Of course most
are simply because of superior adaptation.
There is a wide range of palatable plants that can be made cover into palatable
food with a little effort though I do caution that it is hard not to be dissuaded
by first time failures. Youth also
matters. It is hard to imagine making
something out of maturing ragweed or maturing corn for that matter, but
youthful ragweed is lambs quarters which should be on everyone’s menu.
As the author
mentions, it is high time these products did find their way into grocery
stores. Perhaps it is happening. Believe me, farmers have been tapping this
forever.
I personally
think that lambs quarters are a perfect prospect for sprouting and should be
sold that way.
Are Weeds
Healthier Than Farmed Veggies?
Here's why you might consider replacing that romaine
salad with dandelion greens.
—By Tom Philpott
| Wed Sep. 4, 2013
When I moved to a small organic farm in the
mountains of North Carolina, I quickly got hooked on weeds (note plural).
Chickweed popped up soon after the ground thawed in
spring, giving us a vibrant, grassy-tasting salad weeks before the first
cultivated greens were ready. Not long after, tender, peppery watercress
sprouted in the marshy banks of the creek—a real delicacy, and one prized by
our chef customers. By midsummer, my favorite weeds of all would emerge from
plowed fields: a high-rising, spinach-related green called lamb's-quarters, and
a low-slung, creeping plant called purslane, with its succulent, lemony leaves.
We never found much of a market for these
delicacies, save for the watercress. But they became staples of the farmhouse
kitchen. Now that I spend more of my time off the farm and in a city, one of
the things I miss most is easy access to these pungent wild foods.
Turns out the void I'm feeling may be more than
aesthetic. According to author Jo Robinson's recent book Eating on the
Wild Side, the same wild edible plants that we call weeds tend to be loaded
with phytonutrients—the "arsenal of chemicals" that plants synthesize
to fend off "insects, disease, damaging ultra-violet light, inclement
weather, and browsing animals." Phytochemicals ("phyto" means
"plant" in Greek) are essentially the plant kingdom's survival
strategy—a passive-aggressive tool for living creatures that can't flee
predators, disease, or bad weather.
Recent studies suggest that eating phytonutrients
helps humans fend off four of what Robinson calls "our modern
scourges": cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dementia. In a
peer-reviewed paper last year, Finnish researchers found that lycopene—the
stuff that makes tomatoes and watermelons red—seems to dramatically reduce
stroke incidence in males. In 2011, British researchers determined that a
compound called indole-3-carbinol, found in cruciferous vegetables like
broccoli, cabbage, and turnips, boosts the immune system and helps maintain
intestinal health. Resveratrol, the stuff grapes produce to fight off fungal
pathogens, appears to have a host of benefits for humans, including protecting
our brains from damage after a stroke, a 2012 study by Chinese researchers
suggested.
As Cornell food science professor Rui Hai Liu put it
in a 2004 paper, phytonutrients are "best acquired through whole-food
consumption, not from expensive dietary supplements." The problem is that
the foods that contain more of them tend to be bitter, not sweet. And according
to Robinson, humanity's 10,000-year agricultural adventure has been all about
breeding away bitterness and selecting for sweetness, starchiness, and fat—and
thus has been a kind of millennia-long war against the very nutrients that made
early humans the healthy, vibrant creatures capable of inventing agriculture in
the first place. As a result, she writes, "the more palatable our fruits
and vegetables became…the less advantageous they were for our health."
It's not that common supermarket varieties don't contain phytonutrients—it's
just that, Robinson shows, they have many fewer than their wild ancestors and
other plants (like my beloved weeds) that haven't been subjected to thousands
of years of selective breeding.
Luckily, we haven't forgotten about weeds entirely.
They play a role in some of the globe's most celebrated cuisines. I wouldn't
want to imagine Mexico's street food without tlacoyos con quelites (grilled
corn cakes with lamb's-quarters) or Italy without ravioli d'ortica (pasta
stuffed with stinging nettles). And some cultivated vegetable varieties remain
genetically close to their wild progenitors—and are thus flush with
phytonutrients. Take arugula: Until very recently, the slightly bitter green
was considered a weed, and the kind sold in supermarkets is still "very
similar to its wild ancestor," Robinson notes. It's also rich in a
cancer-fighting class of phytonutrients called glucosinolates. Robinson also
points to herbs, which much more closely resemble their wild antecedents than
do, say, modern apples or tomatoes or corn. "We've long valued them for
their intense flavors and aroma, which is why they've not been given a flavor
makeover," she writes. "Because we've left them well enough alone,
their phytonutrient content has remained intact."
One of the unsung benefits of the explosion of
farmers markets and CSAs over the past decade is that it has given more people
access to produce bred for things besides just sweetness, shelf life, and
portability. We might not sell much in the way of wild greens at the North
Carolina farm I'm involved with, but we can never grow enough of our famously
spicy arugula to satisfy demand. And like many farms that sell to neighboring
communities, we favor tomato varieties that balance sweetness with acidity—and
may well deliver an extra jolt of phytonutrients because of it. We're not
alone: These days, "weeds" like purslane are beginning to appear at
farmers markets and on trendy restaurant menus.
The first thing I did after reading Robinson's book?
I contacted my colleagues back on the farm, to suggest that it might be time to
try marketing chickweed and lamb's-quarters again.
No comments:
Post a Comment