Vegetable Juice

I just wanted to break my long silence with a quick follow-up to a post from April about juicing vegetables.

As I mentioned in that post, although I am thoroughly enjoying the process of growing vegetables, my palate has been slower to catch up. I just lack a natural "talent" for gnawing on large piles of veggies and finding them delicious. In order to get a sufficient volume vegetables into my diet, I decided to try juicing.

My first experiment with a borrowed Krups juicer produced 40 ounces of juice using:

• Baby spinach, roughly 1 lb. (< $1.00)
• 1 cucumber ($0.50)
• 4 carrots ($0.20)
• 2 oranges (free)
• 1 grapefruit (free)

The free citrus came from my gardener friend, and the vegetables were procured cheaply from Golden Farms (an Armenian grocery store in Glendale).

A 64-oz bottle of vegetable juice from Trader Joe's costs $3.79 - the ingredients for my juice would be about $2.70 for the same amount. Granted, it did take time and effort for me to make the juice and clean the juicer. However, the benefits of making it at home include freshness, and the knowledge of exactly what went into it. The first ingredient in Trader Joe's juice is water, used to reconstitute some powdered ingredients. Although vegetables also contain a lot of water, I know that my juice was not further diluted, and everything was fresh.

Adding fruit to my mix was definitely key for flavor. The result was a muddy green beverage that tasted of mild, grassy grapefruit juice. I included a few strawberries in my second batch of juice, which brought it up to the level of downright deliciousness!

I liked using spinach for its nutritional density, but it was the least convenient item to juice, as I had to turn the juicer off while I wadded together small bunches of leaves using both hands (or else little leaves would go flying as I tried to stuff them into the small opening of the machine). Cucumbers and carrots were especially convenient to put through the juicing machine - though these are vegetables that I actually already enjoy nibbling on raw.

I poured the finished juice into empty 16 oz. glass bottles to bring to work. I only made 2.5 days' worth at a time, as there are no preservatives in the juice.

* * *

I'm still helping out in my friend's CSA garden on the weekends. The main job recently has been to wrangle the overgrown tomato plants and lift them off the ground with twine strung between tall stakes.

We have also been busy harvesting for her CSA deliveries! The swiss chard is unfortunately infested with aphids, but we've still got kale and some kohlrabi going, as well as leeks, zucchini, and more peaches!

I have pictures of the garden from June and July, which I will post later.

Path to Freedom film screening: Food Matters

On Sunday evening, I attended a local film screening and potluck hosted by Path to Freedom. They host these events in Pasadena monthly, and the previous one I attended was in December.

Now that it's spring, the potluck portion of the evening was held outdoors. Participants were asked to bring a vegetarian dish that is as "local" as possible.

I made deviled eggs using free-range brown and white eggs from the South Pasadena farmer's market, nested on a bed of fresh lettuce from my friend's organic backyard garden. The lettuce helped improve the presentation, and also kept the eggs from sliding around the serving dish while I transported them :)

The hosts provide compostable plates and utensils, but encourage participants to bring their own reusable dinnerware. One handy idea that I learned by observing veteran attendees at the last event was to bring a container with a lid, so that after you're done eating, food scraps won't soil the inside of your bag. I brought my 7-cup pyrex storage container, which worked perfectly!

This month's documentary was called Food Matters. In a nutshell, the film's point was to illustrate that proper nutrition is key to preventing health problems, and even for curing many degenerative diseases. Many of the experts interviewed for the film believe that while modern medicine is extremely adept at treating acute injuries, it is less competent when it comes to chronic illnesses. A diet heavy in raw foods and vitamins was promoted by the film, and drug treatments (as well as cancer therapies such as radiation) were criticized.

I found the film very interesting, but as with my reading of Nina Planck's book, Real Food, I tried to take a step back instead of immediately buying into everything it was suggesting. I always have to ask myself, "are they rightfully exposing a truth that has been obscured from popular knowledge, or might this also be propaganda?"

One of the recurring themes in the documentary was that cooking foods destroys a lot of the beneficial enzymes, and that a diet should be predominantly raw - at least 51% of every meal. I wasn't sure if this was by volume or weight - definitely not the same thing. Picture a big fluffy ball of sprouts vs. a cantaloupe...

I am already consuming raw milk, raw honey, and fresh fruits. However, I know that I personally couldn't be happy as a 100% raw-foods vegan. I haven't tried it before, but cheese and milk are huge staples of my diet, along with whole wheat pasta. These food items add an enormous amount of happiness to my daily life, and I can't give them up entirely.

Nevertheless, I have long suspected that I need to add more fresh produce to my diet anyway. I am recovering from a lifelong aversion to most vegetables - as a child, fresh carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes were about all I would eat, along with the occasional cooked broccoli, cauliflower, peas, or corn on the cob.

A couple years ago, I actually made a new year's resolution to eat at least ONE legitimately green thing every day. Otherwise, days would go by without any vegetables being consumed at all - let alone the 3-5 servings typically recommended. I was in fact able to stick to my resolution that year, and vegetables have become part of my daily diet - in limited quantities. My taste for veggies is finally expanding, perhaps due to a maturing palate. However, I am still nowhere near eating the quantity I should be. I eat very little meat, so my meals are heavy in whole grains and dairy or eggs. Unless I'm eating a salad, vegetables are merely a small side dish.

Upon viewing Food Matters, I renewed my commitment to consuming a higher proportion of fresh veggies. One expert that was interviewed for the film - Andrew Saul - particularly caught my attention. He was very likable, and his sense of humor really showed in his interviews, and on his website as well. His recommendation of juicing vegetables particularly appealed to me.

Since I still find masticating a large quantity of vegetables each day to be fairly daunting, juicing seems like it might be a good solution for me.  There will be a lot of pulp leftover, but I'm not worried about losing fiber in my diet, as these are vegetables I wouldn't be consuming otherwise.  I plan to save the pulp in the fridge to give to my friend's hens.  I have a juicing machine on loan, and will report back on my progress!

I almost forgot to mention - each Path to Freedom film screening is followed by a brief quiz.  I remembered this from last time, and took notes throughout the film, because there is a prize for answering all 10 questions correctly!  Winners receive either free admission to the next event, or $10-off at the Peddler's Wagon store.  

At December's event, I used my $10 prize toward a set of glass food storage canisters.  On Sunday, as I approached the Peddler's Wagon table, something immediately caught my eye, and I knew exactly what to get...

Bokashi bran!  

I am almost done with the last of the Bokashi mix I had purchased from Gaiam back in October to get my composting process started.  Fortuitously, Peddler's Wagon had a tub right there at the event for... $10!  I paid only tax, and walked home with a fresh batch of Bokashi bran to continue my kitchen composting.  Excellent!

Book Review: Real Food

Over the past few months, I've read two popular books about the way modern Americans eat: Real Food, by Nina Planck, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. I'm now in the middle of a third well-known book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.

I have enjoyed all three books, and found that reading them in the order listed above was a good strategy, as each book goes into successively greater detail and analysis.

Below are my thoughts on the first book I read, Real Food: What to Eat and Why, by Nina Planck, 2007:

I rate this book 3.5 stars out of 5. It's a good starting point to spark your thinking about what we as a culture tend to eat, what we used to eat, and what we should eat.

Planck's reasoning is framed mainly from a nutritional perspective. She references medical and anthropological research to support her claim that "real" foods - i.e. produced and prepared using primitive or traditional methods - are the most healthful, whereas modern, processed foods are more dangerous to our health.

She argues that humans have evolved to eat certain types of foods, including meat, but that modern food technology has created foods that are bodies are not built to use in the right manner. According to Planck, modern foods are the root of modern health problems such as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.

Planck seeks to debunk what she sees as a myth, pervasive in American culture, that low-cholesterol and low-fat foods are the healthiest. She believes that animal products - and the fat and cholesterol contained within them - are not inherently bad for us. Instead, it's conventional factory-farming practices, as well as refined foods such as processed sugar, that threaten our health.

According to Planck's food philosophy, we should eat eggs from pastured chickens, grass-fed beef, and plenty of wild-caught fish, but should avoid refined foods - including isolated soy protein - which she considers a health-food impostor.

Planck is a one-time vegan who has come to firmly believe that eating animal products, including meat, is natural and healthful. However, she is adamant that the consumer should make every effort to obtain animal products raised using the most stringent, ethical methods possible. Interestingly, she argues this primarily for reasons of nutrition, with environmental and animal-rights concerns being secondary.

Conventionally-grown vegetables and fruits may contain harmful residues of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. However, Planck argues, compared to eating a small amount of meat from an animal who consumes non-organically grown plants, you would have to consume a massive quantity of chemically-sprayed plant products directly to accumulate the same amount of toxins in your body.

I liken it to thinking about how mainstream it has become to worry about consuming mercury when eating fish. Fish who eat other fish develop higher concentrations of mercury in their flesh, so those highest up on the food chain should be consumed very sparingly. The Monterey Bay Aquarium publishes a seafood guide that outlines the recommended frequency for consuming different types of fish. The guide is based on the risk of different types of fish to our health, as well as on the different fishing or farming practices used to acquire each type of fish.

Planck advocates consuming organic, free-range, grass-fed, wild-caught, etc. as much as possible when eating animal products, but feels that it is less necessary to buy organic when consuming plants.

The book was certainly eye-opening for me, as I was only beginning to consider factors apart from convenience and price when determining what to eat.

However, I was a bit disappointed by the book's lack of structure. The author seemed to bounce around and circle back a lot instead of thoroughly exploring each topic she introduced. For me, this diluted the message of her book. Others may not find the somewhat disorganized format to be as distracting, but for me the lack of cohesion made it harder to distill the take-away points.

Also, although Planck provides citations for many studies to form the basis of her theories, I felt that I should take her assertions with a grain of salt. The anthropological observations she described were interesting, but not as persuasive to me as the empirical medical studies she referenced.

Still, if you have the time, Planck's book is certainly worth a read. After finishing Real Food, I re-evaluated my own diet as follows:

• As I described in another recent post, I've adopted Planck's strategy of spending more on animal products to ensure that they were raised in a fashion that imparts the greatest nutritional benefits - along with doing less damage to the environment and the animals' welfare.


• I also try to obtain local or organic produce as often as possible, but am not willing to pay quite as much of a premium as I do with animal products. I generally avoid cheap milk, eggs, and meat.


• I no longer feel guilty about eating whole eggs, rather than just the whites. Even as a child, I liked the yolks the best! I have tried buying cartons of liquid eggs whites before, and found them to be an unsatisfactory substitution for eggs. Many people consider egg whites to be a health food, but Planck believes whole eggs to be much more beneficial.


• I verified with a friend who is completing a joint MD-MPH program, with a focus in nutrition, that eating egg yolks will not directly lead to high cholesterol and heart disease. She said I should feel free to eat whole eggs, as long as I don't consume an insane quantity every day. :)


• I began drinking whole-fat, un-homogenized milk (Trader Joe's sells cream-top organic milk by the half-gallon). As a child, I always drank whole or 2% milk - skim tasted like glorified grey water to me. I switched to skim from 2004-2008 because that seemed like the "adult" thing to do. Now I'm back to enjoying a daily glass of sweet, rich, creamy real milk - and the switch has not caused me to gain weight.


• I recently took it one step further and tried raw milk (which is un-pasteurized as well as un-homogenized), as Planck recommended. I've had absolutely no digestive issues with the change. Whole Foods carries raw milk options.


• When cooking, I use olive oil and real butter, never margarine. Vegetable oils are made solid through hydrogenation. Therefore, margarine = trans fats!


• Soy: I still love tofu, but instead of using vanilla soy milk in my coffee, I now use organic half-and-half or whole milk. I never use non-dairy "creamer" - which is actually made with both high-fructose corn syrup and partially-hydrogenated oils!


• I still consume some refined and processed foods. Old habits die hard, and there are certain processed foods that still make me salivate! I want to live life and enjoy different kinds of flavors - but I am more selective and try to practice moderation.


• Although I switched to brown rice and whole wheat bread and pasta several years ago for everyday consumption, I still bake with some white all-purpose flour and white sugar.


• I also still indulge in store-bought cereal along with occasional snacks and desserts, but always examine the ingredients.

I'm still trying to establish and maintain a healthy diet that works for me. I want to feel healthy and like I am making ethical food choices. However, I am still recovering from being a lifelong picky eater, and taste is very important to me. I've made a lot of improvements in eating nutritiously over the last couple years, particularly in the last few months since I started cooking from scratch and getting involved in gardening.

However, a typical meal for me is heavy in pasta (whole wheat, at least!) and dairy, with some vegetables and fruit on the side. I think the balance on my plate needs to be reversed - so that is my next goal.