Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
 Our quinoa is just what has been grown in heirloom varieties for centuries, and we're not even sure what varieties we have. There are about 106 different quinoa varieties in the world, and ours has quite a few different varieties, so you'll see different colors in it. It has a more intense flavor because of that, too. Plus, it won a Slow Food Award two years ago for biodiversity. We're trying to keep many of the varieties to create biodiversity and have more plants available, because they all have various benefits.
Mike: Let me ask you a couple of other questions on a different track. |
David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes
See book keywords and concepts |
 Types of Ginseng
Asian ginseng comes in many forms and varieties. There are several varieties of white and red ginseng. Dried, uncured white ginseng is known as sheng shai shen. Red ginseng is steamed and is much warmer (more stimulating) than uncured ginseng. It is known as hong shen. Ginseng tails or rootlets are a cheap but weaker substitute for the root.
White ginseng is cooler than red ginseng, and most white ginseng roots are five to seven years old when they are harvested for use. One special type of white ginseng is yi-sun ginseng; it is of very high quality and quite expensive. |
Michael J. Panzner
See book keywords and concepts |
 But there are many other varieties of derivatives, some involving factors and contingencies that are not as readily explained. The pricing of options, for example, is influenced by the time remaining until maturity, interest rates, and investor expectations about how volatile markets will be. Some varieties include complicated derivatives that depend on other derivatives for their value. Most of the synthetically created securities that many firms hold in sizable portfolios cannot be understood, let alone managed, without relying on complicated formulas and powerful computers. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| There are about 106 different quinoa varieties in the world, and ours has quite a few different varieties, so you'll see different colors in it. It has a more intense flavor because of that, too. Plus, it won a Slow Food Award two years ago for biodiversity. We're trying to keep many of the varieties to create biodiversity and have more plants available, because they all have various benefits.
Mike: Let me ask you a couple of other questions on a different track. Let's talk about people who have not tried quinoa yet. They're thinking, "Okay, this is an ancient grain. |
Michael Pollan
See book keywords and concepts |
 Thousands of plant and animal varieties have fallen out of commerce in the last century as industrial agriculture has focused its attentions on a small handful of high-yielding (and usually patented) varieties, with qualities that suited them to things like mechanical harvesting and processing. Half of all the broccoli grown commercially in America today is a single variety—Marathon—notable for its high yield. The overwhelming majority of the chickens raised for meat in America are the same hybrid, the Cornish cross; more than 99 percent of the turkeys are Broad-Breasted Whites. |
| Halweil cites several studies demonstrating that when older crop varieties are grown side by side with modern cultivars, the older ones typically have lower yields but substantially higher nutrient levels. USDA researchers recently found that breeding to "improve" wheat varieties over the past 13 0 years (a period during which yields of grain per acre tripled) had reduced levels of iron by 28 percent and zinc and selenium by roughly a third. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
See book keywords and concepts |
 Although green tea, black tea, and oolong tea are all derived from the single plant species Camellia sinensis, there are two major varieties of the tea plant: sinensis and assamica. The varieties are distinguished on the basis of leaf size. The sinensis variety has leaves five to twelve centimeters long, while the leaves of the assamica variety may measure up to twenty centimeters in length.
Tea is a hardy plant that grows best at higher altitudes with plenty of warm, rainy weather. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
See article keywords and concepts |
| There are about 106 different quinoa varieties in the world, and ours has quite a few different varieties, so you'll see different colors in it. It has a more intense flavor because of that, too. Plus, it won a Slow Food Award two years ago for biodiversity. We're trying to keep many of the varieties to create biodiversity and have more plants available, because they all have various benefits.
Mike: Let me ask you a couple of other questions on a different track. Let's talk about people who have not tried quinoa yet. They're thinking, "Okay, this is an ancient grain. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
See book keywords and concepts |
 Winter squash is higher in carbohydrate content than summer squash, and there are some specific differences among the winter varieties. Acorn squash is a fiber heavyweight—1 cup of cooked acorn squash gives you 9 g of fiber, which makes it one of the highest-fiber foods in this book, especially calorie for calorie (1 cup of acorn has 115 calories). It also has a whopping 896 mg of potassium and almost 2 mg of iron. Spaghetti squash, on the other hand, has almost no calories (42 calories per cup!) but also less fiber (2.2. mg) and a lot less potassium and vitamin A. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
See book keywords and concepts |
| However, pregnant women and women whose premenstrual syndrome or fibrocystic breast disease worsens after caffeine ingestion will want to choose decaffeinated varieties of green tea or caffeine-free green tea supplements.
CHAPTER 10
A Cup a Day Keeps the Dentist Away
Few parts of the body play such a variety of roles in everyday living as your mouth and teeth do. They are important for expressing yourself through speaking, singing, and smiling, but in a function even more basic to sustaining health, the teeth and mouth are responsible for the first phase of digesting food. |
| Department of Food Science and the Center for Advanced Food Technology at Rutgers University, recently compared the free-radical-fighting ability of twelve different teas, including several varieties of green, oolong, and black teas. The results were consistent with those from other studies: Dr. Ho found that green tea had the highest yields of polyphenols—particularly for EGCG. Oolong tea was in the middle, and black tea (as a result of its auto-oxidation process) had the lowest polyphenol yield.12
Is the body able to absorb and use the high levels of polyphenols that green tea contains? |
Gabriel Cousens
See book keywords and concepts |
 Sea Vegetables
People all over the world have been eating sea vegetables (known gener-ically as seaweed) for thousands of years. Four varieties of sea vegetables have been found preserved in Japanese burial grounds that were 10,000 years old. The Australian Aborigines use three different types of sea vegetables. The Native Americans include alaria (wakame-like), nori (laver), and kelp in their traditional diets. The Atlantic coastal people of Scandinavia, France, and the British Isles also have been eating sea vegetables for centuries. |
Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, ND, DACBN
See book keywords and concepts |
| Use organic varieties only.
• Zucchini and yellow squash are now being genetically modified for color and size. Use organic or locally grown sources.
• Avoid all products containing Aspartame as it is genetically modified and extremely toxic.
• Most meat and dairy products come from animals fed genetically modified feed. Buy organic, range fed, hormone and antibiotic-free meat and dairy products.
• Become politically active! Send letters to grocery chain executives and talk to the store managers at your local supermarkets. |
David R. Montgomery
See book keywords and concepts |
 Increased harvests stemmed from development of high-yield "miracle" varieties of wheat and rice capable of producing two or three harvests a year, increased use of chemical fertilizers, and massive investments in irrigation infrastructure in developing nations. The introduction of fertilizer-responsive rice and wheat increased crop yields berween the 1950s and 1970s by more than 2 percenr a year.
Since then, however, growth in crop yields has slowed to a virtual standstill. The grear postwar increase in crop yields appears to be over. |
| New high-yield crop varieties incteased wheat and rice yields dramatically in the 1960s, but the greatet yields required more intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides. Between 1961 and 1984 fertilizer use increased more than tenfold in developing countries. Well-to-do farmers prospered while many peasants could not afford to join the tevolution.
The green revolution simultaneously created a lucrative global market for the chemicals on which modern agriculture depended and practically ensured that a country embarked on this path of dependency could not realistically change coutse. |
| If the high-yielding dwarf wheat and rice varieties are the catalysts that have ignited the Gteen Revolution, then chemical fertilizer is the fuel that has powered its forward thrust."9 In 1950 high-income countries in the developed world accounted for more than 90 percent of nitrogen fertilizer consumption; by the end of the century, low-income developing countries accounted for 66 percent.
In developing nations, colonial appropriation of the best land for export crops meant that increasingly intensive cultivation of marginal land was necessary to feed growing populations. |
| People began grinding maize into flour once high-yield varieties allowed the development of permanent settlements. The region supported a diffuse rural population until large towns emerged between 350 bc and ad 250. By then some parts of the Mayan world were already severely eroded, but in many areas the greatest soil erosion—and evidence for soil conservation efforts—date from about ad 600—900. The subsequent lack of artifacts has been interpreted to show a dramatic population decline (or dispersal) as Mayan society crumbled and the jungle reclaimed Tikal and its rivals. |
| Although this ease of cultivation suggests that agriculture could have originared many times in many places, genetic analyses show that modern strains of wheat, peas, and lentils all came from a small sample of wild varieties. Domestication of plants fundamental to our modern diet occurred in just a few places and times when people began to more intensively exploit what had until then been secondary resources.
The earliesr known semiagricultural people lived on the slopes of the Zagros Mountains between Iraq and Iran about 11,000 to 9000 bc (or thirteen thousand to eleven thousand years ago). |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
See book keywords and concepts |
| In descending order, the major tea grades are:
Broken Orange Pekoe
Broken Pekoe Souchong Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings Dust
Besides the various grades of tea, there are many varieties of tea from which you can choose, based on your personal taste. Try several to determine which suit your taste.
Gunpowder
When this type of green tea is processed, each leaf is rolled tightly into a pellet shape, which then unfurls when boiling water is poured over it. |
Brigitte Mars, A.H.G.
See book keywords and concepts |
 Range and Appearance
Native to the Americas, cayenne has many varieties, which can grow as annuals or perennials and as small herbs or small shrubs. The plant features simple five-lobed leaves and usually white flowers. The fruit is long, twisting, and red to orange-red. In the garden cayenne enjoys full sun and can tolerate dry conditions.
CELERY
Botanical Name
Apium graveolens
Family
Apiaceae (Parsley Family) Etymology
The genus name, Apium, is thought to derive from the Latin apis, "bee," as bees relish this plant. |
Bottom Line Health
See book keywords and concepts |
| For produce, choose organic varieties if you're buying one of the items found by the Environmental Working Group (a nonprofit group of researchers who investigate environmental health threats) to be among the most contaminated (see chart on page 293).
If you must buy nonorganic, choose produce that is least likely to be contaminated. Wash the nonorganic produce vigorously under running water to remove as much potentially harmful residue as possible. (Organic produce also should be washed. |
Brigitte Mars, A.H.G.
See book keywords and concepts |
| Range and Appearance
Most horsetail varieties are perennials, though some are annuals. The plant grows in damp acidic soil areas near streams, ditches, and roadsides; it is native to Eurasia, Africa, and North America. In early spring the hollow stems rise to a height of 2 to 3 feet; they are unbranched and look like multijointed bamboo. At the top of some plants is a conelike strobile, where the reproductive spores are produced. Horsetails bearing a cone are considered fertile; those without are infertile. |
| Although the root is the primary medicinal component of the plant, the leaves of both varieties can be used to treat hangover and fever.
When to Take Ginseng
For best effect, take ginseng between meals rather than with food. It is best not to take ginseng at night, as it could impair sleep.
Edible Uses
The root is edible when soaked or cooked if dried; it is commonly added to soups and grain dishes. The root also makes a delicious and therapeutic candy. It also can be infused in liqueur or wine. |
| The milder American varieties (E. nevadensis, E. viridis) are more suitable for the treatment of allergies and asthma in children.
When combined with caffeine, ephedra has a thermogenic effect that helps metabolize fat and promote weight loss. However, use of ephedra can have many potential side effects (see "Contraindications," below), and there are many safer ways to lose weight.
In 1926 the German firm Merck synthesized ephedra's alkaloid, ephedrine, a chemical that is related to the endogenous brain hormone adrenaline. |
| Range and Appearance
There are three varieties of eclipta, all growing throughout the Himalayan foothills and wet areas of India: a white-flowering variety, a yellow-flowering variety, and a black-fruiting variety. Eclipta is an annual herb with a soft stem and numerous branches. The leaves are opposite and covered on both sides with fuzzy hairs. When bruised the stems ooze a milky white fluid that soon turns black.
ELDER
Botanical Name
Sambucus canadensis, S. |
| The leaves are smooth and firm. Many varieties have spines. The fragrant, hermaphroditic, greenish yellow flowers are borne on cymes. The oblong or oval fruits become dark red to purplish black when ripe.
JUNIPER
Botanical Name
Juniperus communis
Family
Cupressaceae (Cypress Family) Etymology
The origin of the name is uncertain. The Latin name for the plant, juniperus, may derive from an earlier Celtic term; it may also derive from the Latin iuveni-parus, "early bearing." The species name communis is Latin for "common. |
David W. Grotto, RD, LDN
See book keywords and concepts |
 A study that reviewed twenty-seven varieties of nuts and seeds found that the sunflower kernel was one of the richest in phy-tosterols, substances known to fight heart disease and prostate cancer.
Throw Me a Lifesaver!
CANCER: An in vivo study using mice with stage-two skin cancer found that sunflower oil reduced papillomas in the mice by twenty to forty percent.
CHOLESTEROL: A double-blind, randomized, controlled human study found that those given diets containing mid-oleic sunflower oil had a decrease in both total and low-density lipoprotein (LDL or "bad") cholesterol. |
| Whole grain rice also comes in black, red, and purple varieties.
A Serving of Food Lore...
Rice is the most consumed grain in the world and is grown on every continent except for Antarctica. It has been part of the staple diet in Eastern countries for thousands of years. Recordings of rice consumption date back some 5,000 years ago in China. Rice arrived in Egypt in the fourth century b.c. and around that time India was exporting it to Greece and throughout Europe and eventually to the United States. Rice production has been part of U.S. agriculture since the late seventeenth century. |
Email this page to a friend
