It has been a number of months since Real Food Connections opened up their larger grocery store on Hanwell road, but the time has finally come ... it is time to party! Come out this Saturday between noon and 7pm to their grand opening and meet the gang that put together your veggie & grocery boxes each week. You can also chat with some of the local suppliers, sample some food, listen to live music and win some awesome prizes!!!!
Full details can be found here
https://www.facebook.com/events/276268665807252/
Now, before I finish the rest of this blog post I want to clear up something that a few people have asked me. Yes, I am VERY vocal in my support of RFC .. but I have absolutely NO financial interest in the company. On the contrary, I wish! :) I'm just a regular guy who is very passionate about real food, who happens to believe what RFC is doing aligns very closely with what I'd like to see the future look like.
Which brings me to the second point of this blog post, our food supply. This year has had its ups and down. On one side RFC has grown and it seems that new suppliers are coming online every week. It is great to see that we have such a lively economy and people are finding an outlet for their products. I'm not sure if it is just my friends have changed over the last couple years or not, but it also seems that everybody and their dog is participating in some sort of veggie box or grocery box program. I'm a big proponent of "voting with your dollar" so supporting local farmers is high on my list, but that is the subject of another blog post altogether (coming soon). Anyway, it seems that, at least in Fredericton and the surrounding area, we are heading on the right track.
However, as with everything, for every few steps forward, there is a step backwards. This summer was also marred by the presence of "Egg Gate 2012". Quick recap .. RFCs very popular egg program was shut down earlier this year when it was discovered (i.e. some cowardly soul reported them) that they were storing ungraded eggs in their fridge for pickup by customers who pre-purchased them from the farm (Hilltop Farms). The eggs were not being sold on their shelves, and everybody knew the eggs were ungraded and came from the farm, so there was no anonymity. Some people tried to frame it as a "health" issue, but that didn't add up since the farm could sell the eggs directly to the consumer if they had the means. No, the issue here was simply the storage .. some bureaucratic rule from another time .. meant to "protect us".
Yes folks, we live in an age and time where tomatoes grown in compost, and milk that hasn't been heated to within an inch of its life, is considered too dangerous to consume. Yet packaged goods with 30 ingredients, none of which you can pronounce, are perfectly legit.
I'm not sure about you, but that sort of pisses me off a bit. I'm sorry to Hilltop Farms that the program got closed down. I'm also sorry that they couldn't make a go of it afterward trying to sell the eggs from their truck outside RFC. This day and age people live hectic lives, and it is hard to find the time sometimes. This just highlights the need of what the original program did. But most of all, I'm sorry we let the issue die down without a fight. That is a mistake I plan to rectify, because I think the tipping point is coming and I know which side I want to be on. I plan to fight for real food, and my right to choose what I think is healthy. I don't plan to listen to "government experts", because most of them don't seem to know what the hell they are talking about. If you support real food and feel the need to fight for it, let me know. When the time comes we'll need all the voices we can muster.
In the meantime, I plan on supporting businesses like RFC all I can. To me, Levi has proved that there is a demand for real, unprocessed food in this province, and there is enough to go around, so far. I think we will need more farmers as the demand grows. I also think the RFC model needs to be adopted elsewhere in this province. We have a very special province here, and we need to get back to basics and utilize the land we have in a sustainable manner. Right now NB seems to be doing two things well, IT startups and real food. We seem to be doing a good job of incubating small IT companies, I think maybe we need to start incubating real food based businesses.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Some Egg (Dietary) Facts
Some folks have been a bit surprised that we (as a family) go through 3 to 4 dozen eggs a week. Maybe the surprise is just from the large consumption of a single item, or maybe it is because eggs have gotten a bad wrap, or maybe both. To the former, I just really like eggs. Eggs are tasty and highly portable and a breeze to cook when you are in a hurry. They are also very nutritious! Some weeks I consume a lot less just because I want to try something new, but generally this is the norm.
"What?", you say. Aren't they high in fat and cholesterol .. sure .. but read on.
So as to the cholesterol issue, sure eggs contain a decent amount of cholesterol. However cholesterol is an important nutrient in your body. It is a precursor to various hormones (especially sex hormones) as well as being vital to cellular repair. It is so important that every cell in your body has the ability to produce it by itself. Your body will also vary the amount of cholesterol it produces based the amount of dietary (i.e. exogenous) cholesterol you consume!
Other than a specific portion of the population (termed "hyper responders") most folks will NOT see an increase in serum cholesterol levels in the body based on increased intake of dietary cholesterol. While I do not have exact numbers, I would assume a decent amount of those hyper responders would be those with Familial Hypercholesterolemia, which is a genetic disorder whereby the LDL receptors in the liver do not recycle cholesterol properly (or at all). That is a huge simplification of the condition, but sufficient for my point.
So, to put it simply, I don't view the cholesterol levels in eggs to be even relevant for most folks eating a healthy diet.
Peter Attia has a great series on cholesterol over on this website at http://eatingacademy.com if you are interested in learning more.
Consumption of saturated fat is frequently blamed as being a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However a 2010 meta-analysis of 21 epidemiological studies that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that "there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat". There are hypothesis' that overconsumption of carbohydrate may be to blame since excess glucose will be converted to palmatic acid (the body's storage form of saturated fat) when your body's glycogen levels are already full, but I have not been able to find a study that supports this. That is not to say that it does not exist, only that my Google Fu is lacking in that area :)
Saturated fat is also routinely blamed for increasing cholesterol levels. While this is true, saturated fat tends to increase both HDL and Total Cholesterol and generally results in a more favourable TC:HDL ratio, which is a much better predictor of CVD than TC alone.
If you do some digging around PubMed you will likely find that a lot of the current CVD risk research is focusing on LDL particle size and oxidative stress. Saturated fat is actually the least prone to oxidation, followed by mono-unsaturated and then polyunsaturated. When you consume fat some of it is used for fuel by your body and some of it is incorporated into your cells (as well as other uses). Consumption of fat that is already oxidized, or that can easily become oxidized in your body, would increase the amount of oxidative stress on your body (thus depleting anti-oxidant levels such as glutathione which are needed to deal with the free radicals). I will let you draw your own conclusion here but the conclusion of many in the Paleo realm is that saturated (from healthy fat sources like coconut and animals that were responsibly raised) is an ideal source of fat for this reason and many others. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats from good sources are healthy too (polyunsaturated fats contain DHA and EPA for one, which are essential fatty acids that we need to consume) but one should not shun saturated fat!
Now that I've dispensed with some common objections to egg consumption, let us look at why you should be eating eggs (other than the fact they are delicious)! The image below shows a list of common nutrients found in eggs, split into white and yolk. I have left the table split since I do not want folks to think they can simply get all this from the white alone! Notably missing from the chart is choline. A 100g serving of egg yolk contains about 683mg of choline in the yolk and about 1.1mg in the white. A single egg generally contains about 250mg of choline which is about 25% of the daily recommended intake.
Bottom line: eggs are a nutritious and delicious part of a healthy diet!
"What?", you say. Aren't they high in fat and cholesterol .. sure .. but read on.
So as to the cholesterol issue, sure eggs contain a decent amount of cholesterol. However cholesterol is an important nutrient in your body. It is a precursor to various hormones (especially sex hormones) as well as being vital to cellular repair. It is so important that every cell in your body has the ability to produce it by itself. Your body will also vary the amount of cholesterol it produces based the amount of dietary (i.e. exogenous) cholesterol you consume!
Other than a specific portion of the population (termed "hyper responders") most folks will NOT see an increase in serum cholesterol levels in the body based on increased intake of dietary cholesterol. While I do not have exact numbers, I would assume a decent amount of those hyper responders would be those with Familial Hypercholesterolemia, which is a genetic disorder whereby the LDL receptors in the liver do not recycle cholesterol properly (or at all). That is a huge simplification of the condition, but sufficient for my point.
So, to put it simply, I don't view the cholesterol levels in eggs to be even relevant for most folks eating a healthy diet.
Peter Attia has a great series on cholesterol over on this website at http://eatingacademy.com if you are interested in learning more.
Consumption of saturated fat is frequently blamed as being a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However a 2010 meta-analysis of 21 epidemiological studies that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that "there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat". There are hypothesis' that overconsumption of carbohydrate may be to blame since excess glucose will be converted to palmatic acid (the body's storage form of saturated fat) when your body's glycogen levels are already full, but I have not been able to find a study that supports this. That is not to say that it does not exist, only that my Google Fu is lacking in that area :)
Saturated fat is also routinely blamed for increasing cholesterol levels. While this is true, saturated fat tends to increase both HDL and Total Cholesterol and generally results in a more favourable TC:HDL ratio, which is a much better predictor of CVD than TC alone.
If you do some digging around PubMed you will likely find that a lot of the current CVD risk research is focusing on LDL particle size and oxidative stress. Saturated fat is actually the least prone to oxidation, followed by mono-unsaturated and then polyunsaturated. When you consume fat some of it is used for fuel by your body and some of it is incorporated into your cells (as well as other uses). Consumption of fat that is already oxidized, or that can easily become oxidized in your body, would increase the amount of oxidative stress on your body (thus depleting anti-oxidant levels such as glutathione which are needed to deal with the free radicals). I will let you draw your own conclusion here but the conclusion of many in the Paleo realm is that saturated (from healthy fat sources like coconut and animals that were responsibly raised) is an ideal source of fat for this reason and many others. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats from good sources are healthy too (polyunsaturated fats contain DHA and EPA for one, which are essential fatty acids that we need to consume) but one should not shun saturated fat!
Now that I've dispensed with some common objections to egg consumption, let us look at why you should be eating eggs (other than the fact they are delicious)! The image below shows a list of common nutrients found in eggs, split into white and yolk. I have left the table split since I do not want folks to think they can simply get all this from the white alone! Notably missing from the chart is choline. A 100g serving of egg yolk contains about 683mg of choline in the yolk and about 1.1mg in the white. A single egg generally contains about 250mg of choline which is about 25% of the daily recommended intake.
Bottom line: eggs are a nutritious and delicious part of a healthy diet!
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Egg Update
Just a quick update for folks as it seems my little blog post has sparked a bit of local interest.
Levi Lawrence did an interview on Maritime Noon today which spawned a bit of a Facebook thread on the MN page. You can view it, as well as a link to an audio recording, here.
Levi also did an interview for CTV's Live At 5 that you can view tonight!
I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Laura Brown of CBC NB this afternoon and that interview will likely play this evening on the CBC News either at 5:00 or 6:00 (or both, not entirely sure).
Thanks to everybody who retweeted, shared and posted on their Facebook pages and whatever else. Without you we would not have gotten this amount of attention. As of now we have over 500 page views on my blog post with more coming in every minute.
Huge thanks for your support of local, quality food!
Levi Lawrence did an interview on Maritime Noon today which spawned a bit of a Facebook thread on the MN page. You can view it, as well as a link to an audio recording, here.
Levi also did an interview for CTV's Live At 5 that you can view tonight!
I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Laura Brown of CBC NB this afternoon and that interview will likely play this evening on the CBC News either at 5:00 or 6:00 (or both, not entirely sure).
Thanks to everybody who retweeted, shared and posted on their Facebook pages and whatever else. Without you we would not have gotten this amount of attention. As of now we have over 500 page views on my blog post with more coming in every minute.
Huge thanks for your support of local, quality food!
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