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Interesting Blog — Junkfood Science

I recently came across an interesting blog called Junkfood Science.

This blog written by Sandy Szwarc is not a ‘normal’ blog in that you can’t leave comments and it’s clearly not run by an amateur. Sandy appears to be a well established journalist. This blog is also very North American (mostly United States) in flavor, and may not be of great interest to people not living there or who otherwise don’t have roots in the area. This blog also has very little to do with gardening.

What I find interesting about this blog is that while written mostly from the perspective of a health professional and nutritional specialist, it has a very similar tone and point of view as this blog has to biodiversity, gardening, agriculture and processed food. Most of the topics she addresses on her blog have a direct counter part with something discussed over here.

I think it’s a very interesting blog to read along side this one!

Also, if you are interested in learning more about the US health care system, I recommend Michael Moore’s latest film Sicko.

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Second Podcast

The second podcast segment I recorded for the Alternative Kitchen Garden on heirloom gardening is available for download.

This week’s podcast also included a segment done by Rebsie of Daughter of the Soil about historical beetroot varieties.  A really facinating segment, and very well done!  For me this is also my first time hearing the voice behind the blog I’ve been reading for years now.

Also featured was Madeleine who talked about preserving herbs, also a really interesting segment!

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Pfälzer Dinkel

I posted previously on this spelt I’m growing, here and here.

Here are some of the heads after harvest:

Spelt Seed Heads

The plants were quite productive. A rough estimate would be I planted 20g of seeds and ended up with a harvest of about 1Kg, or a 50-fold increase.

This is something of an ongoing experiment. Spelt is an old wheat variety, and is known for having a difficult to remove husk. I am going to try building a hulling machine, and see how it goes. This year I don’t have enough to make harvest or threshing difficult to do by hand, but in the long run I will have to see if this is a good variety for this. This particular variety of spelt was used originally for making German pretzels.

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European Pesticide Watch

I’m sorry for all of you reading this outside of the European Union, this doesn’t really apply to you.

There is a Dutch language article on the subject here.

For you Europeans, there is an important vote coming up on Tuesday in the EU parliament on the issue of pesticide use in Europe. For Holland this is a very important issue, because there is a great deal of pollution caused by agricultural poisons. A large percentage of these pesticides are used by the flower industry in order to grow blemish free cut flowers and flower bulbs for export. These pesticides are of course different than what is used for food, and have different criteria for safety.

These pesticides are polluting the surface water, meaning drinking water has to come from deeper and deeper wells, a process that can’t continue forever.

Holland also has many important and fragile ecosystems that are kept under constant stress by the use of these chemicals.

The upcoming vote, this Tuesday 17 July, is for a series of amendments to an already agreed upon resolution. Among other things these measures call for a 50% reduction in pesticide use in the next 10 years (amendment 119), creation of a new pesticide tax (amendment ITRE 2) and allocation of money for organic agriculture (amendment 287).

A secret vote on these measures is planned! In case some of you thought we lived in a democracy that was sensitive to the wishes of the people, apparently in this case they don’t want the pressure of public opinion. As well as encouraging your representatives to support these measures, please also encourage them to voluntarily make their votes public so it’s clear who should be supported in the next elections.

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Search and Destroy

I came across this recent Danish invention (via Riverrim). A weed killing robot that recognizes weeds and is used together with:

“High-tech tools for weeding that at a later stage can be implemented are tools like laser, micro spraying and mechanical devices.”

Are robots that travel through our gardens using a laser to kill weeds what the future holds?