just prolong your life.

A recent study presented to the American Heart Association found that "people who took part in bimonthly group sessions built around music or laughter lowered their systolic blood pressure (the top number in the reading) by an average of five to six points after three months." Lower blood pressure means reduced risk of heart attack and stroke. Participants showed improvement whether they attended music sessions or "laughter sessions," and the overall improvements were equivalent to "someone adopting a low-salt diet, losing 10 pounds, or taking a blood-pressure-lowering medication"!

Given our busy lives, you may feel you don't have time to listen to music or that there isn't much to laugh about, but that just goes to show you haven't attended a children's band concert lately. Music and hilarity all in one place. A total two-fer. If you can catch a local school talent show, even better. I heard recently that a friend's 3rd grade daughter was writing her own song and accompanying herself on the ukulele. If that doesn't lower your blood pressure by 6 mmHg right there, there's no hope for you.

And we need a little help with our blood pressure. Latest reports bemoan rising food costs, with "prices of wheat, corn and other staples soaring." Economists blame everything from crop yields to weather to political unrest to oil prices and estimate American food prices will rise across the board by 3-4%. Unaffordable food is nothing new for many places in the world, where people spend 30-70% of their income on food, with the result that the cheapest calories become the only options, whether or not those calories are any good for you. Consider the story run in the New York Times recently about Bolivians' native quinoa now priced out of reach, "hastening [the Bolivians'] embrace of cheaper, processed foods and raising fears of malnutrition in a country that has long struggled with it."

Then there's the plastic packaging. Discovery News cites a study finding that the levels of BpA in the bloodstream could be reduced by half if the participant went on a strict, very-limited-exposure plastic "diet." No plastic wrap, packaging, containers, water bottles, etc. (Unfortunately, the link wasn't working for me when I checked it again. Hopefully they got their server fixed...) Nice to know, but almost impossible to implement. We're doomed!!! Time for another band concert...

Hang in there, and we'll see you all in six weeks at our source for music, laughter, and fresh, unpackaged food--the Bellevue Farmers Market!

(P.S. All food may be getting more expensive, but the Market accepts WIC Fruit/Vegetable Checks and EBT Cards.)

*** Bellevue Farmers Market 2011 Coming Soon!***
THURSDAY OPENING DAY
May 12th
3 - 7 pm
First Presbyterian Church
SATURDAY OPENING DAY
June 4th
10 - 3 pm
Washington Square

Spring Has Sprung!

Greetings on this sunny morning, fellow foodies!

Spring has sprung, and in the spring this blogger's fancy turns to the Bellevue Farmers Market Opening Day: Thursday, May 12. Once again we meet in the parking lot of First Presbyterian Church from 3-7 p.m. Saturday markets kick off Saturday, June 4, in the parking lot by Washington Square (same location as last year) from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Glory be!

For those of you food producers who might be interested in a booth at our Market, it's not too late to apply! For those of you marketgoers who have been wanting to get more involved, it's not too early to volunteer!

In the meantime, while the apples in the store grow increasingly mushy and we watch the migration of asparagus season from Mexico northward to California, I bring you the week's interesting food tidbits culled from Twitter.

• Curious where your milk or other dairy products come from? This fun website can tell you! I learned my Organic Valley milk (bought at QFC) hails from Swan Island Dairy in Portland, Oregon. My Darigold sour cream from Boise, Idaho. I'd love to hear where some other brands come from. Why isn't Organic Valley milk that is sold in Washington coming from Washington dairy farmers???

• If you're concerned about antibiotic use in industrial farming, this Wired article is worth a read. It seems "chickens, chicken meat and humans in the Netherlands are carrying identical, highly drug-resistant E. coli — resistance that is apparently moving from poultry raised with antibiotics, to humans, via food." Yeeks! While the Netherlands feature "conservative human antibiotic use, [they also have] the most liberal agricultural antibiotic use of any EU member," (italics theirs) and in the Netherlands, "the percentage of E. coli that was found in the guts of chickens and was carrying ESBL went up five times over between 2003 and 2008." Best to skip the buffalo wings in Amsterdam, then.

• Speaking of E. coli, Food Safety News reports that "phage-based EcoShield" might be the next step in fighting E. coli contamination. E. coli being a bacteria, why not sic bacteriophages (bacteria eaters) on them? These naturally-occurring viruses target, infect, and kill bacteria. Very old-school and new-school, low-tech and high-tech at the same time. Sounds promising, but for now, cook that beef, whether grain- or grass-fed to the recommended 160F.

• And finally, I've been trying to do more olive oil in the diet, but my next bottle of "yellow" vegetable oil will probably be safflower. Researchers at Ohio State claim a daily dose of safflower oil "improved such cardiovascular health measures as high-density lipoprotein, the 'good' cholesterol; blood sugar; insulin sensitivity and inflammation in obese post-menopausal women who have type 2 diabetes."

That's a wrap. Now get away from your computer and go enjoy that sunshine!

It's Good to Be Beige

For all you map-o-philes, the Center for Disease Control has released an interesting new one: County Level Estimates of Diagnosed Diabetes. This is the first time they've been able to break the data out on a county-by-county level, versus a state level. Leaving aside the newly-revealed "Diabetes Belt" in the nation's southeast, the data on Washington State are enlightening. Those burgundy counties (i.e., more than 10% of the population diagnosed diabetic) are Grays Harbor and Adams. King County clocks in nicely beige, with fewer than 7% of the population diabetic. One thing to note: these figures are only for people 20 years or older, so the rising rates of childhood diabetes are not represented. They probably demonstrate strong correspondences to the adult rates, however. For more information, check the Scientific American run-down. I wonder how many of their identified risk factors play a role in Grays Harbor or Adams, not to mention those deeper orange counties: (1) high obesity rates; (2) sedentary lifestyles; (3) lower education levels; and, (4) higher percentage of non-Hispanic blacks. Because the researchers are government-funded, there is much mention of encouraging people to live an "active lifestyle" and to watch the the number of calories, but no mention of the where those calories should come from. Well, it's a start.

Speaking of where calories should come from, eating fish gets another endorsement, this one from Science Digest. If you happen to carry the "bad" APOE gene, one found in 15% of the general population and 50% of those suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, "a diet high in Omega 3 oils and low in cholesterol appears to significantly reduce the negative effects of the APOE4 gene in mouse models." Around our house we refer to fish as "brain food." If your supplies of Loki Salmon are running low, remember they can be found online and at local Thriftway markets, as well as the year-round Ballard, U District and West Seattle Farmers Markets. As for the BFM's tuna supplier, Fishing Vessel St. Jude, find their cans at Whole Foods.

And then, in a final note that completely undermines all that has come before, I'm thrilled to have spotted the Molly Moon truck around Bellevue. Look for it Wed-Fri and again on Sunday, from 5-10 p.m. at All The Best Pet Care, 1048 116th Avenue Northeast and check the Molly Moon blog for updates!

Feeding the World

I am part of the problem.

I write this post on a full stomach. Maybe even slightly over-full because a dear lady dropped off two-months' worth of the Homemade-Cookies-of-the-Month extravaganza I won at a charity auction last fall. (Don't even try to outbid me on items like these.)

So this seemed as good a time as any to mention that The Economist predicts the world will have to grow "more wheat and maize over the next 40 years than was grown in the previous 500" (!). Not just to feed over-cookied people like me, but also the other nearly 7 billion of you out there and the 2 billion more on the way by 2050. The article is predictably gloomy--everyone wants meat! crop yields are dropping!--but my cookies have put me in an expansive mood, so I'd rather dwell on bits of good news.

Firstly, contrary to The Economist's findings, Scientific American reports that there is a remarkable exception to falling crop yields: the new practice of "eco-farming." The United Nations reports that "many farmers in developing nations can double food production within a decade by shifting to ecological agriculture from use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides." In 20 different African countries, for instance, "recent projects...resulted in a doubling of crop yields within three to 10 years," projects like "more use of natural compost" and "planting insect-repelling desmodium or tick clover, used as animal fodder, within corn fields to keep damaging insects away."

Unfortunately, the article predicts that agro-industry in developed countries won't see these results because of their dependence on fossil fuels and pesticides. A bummer, to say the least.

But (as my sugar high kicks in again), on the bright side, we in the developed world are just seeing the wave building of a new farming generation. A recent New York Times article highlighted some young farmers in Oregon who are working the land, inspired by food journalists like Michael Pollan and the calls to eat local and eat real.

Well, Oregon isn't the only "farmer-foodie" state, as we know. Consider some of the facts about Washington:

• The number of farms increased 6% from 2000-2008.
• A whopping 90% of the farms are individual- or family-owned.
• 20% of Washington's farmers are women.
• According to the WA State Dept of Agriculture, "King County’s 1,800 farmers generate $127 million in sales each year on about 50,000 acres."
• And 250 of the State's farmers come to King County to participate in our many farmers markets.

Add it all up, throw in a recent fabulous post on Civil Eats declaring (once more) that fat is not the problem, and we've got something to be cheerful about.

That, and there are only 64 more days till the Bellevue Farmers Market opens on May 12! Hurry, Spring!

What a Waste

At church today, one of the facilities fellows pulled me aside. "I noticed last night [after a large group dinner event] that the leftover fruit salad got thrown in the trash. It was a lot of fruit. I think next time it could all be marked 'Help Yourself' and put out for the staff the next day." A brilliant idea, of course, but one requiring a bit of foresight and organization. Two qualities, alas, which are sometimes in short supply.

Take the dumping of food that happens just at home. Vegetables that liquefy mysteriously over the course of weeks in the "crisper." Leftovers that get tossed after one reheat (if even). That jar of odd ingredient purchased to make a particular recipe and then never used again.

The Economist reports that Americans end up throwing out about a quarter of the food purchased in shops or restaurants. "Top of the list come salads, about half of which are chucked away. A third of all bread, a quarter of fruit and a fifth of vegetables." This dumping adds up to 96 billion pounds per year, according to Robyn O'Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth. Yowza. If we had some kind of magic insta-transporter to redistribute wasted food alone, that would take care of the hunger problem for nine billion people worldwide!

In the absence of such a useful invention, however, let me offer suggestions for a food version of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle:

1. Have a weekly Clean Out the Fridge Night. Or, as one friend calls it, "The Week in Review." A smorgasbord of tiny offerings. If you don't have enough to make a family meal, have a Lunch in Review. Out of guilt and laziness today, my lunch was 1/4 cup mac & cheese topped with 1/2 cup leftover lima beans, with a side of 1/4 cup roasted butternut squash. Some friends and I used to do potluck leftover lunches. Exactly what they sounded like, and no one had to cook (again).
   
2. Make a food chain. The Economist article says the #1 throwaway food is salad. Because, unless it's a chopped salad, it just doesn't taste great the next day. If you have friends or neighbors who you know eat later than you, make a food chain! Bring them some salad. Maybe you can swap for a food item at their house. You might be sick of your leftovers after one or two goes, so why not exchange them? I know I always feel food tastes better if someone else made it for me.
   
3. Use that freezer. I roasted the last of the butternut squash a couple days ago, mashed it all up and separated it into freezer bags. Now I've got three future meals/sides: squash for soup, squash for ravioli, and squash for squash. I freeze soup, beans, the other half of the cornbread. A friend suggested I skip buying boxed tomatoes next year and just wash, chop and freeze the upcoming harvest. No need to can.
   
4. Whip up a frittata or rock soup. These are great ways to use stray odds and ends. Use cooked bits in frittatas and raw or cooked in soup. The links are just ideas. Feel absolutely free to improvise. Leftovers also make their way into fried rice, in our house. Just chop it up. A couple weeks ago, the concoction of the day was Hot-Dog Fried Rice. Anything goes.

If you have other waste not, want not ideas, please feel free to share. And if you have doggy bags from any of our fabulous local restaurants that you don't want to deal with, you know where I live...