Shouldn't We Be Farming For Nutrition? Posted: 15 Feb 2011 07:55 AM PST
These experts are calling on nations “to incorporate health and nutrition as a goal in farming…nations must see agriculture as more than a food producing machine as it is linked to people's well being in many ways.” The world’s farmers grow more and more food every year for an ever-expanding population. Inevitably, overproduction means increased waste and bins of corn, soybeans, and other mass produced grains that begin to overflow. But still there are people in the world starving and lacking the vital nutrition for survival, let alone optimal health. Considering one-sixth of the world’s population goes hungry every day and even more individuals are malnourished, experts gather to find a solution to the problem. There’s no easy answer about how to effectively nourish the population when there are looming issues like food surplus in some industries, climate change’s impact on agricultural productivity, and rising food costs. "Food production and distribution does not really reflect what humans need to eat and instead tends to reflect more what farmers and larger food buying and selling organizations want to make money from," said, David Nabarro, the United Nations special representative on food security. There’s a disconnect between what foods are needed for nourishment, what big agriculture profits from and what the farmers are actually growing. How can we align our goals so that food and nutritional needs are met? It is definitely encouraging to see experts from 60 countries coming together to find a solution to world health issues, but is it enough to spark real change? What if? More farmers used organic growing practices that naturally enhance crops nutrition. And… Food industry companies committed to less processing that depletes nutrients from foods. What are your ideas on solving this world health issue? Use your voice here and propose your own solution.
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Chances are that curry will cost you a good night's sleep. But does what and when you eat really affect the quality of your sleep?
That's what we're putting to the test.
The test
Our experiment has taken place at the Centre for Sleep Research at the University of South Australia where Professor Drew Dawson is Dean.
So what does he think about the idea that eating before bedtime will mess up your shuteye?
"It depends on what is in the meal and what time you eat that meal before you go to sleep," he says.
Let's put that to the test. Meet Phoebe, Kurt, Alex and Leigh — our sleeping partners in this test.
Their first task is dinner. Alex and Kurt tuck into their meal now (three hours before bedtime). Phoebe and Leigh get exactly the same dish but it's a take-away, which they'll have to wait for until just before going to bed.
At the lab, sleep technician Sarah Biggs gets all four wired up.
"First thing we're going to do is put an electrode right in the middle of [the] head which we call a reference electrode. That just helps us to read the signals from your brain activity," says Sarah.
This hard wiring feeds into computers that allow Sarah to monitor our volunteers as they sleep. It shows brain patterns, eye movements and even teeth grinding.
What about Phoebe and Leigh? They're both dying to get their hands on that takeaway.
"It's a little bit different to what I'd normally do. Normally I eat a few hours before I go to sleep — but we'll wait and see what happens in the morning I guess," says Leigh.
Dinner tastes great, but will it feel so good sitting on their stomach as they try to sleep? It's lights out for our four sleepyheads.
But Sarah's maintaining an all night vigil — she'll be recording every second of their sleep over the next eight hours and in the morning we'll find out if our late eaters got a worse night's sleep than our early eaters.
Results
The next morning …
How did they all sleep? Both our early eaters slept well but what about when it came to the late eaters?
Leigh: "I tossed and turned a lot, it took me a little while to get to sleep. Obviously I slept a bit because it went a bit faster than I thought but yeah not very well at all. Normally I sleep like a little baby so it was a bit of a change last night."
Phoebe: "I feel like I was tossing and turning all night and I've got to go to uni now so I'm probably not going to be performing at my best."
So, what part of the night's sleep did our late eaters miss out on?
There are five stages of sleep:
Deep sleep is when the body rests and repairs itself ready for another day. And that deep sleep is what our late eaters missed, especially in the early part of the night.
"They had a lot more awakenings and a lot more movement than the early eaters so they didn't actually get a lot of the deep sleep that is normally associated with the early hours of the night," says Sarah Biggs.
The results of our test are no surprise to Professor Drew Dawson.
"This is what we would expect based on what we've seen in the literature before," he says.
Dr Clare Collins, a lecturer in nutrition at the University of Newcastle, agrees. She says the body simply isn't designed to cope with a heavy load before sleep.
"If you have a really full stomach and you lie down, you're more likely to get a bit of reflux. You've got your digestion cranked up at full speed when your body should actually be relaxed, calm — more to help you get a really good night's sleep," she says.
Being hungry is as disruptive to sleep as being too full. A light snack one hour before bed can help fuel your body for rest. But not just any snack.
"The ideal mix of foods for a really good night's sleep are going to be some carbohydrate foods, preferably the wholegrain versions of those, and then some protein foods — but just a small amount. Now a really good example of that would be something like a banana with a glass of milk, a slice of toast with a small amount of cheese or turkey on top," says Dr Collins.
Why this combination of foods?
If we look at the milk and bananas combo, milk has amino acids. In the brain that's converted to serotonin — a calming hormone. Bananas have carbs. When you add carbs to the amino acids it boosts the serotonin levels in the brain. That's important because serotonin becomes melatonin — the hormone that triggers sleep.
Conclusion
So here are our top tips for a good night's sleep:
So if you don't want to be grumpy the next day, then give those late-night curries a miss — you'll thank us in the morning!
Fast facts
I'm a busy guy with a fair number of responsibilities, but I love my free time. Being absolutely unproductive, whether alone or with my wife, kids, and dog, at the beach or reading a book on the couch at two in the afternoon, is what makes life worth living. I imagine you're all pretty similar in that regard. It's what we're all looking for, after all -- to have gotten all the important stuff done so you can rest easy and simply be.
I've got enough work in my life to fill several, so when it comes to staying fit, healthy and strong, I'm not looking for a second job. I tried that for a couple decades as a marathoner and triathlete, and I was miserable (not to mention unhealthy and weak, but that's another article). I want the most bang for my buck. Yet when most people discuss fitness, they speak in terms of work. It's right there in the word: "workout." And since work is supposed to be hard and unpleasant, good workouts become long, dreary things, exercises in pain and suffering that you have to push through. No pain, no gain, right? It's all very Puritan. But is it true?
We certainly try to make exercise as unpleasant as possible. Consider how most of us work out. Jog for an hour (if we can muster up the will to do it), making sure to keep our heart rates at 80 percent of our max and jogging in place at stoplights (because stopping for even a second will halt the fat burning). Lift weights, using complex machines that isolate the most important body parts, like biceps, forearms and calves (you know, the ones that everyone can see), and subject our bodies to movement patterns they'd never face in real life.
Sure, our joints might hurt a bit and all that chronic cardio makes us gorge on pizza and ice cream, but that's just part of the deal. Sure, we dread working out, but that's normal -- exercise is supposed to be miserable, or else it ain't doing its job.
To decide whether the conventional advice regarding physical fitness is actually working, consider your average gym-goer. He or she is doing things the right way, putting in the time on the treadmill, hitting the separate body parts with resistance training, and yes, huffing and puffing and sweating, but with paltry results. Note the persistent belly fat, the magazine to keep the boredom away and the agony off the mind, and the sad eyes fixated on the television for digital escape. And that's just the person who actually goes to the gym. There's also the flood of newcomers every January who go a few times, maybe a few weeks, and never return. You know it's true; we've all noticed the New Year's gym influx and subsequent exodus. Something isn't working. There's something about the way we exercise that squanders results and makes people hate working out. It's both unsustainable and ineffective.
To figure out how to fix the problem, let's go back to the concept of work. What is effective work? Is it short and to the point or long and drawn-out? Who's the better worker -- the one who gets his report done in four hours working diligently or the one who takes seven hours to complete the same task? Obviously, to produce the same result in less time is of greater value for everyone involved; this is self-evident for schoolwork, physical labor, and the workplace, and yet when it comes to physical fitness we forget all about the concept of time economy. We confuse length with intensity, when the opposite is true: excessive quantity of exercise necessarily diminishes intensity, and thus quality, of exercise.
Workouts shouldn't be long and awful, then. They should either be hard and fast and even fun, or really long and leisurely. I always say that you should make your long, slow workouts even longer and slower and your short, fast workouts even shorter and faster. Don't jog for 45 minutes at a high heart rate, plodding along as you try for intensity but never really reach it, stressing your adrenals, and prompting the release of excess cortisol that in turn increases carb cravings, belly fat and muscle wasting; walk or hike, instead engaging in low level aerobic activity that slowly burns fat and, most importantly, makes exercise pleasurable and relaxing. Save your intensity for the truly short workouts where you can really push yourself.
Like sprinting. Sprint once in awhile. Once a week, run six sprints at top speed -- remember, a sprint is a max effort by definition -- with plenty of rest in between. Cut the sprint short when you start to slow. You're done in about five minutes, your body is sufficiently stimulated, and you will get fitter and faster. It's hard, yeah, but it's over before you know it. If you can't actually run, consider swimming, cycling, even crawling sprints, which work equally well.
Strength training doesn't require complex equipment or machinery, or even a gym membership. Consider the world your gym and your body the equipment with gravity providing the necessary resistance. Free weights are excellent tools, but they aren't required for basic fitness and strength development. And when you work your body, consider that it is a single thing comprised of many working parts that work together to move you through space. Full body movements, like squats, pushups, and pullups are the most effective, the safest, and provide the greatest transfer to real life movements, not isolated exercises that segregate muscles and joints.
We're all busy people with packed schedules and multiple responsibilities, but we owe it to ourselves to stay fit, healthy and happy. Luckily, by pairing intensity with brevity, and length with leisurely movement, we can achieve all three goals at once.
Mark Sisson is a former elite marathoner and triathlete. He is the author of the best-selling health and fitness book, "The Primal Blueprint", and publisher of the health blog, MarksDailyApple.com. Become a fan on Facebook and visit Mark's blog for daily health tips.
Until recently, I’d drifted away from grainy breakfasts, even though breakfast is a great time of day for whole grains — especially if you exercise first thing in the morning, as I do. Then I rediscovered steel-cut oats and homemade granola.
Each week this series will present recipes around a particular type of produce or a pantry item. This is food that is vibrant and light, full of nutrients but by no means ascetic, fun to cook and a pleasure to eat.
See previous recipes »Lately, I’ve begun making granola again. It only took one batch to hook my son, who takes a bag of it to school every day as a mid-morning snack. I was inspired by a nifty Web site called www.mixmygranola.com, where users can order up a custom mix of granola beginning with a crisp base of sweetened oats and rice. After selecting your base, you can choose from a wide selection of added dried fruits, nuts and “extras.” (Unfortunately there are some questionable options, like M&M’s and gummy bears, which negate the virtues of the healthy base). Then they send you the granola with your own customized label.
If you like hot cereal for breakfast and you’re not familiar with steel-cut oats, I urge you to try them. Also known as Irish or Scottish oatmeal, steel-cut oats are creamy and chewy at the same time. Since steel-cut oatmeal takes a while to cook and doesn’t really work in the microwave, I’ve been cooking up a pot one night a week, then heating it by the bowl in the morning.
If a bowl of cereal isn’t your thing, there are other ways to work whole grains into your breakfast. I add softened rolled oats to buttermilk pancakes and granola to muffins, which are handy if you are a grab-something-and-run sort of breakfast eater.
Granola
I used to make a rich holiday granola, but often it burned and stuck to the baking sheets. One of the reasons: I used wheat germ, which browns more quickly than oats.
Now I keep the heat low in my oven and line my backing sheets with parchment. Be sure to stir the granola every 10 to 15 minutes, and switch the trays from top to bottom each time you stir. If you want to make a smaller amount, you can halve this recipe.
6 cups flaked or rolled oats
2 cups oat bran
1/2 cup flax seeds, coarsely ground
1/2 cup coconut, flaked or shaved (optional)
1 cup chopped nuts (I recommend almonds and pecans)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (to taste)
2 to 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon (to taste)
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup mild honey, such as clover
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 to 2 cups raisins (optional)
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Toss together all of the dry ingredients except the raisins in a very large bowl. Combine the oil, honey and vanilla in a saucepan or in a measuring cup, and warm over low heat or heat at 50 percent power in a microwave. Do not let the mixture come to a simmer. Stir into the dry ingredients. Stir to coat evenly.
2. Spread the granola mixture on the sheet pans, and bake for about 45 minutes to one hour until golden, stirring every 10 to 15 minutes and switching the pans from lower to middle racks. Remove from the heat, stir in the raisins if using, and allow to cool on the pans. Store in well sealed jars, bags or containers.
Yield: Makes about 2 1/2 quarts.
Advance preparation: This will keep well for several weeks in the freezer.
A previous version of this recipe described oats as gluten-free. In fact, while oats do not contain gluten, it may be added during processing. The reference has been deleted.
Martha Rose Shulman can be reached at martha-rose-shulman.com.