A Late Spring Detox: Remedy to too much Grass-Fed Meats and Biodynamic Wines

We are bursting with food even before setting foot into June and looking back at last year's photos, we are way ahead of the game thanks to high tunnels allowing us to plant beans, tomatoes and peppers in April and to planting things normally direct seeded like snap peas and English peas in soil blocks weeks ahead of time to get a head start.

It's been a tough month of May between our usual jobs but with the added stress of Charlie's hospital, St. Vincent's closing, 4 farmer's markets, an eco-house tour we participated in, planting our own farm, expanding another area to accomdate our next experiment (permaculture and edible forest gardens), me prepping for a talk on Food and Cancer at Donna Karan's Urben Zen and moving my private practice to Beth Israel's Center for Health and Healing, this Memorial Day weekend has been our first breather.

I've been wanting to do a "detox" or juice fast for a long time.  The closest I've ever gotten was during a Goenka Vipassana retreat in 2004 but I never found the time to actually buckle down and do it.  Then after getting married to a meat and bread lover, it became even tougher.  And since I guide people in food as part of my work, I've put myself through a variety of food challenges from yeast, gluten and dairy free diets to elimination diets to partly understand how difficult the process is, but to also be able to tell patients how to exactly navigate these sometimes difficult food modifications.  I mean, it's hard to give advice and conversely take advice from someone without a true understanding of what's it's like to embark on such a journey of food  that can be so emotionally charged.  I've had a variety of patients ask me about detoxing and the various different protocols and books written on the subject.  I have to say, they all have a very common thread plus or minus colonics (which I don't routinely advise), multiple supplements and herbs usually profiting the author's protocol (though there is sometimes rational use for them).  I have now decided to plunge in and go through a detox regimen.  Thankfully, it was suggested by Charlie who was ready to make changes as well.  So much easier when you have a partner in crime.  In this case, a partner in health.

We decided on following Natalia Rose's book The Raw Food Detox Diet for the next week rather than taking off days from work to do a juice cleanse.  Juice cleanses are fine if one has the time to rest and relax but Natalia's book allows for meals which makes working plausible.  What is most motivating for us is the availablity of our own food which has offered us access in abundance at the moment in kale, beans, snap peas, shell peas, chard, beet greens, celery, lettuces, fennel, leeks, garlic scapes, cabbage, mustard greens, bok choy, berries, and herbs galore (chervil, basil, sage, marjoram, oregano, savory, thyme, cilantro, vienamese cilantro, dill, parsley).

Wish us luck and we'll report back shortly with our findings!  Tonight we feast on wine, cider beer, pizza, Wagyu beef burgers, and BBQ'd organic chicken drumsticks.  You gotta hit rock bottom sometimes before surfacing to the top.

Weekly Musings: Spring Lettuce - Guest Writer and Nyack Chef Jolie Lampkin

This journal entry, we invited a local Nyack Chef, Jolie Lampkin, who purchases our produce for her clients (and herself!) to write about what is abundant at the moment: spring lettuces. Jolie is singlehandedly able to consume the entire contents of a large bag of our salad greens in a couple days (no small feat!) so we think she's the perfect author for this article on lettuces. A gardener and veggie-lover, her focus is using local and sustainably grown ingredients as inspiration to create meals that are healthy, imaginative, and delicious. She specializes in fresh, seasonal cooking for busy families and intimate multi-course dinner parties for special occasions....
 
 
"Spring is here at last, bringing with it the first green leaves, those wild pinks and yellows of daffodils and tulips, that heady scent of lilacs. We venture outside, half-delirious, spring-dizzy, our tender winter arms and legs like white shoots soaking up the sun on those first warm days. It's with this change in the weather that I start to crave salad greens. Goodbye, savory stews of winter, long-simmering pots of soup! Now's the moment for something really fresh-tasting and light.
 
In times not so long ago, our farmer ancestors survived the long winters by storing hardy fall fruits and vegetables in underground root cellars (think cabbages, root vegetables, onions and apples), and by canning the more perishable fruits and vegetables. Beans and grains were dried, to be made into nourishing soups and ground for loaves of bread; meats and cheeses were preserved by salting. Conspicuously absent from the winter diet, however: fresh greens. So it's no wonder that after a winter of eating all that heavy food, people were thrilled by the appearance of the first early spring greens. They'd eat them as salad, as we do now, but also concoct spring "tonics", thought to help purify the body. Tonics might include a bit of whatever was around--dandelion, nettle, watercress, and violet leaves--all valuable sources of many of the vitamins and minerals which would have been lacking in the winter diet. A new favorite lettuce: "Spouted Trout
 
Of course, these days we can eat salad--and pretty much anything we want--year round. Whether we should or not, though, is another thing entirely (is that January tomato anything at all like a July tomato?). But even if you're not eating exclusively seasonal produce, many people do find themselves naturally leaning towards the heartier fare during the fall and winter and lightening up during the spring and summer months. So if, like me, you find yourself scarfing down salad by the bowlful lately, don't be alarmed! This is a good thing--your body is telling you what it needs--and you should listen.
 
Lucky for us salad-lovers, lettuces are easy to grow, and are actually at their best in cool temperatures. This is because cold weather encourages lettuce to produce more sugars, resulting in much better flavor. Ever tried to grow lettuce in the summer? Not only will it tend to bolt quickly, but it will most likely be more bitter than you'd like. Because of this, it's best to grow it in partial shade during the summer months.
 
Chives, an early spring arrival, have a great assertive flavor. They're deliciously oniony without being overpowering. Also easy to grow, they are perennials and will come back each spring. They like a lot of sun and will even continue to do well into the early summer months, if you continue to cut them back. Their purple blossoms are also lovely in the garden or as a garnish, if you allow them to go to seed.
 
Johnny-jump-ups (violas, a cousin of the violet), our guest star, thrive in cool weather as well, but will do fine into the summer if planted in a partly shady area and consistently pinched back. Their blossoms have a delicate, mild flavor and look beautiful in salads. The leaves and blossoms are also very high in vitamin C. Johnny Jump-Ups
 
So here's a spin on the idea of spring tonic: a recipe for a simple salad with some of the first flowers of the season, with a dressing that tastes both subtle and intoxicating. It allows the flavors of the lettuces to shine, while truffle oil lends a note of mystery. Arugula's hiding in the mix, with its unexpected peppery bite. Chives give things a little zip. The Johnny-jump-ups are my nod to the violet leaves featured in old-time tonics--and besides, they're just gorgeous".
 
Spring salad with truffle oil vinaigrette
 
1T Champagne vinegar
1/4t fresh lemon juice
3T white truffle oil
2T extra-virgin olive oil
salt (I like fleur de sel) and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
 
Hook Mountain Growers lettuce mix with Johnny-jump-ups, washed and spun till very dry in a salad spinner
1T chopped chives
 
In a small bowl, whisk together the Champagne vinegar and lemon juice. Slowly drizzle in the oil, whisking as you go till the mixture is emulsified. Add the salt and pepper and adjust to taste. Toss a spoonful or two of the vinaigrette around with the greens (you might not need all of it, depending on how much salad you plan to eat--the leaves should be very lightly coated with the vinaigrette), add the chives and serve immediately. If you're a salt fiend like me, you may want to sprinkle a little fleur de sel on top of the dressed salad as well.

 
Jolie Lampkin

For more information on what Jolie offers, you may contact her at jolielampkin@gmail.com

photo by Jolie Lampkin

Weekly Musings: Spring Sorrel

One of the very first things to appear in the garden is the perennial herb Sorrel (rumex acetosus).  Rarely  found in produce sections, sorrel is more frequently seen in farmers market stands.  But this one is easy for you to grow yourself.  This European vegetable/herb is used in cooking (as a sauce accompaniment to fish and meat, in salads as young leaves, sauteed, and in the class French sorrel soup) and has medicinal properties as well.  Sorrel has an acidic apple-lemony taste to it which adds a tangy flavor to dishes.

 Medical Notes

Sorrel is high in Vitamin C and A and was used in the distant past to prevent scurvy.  Like spinach and rhuabarb, sorrel is high in oxalic acid.   It's important to note that oxalic acid binds calcium, zinc and iron to some degree in the gastrointestinal tract so that it possible that it can interfere with the absorption of these minerals in supplements.  Also, in large amounts sorrel can theoretically increase the risk of calcium oxalate kidney stones, the most common type of kidney stone.

Sorrel is also found medicinally in certain combination products with gentian, European vervain and elder used together for the treatment of acute and chronic sinusitis and in the herbal formula Essiac, purportedly helpful for cancer.  The high level of tannins have an astringent affect of mucosal tissues reducing secretions.

Growing Sorrel

Tiny seedlings in CowPots in the greenhouseThis is one of the easiest plants you can grow - there is little maintenance and it comes back every year.  It is also a cut-and-come-again plant that can supply you with food throughout the growing season.  Sorrel tastes best when harvested as young leaves.  Once established it is one the earliest greens to appear and after the second year it begins to spread and can be divided every few years.  It likes sun but perfers partial shade especially when the weather gets hot.

You can directly seed in early spring and thin to 12" apart or start early indoors and transplant when the threat of a hard frost is over.

Leeks planted last summer overwintered nicely under a row cover.I used Nicola potatoes stored in the root cellar from last fall.

Recipe: Potato, Leek and Sorrel Soup

Ingredients:

2 Tbs Butter

3 Large or 6 Medium Leeks, white parts only, finely chopped

1.5 lbs boiling potato, quarted and thinly sliced.  You may leave the skins on if potatoes are organic.

2-4 handfuls of Sorrel leaves, stems removed

Salt and Pepper

7 cups of water

Heat butter in a wide soup pan and add leek and potatoes cooking over low heat covered for 10 minutes.  Add 7 cups of water and 1.5 tsp of salt and bring to boil.  Reduce to a simmer, partially covered, until the potatoes become very soft to the point of breaking apart, about 35-40 minutes.  In the last 10 minutes, add the sorrel to the pot.  Press a few of the potatoes against the side of the pan to break them up and give the soup some body.  Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve. Optional: top with creme fraiche or snipped chives.

Serves 4-6.

Adapted from Deborah Madison’s cookbook Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Farmer Pam, MD

Nutrient Dense Foods: Minerals and Soil Analysis part 2 of 6

Sci-Fi Mineral Harvester Henry Hudson
For those who are fans of science fiction reading, often a space traveler will find themselves stranded on a remote area devoid of what the traveler requires to sustain life. Our traveler will then tunnel to the center of the planet it lands on, harvest the raw minerals in the rock and then construct anything it needs using only these minerals, and a very sophisticated computer, as well as some imagination on the part of the reader.

There is some truth to these stories though. For those of us who remember the periodic table from high school chemistry, the thought of reciting these minerals often leads to immediate nausea and abdominal pain. However, with a little attention to a few of the important minerals, we can increase the yield of our plants as well as the nutritional quality of what we are feeding those who eat our food.

In the last entry on Nutrient Dense Foods, I began the introductory explanation of how most produce, organic or not, is not necessarily high in nutrition as measured by vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes and anti-oxidants. The first place to address in our pursuit of increasing the nutritional content of our food is to look at the growing medium - SOIL.  Soil has become so empty and depleted that the plants that grow from this soil do so but are nutritionally compromised and are then susceptible to disease, short storage lives, and they taste like substandard produce.  This is the second in a six-part series as we embark on learning and incorporating this nutrient density farming technique as we attend a course led by Dan Kittridege of the Real Food Campaign.

Anyone who has been among animals knows that they have an intuitive nature.  Your dog may start getting excited way before you pull up to the driveway or even your street.  We know of a NYC cat named Ichabod who started howling at his owner when a space heater was plugged in and minutes later it blew up.  Animals seem to also know what’s better for them.  A Hudson Valley farmer present at the Nutrient Density Growing conference stated that he once tried feeding his pigs the same type of feed he usually does however he used a GMO (genetically modified) variety and they refused to eat!  The same could be said about bees as well and may indicate one possible reason for colony collapse disorder, the phenomena of disappearing bees in North America.  According to Arden Andersen, soil scientist and physician, bees will preferentially go to flowers with a BRIX measurement of 7 or higher.  BRIX, as discussed in previous posts, is an easy measurement performed with a device called a refractometer, that correlates with nutritional quality and density of the plant or fruit.  For a bee to pollinate a lower BRIX flower, it will expend more energy to make the honey than the bee is receiving from the lower BRIX pollen.  If only we had access to that intuitive nature, than we could stand before the produce section in the supermarket and know what to preferentially select to eat!  In the meantime, we can start with purchasing a refractometer and testing the produce ourselves or to buy from farmers who employ these techniques.

What Next?

A lot of people tell us that they don’t have luck growing bell peppers, or that they are inundated with pests like slugs, or that their attempts at gardening seem to produce much less than the effort given.  Our first advice is to TEST YOUR SOIL.  For example, gardeners who use only compost to enhance their soil will uniformly find it to be deficient in Calcium and Magnesium. Before learning about Nutrient Density Growing, we were and still are, Eliot Coleman disciples.  Compost was everything.  But if you think carefully about this, compost only has what it was made from.  If you are making your own compost and you are using the remains of vegetable plants, grass clippings, and table scraps and coffee grinds, your compost will only have the nutrients that are the breakdown products of these additions.  Calcium is the king or queen of all minerals.  It is absolutely necessary to have enough Calcium to ensure that the plant will have strong cell walls in it’s leaves and roots which will then provide the plant with the defense mechanisms to avoid being overtaken by disease and pests. Calcium stimulates soil microbes and earthworms,  and is the primary base for other molecules to react with.  It is essential for overall plant health.

 

How to Test Your Soil

There are a variety of labs that you can send you sample to for roughly $25.  We use International Ag Labs and Logan Labs.  For $15, you can use Cornell University Labs though they employ a “strong acid” test rather than a “weak acid” test which we believe to represent a better indication of what’s actually available to the plant.  What we recommend doing if you have multiple raised beds like we do, is to take multiple samples from different beds to get an overall picture of what’s going on.  If there are several different locations you grow on and want to analyze than it makes sense to do them separately.  For example, it makes sense to test soil that grows berries separately from the area where you grow your annual vegetables.  Once you get the results back, you will have an idea of what deficiencies and excesses you have and how to remediate it.  Oftentimes, the labs that test your soil offer an analysis for for $25 and will recommend the amount of minerals that will be necessary to replete your specific size growing area.  Your other option to avoid the extra test cost of “recommendations” after the analysis is to contact the companies that sell the rock salts and minerals, tell them your square footage, and have them make suggestions based on your soil results.  Lancaster Ag, Nutrient Density Supply Company, and North Country Organics are some of the reliable companies you can consult.

The next entry in this series will focus on more specifics on the use of brix measuring, transplanting and direct seeding into your garden bed and using foliar sprays, measuring pH and electrical conductivity in the soil and nutrient drenches through the growing season.  The goal we have, and hope you have as well, is to achieve the maximum biologic vitality in the food you grow which then translates to the maximum biologic vitality of your body.

Farmer Pam MD and Charlie, Wheelbarrow Operator

Fish For Fodder: Can Eating Fish or Fish Oil Supplements be Sustainable?

Kevin Ferry pulls some striped bass from the tanks at Cabbage Hill FarmIn the gray winter months, I clamor for some signs of the lush green vegetative growth I was privy to from April to November.  Farm life here, for the most part, is about sitting down and dreaming of more ways in which we can grow more food on our micro-farm, or trying to wrestle with crop rotation when you have such a small space and grow bio-intensively.  Fortunately, some nearby farms were still open to the public for tours during these bleak months so we visited Cabbage Hill Farm in Mt Kisco, New York.  All of their outside beds were resting for the winter months however upon walking into the main greenhouse, life was in full gear.  Cabbage Hill farm is known for their work in Aquaponics - which is the system whereby fish and plants live in a symbiotic recirculating relationship.  Vegetation on the left, fish on the rightThe fish provide nutritious waste which is then funneled out to the roots of plants and vegetables which happily grow from this nitrogen source, and in turn, clean the water that gets funneled back again to the fish tanks.  There is little to fear with PCB, dioxin and mercury fish contamination and in theory it is a sustainable system with the only input being the feed for the fish [though there was lots of electrical needs that could eventually be offset by solar panels].  This system imitates the ancient practice of allowing carp, herbivorous fish, to swim in rice paddies.  The rice benefit from the carp excrement and the roots filter the water for the fish.    At Cabbage Hill Farm 6000-8000 lbs of tilapia, trout and striped bass are sold to markets and local restaurants every year.


It is estimated that for every pound of vegetarian fish food used at Cabbage Hill 1/4 lb of fish and 8-10 lbs of vegetables (bok choy, chard, lettuces, mustard greens and herbs) are produced.


Sustainability

 
More and more, people are becoming aware that they can make sustainable choices in the types of fish they eat and there are several well-known chefs, like Rick Moonen of Vegas’s RM Seafood restaurant, who are trying to spread the word within the culinary industry.  What about fish oil supplements?  Can they be sustainable and what type of information does one need to eat fish sustainably?  This is a difficult question that I’ve been wrestling with especially since eating fish has so many obvious health benefits.  There are countless studies on the health benefits of omega -3 fatty acids which are found in high concentrations in oily fish.  I first began recommending fish oil to patients with cardiovascular disease at least a decade ago but with the plethora of studies continuing to show benefit for a wide range of conditions from cancer cachexia to depression, it has become the supplement du jour.   Since 2006, the US market for omega-3 neutraceuticals has doubled to an estimated $1 billion (and that doesn’t include the fortified foods like infant formulas for example).

Though the word sustainable is thrown around a lot, it’s helpful to really dissect the definition of what it truly means before coming to a reasonable conclusion of whether or not eating fish or consuming fish oil supplements can be sustainable.

According to Wikipedia, that bastion of knowledge that most people turn to on the web, sustainability means “the capacity to endure” which “can be applied to every facet of life on Earth.”  To me, it is most obviously applies to our limited resources but less obvious, it also pertains to the health and well-being of humans.  Pertaining to our discussion here, fish are the limited resource.  There are simple things one can do: refuse to buy and eat any fish that is being overfished i.e. Chilean Seabass, Beluga Sturgeon, Bluefish Tuna. These actions would be for the sustainability of the planet.  Then there are other fish you should avoid which is for the sustainability (health) of humans because of high pollutant and contamination levels (farmed salmon, orange roughy, swordfish and tuna (longline)).

This is relatively easy to grasp and there are numerous resource, pocket and mobile phone guides you can download and keep with you for when you shop or dine out.  I like the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch which will break down the guides according to which area you live in the US.

Now the hard part. Is the use of fish oil an environmentally unsustainable practice?  This recently was discussed in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, and brought to my attention, the plight of the Menhaden fish, a fish that I had never heard of before this piece.  Menhaden provides one of the largest sources of omega-3 fish oils in the supplement industry.  Other sources include sardines, anchovies and cod which are fished mostly in Peru.

First a lesson in Omega-3 fatty acids which I will make as simple as possible:

Omega-3 fatty acids are an essential fatty acid, which means our bodies do not produce them.  They must be consumed.  The reason why certain fish have high levels of omega 3-fatty acids is that they either consume algae or they eat other fish that have in turn consumed algae.  So predatory fish like tuna or shark aren’t just born with high levels of omega 3 fatty acids, they consume fish that in turn eat smaller fish like Menhaden which, by the way, are a “colossal eater” of algae.  The larger the fish, the large the accumulation of omega3- fatty acids which is the good news, but the bad news is that these same fish are also larger accumulators of toxic pollutants like mercury, PCB’s and dioxins.  The same applies when you buy eggs high in omega-3 fatty acids: they are simply fed omega-3 fatty acids usually in the form of flaxseed but they may also have been fed Menhaden as well.  Be sure to look for the label “vegetarian fed” on your egg cartons.  So what’s Menhaden and why is it important in the ecological scheme of things?

Menhaden, an oily inedible fish, that used to swim in schools as large as 40 miles long on the eastern seaboard, have been fished so drastically over the last 200 years that the impact is being felt in the entire ecologically systems of both the Atlantic ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.  To understand this, one needs to know what Menhaden do:

1. Menhaden are filter feeders.  One Menhaden fish can filter 4-8 gallons of water per minute.  Because they only eat phytoplankton, which are algae, or cellulose from rotting vegetation, (one of the few fish that do this) they essentially clean the water.  What happens if the water is not cleaned?  Though there are other causes of algal blooms which lead to “dead zones,” areas in the water that cannot support any life, Menhaden can dramatically reduce these areas, but only if they are around.  Massive Algal Bloom in a Freshwater Chinese LakeThink of a swamp ecology - thick algae blocks sunlight which decreases oxygen and thus create a inhospitable environment for fish and shellfish.

2. They are the main food source for other marine animals like bluefish, striped bass and fluke.  The Menhaden are the preferred meal for these predators which is substantiated by the fact that it’s the best bait you can use when fishing.  When this is eliminated, populations of these fish are greatly reduced.  These predators then hunt other fish like herring and those populations eventually will decrease.

This Book Rocks! A great read.As you can see, when you take this particularly unknown fish out of the water, the ecosystem begins to fall apart.  A must-read for all those who consume fish and care about the environment is H. Bruce Franklin’s The Most Important Fish In The Sea.  During his extensive research several biologists to environmental advocates emphasized the critical role of Menhaden; “[One] can’t overemphasize the importance of this fish to the ecology of the entire East Coast” or that the Menhaden are “the absolute keystone species for the health of the entire Atlantic ecosystem.”  His book provided me with the inspiration to look into this matter further as it pertains to my patients and my use of prescribing fish oils.

What to do with this information?

Eat Vegetable Sources of Omega 3’s

There are many plant sources of omega-3 fatty acids in the form of alpha-linolenic acid.  These include flaxseed and oil, walnuts, purslane and canola oil, hemp seed and hemp milk, chia, and soybean.  The issue here is that the beneficial omega-3’s known as DHA and EPA, which are readily available from fish, are not in these vegetarian sources.  The body must convert them slowly to these forms and a small percentage of the population has the genetic polymorphism that doesn’t enable the critical enzyme delta-6-desaturase to convert alpha-linolenic acid to the long chain DHA and EPA.


Eat fish and not supplements

This is becoming more and more difficult to do give the effects of toxic contaminants that have filled our oceans and rivers.  However, there are choices one can make when eating out or purchasing fish.  The most important being knowing exactly where your fish comes from.  The Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Environmental Defense Fund both provide interactive guides online about good, bad and worse choices. As a frequent consumer of sushi, I especially like their pocket sushi guide where you can download HERE.

Educate yourself on the companies that produce your fish oil.

One of the things you can do to make an impact on the Atlantic ocean’s ecosystem is to vote with your dollar.  Do not support companies that use Menhaden either as their source for fish oil, pet food, food products or fertilizer.  In fact, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the worst choices (purity standards) you can make in purchasing fish oil supplements is from the company that continues to be responsible for the destruction of the Menhaden population: Omega Protein which makes Omega Pure fish oil.  They had contaminant levels well beyond the standards for their survey.  Finally, consider algae-based omega-3 supplementation.  The caveat here is that it provides primarily DHA and not EPA fatty acids.

Read what your dog food is made of: brands like VeRUS, Wellness Core Ocean formula, Earthborn Holistic Ocean or Solid Gold Holistique Blend Fish all use Menhaden fish in their formulas.  There are PLENTY of other safe choices.Butters says: "Boycott Menhaden in your food!  Better yet, become acquainted with Omega Pure’s website and their products.  Menhaden oil is the source of omega 3’s in Smart Balance Buttery Spread and Cindy’s Kitchen “All Natural” salad dressings.  Don’t buy!

Become a Seafood Watch Advocate

By joining, you can increase awareness to the restaurants and markets you shop as well as being able to educate your friends and families about their choices and the effect those choices have on our delicate and fragile ocean ecology.  Join HERE.

Farmer Pam, MD

Update on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 4:16PM by Pam

A lawsuit is pending in California is alleging that 8 major manufacturers of fish oil supplements contain huge amounts of PCBs - a manmade cancer-causing toxin.  Testing was done by Manteel Environmental Justice Foundation and named these companies: Omega Protein, GNC, Rite Aid, CVS, Pharmavite (Nature Made), NOW, Solgar and Twin Labs.  For now, avoid these brands and look into reputable companies that perform third party testing on their supplements.

Update on Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 5:18PM by Pam

H. Bruce Franklin's book had a readl impact as the menhaden fish are now being protected...

See story HERE.