Gluten Intolerance . . . Is It All In Your Head?

...lation. That actually makes it one of the most common disorders related to food. But a much larger percentage of people self-diagnose as gluten intolerant who do not have celiac disease. Peter Gibson, a professor of gastroenterology at Monash University and director of the GI Unit at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, kicked the gluten intolerance self-diagnosis trend into overdrive with a 2011 study that showed a large percentage of the population...

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The problem with polar fleece: it’s in the ocean, it’s in sea creatures, it’s on our plates

...lution in the ocean, they are also consumed by marine life. They enter the food chain. Confused bivalves and shrimp eat this stuff, and we eat them. In short, we are eating our fleece jackets. And nobody knows what health impacts all this ingestion of microplastics will have for us, or the sea creatures. The news first came to me, ironically enough, via Patagonia, purveyors of very expensive polar fleece. They’d commissioned a study on this, which...

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I’ve Flown the Coop

...I’m at a two day poultry seminar sponsored by the California Department of Food & Agriculture. The point of my attendance is to learn good husbandry practices and share them with you, our dear readers. I’ll break down the voluminous information into a series of future blog posts. The takeaways from yesterday’s session: Buy chickens that have been vaccinated for Marek’s disease. This is the most common problem with backyard chickens and it’s entire...

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The Luddite’s Moonshot

...list of things they can help with: Mediterranean gardening with perennial food crops. Mammalian garden invasions, i.e. those infernal squirrels/raccoons/skunks. Meal preparation for busy people. I realize the tech bros have taken up this problem with services such as Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. But I think there’s a better way we can do this at home without the shipping and packaging. Preventing food waste in the home. Internet distraction/news a...

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Solar Oven Triumph: Fluffy Egg Strata

...n to plan accordingly. Another learning curve is figuring out what kind of foods do well in a solar oven. Eggs, it turns out, really like solar ovens! This is logical, because eggs do well when cooked low and slow. (Have you ever tried the Eggs Francis Picabia recipe in the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook?) I think any kind of quiche/egg pie/strata type recipe will do well in a sun oven, and intend to explore this more. The Eartheasy egg strata recipe wa...

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