Dear Mary-Howell, et. al.,
I glad to see someone finally hitting on something important in this
discussion.
It is of little value to know whether an organic or biodynamic vegetable or
fruit has more calcium, iron, copper, manganese, boron etc. in it than
another conventionally grown item. What form is the mineral in? Is it
present as a salt? Or is it incorporated into an enzyme, hormone, vitamin
or other complex organic form?
For over 15 years I've been saying that the real issue is how much vitality
is in the food and my utterances seem to bring stone deaf silence in their
wake nearly every time.
Most of the organic industry is focused on keeping noxious materials OUT of
the food. There is very little concern about vitality. Yet the two are
related. Care to consider how?
Virtually all of the contaminants that can or do poison food have a
disorganizing effect on the chemistry of the food. Chlorinated hydrocarbon
poisons like DDT, DES, TCDD, DBCP, etc. or the organophosphate poisons like
glyphosate and malathion disrupt the living chemistry of the plant and
ultimately whatever comes in contact with it IN MUCH THE SAME FASHION AS
GAMMA RADIATION DOES. For this reason they are sometimes called
RADIOMIMETIC (they mimic radioactivity) chemicals. TCDD (commonly known as
dioxin) is one of the worst of these and is a contaminant in many other
chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds. One might as well dust things with
radioactive waste as the effects on biological organisms is similar in its
disruptive effects.
I know it is not the same as. Many poisonous chemicals are more specific in
their reactions than gamma radiation. For example DDT mimics the effects of
estrogen resulting in biological male organisms exhibiting female
characteristics along with loss of their male ones. But even so the effects
disorganize the chemistry of the organisms that come in contact with them
What is a living organism? It is organized. The degree to which it is
organized is a measure of its vitality and life force. We don't eat food
for how much calcium or iron it contains. We eat it for the complexity of
its organisation of these things. The hemoglobin in our blood is a complex
organic chemical with iron at its core. That's the form we need iron in,
not iron chloride or iron nitrate. The apatite in our tooth enamel is a
highly organized combination of calcium, silica and carbon forms. If all we
do is eat dolomite tablets we won't do much to build strong teeth because
we won't be taking in the level of complexity, the organizational level
necessary to build strong teeth. The body chemistry would have to do too
much transformation from simple salts to complex organic forms to get there
and where is it to get the forces to do this? So the degree to which our
foods are highly developed in their organizational complexity is the degree
to which they do us good when we eat them.
It is possible to analyse both the crude protein content of a vegetable and
also run an assay of its actual proteins and amino acids. The crude protein
test is in reality not a test of protein but a test of all nitrogen
compounds, many of which may be crude forms such as ammonium, amines,
amides, nitrites or nitrates. Foods grown with nitrogen salt fertilizers
are notorious for being loaded with such salts. For example, baby food
formulations of spinach have a bad history of containing enough nitrates
that they are harmful to babies if they are eaten. Of course, most babies
try to spit them out when they are served as the taste is awful.
We don't really have to go to a chemical laboratory to determine food
quality. There is no way a vegetable, fruit or herb is going to have
delicious, savory characteristics if it is not highly organized in its
chemistry. Many organic growers know that the brix readings of plant juices
are a good test for how well organized the plant chemistry is, but you know
what? You can taste the plant juices and get a pretty good idea of its
sugar content. As the professor in my first chemistry course, second class
meeting, in my biochemistry cirriculum said, "You have two of the best
methods of chemical analysis that you carry around with you at all times.
Taste and smell."
When I worked in a vegetarian restaurant in Montreal there was about a
month where we got case after case of bartlet pears from a grower in the
Frazer River valley out in western British Columbia. These were commercial
pears but Wow! what flavor! Far, far out of the ordinary. We gorged
ourselves on those things, and the zing of their vitality was something
that reached to the fingertips and made the morning meditations crackle
with energy.
I was a produce buyer for local stores and restaurants and used to shop the
Atlanta Farmers' Market in Forest Park every week. I tasted everything
before buying for my customers and there was one canteloupe grower that
always had by far the tastiest canteloupes. Finally I asked him to share
his secret with me, another farmer. "Most of these growers pour the
nitrogen to their melons in order to get big size." he said. "I'm a soybean
farmer with 300 acres in soybeans and I rotate my melons to use the
nitrogen the soybeans fix. What makes the sugar in the canteloupes is
potash, and I pour the potash (as sulpomag) to my melons to get a sweet
melon, which ends up building the fertility for my soybeans."
Gosh! A savvy conventional farmer! He sure had the sweetest most aromatic
melons. No way of faking it. And what was more he was using a beneficial
form of potash instead of the usual muriate of potash that has so much
chlorine in it it sterilizes the soil. Sulpomag leaves the microorganisms
alive in the soil and they soak up the potash so it doesn't wash away. On
this guy's sandy soils in south Georgia if he put muriate on it washed away
in the first heavy rains and was gone. He paid a little extra for the
sulfate of magnesia and potassium because it was what worked. And his
nitrogen was in the form of complex aminos from the soybean rotation! These
were canteloupes that tasted wonderful and, yes, they made you feel good
when you ate them. They also kept longer when ripe. All the chemical
analysis you needed to know this was in the nose and the mouth, not in the
laboratory. It is doubtful you would have known as much about the quality
of his melons if you had gone through a $500 or even a $1,000 analysis.
There is such a great infatuation with laboratory analyses and putting
numbers on things. But it is nowhere near as revealing as most folks
assume. Rather, it is a rip-off. When you see organic vegetables in the
store and you buy them and they taste awful--discard them. The farmer may
have been certified and may not have used poisons on his crop, but his
final product does not have what you need in it. It is not highly
organized. It is not vitally alive. Maybe his soil's nitrogen was oxidized
all the way to the nitrates, which you don't need a chemical laboratory to
tell. Just taste it. That bitter nitrogen salt flavor can't be masked, and
it is REALLY apparant when you cook something loaded with nitrogen salts.
Chlorine salts are a little harder to detect, but their effects can deaden
food too. You know what makes a hot pepper so hot? Hydrochloric acid. If
all the pepper is is hot without other aromatic flavors then all you are
getting is a bunch of HCl. It would be helpful if people had an education
in what the things they taste and smell mean in terms of food chemistry
because if they did it could mean a lot in terms of eating the most vital
foods. As a gourmet chef and a biodynamic grower I know. As a former
chemist I also know. I believe if you take what I'm saying to heart you
will also know.
It is really funny that people commonly don't trust their own authority on
things. Instead they look to the authority of others. They want a
laboratory analysis on a sheet of paper before they can believe something.
Why is that? It's pretty wierd in my book.
Best wishes,
Hugh Lovel, Director
Union Agricultural Institute
Blairsville, Georgia
Mary-Howell writes:
>Sanet folks -
>
>As I follow the discussions on nutrient status of organic vs.
>conventional foods (much discussion based on very little information!), I
>feel that one very critical aspect is not being addressed - and maybe
>that is because it has not been studied, though I find that hard to
>believe.
>
>I think that simply knowing the absolute quantity of chemical elements in
>a food sample isn't particularly revealing if we don't know what
>molecules those elements are part of in the food product.
>
>- That is, are the higher levels of nitrogen (or calcium, magnesium,
>sulfur etc) found in organic foods incorporated into proteins, enzymes,
>sugars, characteristic flavor molecules like organic acids, esters, in
>other secondary metabolites? How does this affect those important
>characteristics that we humans detect as 'quality'.
>
>- Does anyone have research correlations between soil chemistry with
>plant biochemistry/physiology with food quality (flavor, storage,
>nutrition)?
>
>Do you know of researchers who might be able to contribute pieces to this
>puzzle - what are the complex organic molecules that constitute
>characteristic flavors or other quality components? Are higher levels of
>these molecules generally synthesized in plants testing high overall in
>certain chemical elements? What effect do soil conditions (chemical,
>biological, physical) have on this synthesis?
>
>Thanks for your collective input! Mary-Howell Martens
>
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