new research debunks trad views on nutrition

[gtaus]

Alfalfa sprouts , grass, red peppers and carrots seem to do the trick too.

Yes, you can sprout many different seeds. I use barley because it the least expensive and best sprouting seeds where I live. I have also sprouted oats and wheat, but with less productivity and a higher cost for those seeds. So, I just use barley.

I also feed my chickens all our kitchen scraps and leftovers. It's not a lot per day, but it's a nice little variety in the diet for the chickens.

 

[Molpet]

Thanks for the shout out.

Yes, I have been sprouting barley for the past 3 to 4 winters. It takes me less than 5 minutes per day to flood and fill my barely tower.

I have not been following this thread, but I did notice that there was some posting that sprouted barley reduced egg laying productivity. After careful reading that screenshot, I noticed that they were giving up to 46g of sprouted barley per day per hen. Let's stop there and consider this...

View attachment 4002357

I only feed sprouted barley to my chickens in the winter months, when we are snow covered for up to 6 months, because my chickens do not have access to any fresh greens otherwise.

I only feed sprouted barley in the winter, when egg production goes down due to our short daylight hours, so reduced egg production happens to me regardless.

I don't advocate using sprouted barley as a main feed. I use it more as a "treat" or "green supplement" to their commercial layer feed during our snow months. I did a quick calculation, and my daily sprouted barley comes out to about 10g per bird. That is only 10%, or less, of their daily intake. Again, I consider it a green treat.

My chickens seem to enjoy pecking and scratching apart the sprouted barley root mats I toss into the chicken run and/or coop. Some chickens like to eat the grains in the bottom of the root mat, others like to eat the blades of barley grass, some both. Frankly, it's about the only scratching and pecking my chickens can do in the winter months because everything else out in the chicken run is frozen solid.

The reason I continue to supplement my chickens with sprouted barley in the winter is because the egg yolks get a darker orange color. If the hens are only on commercial feed, the egg yolks get a brighter yellow color. We sell our excess eggs to people who appreciate the darker orange egg yolks compared to the pale yellow egg yolks of commercial eggs at the store. They think a darker yolk means a more healthy egg. I don't know if that is true, or not, but they are buying the eggs and that's what they believe.

Honestly, I think a darker orange egg yolk looks better and tastes better. But I could only be fooling myself.

My commercial feed consumption goes down a bit when I give my chickens sprouted barley, but that is not the reason I give them fresh green barley grass in the winter. I just want them to have access to fresh greens in the winter.

Again, a well-balanced commercial layer feed is what I use. Sprouted barley is only used as a green treat at less than 10% of their daily intake. With the tower system I use, I spend almost no time per day growing barley sprouts. For my minimal efforts, I get darker colored egg yolks in the winter and the chickens get to scratch and peck for some of their food. To me, that's worth it.

Thanks for a real world use
I bet they enjoy the treat.
How many birds do you have?

 

[gtaus]

Thanks for a real world use
I bet they enjoy the treat.
How many birds do you have?

I normally carry 10 hens over winter.

Currently I have 15 chickens, but that is only because I was too late in harvesting some of my old hens before it got cold and snowed. I still plan on harvesting at least 5 of the older chickens before spring. But our temps have been down to -4F and that's just too cold for me to work outside butchering chickens.

 

[Perris]

an interesting piece on UPFs v. high fat/sugar/salt foods appeared here 2 days ago:
https://foodservicefootprint.com/hfss-vs-upf-is-it-time-for-governments-to-choose/

To cut to the chase, they say

"UPF is the symptom of a society that values economic growth and investor returns over collective wellbeing; that prefers to subcontract the job of feeding the population to those incentivised by profit rather than those who pick up the tab for the cost of treating diet-related ill health and repairing environmental harm... The only solution to the harm caused by UPF is the same as it is to the environmental harm caused by intensive agricultural production or the unrelenting pressure on farmer livelihoods – structural food system reform that makes whole or minimally processed foods the affordable, accessible choice for all."

But whole or minimally processed foods need to be prepared in a kitchen to make them palatable, never mind as tasty as UPFs are by design, and how many of us have the time or skills for that? If they don't get this right soon, a lot of people will feel as ill-equipped to choose healthy food for themselves as they apparently do already to choose healthy food for their chickens.

 

[BDutch]

an interesting piece on UPFs v. high fat/sugar/salt foods appeared here 2 days ago:
https://foodservicefootprint.com/hfss-vs-upf-is-it-time-for-governments-to-choose/

To cut to the chase, they say

"UPF is the symptom of a society that values economic growth and investor returns over collective wellbeing; that prefers to subcontract the job of feeding the population to those incentivised by profit rather than those who pick up the tab for the cost of treating diet-related ill health and repairing environmental harm... The only solution to the harm caused by UPF is the same as it is to the environmental harm caused by intensive agricultural production or the unrelenting pressure on farmer livelihoods – structural food system reform that makes whole or minimally processed foods the affordable, accessible choice for all."

But whole or minimally processed foods need to be prepared in a kitchen to make them palatable, never mind as tasty as UPFs are by design, and how many of us have the time or skills for that? If they don't get this right soon, a lot of people will feel as ill-equipped to choose healthy food for themselves as they apparently do already to choose healthy food for their chickens.

Wont happen in the Netherlands with the government we have today.

 

[Molpet]

"UPF is the symptom of a society that values economic growth and investor returns over collective wellbeing; that prefers to subcontract the job of feeding the population to those incentivised by profit rather than those who pick up the tab for the cost of treating diet-related ill health and repairing environmental harm...

pretty much the whole basis of capitalism
unfortunately the other forms of economy have issues too

 

[saysfaa]

.. But whole or minimally processed foods need to be prepared in a kitchen ...and how many of us have the time or skills for that?..

The skills can be learned. They really aren't difficult for basic cooking.

Don't nearly all of us have more time for preparing food than nearly anyone else in history? Among other things, most of us don't have to gather the fuel or build the fires to cook over.

Whether or not we have more time for prepping food than people who did it or are doing it, are you really sure most of us don't have time for it?

My family, for example. It takes seven minutes to cook steel cut oats, less if we were willing to eat quick oats but steel cut is more minimally processed with the advantages of that (lower glycemic index, etc). And while the water is heating, I can fill a jar with leftovers or prep sandwich filling. Then, while the oats are cooking, I finish putting the sandwiches together or add the makings of a salad. Add 30 seconds to put the oats in jars and add fruit and another minute to wash up -that is breakfast and lunch in less than ten minutes. Often, the same ten minutes can prep both meals for two or more days for two people. When we were seven, it took a little longer to make all the sandwiches and I didn't try to make more than one day's worth of oatmeal.

Dinner usually takes from a half hour to two hours. Again, that counts the cooking time where there is often no attention or activity other than staying within the sound of a timer. Add ten minutes on subsequent days for reheating and changing it up a bit - such as adding a fresh salad and it yields delicious, wholesome meals for three or four days. We like leftovers.

I don't have any reason to minimize the time I spend making meals. If I did, I'm pretty sure I could spend a lot less time doing it.

If that seems like a lot of time prepping food, we could look at what people are doing with their time instead of cooking. Do so many people really not have time for it? Or is that a convenient way to say they would rather watch tv, play on the internet, etc, etc, etc...

 

[AntiqueB]

Depends on your day, though. For example, today I picked up my kid at 4:45 to drive him to a piano lesson that finished at 6:30. We got home at 7. Now I have to cook, eat, take a shower, and help with homework before my bedtime at 9. It's tight.

But I did make a simple fried rice for dinner!

 

[gtaus]

But whole or minimally processed foods need to be prepared in a kitchen to make them palatable, never mind as tasty as UPFs are by design, and how many of us have the time or skills for that?

In the bad old days when I grew up, boys were forced to take shop class and girls had to take Home Economics. I guess in some ways that system worked because my wife knows how to cook and sew and I can change the oil and tires on a car and swing a hammer.

I see my nephews and nieces going through school and none of them have any "life" skills. Worse yet, most of them are in homes with one working parent and nobody to teach them those old fashioned skills at home. Pretty much buy food at McDonalds if you get hungry.

I am not so sure it's a matter of not having the time, but definitely lack of knowledge and skills makes cooking raw food a real challenge.

If that seems like a lot of time prepping food, we could look at what people are doing with their time instead of cooking. Do so many people really not have time for it? Or is that a convenient way to say they would rather watch tv, play on the internet, etc, etc, etc...

Or is it that we just don't value mealtime and eating healthy? When I grew up, we had lunch in school which took about 10 minutes to wolf down and then we ran to the gym to play for the rest of the lunch period.

I just watched a story about a school in France where they take a full hour for lunch, which includes education on food nutrition, how to prepare the food, and even how to serve it as the classmates were responsible for serving each other. I know the women cooks at my school were low paid part time employees. In that French school, they had a full time well paid (male) Chef preparing the menus and supervising the (men and women) sous-chefs in preparing the meals.

I just don't think we value food in our US culture like they do in so many other places.

 

[saysfaa]

I've been thinking about it off and on most of the day. "It" being people having time to cook.

I came up with a lot of facets.

One of the bigger ones is what people are trying to cook. Dinner doesn't have to look like food our parents or grandparents served. That might be the cans and boxes casseroles or the fast food and microwavables or holiday feasts. It took me a long time to realize that and even longer to move there.

Another facet is that it takes some management to end up with the right staples in reasonable quantities for the way one cooks.

Another is that many of the things that cost less time, money, and effort to make at home need a recipe that is not easy to find. I am still looking for a burrito mix recipe that tastes right.

Another is that there are umpteen cookbooks and most of them assume the cook knows some basics. Thankfully, there are also cookbooks that spell everything out in abundant detail. The poor person just starting out, though, who may not even know to look for that kind of cookbook.

Also, thankfully, many of the simpler meals are quite forgiving. They may not be as tender or tasty when something goes wrong but there is very often a wide margin of it still being safe and nourishing. That might be another cause to say the poor person who may not even know how to eat the odd tasteless or weird textured meal.

It often isn't easy. It helps to know it can be done and see how other people did things.

Thankfully, another facet is that it isn't all or nothing. A person can start and gain benefit from even small changes.