Farmer's Market Orientation

We attended our first day of orientation for the Boulder County Farmer's Market. How do we feel? Excited and scared.

It's the 25th anniversary of the market, and Patrick is the youngest farmer to date in its history.

Jenn Ross, market manager, explained that we should anticipate selling more than we expect. Dirk and I both wanted to rush home and till more soil. Patrick wanted to buy more flats and grow lights to turn our already fluorescent glowing living room into a light show extravaganza.

Our operation is in full swing. Starter seeds are growing in every window of our house. Our signature giant pumpkins are taking off in only five days. They're already a few inches high. They're so Willy Wonka.

Dirk went to Western Disposal today for a truck load of free compost which he described as hand-to-hand combat at 8:00 am for the rich soil. Everybody wants the good stuff. Patrick spent the early morning unloading and spreading it in our raised beds.

Dirk built a hoop house this afternoon for the transplants that we'll get in the ground in the next month.

Patrick got a prime spot in the "atrium" of the market across from a prominent local bakery and next to an established farm. The owners can help us out in terms of managing our customers. We learned a lot about how to properly give samples within strict safe food handling requirements and load and unload our produce every weekend. Dirk and Patrick will be out and ready to go by 6:00 am each week. A gong starts the market at precisely 8:00 am.

Fresh Mouth Farms is in full swing already. We will probably start the market in May. April will be a bit early for us. It's the "shoulder" season. Only a few vendors will have produce that early. We're learning that this farming biz requires a lot of early planning and rising. We can hear the rooster crowing already.

Kill the Processed Foods ... Not Yourself

I read two articles this week linking modern food to our illnesses. It boils down to the fact that processed foods like soda and refined carbs like chips, cookies, etc. cause cancer and heart disease.

Coke and Pepsi have a chemical in them to give their drinks that rich caramel color. It's known as 4-methylimidazole (4-MI) and in high doses it causes cancer in animals. The Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the FDA last week to ban certain caramel colorings, including 4-MI, because of their link to cancer. Of course, the supplier of the coloring says it's safe. The FDA takes the middle ground suggesting that people would have to drink a 1,000 cans of soda "to reach the doses administered in the studies that have shown links to cancer in rodents."

We don't drink soda in our house, but this is good to know and only further reinforces how pointless it is to drink soft drinks. I indulge maybe once a year in a cold Coke from a can on a hot day after gardening in the sun, but that's about it. I do know a lot of friends, Southerners in particular, who probably hit the 1,000 can of soda mark faster than they would like to know.

The second article was about what really causes heart disease. Heart surgeon, Dr. Dwight Lundell, writes the piece. He's got 25 years in the field and has performed more than 5,000 open heart surgeries. He admits that science has been wrong for decades. He writes, "The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine."

The biggest culprits of inflammation that lead to heart disease, Lundell note? Simple, highly processed carbs like flour, sugar and all the products made from them, as well as the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower found in many processed foods. The rest of his article is a fascinating breakdown of how processed foods cause inflammation. Read the full article for the science.

What to do? He suggests eating food your grandmother served and not the processed food that fills grocery store aisles. Lundell offers hope. He says if you eliminate these inflammatory foods and eat whole, fresh, nutrient-dense food, you can reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from eating the typical American diet.

Why We Are Fat

I love reading alumni magazines from any school. It's like sport to me to get a handle on what the university or college deems relevant and the focus of research or faculty. You can souse out any biases. There's the class notes where you can read what people your age are doing with their lives. That can be an exercise in self-punishment ... be cautious!

This week, we got Bostonia Magazine from Boston University where Dirk went to grad school. There's a piece in the issue by Barbara Moran entitled, "Why We Are Fat: A med biochemist says the obesity epidemic is not just about calories. It could be the chemicals."

In the article, the work of biochemist Barbara Corkey takes center stage. Her thesis? That food additives like saccharin and emulsifiers are one of the reasons we're fat.

This is not a radically new assertion, but Corkey's science is solid. She asserts that food additives and other environmental factors play a role in biochemical changes that can lead to diabetes and obesity. Her work reveals that monoglycerides and saccharin stimulate beta cells to produce insulin at the wrong times. This causes hardship for cells to take up glucose which causes diabetes.

Corkey is realistic in her assertions. She doesn't isolate one really bad additive, but she does think there are a handful of problem additives that could be removed from the food supply. The profile of Corkey is also deep and interesting as it highlights her duality as a scientist and painter.

I have long thought that chemical additives have had to play a part in obesity and illness in general. This is hopefully the beginning of some deeper, more meaningful research in to what we put in our bodies that can change what we put in to our food supply.