Wheat farmers, advocates of food safety, and pretty much anyone who eats bread or noodles have turned their attention to Oregon, where a wheat farmer found a genetically engineered strain of wheat in his otherwise unmodified crop. He couldn’t kill it in any of the normal ways, so he sent it to the lab for testing, which sounds like the set-up for a farm-belt horror movie. The reality has caused alarm of a different sort: Genetically modified wheat hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and unlike corn and soy and other so-called GMO foods, there isn’t supposed to be any genetically modified wheat in the U.S. food supply at all

Like other vegetables of the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts etc), radishes contain two natural compounds, sulforaphane and indole-3, which in animal and lab studies have shown an anti-cancer action. It is thought that these antioxidant substances may slow or stop the growth of several different types of cancer, possibly by prompting the body to make higher levels of detoxifying enzymes. Since we generally eat radishes raw, we benefit from this nutritional benefit as these compounds are depleted by cooking. Radishes also give you a significant amount of vitamin C to boost your defences against disease

“Prolonged sitting is not what nature intended for us,” says Dr. Camelia Davtyan, clinical professor of medicine and director of women’s health at the UCLA Comprehensive Health Program. “The chair is out to kill us,” says James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine.

Wild dandelions, once a springtime treat for Native Americans, have seven times more phytonutrients than spinach, which we consider a “superfood.” A purple potato native to Peru has 28 times more cancer-fighting anthocyanins than common russet potatoes. One species of apple has a staggering 100 times more phytonutrients than the Golden Delicious displayed in our supermarkets.

Were the people who foraged for these wild foods healthier than we are today? They did not live nearly as long as we do, but growing evidence suggests that they were much less likely to die from degenerative diseases, even the minority who lived 70 years and more. The primary cause of death for most adults, according to anthropologists, was injury and infections.

Excellent article. 

When you need lemon juice for a recipe, nothing beats fresh-squeezed, but it’s always a struggle to coax a lot of juice out of the fruit. As it turns out, the secret is to cut the lemon lengthwise.