10 Common Nutrients in Vegetables

1. Beta-carotene: especially useful to the body as it is turned into vitamin A. Found in yellow, red, orange and dark green vegetables and fruit such as pumpkin, carrots, yellow beans, beetroot, blue berries, raspberries, spinach, kale, broccoli

2. Calcium: essential for developing and maintain strong bones. Found in green vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, kale and plain yoghurt. Do not rely on dairy foods as your only source of calcium – after all, where do cows get calcium?

3. Chlorophyll: for energy and the very basis of healthy. Found in all the green vegetables and their leaves, such as spinach, beetroot, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, salad leaves, etc

4. Flavonoids: these are antioxidants which help prevent degenerative diseases such as heart disease and cancer – eat your veggies!

5. Folic acid: essential for healthy blood. Found in beetroot, citrus fruit, green leafy vegetables and salad leaves

6. Iron: very important for well functioning red blood cells. Found in dark green leafy vegetables and beetroot

7. Magnesium: essential for growth and repair of the body. Found in peas, nuts and sesame seeds

8. Phosphorus: grow healthy teeth and bones. Found in cabbage, potatoes, oranges, cherries and currants

9. Potassium: important for cell function. Found in many vegetables and fruit, particularly bananas

10. Protein: an essential nutrient for all muscle building and maintaining, energy and growth. Found in beans, peas, lentils, nuts and seeds

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How to banish a cold

OTC cold remedies don’t work. Masking one lot of symptoms just to suffer a bunch of others which make you feel worse doesn’t make any sense. To top it, your cold still lasts either 2 weeks or fourteen days. Why not set about preventing them for a change? If you get more than two colds a year, here’s how:

From today on, take 1-2 grams of vitamin C three times a day

Next time you get that scratchy feeling in your throat, don’t hang around waiting to see how it develops, and try this:

• Immediately eat 2 cloves of raw garlic, either chopped up with some other food, or in a glass of juiced vegetables, or just swallow the cloves whole. Do this 4 times a day for four days, or take 2 good quality garlic tablets, sourced from raw Alpine garlic leaves
• Four times a day for four days, take 2g vitamin C, 2 Olive Leaf tablets and 2 Golden Seal tablets
• After 4 days. stop the Golden Seal and Olive Leaf and continue with the vitamin C and garlic for another four days
• Suck some zinc gluconate or zinc acetate lozenges

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Vegetable garden growing pains at Squirrel's Landing

This week we put in a new bed at ‘Squirrel’s Landing’ because we’ve outgrown the first three!

• We’ve used the same process as before – first digging over the soil with a hefty pick, taking out all the stones and grass and then resting it for a couple of days
• Next we opened up 8 huge bags of ancient manure, completely aged and dry, and worked them well into the soil
• On top of that came a generous sprinkling of organic fertilizer pellets and bone meal
• More digging over followed
• With a good watering to get the soil evenly moist
• We then let the bed ‘rest’ for a week, with two more good waterings as there’s been no rain, and some temperatures in the 20’s
• Finally we planted out a long row of young strawberry plants taken from the six originals we cropped off last summer
  

The broad beans are in flower! This is a new surprise, as they are still quite young, but none the less are bursting with health and enthusiasm. All the seeds germinated, and as a result, the plants are quite close together and so giving one another some support. So far they haven’t been battered by the wind or rain, and if our luck holds, we should have some young beans in a couple of weeks.






The artichokes and rhubarb are growing very well – we had a crop of rhubarb with stalks over 50cm in length, so only needed a few for a hefty rhubarb pie. When we planted the artichokes we knew they were too close together, but hoped they’d grow slowly through the cold weather and give us time to get some new beds going before they outgrew their space. Instead, they’ve grown into huge plants at a record pace and will have to be transplanted very soon.

In the background of the picture you can see the asparagus fronds are dying off quickly. The stems will soon need to be cut back and the plants given their covering of well rotted manure which will send down nutrients into the soil over their dormant time. thinning them out will taken place before their new shoots form at the end of winter

As you can see, the bed we’ve just prepared isn’t going to give us nearly enough space – we’ll have to do it all again very soon if we want to sew any more beetroot and carrots. Let alone the lettuce, peas, tomatoes, cabbage and potatoes which the books tell us we can plant in June.


Watch out for progress reports on the strawberries...









More artilces on the Organic Vegetable Garden at Squirrel's Landing:

The birth of an organic vegetable garden
April Progress in the organic vegetable garden
May progress in the organic vegetable garden
May harvest from the organic vegetable garden

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Chromium helps beat cholesterol and heart disease

If you thought of chromium as the shiny metal in a car bumper, you’re not alone. Of course chrome bumpers are long gone, but the metal plays a crucial role in human health, reports the Jan 2007 issue of Harvard Men’s Health Watch.

Chromium and cholesterol:
The best ways to boost HDL levels are lifestyle changes such as exercise and a diet boosted with Omega-3 fish oil, fresh vegetables and fruit, while eliminating processed foods, sugar and supermarket fats. But if those don’t help, chromium may be worth a try. Some clinical trials have reported a benefit. Chromium deficiency leads to high cholesterol levels in rats, but the results in humans have been contradictory, so it may be too early to recommend chromium supplements for high cholesterol.

Chromium and heart disease:
A new study reports a link between chromium levels and heart attack risk: the lower the levels, the higher the risk. The association of low chromium and heart attacks was unrelated to diabetes or diet.

Chromium and diabetes:
Many diabetics will test a deficiency in chromium, and since chromium influences insulin action and glucose metabolism, diabetes is a logical candidate for chromium replacement therapy. However, studies have yielded conflicting results. The American Diabetes Association states that “at present, benefit from chromium supplements has not been conclusively demonstrated.” This is an invitation for more scientific study.

Chromium and weight loss:
Despite the popularity of chromium picolinate as a diet aid, scientists agree that chromium supplements are not effective in producing sustained weight loss.

Is chromium right for you? When it comes to dietary chromium, the answer is yes; whole grains, nuts, broccoli, and green beans, which contain the mineral, are all healthful foods.

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Organic is big business

At the start of this posting you’ll have gathered long ago that Cabbages and Cream is passionate about organic food, be it vegetables and fruit, or even skin food and household detergents. However, in a moment you may question this stance, because we’re about to show up the word ‘organic’ as being surprisingly flawed. So please accept our apologies right now, while we urge you to use the information with common sense and for your good health’s sake continue to eat as much Real Food as you possibly can. All you need to do is be diligent as to its source and stop believing every label you read as having your best interests at heart

As soon as something good comes along, Big Business is sure to get its fingers in the pie, and more often than not, to the detriment of the consumer

Take the word ‘organic’ for instance. There was a time when the whole organic movement was scoffed at, but then people started asking uncomfortable questions about the quality of their food, to discover that all the time ‘organic’ had the answers. At last we found food grown like it used to be in ‘the good ole’ days’ of our grandparents’ time, with all the sentimental hype to goe with it

But Big Business wasn’t happy – suddenly they had to answer for the way they grow our food and that could be uncomfortable. So they found ‘scientists’ who could ‘prove’ organic is no better than conventional food, and subsequently the jury has remained out. A situation which suits Big Business very well – keep the consumer confused while continuing to produce inferior foods in clever wrappings

Well, not ALL Big Business, of course, but there are enough reasons to suppose food manufacturers are gypping us. As a result we spend a lot of time on the fence but instinctively believe that ‘organic is better’. And so we should

But – and here’s the nub – Big Business is promoting ‘organic’ with a large-scale mentality! How did that happen? You may well ask.

Organic food sales reflect this trend – in the US organic food sales increased from $3.5bil in 1996 to $9bil in 2001. What must those figures look like for 2007?

While families with young children are the biggest consumers of organic products – wait for it – heavyweights such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi are working their way steadily into the organic market. Frito-Lay, which is owned by PepsiCo, now sells ‘organic’ salsa. What mockery of the word is this? As far back as 2001, Coca-Cola started selling organic carrot, apple and orange juices. Big Business has its teeth in the organic trend and before long the word will become hideously flawed, leaving consumers more confused than ever.

And now the Wal-Mart Giant has stirred ……

Wal-Mart Plans Huge Move Into Organic Food

Organic Rice Krispies, organic Frosted Mini Wheats and even organic Pepsi may define the future of American eating habits after Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, revealed plans for a huge expansion into pesticide-free foods.

The answer to all this nonsense is, don’t be fooled. Just because someone says something is organic is no reason to buy it without first doing the homework. The word organic printed on a label doesn’t mean the product is necessarily better for you than non-organic – take these examples:

• Commercial organic milk. Don’t forget that pasteurization destroys enzymes, denatures fragile milk proteins, obliterates beneficial bacteria, weakens vitamin content, encourages allergies, promotes pathogens, boosts tooth decay and infantile colic, destroys vitamin B12, and vitamin B6and encourages growth problems in children, arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer and heart disease. It makes no difference whether the milk is organic or not, these functions still apply to pasteurized milk and only raw milk does not hold these pitfalls.
• Organic whole wheat bread is another example. Organic bread and organic sugar both contribute to chronic degenerative disease in the majority of people who consume them. They both cause food sensitivities, whether they are organic or not.
• These examples are typical of food industry moguls catching on to the organic bandwagon at the expense of the consumer

Further reading: ABC Forced to Apologize for Lying About Evidence on Organic Food

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