This blog is about the intersection between evolutionary biology and food. But also about practical applications, sustainable agriculture, and general tasty things. I originally started eating this way to heal from chronic health problems and...it worked!
Melissa McEwen
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rice
09/08/2011 - 22:02
Last month someone posted saying asking if I might have issues with anxiety/depression that might really be at the root of my stomach problems rather than diet. It's interesting because I once thought that to be the case, but if it was I seem to have de-coupled the issues. When I first started getting healthy, my main goal was to be stable enough health-wise to study abroad, a goal I met and indeed I did study for a year in Uppsala. But even there when I was stressed I would get stomach issues.
The past few weeks have been rough personally, but the amazing thing is that my problems have not been compounded by severe stomach issues like they were in the past. I think that while I have had other troubles, I am thrilled to have a achieved a degree of resiliency that I didn't think was possible for myself. I think the things that have gotten me through this time are utilizing simple gentle cooking methods. I told myself that it's OK to not eat perfectly, but that's not an excuse to survive on ice cream.
I was very grateful that I have a bag of Haiga rice. It is more expensive that normal rice, but it is more nutritious that white or brown rice. It has more of the rice germ, but not the hull. So it's digestible without being soaked.
In my experience I need very little of this to be full. I make it in my handy rice cooker. I first learned about rice cookers when I lived in grad student housing that provided me with a large private room...but no kitchen. Most of the other people there were exchange students from Taiwan, China, and Korea. They all had rice cookers. You can cook great meals with just an electrical outlet at your disposal. It's important to get one with a steamer to make your meal complete. In the past when I was grain-free I boiled roots in the rice container, but now I just put in some haiga rice. In the steamer you can put all kinds of things. Most roots and vegetables steam well. You can also steam sausage, fish, and Korean egg custard (I just put the custard in a dish and put the dish in the middle of the steamer). I love steaming sausage because it usually bursts a little and drips on top of the rice. I have also made a few other random things in the steamer like bucket dumplings and idlis.
I can't give you a recipe for a buckwheat dumplings, because I made mine up. I first had such a thing when I was at Himalayan Yak. They told me not to order the buckwheat thing (maybe it wasn't even a dumpling) because it was not something Westerners liked, but I don't know what they were talking about because it was delicious. They served it with TONS of butter and a stew of some sort made with goat liver and heart. If anyone knows what this is called I would be grateful :) It's not on their normal menu. Either way, if you can make it into a ball, you can steam it. I usually soak the locally grown buckwheat flour overnight in some water and it works OK. The butter is required :) I'm fascinated by the diversity of cuisines in Nepal...seems like there are at least five different regional cuisines.
I just put the stuff in, flip the switch, and go do other things. When I'm done I mix it all together and add random stuff like pickled vegetables, chutney, sambal oelek, seaweed, and raw egg yolks.
Also, of course I use my slow cooker. I find that Korean recipes work really well in a slow cooker and I get a lot of ideas at local Korean places. They are some of the few restaurants in the city where they still make bone stocks and cook meat on the bone. I've had old Bulgarian ladies tell me their MSG-laden bouillon is "traditional," but the Koreans know better. You can't make something like Seolleongtang without real bone stock. It's made with ox bones that are boiled for hours and hours. Properly, they should be boiled for days.
While I am not going to live in NYC much longer, I'm very grateful for the diversity and how it has inspired me to learn and develop ways of eating that are as resilient as the cultures they came from. Thanks to the internet, I really don't need to live here to enjoy such food anyway....
08/20/2011 - 19:56
Grains are evil. The people in the paleolithic didn't eat them. Amirite? Unfortunately, that hypothesis is contradicted by archeological evidence, but now there is genetic evidence that rice may have been domesticated earlier than thought.
Asian rice, Oryza sativa, is one of world's oldest and most important crop species. Rice is believed to have been domesticated ∼9,000 y ago, although debate on its origin remains contentious. A single-origin model suggests that two main subspecies of Asian rice, indica and japonica, were domesticated from the wild rice O. rufipogon. In contrast, the multiple independent domestication model proposes that these two major rice types were domesticated separately and in different parts of the species range of wild rice. This latter view has gained much support from the observation of strong genetic differentiation between indica and japonica as well as several phylogenetic studies of rice domestication. We reexamine the evolutionary history of domesticated rice by resequencing 630 gene fragments on chromosomes 8, 10, and 12 from a diverse set of wild and domesticated rice accessions. Using patterns of SNPs, we identify 20 putative selective sweeps on these chromosomes in cultivated rice. Demographic modeling based on these SNP data and a diffusion-based approach provide the strongest support for a single domestication origin of rice. Bayesian phylogenetic analyses implementing the multispecies coalescent and using previously published phylogenetic sequence datasets also point to a single origin of Asian domesticated rice. Finally, we date the origin of domestication at ∼8,200–13,500 y ago, depending on the molecular clock estimate that is used, which is consistent with known archaeological data that suggests rice was first cultivated at around this time in the Yangtze Valley of China.
13,500 is older than what many people consider to be the end of the paleolithic, though many consider the paleolithic era to be relative to the region and would characterize a culture eating rice 13,500 years ago to be mesolithic.
The molecular clock also has its share of controversy, as it is based on statistical modeling, but no more than other evidence we have used to build the concept of the paleolithic diet.
I have written about my success with rice and hope to write more about it soon. Maybe I should just start calling my diet the mesolithic diet...
03/18/2011 - 17:55
Living in Queens, one of the most diverse counties in the nation, I have been able to experience many interesting traditional cuisines. But I'd also been able to observe people losing their traditions without even really noticing. There are two examples that come to mind, both involving fermented rice. One is the Indian Idli, which Stephan has blogged about.
The spicy coconut chutney in the middle and the sambar soup are SO DELICIOUS.
The other is the Filipino Puto.
SO chewy and delicious with butter!
If you go to the market and ask a random elder woman of each culture who she makes these dishes, you will probably get wildly divergent answers. Some women still ferment the rice, but a lot of them are using modern ingredients. For both you can now buy batter mix with leavening agents so you don't have to ferment at all. Some people also now add wheat flour to these dishes. I'd had 70 year old women tell me that baking powder is the traditional way to make idli.
It's a shame because fermentation produces a rich flavor that can't be compared to those made with mixes. It's very possible that the fermented versions also have some health benefits. Though probiotic bacteria are probably killed during the steaming process and white rice doesn't have many anti-nutrients, they may endow the rice with more vitamins. Idli probably has more benefits because it also contains skinless urad dal, which has some antinutrients and lectins, though much less than the skinned version.
A dosa is the pancake version of the idli. THere have been some studies on the fermented batter. "They produced flavour, enzymes and helped in the saccharification of starch. Both bacteria and yeasts were contributed by the ingredients Oryza sativa and Phaseolus mungo. The prevalence of bacteria and yeasts was affected by seasonal variations but bacteria always dominated the overall microbial load."
There is also some evidence that fermented rice improves cholesterol markers and reduces fatigue in animals. though these studies have used more grainy fermented rice like red rice or brown rice. I've had very good results with fermented white rice, but a lot of the fermented brown rice products make me feel somewhat ill. However, some of them, like the health food store drink Amazake, contain considerable amount of sugar which could confound things.
01/08/2011 - 23:33
Reader Matthew sent me this radio piece about Slow Food's Terra Madre convention. It features some cultures I am very interested. One is the Scottish Crofters and bonus points for mentioning the Highland Clearances, which forced many crofters from their home, often cruelly. One of those people was Jemima Campbell, one of my ancestors. More and more my diet has come to resemble that of a crofter: grassfed lamb and beef with some horticultural crops.
Here is Julie Fowlis, one of my favorite Scots Gaelic singers:
Another people featured are the Sami (sometimes called the Lapps, but that is considered derogatory), a relatively little-known indigenous culture in the far-north of Scandinavia that once herded reindeer extensively. Some still practice this, though it is dying out for the same reason that cattle driving died out in the US: farmers don't want nomadic grazing animals invading their land, so they fence it off and sometimes kill the animals. I was surprised at some of the negative attitudes against Sami I encountered from Swedish farmers. This story talks about how Sami eat dried reindeer meat as a snack to gain energy. I often bought reindeer meat in Sweden and it was excellent. I hope Sweden will realize the value of this to their nation's health and support these herders better.
I also really like Sami music. Here is one of my favorite Sami throat singers:
As I understand throat-singing may be an acquired taste, here is the more contemporary beautiful Sofia Jannok, who I met last year
As Prof Gumby (and I) say, modern indigenous people aren't paleolithic people, but they still have much to teach us. Why are they so healthy when eating their native diets? I think science should explore this, but I also think they deserve to have their livelihoods supported because they have cultural, social, and culinary value among other things. Hopefully increased appreciation fostered by Slow Food will allow them to find a way to sustainably share their food with the rest of the world.
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