Tribe.net. Local Connections Judith http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#b8583022-f4d3-468b-9abe-36f1e5b2db11 2009-07-04T06:09:23Z 2009-07-04T06:09:23Z

back to the rice issue...I know that ASian style white rice, especailly Japanese shortpgrain, was traditionally coated with ralc or diatomaceous earth to discourage bug pests, and it definitely needed to be rinsed off. I met people who grew up eating Japanese rice and while they didn;t like the rinsing, other types of rice jsut didn;t taste :right; to them...not all of them were Japanese either. because of racial discrimination, a lot fo lower middle calss famileis lived in close proximity to Japanese familes up until internment with WWII on the West Coast...the Jaanese tended to be better off financiall but they couldn;t move into "good" white neighborhoods. lvoely country we live in...but I digress. no, polished white rice won;t prout no matter that you do with it. you guys know they discovered thiamine, the vitamin, because the only priosoners who weren;t getting beriberi from a depleted diet were the ones in the "bad guys" jail where they fed them brown rice, which was considered an insult meant for chickjens in traditional Japanese society? rive bran is GOOD for ya I tell ya. eat your whole grains (and try getting them in jail, har har)...

Judith 2009-07-04T06:09:23Z Judith http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#3e22ef93-f576-4d1f-9690-1df78ab93b21 2009-07-04T06:00:25Z 2009-07-04T06:00:25Z

mom looks somewhat familiar but I couldn;t find a name besides Strawberry and that;s the kid..hilarious photo, people either love or hate pictures of that as they grow up. (my fourteen yrar old daughter would be way buggered if I posted one of her butt like that...well, I do have a couple from Green tortoise trips and such but she discourages it...) anwyay..thanks, Judith

Judith 2009-07-04T06:00:25Z girl mark http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#cfd2befd-1624-4899-b8ce-b1f8e8bb64ad 2009-07-03T21:19:59Z 2009-07-03T21:19:59Z

I haven't actually met the lady, but here's a photo of her back in the hippie days- I just talk to her daughter who's in her mid-late 30's now. they both live in Santa Cruz now: http://people.tribe.net/hihi/photos/754c72d4-07cf-4aec-b4fd-361d217f88ff

girl mark 2009-07-03T21:19:59Z Judith http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#beb6d879-61b6-4ecf-acde-a9873e413297 2009-07-03T19:12:50Z 2009-07-03T19:12:50Z

well, I;ve been heavily influenced by the Farm though I never klived there, and know a lot of ex-Farm people too. is your friends' mother one of the midwives from the Farm? what;s her name? I may know ehr, or klnow of her. or know oeople who do. I had fertility rpobelsnm most of my life (one baby after 17 eyars of trying) but I don;t believe that;s about eating soy at all, and if anything tofu and most soymilk really agree with me. and it was teh Farm;s introduction of it that turned me on to tempeh, which is a fermented and very digestible soy cake inocualted with a eyast, RHizopus oligospermium, or something, that ninds it togetehr and degrades some fo teh porteins. now I dontp; digest whole cooked dried soybeans very well, and it;s interestingto me that the ASian cultures that do use a lot of soy didn;t cook soybeans that may to wat like pinto peans - they franjctioned it into tifu anmd spymlk, or cultured it as tempeh in Indonesia, or mafde otehr fermented foods such as miso, and shoyu and natto. I do enjoy dry-roasted soybeans, wehre they are huleld and split, soaked, then baked at a low temperature until crunchy; I ate those a lot as a teen. but the Farm's whole cooked soybeans wrapped in a white flour tortilla, or some of the mixed hot cereals with soy emal thrown in..nah, not my thing. the other problem the Farm often had was food shortages; the folks I knew who lived there experienced a lot of those. sometiems the eating was great, but sometimes there were szerious lacks of fresh vagetables and fruits, or there was a lot fo filling in vcaliroes with junk foods and/or sugar because there wasn;t much else, and tehre was the infamous Wheatberry WInter, when there was no working mill and a lack of food, and steamed wheatberries apopeared on everyone;s plate at every meal...all kinhd of ironic. they were the first commercial source of soy ice cream, however, and I used to buy it out ehre when it came into production . yum, now THAT I do make, and buy, and enjoy. but no, soy hasn't posoned me, I;m in my fifties and in better shape than most people my age, and yes, I;m still ahving regualr menstrual cycles. I do take some heerbal supplements to help balanmce out the empotional and occasional achy part of it, but I'm convinced that a met-type diet and junk food would have made it way worse. I studied pubilc health nutirtion at Berkeley a little. even "straight" dietitians agree that a varied vegetarian diet, including a vega fdiet, can be life-sustaining and healthful at all life stages, icnlduing childhood and during pregnancy.

Judith 2009-07-03T19:12:50Z girl mark http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#e891257a-cf44-4384-aabe-0694d15378bf 2009-07-03T17:03:40Z 2009-07-03T16:59:03Z

I think that's basically what reseasrch shows- we're omnivores and traditionally people ate a lot of different diets and did fine within the constraints of their beliefs or their resources. Michael Pollan's books cover that pretty well. One of the things the Nourishing Traditions people are really shrill about is the supposed toxicity of soy, and they claim that it causes all kinds of female menstrual cycle issues. I think that the real trick to figuring out the female hormone aspect of the 'is soy poison' issue is to talk to the old midwives from The Farm- they ate tons, and tons, and tons of soy from what I can tell, and they had a big system for paying attention to women's reproductive health because the midwives were some of the more powerful people in the community. I've heard that one of them, the mother of one of my friends, claims that they just didn't see as many problems with women's menstrual cycle and reproductive issues as women seem to experience now- my guess would be that an explanation would be the modern presence of other pollutants and toxins and/or whatever prenatal exposure to some new toxin that some of 'today's women' experienced , rather than what people were eating then or now. Of course this is just anecdotal and my friend's mom might be wrong. I've been interested in this issue for a long time- I do great with soy, or without it, and I've been wanting to actually track down some of the ladies from The Farm who were involved in health care and pitch that question to them. I'm now living in the Southeast and am meeting more and more people who grew up there, so this should be possible to do.

girl mark 2009-07-03T16:59:03Z girl mark http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#4b3cece2-d061-488e-a86b-7213165d98e7 2009-07-03T17:01:01Z 2009-07-03T17:01:01Z

yeah, that's different, though- soaking white rice (which I've been told to cook this way too, so it's more fluffy) won't sprout it or cause enzyme conversion as far as I understand- it's dead stuff already and not a viable seed. Plus the supposed poisonous stuff in the seed coat, which I think is one of the reasons the 'food is poison' people claim you need to soak grains for, has already been polished off of that kind of rice.

girl mark 2009-07-03T17:01:01Z Judith http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#5264c069-d5cf-47cd-94b0-971a6aef03fa 2009-07-03T15:46:35Z 2009-07-03T15:46:35Z

thank you, Girl Mark. that's a riot about "Eating: harder than it looks." I have some real porblems with some of what;s being advanced by Nourishing TRaditions, Weston Price FOundadtion, Jessica Prentice, and this whole, relatively recent anti-vegetarian soy-is-poison trend within the natural foods movement. NOurishing Traditions, in particular, runs a bunch of anecdotal scare stories about the problems with a vegetarian diet that read like the old pre-Web chain letters about :ignore this warning like Colonel Jphn Jpones did, and you too may develop seizures and broken bones!" I've been vegetarian for over thirty five years, in various forms of attention (close to vegan now, ate more fairy as a teen, have always loved tofu) and I don;t have a problem digesting most grains at all...grains and legumes generally just have to be cooked enough to be palatable, or you can sprout them to reduce the cook time...I personally don;t digest raw starchy things, even spouty ones sych as garbanzo beans and sprouted rice, without a little cooking to soften. I;ve been saying for eyars that there are a lot fo natural foods-based diets that are health promoting, and that I;d bet if you took someone eating the Nourishing Traditions diet, with modcerate amounts of naturally raised meats, fermented dairy products, etc, and someone who;d been eating a natural foods based vegan diet with moderate amounts of soy in fairly traditional forms (e/.g., tofu and tempeh rather than highly processed "isdolated spoy protein" products), over a twenty eyar study both groups would look pretty darned good in terms of ehalth outcomes - especailly compared with someone eating a modern fast food and highly processed, mostly meats and sweets and oily snacks based U&S type diet.

Judith 2009-07-03T15:46:35Z Karen http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#c6b63d83-6144-4607-bb29-5baf33ff7c29 2009-07-03T13:17:37Z 2009-07-03T13:17:37Z

Back in the day grains were processed differently. I was always told by my old aunt (great aunt) to rinse and soak the rice in cool. I think it washed off some of the starch which made the rice sticky.

Karen 2009-07-03T13:17:37Z girl mark http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#3cbc1cd7-570f-4ed8-9834-141885a361b2 2009-07-02T23:17:53Z 2009-07-02T23:17:53Z

I think this comes from the last hippie diet fad, the one I call "eating- it's harder than it looks". It comes from the Nourishing Traditions cookbook, which makes it sound like most people can't digest food. I somewhat disagree. I'm sure it's true that some people are allergic to some foods and would do better sprouting some grains, however, I don't see what the evidence is. the cookbook and website tend to list lots of really questionable science to support their assertions.

girl mark 2009-07-02T23:17:53Z Lynn http://herbalmedicine.tribe.net/thread/f14f7ffe-de64-40ef-8af6-2db5b271f4f4#22043125-9c04-4d49-9843-b340f11e137e 2009-07-02T17:55:49Z 2009-07-02T17:55:49Z

I've just stumbled across a lot of data about soaking grains for several hours before cooking with them. I've always soaked beans, but have never done anything with my grains. I eat a lot of millet, brown rice and quinoa. !!!!! Is this a new thing, or have I just been totally ignorant? Do you soak your grains? Do you think it is imortant? THANKS

Lynn 2009-07-02T17:55:49Z