At first glance, the operations of We Are The New Farmers and iwi could not look more different. One occupies a 1,200-square-foot space in a warehouse on the waterfront in Brooklyn, New York, where a microscopic organism called Arthrospira platensis grows in stainless steel tanks illuminated by grow lights. The other sits on 300 acres of scrubland in West Texas, where a similar single-celled species thrives in brackish ponds surrounded by mesquite and javelinas.

Despite the vastly different settings and scale, these companies are tackling the same challenge: producing food for a world in which fresh water and arable land are increasingly scarce.

With as many as 10 billion people crowding the planet by 2050, the world’s farmland, strained by extreme weather events, will be hard-pressed to churn out enough calories to feed everyone. It doesn’t help that the Western US is seeing the worst drought in 1,200 years, and American farmers are experiencing lower yields and livestock forage as a result. Or that the US has lost 11 million acres of farmland to development in the last 20 years.

Enter microalgae, a life-form that, like a plant, gets its energy through photosynthesis. It can grow in fresh, brackish, or salt water, and it doesn’t need soil.

While most often used in animal feed and nutritional supplements, algae like the kind We Are The New Farmers and iwi grow is gaining attention as a sustainable food for humans. It is “a crop for people who want to turn climate-stressed land into more productive, more resilient forms of agriculture,” says Jonas Guenther, cofounder of We Are The New Farmers, which started producing Arthrospira platensis — more commonly known as spirulina — in 2017. The start-up’s dark green food product, which has the consistency of hummus, can add protein, vitamins, and minerals to anything from smoothies to veggie meatballs.

The wide range of possible environments and the speed with which the single-celled organisms grow leads Miguel Calatayud, the CEO of iwi, to call microalgae “kind of perfection.” His nutraceutical company plans to make it a central ingredient in a line of protein bars and drinks later this year. “It’s unbelievable, like it’s coming from a different planet,” he says. “This is really a revolution in farming.”

Growing Algae

At iwi’s farm in West Texas, in a region where most conventional crops struggle to get enough water, the microalgae Nannochloropsis thrives. Iwi pumps brackish water from aquifers that have grown saltier over time from generations of agricultural use, and the algae love it. And since it’s grown in ponds, soil quality is irrelevant.

Algae is pretty much the most efficient organism at converting sunlight into nutrients.

Sean Raspet, Co-Founder and Product Developer of Nonfood

The growing process itself is also incredibly water-efficient. “It sounds counterintuitive because it grows in water,” says Guenther. During harvesting, the tank-grown spirulina makes several trips through a filter to remove more than 90% of the H₂O. The same goes for the Nannochloropsis grown in iwi’s open ponds. That reclaimed liquid nourishes the next round in a process that can be repeated several times.

Outdoor ponds inevitably lose more water to evaporation than indoor operations. “We can’t get around that,” says Jakob Nalley, iwi’s director of agronomy. But those losses are offset by how much protein algae provides with the relatively little water and land it requires, he says.

One analysis found that microalgae yields between 22 and 44 tons of protein per hectare, depending on the region. That’s as much as 36 times the amount from soybeans. It helps that the entire organism is edible — algae has no stems, no roots, and no leaves. It also grows at a staggering rate; under ideal conditions, spirulina, for example, can double its biomass in as little as 48 hours.

“It’s explosive growth,” Guenther says. Given that, algae can be harvested as often as every few days. And indoor systems can be customized with the ideal temperature, light, and salinity levels for a given strain, making the yields even higher and more consistent throughout the year. (It’s even possible to grow it without any light at all.)

“Algae is pretty much the most efficient organism at converting sunlight into nutrients,” says Sean Raspet, cofounder and product developer at Nonfood, which produces a microalgae powder meant to supplement savory food dishes. Raspet and others also celebrate the crop’s minimal “resource footprint” —  most algae operations do not use pesticides, and although they all require electricity to run, they don’t need fossil-fuel-intensive equipment like tractors.

Eating Algae

When Guenther first learned of spirulina in 2017, he recalls asking himself: “If we have this magic crop, if you will, why is it not something that we eat a lot more?”

Of course, you can’t eat the scum on the sides of a pool or poisonous algal blooms, but humans have been enjoying a handful of edible algae varieties for hundreds of years, if not longer. The Aztecs harvested spirulina and ate it as a dried cake. And it has long been harvested from Lake Kossorom in Chad, as well as in many countries in Asia. But algae is not a regular part of the modern diet in the Western world.

Guenther learned that microalgae’s primary market for humans is in the form of nutritional supplements because many varieties are rich in omega-3 fatty acids and protein. Companies like EarthRise, Nutrex Hawaii, and iwi grow algae for exactly that purpose. But Guenther saw an opportunity to use algae as the foundation of a whole range of foods.

“We want to create a world in which microalgae is a staple in every kitchen, making any meal better, brighter, and more sustainable,” says Guenther.

The folks at Nonfood had a similar idea: The best way of expanding algae production, they thought, was to produce an appealing product consumers could easily add to almost any dish. Nongredient, which is microalgae in powdered form, can be used in stews, curries, salads, and more, enriching them with protein and healthy fats. Cofounder Lucy Chinen says it has an umami flavor profile, and she compares it to nutritional yeast, a product vegans turn to for its savory, cheesy flavor.

Chinen isn’t aiming to create the next fake meat product. Algae stands on its own as both a historical food and something novel. “There’s a lot of talk… about meat replacements and stuff like that,” she says. “Nonfood is not really a replacement for anything.”

Scaling Up Microalgae Production

According to the Department of Energy, 139,886 square miles of land in the United States is suitable for microalgae ponds — a figure that does not include current cropland, forests, or environmentally sensitive areas. That’s larger than New Mexico. Although that analysis was aimed at expanding biofuel production, the fact remains there is plenty of land available to grow algae, regardless of its end use.

But a few hurdles need to be addressed for the algae industry to reach its full potential. Algae start-ups are tackling consumer barriers to embracing algae as a food by demonstrating just how many ways it can be eaten.

Another barrier to seeing algae in more kitchens is its cost. But We Are The New Farmers believes it can make algae more affordable by increasing yields. It is experimenting with injecting carbon, which drives algae growth. They predict the increased productivity, along with expanding production, will bring down retail prices. Iwi, which uses about 20% of its ponds, hopes its new algae bars and drinks will bring production to full scale.

Guenther hopes that by 2050, one-fifth of protein consumed worldwide will come from algae. While most of it won’t be produced in high-density areas, like the New York warehouse his company occupies, he sees growing algae in cities as a way to decentralize the supply chain. “Instead of building one large facility somewhere in the middle of nowhere where it’s super cheap, I’d rather have six facilities close to a major population,” he says. “And if there’s one thing we learned during the pandemic, it’s that being reliant on just one single stream of output is not the best way of operating.”

No one is arguing algae will become humanity’s primary source of food. But there is a growing understanding among environmental scientists, algae producers, and consumers that the magical single-celled organism, which thrives pretty much everywhere, could be a critical part of our culinary future. “We believe in the potential of microalgae to reimagine how we eat,” says Guenther. He hopes for “a circular future in which what we consume supports — rather than depletes — the planet we live on.”

For any environment, from abandoned industrial buildings to regions where the water is too salty for terrestrial crops, there is a type of algae (and a type of growing method) that can work. And that versatility is its power. “We can bring farming to places in the world where farming wasn’t even a concept,” says Calatayud.

Tell us in the comments:

• Would you eat algae?
• Have you ever had spirulina or another algae-based food product?
• What other sustainable crops are contributing to the future of food?

Featured Image: Mihály Köles on Unsplash

Read Next:

• Are Sea Vegetables Good for You and the Planet? — And Are Some Better Than Others?
• Are Green Powders Healthy?

The post Why Algae Could Be a “Magic Crop” for a Drought-Stricken World appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

According to economists (who, it seems to me, are a lot better at explaining the past than predicting the future), this massive food inflation is actually caused by a perfect storm of rising demand and lower supply — both intensified by several calamities (like droughts, floods, wars, and knock-on effects of the COVID-19 pandemic) — as well as rising costs for fuel and fertilizer.

For perspective, food prices have typically been rising by about 2% a year for a long time. But from 2021 to 2022, they went up by an average of 11%. And while things seem to have calmed down a bit since then, it’s still easy to get sticker shock any time you visit a cash register.

Even if you’re not paying more outright, you might be paying more in subtle ways. The food industry has recently implemented a tactic known as “shrinkflation,” whereby they offer the same product for the same price — in a smaller quantity, thus avoiding the appearance of higher prices. (“Hey, this is one expensive cornflake!”)

So why exactly have food prices gone up so much? Why do some foods always seem to cost more (or less) than others? And what can you, as a consumer, do about it?

What Influences Food Prices

Did I mention that I’m not an economist? That might be good news here because I’m going to try to simplify the issue of food pricing. There are a few major factors that always influence food pricing. These include how much it costs to produce the food (including the cost of labor for everyone involved in growing and processing it), the cost of transportation and distribution, good old supply and demand, and global trade policies.

Why have food prices gone up so much in the last few years? Three factors stand out, in particular: the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the intensifying climate crisis.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Starting in 2020, the pandemic disrupted nearly every link in the food supply chain. The food processing sector was hit particularly hard, with COVID-19 outbreaks racing through the workforce, due to many people working in close, inadequately ventilated quarters. And the increase in worker turnover, in addition to new COVID protocols, further increased food production costs.

The same labor shortages affected the shipping industry, causing delays and increasing competition for limited shipping space. This led to rising transportation costs. It also increased the price of labor: In order to attract workers, companies had to increase wages, a cost they largely passed directly on to consumers.

As many people shifted their food spending from restaurants to grocery stores, suppliers could not keep up with the change in demand, resulting in massive food waste that effectively decreased supply.

And while 2020 is in the rearview mirror, there’s a funny thing about economics. When prices go up, they rarely come down again. So in some ways, we’re still feeling the effects of the price increases that started in 2020. And now, some additional factors have intensified the situation.

The War in Ukraine

Before the war, Russia and Ukraine were among the largest wheat producers in the world, together accounting for 30% of all exports — and a staggering 12% of all agricultural calories traded on earth. Both production and export have dropped dramatically due to the war.

Russia set up blockades of Ukrainian food exports in the Black Sea, stranding food in ports and creating global shortages. Western countries responded with sanctions against Russian grain exports, intensifying those shortages.

In addition to embargoes on food, the West has also implemented partial bans on Russian exports. These have included oil and gas, which have increased the energy costs associated with food production around the world.

Another blockaded product is fertilizer. As Russia is a major exporter of synthetic fertilizers, accounting for almost 30% of all exports globally, fertilizer prices have also been soaring — impacting farmers and, therefore, food prices.

Increasing Climate Chaos and Disasters

As temperatures continue to rise, crops are sustaining damage from excess heat. And as precipitation patterns change, droughts and flooding (sometimes alternating in the same place) also prevent crops from thriving. This can harm crops by eroding soil, depleting soil nutrients, and increasing runoff.

No farmer wants to try to coax crops out of the ground in conditions of extreme and prolonged drought. As more and more of the arable land on Earth suffers under multiyear drought, farmers are increasingly relying on groundwater, which they’re depleting at an alarming rate.

Additionally, rising temperatures increase pest populations and sometimes allow new pests to take up residence in regions that had previously been inhospitable for them. Temperature shifts can also cause a mismatch in pollination cycles, so the “good” bugs can’t do their jobs — leading to low pollination rates or delayed pollination.

One more disastrous effect of a warming planet is the danger to agricultural workers. More and more of them are suffering from the effects of extreme heat as they toil in parched fields. The National Institutes of Health tells us that farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die of heat exposure than workers in other industries. As conditions become less hospitable, it can be harder for farm owners to find the skilled laborers they need to get their fields planted and harvested. And dynamics in US immigration policy have contributed to a shortage of these workers.

As the planet continues to overheat, and as groundwater gets depleted and droughts and floods intensify, food prices are expected to continue to increase in the coming decades.

Why Do Some Foods Always Cost More (or Less)?

Governmental policies cause some foods to be more expensive than they would be otherwise — while others are made artificially cheaper. To see this in action, let’s look at a category of foods whose price is inflated (organic foods) and another whose price is deflated (grains and the products derived from grains).

Organic and Healthy Food Costs

Organic foods are more expensive than their “conventional” counterparts for several reasons. For one, organic food typically costs more to produce because the process is more labor-intensive than large-scale industrial agricultural methods.

Supply and demand play a role here as well. There’s a much smaller supply of organic food than nonorganic, even though demand for organic foods has more than doubled in the past 10 years. While this demand has caught the attention of some farmers who have decided to convert part or all of their operations to organic methods, this process takes time. In the meanwhile, prices continue to rise as demand grows, but supply lags.

There’s also a policy choice that makes organic food more expensive, which is that organic certification is costly, and getting that certification can be time-consuming. Organic farmers must keep extensive records and pay for organic certification, while farms that use synthetic pesticides don’t have to do either.

Another reason for organic’s higher prices has to do with the concept of “externalities” — that is, costs that arguably should be included in the market price but aren’t.

For example, what are the true costs of topsoil erosion, pesticide exposure for farmworkers and consumers, water and air pollution, or of the routine use of antibiotics in modern factory farms? If these were factored in, we might find that organic food would cost less, not more, than its conventional counterparts.

The fact is that organically grown foods tend to be better for environmental protection and carbon sequestration, deliver higher standards for animal welfare, and contribute to a safer and healthier food supply.

But consumers still have to pay more, and sometimes a lot more, to purchase foods that are grown organically.

Despite this, there are still some compelling advantages to go organic if you can afford to do so. And if you can’t, then you might want to soak your produce in a dab of baking soda to help rid it of pesticide exposure (for our article on what works best, click here).

Government Subsidies

The US government provides agricultural subsidies — monetary payments and other types of support — to farmers or agribusinesses. This ensures that farmers receive a minimum price for their crops while also incentivizing overproduction and inflated production costs. That way, subsidized foods and products made from them appear cheaper than nonsubsidized foods.

Generally, only the largest producers can take advantage of farm subsidies. According to a report from the Environmental Working Group, between 1995 and 2021, the top 10% of all US farm subsidy recipients received almost 80% of all subsidies, while the bottom 80% got less than 10%.

The five major “program” commodities are corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.

Most soybeans and corn are produced by massive monocrop farms rather than small family enterprises. A lot of this subsidized corn and soy is fed to livestock, which artificially lowers the price of animal-derived foods produced on factory farms. All told, the US federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Without these subsidies, a pound of hamburger meat could cost $30, rather than the $5 price seen today. But the true cost plays out in its impact on our health, animals, and the environment — and in the form of taxes and expansion of the national debt.

Is it better in Europe? Well, in many ways, it’s not. According to a 2019 report from Greenpeace, nearly one-fifth of the EU’s entire budget goes to subsidizing the livestock industry.

In effect, these subsidies consistently decrease the price of things like factory-farmed meat, high-fructose corn syrup, white bread, and many of the additives in our food supply — creating a marketplace distortion that makes fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and other healthy staples more expensive in comparison.

To my eyes, it’s a bit like we’re all being fined for wearing our seatbelts. If we want to do the safer and more responsible thing, we have to pay extra.

What You Can Do About Rising Food Prices

If you’re feeling the pinch of rising food prices yourself, there are several strategies that can help you stay within your budget without sacrificing your family’s health.

Make a budget and shop from a list to avoid making impulse purchases while at the store. Prioritize nutrient-dense foods over calorie-dense ones. The latter may seem cheaper by the pound or the calorie, but in terms of what foods can do for you (or to you), good nutrition is more economical than impaired functioning or chronic disease. And buy and cook in bulk to save money and time.

Try to shop locally if you can to avoid incentivizing costly supply chains. If you’re in the US and use SNAP benefits, keep in mind that you can use them to shop for fresh produce at many farmers markets.

Also, buy organic when you can. If you are in a position financially where you can afford to spend more, you can “vote with your dollars” (or euros or pounds or rupees) to make the system fairer and more accessible to everyone. But if you can’t afford the organic price premium, then aim for non-GMO produce items and wash them thoroughly to reduce your pesticide exposure as much as possible.

If you have to choose which fruits and veggies to buy organic, check out the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and Clean 15. Choose organic members of the Dirty Dozen club, and don’t sweat nonorganic Clean 15 items.

Frozen fruits and vegetables can sometimes be more affordable than fresh ones, and they contain abundant nutrition.

And reducing your consumption of animal products can not only help feed the world’s population because we aren’t cycling our crops through animals (a process that wastes at least 9 out of every 10 calories, depending on the crop and the animal eating it), but it can also lead to reductions in costly greenhouse gas emissions, too. Plus, beans tend to be a lot less costly than beef (to animals, the environment, and your wallet, too).

Food Pricing Is Complex, But Healthy Eating Shouldn’t Be

The recent surge in food prices has highlighted the intricate web of factors influencing the cost of our food. From labor shortages and technology costs to climate change and war, the forces at play are vast and interconnected.

But there are ways to navigate these challenging times. By adopting conscious strategies, we can mitigate the impact of rising food prices on our wallets and well-being. Through awareness and mindful decision-making, we can not only do right for our health, but we can also contribute to a more healthy, sustainable, and equitable food system.

Tell us in the comments:

• What foods that you buy frequently have gone up the most in price recently?
• Have you made any changes or substitutions because of food price inflation?
• Which cost-saving strategies could you try?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Ilija Erceg

Read Next:

• A Guide to Going Plant-Based: What to Eat, Benefits, and How to Succeed
• 7 Healthy Recipes for Eating Plant-Based on a Budget

The post The Price of Food: What’s Making Food So Expensive & What You Can Do About It appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Well, that’s the experience I just had researching this article about figs. I thought I knew a lot about this yummy fruit until I started digging into the topic. Spoiler alert: They’re not even fruits! And when I discovered how they get pollinated — that’s a drama worthy of a Game of Thrones episode!

But aside from their storied pollination method, figs have a lot to offer. In addition to being a delicious food, figs have also traditionally been used for healing and for some very practical purposes. For countless generations, people around the world have made poultices from fresh or dried figs, fig leaves, and fig wines. Fig stems and leaves contain latex. And, of course, fig leaves have served as, well, strategically placed garments since the Garden of Eden (at least according to some Renaissance painters).

You can also find mention of figs in both the Bible and the Quran. Biblical writers often use figs as metaphors for the physical and spiritual health of the people, with phrases like “everyone under their own vine and under their own fig tree” depicting a time of peace and prosperity. The Quran quotes the prophet Muhammad as telling his followers to eat the fig “as it cures various diseases.”

In this article, we’re going to focus on the culinary uses of figs. We’ll explore what figs are, how they taste (and how they differ from dates), the nutritional value of fresh vs dried, and their health benefits and downsides.

We’ll also look at how they get pollinated (so dramatic!), and if that process might render figs unfit for a vegan diet.

What Are Figs?

Fig trees (or Ficus carica) are native to the Mediterranean region and were one of the first plants to be cultivated.

Figs are members of the mulberry family, which, contrary to the nursery rhyme, is mostly populated by trees, not bushes to “go ‘round and ‘round.” (Other family members include the banyan, breadfruit, jackfruit, and Osage orange.)

A fig fruit (which, again, is not really a fruit) is known as a syconium. According to the Ecological Society of America, “a fig is not actually a fruit; it is an inflorescence — a cluster of many flowers and seeds contained inside a bulbous stem.” And as we’ll see, it’s that structure that makes its pollination so darn interesting.

Because the fig flower is arranged so unusually, the seeds — which are actually the ovaries of the fig — can’t be pollinated by ordinary flying insects like bees, moths, and butterflies. Instead, it requires a pollinator with the skills of a safecracker who can operate in dark, confined quarters (more on that later).

Types of Figs

There are more than 750 different varieties of fig. Some of the types you’re likely to encounter include Adriatic, Black Mission, Turkish/Brown Turkey, Calimyrna, Kadota, Celeste, and Tiger. Different types have different flavor profiles, and feature in a variety of dishes, from sweet desserts to more savory fare.

The most common dried figs in the US are Black Mission and Golden, both of which are grown in California.

Figs are light green as they grow. They may remain green or change color as they ripen, ranging from yellow to brown to dark purple, depending on the cultivar.

The Differences Between Figs and Dates

Figs and dates are two very different foods that people sometimes get confused with one another, kind of like the actors who play Harry Potter and Frodo. Here are some key differences. Frodo didn’t go to Hogwarts — oops, I mean, here are some key differences between figs and dates.

While figs originated in the Mediterranean region, dates are native to several geographical locations, including North America. Figs grow on trees, while dates are the fruits of palm trees, which are technically grasses and not trees (this is such a genus-bending article!).

Furthermore, figs grow on fig tree branches, while dates grow in clusters on offshoots from the main trunk of the palm tree. Dates contain a single pit, while figs have many small edible seeds.

When it comes to eating the fruits, they’re also quite different. Figs have three times the amount of water as dates, which also makes them much lower in calories (about four times lower, if you’re counting). So dates are a much more concentrated source of carbohydrates, mostly in the form of simple sugars. Dates are also richer sources of some minerals, such as calcium and potassium.

Nutrients in Figs

The good news is figs deliver a lot of essential nutrients. The predominant macronutrient (the one that provides calories) is carbohydrates, but they’re also rich in some vitamins and organic acids. As whole plant foods, they also provide important dietary fiber.

According to the US National Nutrient Database, two medium raw figs contain roughly 3 grams of fiber. Doing the math, this means that if you ate just 8 figs a day and nothing else, you’d still get about half as much fiber as the average US resident consumes in a day. (To be clear, I am NOT recommending the “8 Fig a Day Diet,” although someone could probably write a best-selling diet book with that title.)

However, some researchers have measured much greater amounts of fiber in different fig cultivars. According to the American Botanical Council, two fresh or 4–5 dried figs provide a whopping 12 grams of fiber.

So we have credible authorities telling us that two figs provide 3 grams of fiber, while others say the correct figure is 12 grams of fiber. It reminds me of the old saying, “A person with one watch knows what time it is. A person with two watches… is never quite sure.” So for now, let’s just say that figs are high (potentially very high!) in fiber, and leave it to the good folks at the US National Nutrient Database and the American Botanical Council to duke it out on the details.

Figs are a good source of many bioactive phytonutrients, too, including flavonoids, phenolic acids, carotenoids, and tocopherols.

(Here’s a fun article all about flavonoids, which starts with a weird story about a bunch of soldiers trying to cross a bridge.)

They’re also solid sources of potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, and phosphorus. What’s more, figs provide essential trace elements, including iron, manganese, zinc, and copper.

You’ll get the most nutrients if you don’t peel your figs; the highest concentrations of phytonutrients are in their skin. And darker fig varieties contain more polyphenols and antioxidant power than lighter ones.

Figs also lose some phytonutrients when dried. Studies show a loss of 29% to as much as 86% of the polyphenol content when figs are dried.

Health Benefits of Figs

In the Middle East and Mediterranean regions, figs have long been revered for their contributions to human health and longevity. The fruit, leaves, latex, bark, and roots of fig trees have been used to treat gastrointestinal, respiratory, inflammatory, and cardiovascular disorders, as well as ulcerative diseases and cancers. The various parts of the fig tree possess a wide variety of properties; they can help you poop, relax muscle spasms, fight viruses and bacteria, bring down high blood sugar, and even help your body expel parasites.

And modern scientific research has only added to our understanding of the power of figs to promote health.

Figs and Gut Health

When patients with irritable bowel syndrome add figs to their diet, they often experience decreased symptom occurrence and severity. A 2019 study gave IBS patients 90 grams of dried figs per day for four months. Compared to controls who didn’t get anything, the fig-enhanced group had reduced frequency of pain, less intestinal distention, more frequent pooping, and softer stools. Unsurprisingly, they also reported “a significant increase in quality of life.”

In a 2018 animal study, rats with induced ulcerative colitis were fed a liquid extract containing figs. The treatment had a natural laxative effect but did not lead to diarrhea, and it improved their gastrointestinal functioning. (Our view on the use of animals in medical research is here.)

Figs and Diabetes

Figs (and fig leaves) can also be deployed to treat diabetes. A 1998 study found that people with type 1 diabetes who drank tea made from fig leaves were able to lower their blood sugar immediately following meals. And a 2019 study showed that a fig leaf decoction was able to lower blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes by about half as much as the drug metformin (after two months of treatment).

It’s not just the leaves, though — fig fruits contain a compound called abscisic acid (which should definitely be included in spelling bees) that has been shown to reduce blood sugar levels after meals.

Figs and Cognitive Decline

Studies with experimental animals have shown that figs may help us stay sharp and avoid or delay cognitive decline. One animal study compared the effects of a diet that included figs to a fig-free diet in mice that were genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The mice who ate figs did better on memory tests, displayed fewer anxiety behaviors, learned new things more quickly and fully, and had better motor coordination. Furthermore, the fig-eating mice had lower levels of the toxic amyloid beta proteins that are associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Are Figs Vegan?

This may seem like an odd question, but remember that Game of Thrones reference from earlier? It turns out, fig tree pollination is a bit controversial.

You see, there are two types of fig trees: wild and cultivated. And wild-growing fig trees require pollination to bear fruit. The critters that have volunteered for the job are fig wasps, a term that describes any of several hundred different, mosquito-like tiny creatures from the Agaonidae family. Each species of fig wasp pollinates only one variety of fig.

Basically, here’s how it works.

A female wasp, loaded with pollen, flies to an unripe fig and burrows into its center to deposit her eggs. While she’s doing this, two things happen. One, she spreads her pollen onto the female flowers. And two, the effort of fighting her way through the flower strips her of her wings.

Now the fig goes to work, building structures called galls over the wasp eggs and producing seeds in the flowers that don’t contain the eggs. Meanwhile, the mama wasp dies, whereupon her exoskeleton is dissolved by figgy enzymes. (Cue the emotional orchestral music.)

The heroic male wasps hatch first, and travel around the syconium fertilizing their sisters who are still pupating in their galls. (This is definitely HBO-worthy stuff!) Then they dig holes through which the fertilized females can escape with their wings intact. Once the females hatch, they fly off to repeat the process, leaving the males to die in the maturing fig.

Pretty intense family drama, huh?

As a result, some vegans do not eat figs because they don’t want to consume dead wasps, and also because animals died as part of the process that produced them. However, there’s good news if you want to adhere to a vegan diet and still enjoy delicious figginess.

First, the wasps are completely dissolved by the plant enzymes, so you are not likely to encounter a dead insect in your fig. And second, almost all figs produced and sold in the US are of the cultivated variety and are self-pollinating. This means they don’t need the sacrificial services of the fig wasps, and are considered vegan-friendly.

Fig Downsides

Aside from the fig wasp controversy, there are some other things about figs to consider. For one, some people may have to avoid them because of allergic reactions, including oral allergy syndrome. The latex in the plant may also be a source of irritation and allergy, especially if you’re harvesting figs.

Also dried (but not fresh) figs are high in compounds called salicylates, which may cause swelling, itching, hives, worsened asthma, and food intolerance symptoms in people who are sensitive to them.

The other thing about figs is that it takes a lot of water to grow them. Although they’re not as needy as some other crops like citrus, almonds, alfalfa, and pasture grasses, in places straining under multiyear droughts, such as California and Spain, this can be a problem.

On the other hand, fig trees, like almond trees, are drought tolerant, so they can be a good solution in some cases. While they may not bear fruit during times of drought, they can survive until the rains return. There are several strategies growers can implement, including mulching, thinning fruit to help the remaining fruit develop fully, and protecting trees with shade cloth during the hottest parts of the day.

One other challenge with growing figs, and I say this from personal experience, is that for some reason gophers love their roots. So if you aim to grow a fig tree, it may be wise to place a wire gopher barrier in the planting hole to protect the root ball from those sharp little teeth.

Overall, growing figs appear to be a net positive for the environment. Offsetting their water needs and their moderate carbon footprint, they don’t require heavy use of pesticides. Plus, fig trees sequester carbon in their biomass, keeping it out of the air and not contributing to the climate crisis.

We Dig Figs!

As you’ve probably gathered by now, figs are pretty unique! Their biology is fascinating, and the saga of their pollination is dramatic, to say the least. They also offer a wide range of essential nutrients and health benefits. From their versatile culinary uses to their historical uses as healing agents, figs have proven themselves valuable partners to the humans who have loved, cultivated, and revered them for millennia.

If you’re inspired to add more figgy goodness to your diet, we’ve got you covered: Here’s an article all about different ways of preparing and eating figs.

Tell us in the comments:

• What’s the most surprising fig fact you got from this article?

• Can you find fresh figs where you live? If so, what do you do with them?

• Have you ever planted a fig tree?

Featured Image: iStock.com/SGAPhoto

Read Next:

• Are Dates Good For You, or the Planet?
• Are Grapes Good for You?

The post Figs: Are They Good for You and the Planet? appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

We know that meat has a substantial impact on the planet and that plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable. But exactly how much impact does the food we eat have on environmental outcomes, and what difference would following a vegan diet make compared to consuming a high-meat, or even low-meat diet?

We studied 55,000 people’s dietary data and linked what they ate or drank to five key measures: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. Our results are now published in Nature Food. We found that vegans have just 30% of the dietary environmental impact of high-meat eaters.

The dietary data came from a major study into cancer and nutrition that has been tracking the same people (about 57,000 in total across the UK) for more than two decades. Those who participated in our study reported what they ate and drank over 12 months, and we then classified them into six different groups: vegan, vegetarian, fish eaters, and low-, medium-, and high-meat eaters based on their self-reported dietary habits.

We then linked their dietary reports to a dataset containing information on the environmental impact of 57,000 foods. Crucially, the dataset factored in how and where a food is produced — carrots grown in a greenhouse in Spain will have a different impact from those grown in a field in the UK, for instance. This builds on past studies, which tend to assume, for example, that all types of bread, or all steak, or all lasagna have the same environmental impact.

By incorporating more detail and nuance, we were able to show with more certainty that different diets have different environmental impacts. We found that even the least sustainable vegan diet was still more environmentally friendly than the most sustainable meat eater’s diet. In other words, accounting for region of origin and methods of food production does not obscure the differences in the environmental impacts between diet groups.

Vegans vs Carnivores

Unsurprisingly, diets containing more animal-based foods had higher environmental impacts. Per unit of food consumed, meat and dairy have anywhere from three to 100 times the environmental impact of plant-based foods.

This can mean huge differences between the two extremes, vegans and high-meat eaters. Vegans in our study had just 25% of the dietary impact of high-meat eaters in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, for instance. That’s because meat uses more land, which means more deforestation and less carbon stored in trees. It uses lots of fertilizer (usually produced from fossil fuels) to feed the plants that feed the animals. And because cows and other animals directly emit gases themselves.

It’s not just emissions. Compared to the high-meat eaters, vegans also had just 25% of the dietary impact for land use, 46% for water use, 27% for water pollution, and 34% for biodiversity.

Even low-meat diets had only about 70% of the impact across most environmental measures of high-meat diets. This is important: You don’t have to go full vegan or even vegetarian to make a big difference.

Global Impact

These findings are crucial as the food system is estimated to be responsible for around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of the world’s freshwater use, and 78% of freshwater pollution. Around three-quarters of the world’s ice-free land has been affected by human use, primarily for agriculture and land use change such as deforestation, which is a major source of biodiversity loss.

In the UK, meat-eating declined over the decade to 2018, but in order to meet environmental targets, the National Food Strategy and the UK’s Climate Change Committee recommend an additional 30%–35% reduction.

The choices we make about what we eat are personal. They are highly ingrained habits that can be difficult to change. But our study, and others, are continuing to solidify evidence that the food system is having a massive, global environmental and health impact which could be reduced by a transition towards more plant-based diets. We hope that our work can encourage policymakers to take action and people to make more sustainable choices while still eating something nutritious, affordable, and tasty.

Tell us in the comments:

• Does sustainability factor into your food choices?

• Are you surprised by these findings?

• Will these results change how you eat or think about your diet?

Featured Image: iStock.com/Aamulya

The post Vegan Diet Has Just 30% of the Environmental Impact of a High-Meat Diet, Major Study Finds appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Then tests started detecting PFAS in people’s blood.

Today, PFAS are pervasive in soil, dust, and drinking water around the world. Studies suggest they’re in 98% of Americans’ bodies, where they’ve been associated with health problems including thyroid disease, liver damage, and kidney and testicular cancer. There are now over 9,000 types of PFAS. They’re often referred to as “forever chemicals” because the same properties that make them so useful also ensure they don’t break down in nature.

Scientists are working on methods to capture these synthetic chemicals and destroy them, but it isn’t simple.

The latest breakthrough, published Aug. 18, 2022, in the journal Science, shows how one class of PFAS can be broken down into mostly harmless components using sodium hydroxide, or lye, an inexpensive compound used in soap. It isn’t an immediate solution to this vast problem, but it offers new insight.

Biochemist A. Daniel Jones and soil scientist Hui Li work on PFAS solutions at Michigan State University and explained the promising PFAS destruction techniques being tested today.

How do PFAS get from everyday products into water, soil, and eventually humans?

There are two main exposure pathways for PFAS to get into humans — drinking water and food consumption.

PFAS can get into soil through land application of biosolids, that is, sludge from wastewater treatment, and they can leach out from landfills. If contaminated biosolids are applied to farm fields as fertilizer, PFAS can get into water and into crops and vegetables.

For example, livestock can consume PFAS through the crops they eat and water they drink. There have been cases reported in Michigan, Maine, and New Mexico of elevated levels of PFAS in beef and dairy cows. How big the potential risk is to humans is still largely unknown.

Scientists in our group at Michigan State University are working on materials added to soil that could prevent plants from taking up PFAS, but it would leave PFAS in the soil.

The problem is that these chemicals are everywhere, and there is no natural process in water or soil that breaks them down. Many consumer products are loaded with PFAS, including makeup, dental floss, guitar strings, and ski wax.

How are remediation projects removing PFAS contamination now?

Methods exist for filtering them out of water. The chemicals will stick to activated carbon, for example. But these methods are expensive for large-scale projects, and you still have to get rid of the chemicals.

For example, near a former military base near Sacramento, California, there is a huge activated carbon tank that takes in about 1,500 gallons of contaminated groundwater per minute, filters it, and then pumps it underground. That remediation project has cost over $3 million, but it prevents PFAS from moving into drinking water the community uses.

Filtering is just one step. Once PFAS is captured, then you have to dispose of PFAS-loaded activated carbons, and PFAS still moves around. If you bury contaminated materials in a landfill or elsewhere, PFAS will eventually leach out. That’s why finding ways to destroy it is essential.

What are the most promising methods scientists have found for breaking down PFAS?

The most common method of destroying PFAS is incineration, but most PFAS are remarkably resistant to being burned. That’s why they’re in firefighting foams.

PFAS have multiple fluorine atoms attached to a carbon atom, and the bond between carbon and fluorine is one of the strongest. Normally, to burn something, you have to break the bond, but fluorine resists breaking off from carbon. Most PFAS will break down completely at incineration temperatures around 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,730 degrees Fahrenheit), but it’s energy-intensive, and suitable incinerators are scarce.

There are several other experimental techniques that are promising but haven’t been scaled up to treat large amounts of the chemicals.

A group at Battelle has developed supercritical water oxidation to destroy PFAS. High temperatures and pressures change the state of water, accelerating chemistry in a way that can destroy hazardous substances. However, scaling up remains a challenge.

Others are working with plasma reactors, which use water, electricity, and argon gas to break down PFAS. They’re fast, but also not easy to scale up.

The method described in the new paper, led by scientists at Northwestern, is promising for what they’ve learned about how to break up PFAS. It won’t scale up to industrial treatment, and it uses dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, but these findings will guide future discoveries about what might work.

What are we likely to see in the future?

A lot will depend on what we learn about where humans’ PFAS exposure is primarily coming from.

If the exposure is mostly from drinking water, there are more methods with potential. It’s possible it could eventually be destroyed at the household level with electrochemical methods, but there are also potential risks that remain to be understood, such as converting common substances such as chloride into more toxic by-products.

The big challenge of remediation is making sure we don’t make the problem worse by releasing other gases or creating harmful chemicals. Humans have a long history of trying to solve problems and making things worse. Refrigerators are a great example. Freon, a chlorofluorocarbon, was the solution to replace toxic and flammable ammonia in refrigerators, but then it caused stratospheric ozone depletion. It was replaced with hydrofluorocarbons, which now contribute to climate change.

If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that we need to think through the full life cycle of products. How long do we really need chemicals to last?

Tell us in the comments:

• Had you heard of PFAS or “forever chemicals” before reading this story?

• Do you filter your tap water?

• What other chemicals in our food supply are concerning to you?

Featured Image: iStock.com/SolStock

Read Next:

• Drinking Water Treatment: When It’s Necessary & What Your Options Are
• Safe and Healthy Cookware: What You Need To Know When Choosing Non-Toxic Pots & Pans

The post How to Destroy a “Forever Chemical” – Scientists Are Discovering Ways to Eliminate PFAS, but This Growing Global Health Problem Isn’t Going Away Soon appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

And that’s a good metaphor for okra’s complex culinary and cultural history. Rooted in Africa, okra traveled to the Americas and the Caribbean with the slave trade, its seeds literally woven into the hair of captive African women and girls. Once in the US South, the plant thrived in its fertile soils and long hot summers, even as many of the humans who cultivated and subsisted on it were forced to endure the brutalities of slavery. Today, okra is a staple of US Southern cuisine, where it is often served pickled, stewed with tomatoes, grilled, roasted, and — most commonly — mixed with celery, bell peppers, and onions in bowls of gumbo.

Okra grows eagerly in tropical and subtropical climates and offers many nutritional benefits. Despite these wonderful traits, okra isn’t universally appreciated, largely because of its unusual interior texture, which is sometimes described as sticky or slimy (especially when cooked). Some people are unfamiliar with it, don’t find it appetizing, or haven’t gotten the hang of cooking it in a way that works for them.

And some health-conscious plant-eaters may avoid okra because they associate it with deep frying, either solo or in hush puppies, or with animal products such as sausage gumbo.

Yet okra has a lot of potential, in terms of nutrition, health, culinary pleasure — and even environmental healing. In this article, we’ll explore what okra has to offer.

What Is Okra?

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) is a six-foot-tall annual herb in the mallow family. Its relatives include such diverse cousins as cotton, hibiscus, and hollyhock. The okra you see in the grocery store or at the farm stand is the seed pod, which can grow up to a foot long once mature.

Okra is picked and eaten, though, when the pods are still unripe and tender, and typically between three and six inches long. (Any longer and they get very fibrous, and not even lots of cooking can soften them up.) Okra has a unique texture and slightly sweet flavor.

The big thing about okra pods is that they exude a mucilaginous juice (some say slime) once cut. Some folks are really turned off by this texture, and as a result, miss out on lots of okra goodness. (Spoiler alert — later in this article you’ll see how to prepare okra in a totally slime-free manner.) But it’s partly due to its mucilaginosity (sorry, spell checker, I like the word, and I’m sticking with it) that okra has become such a key part of many cuisines in the US South — the juice helps cooks out by thickening stews, such as gumbos, inexpensively and deliciously.

If you’ve never tried it, I can try to explain what okra tastes like by saying it’s a cross between asparagus and eggplant, but that totally doesn’t do it justice. So I hope this article will convince you to give it a try, so you can come up with your own description.

We’re not sure who first cultivated okra — Southeast Asia, India, and Africa are all contenders, as each region has a long culinary history with the pod. One likely theory posits that okra originated from the Abyssinian area that now includes Ethiopia, a portion of Eritrea, and the eastern, higher part of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. From there, okra may have spread first into Egypt, and then Arabia, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and eastward.

Cultural Importance of Okra

Okra arouses strong feelings, and not just because of its texture. Its history in the Western hemisphere is a story replete with love and hope, cruelty and suffering, oppression and self-determination. Long before it found its way to the Americas and the Caribbean via the slave trade, okra was (and still is) a staple food in many African cultures. In fact, the word “okra” comes from “nkuruma,” the name of the vegetable in the Twi language spoken in a region of West Africa that is now known as the Republic of Ghana.

The word “gumbo,” which originally was a synonym for okra but later referred to any dish in which okra appeared, derives directly from the Angolan word for okra, “ngombo.” Oral history accounts tell of enslaved African women bringing a number of important seeds to the Americas — including not just okra, but also rice and other vegetables and grains — by hiding them in their braided hair. To see how this might have been accomplished, check out this video of Maroon women in the Republic of Suriname demonstrating a hair braiding technique passed down from their ancestors to hide seeds:

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Okra, which had been an essential crop in Africa, thrived in the Southern US and helped enslaved Africans survive in a new land. They were sometimes responsible for growing their own subsistence rations, in addition to working for plantation owners. Crops like okra became staple foods for enslaved peoples. Okra, in particular, grew extremely well throughout the long, hot, Southern summers and eventually became a staple in Southern American cooking.

In addition to its African culinary roots, okra is also embedded in Southeast Asian and Indian culinary traditions. The okra pod is known as “lady finger” across some Asian and European countries, “bhindi” on the Indian subcontinent, and “bamia” in the Middle East.

Okra Nutrition Facts

Okra has been valued as a staple despite not being a high source of energy — a pound of cooked okra provides only 100 calories. In other words, if you were going to live on okra, you’d pretty much have to make eating okra your full-time job. But while it’s low in calories, okra shines by providing many important nutrients. It’s a good source of fiber as well as multiple vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin C, vitamin K1, and folate.

Okra fruits contain phenolic compounds, which are powerful antioxidants that combat oxidative stress in the body. Okra seeds, in particular, are antioxidant treasure troves. Compared to okra skins and flesh, the seeds have 10 times higher concentrations of one type of phenolic compound, flavonols, and almost 15 times higher of another, catechins.

In 100 grams of cooked okra (which is about 1 cup), you’ll find the following nutrients:

• Calories 22 kcal
• Protein 1.87 g
• Carbohydrates 4.51 g
• Fiber 2.5 g
• Calcium 77 mg
• Magnesium 36 mg
• Phosphorus 32 mg
• Potassium 135 mg
• Vitamin C 16.3 mg
• Folate 46 mcg
• Vitamin A 14 mcg
• Vitamin K 40 mcg

Health Benefits of Okra

As the proud provider of so many vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other phytonutrients, okra’s unique biochemical profile makes it particularly relevant to a number of specific conditions.

Okra for Gut Health

If you were busy in the fall of 2015, you might have missed the riveting study in the journal Molecules titled, “Acetylated Rhamnogalacturonans from Immature Fruits of Abelmoschus esculentus Inhibit the Adhesion of Helicobacter pylori to Human Gastric Cells by Interaction with Outer Membrane Proteins.” On the off chance that you missed it, let me fill you in.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a bacterium that can infect your stomach and damage the tissues in your digestive tract, as well as cause inflammation and painful sores known as peptic ulcers. German and Indian researchers isolated compounds from okra and pitted them against the H. pylori in a test tube that also contained human stomach cells. While the okra compounds didn’t kill or harm the bacteria, they did prevent them from sticking. In theory, this can prevent H. pylori from causing damage even if someone is infected.

What’s more, some health researchers believe that the sliminess of okra, known as mucilage, could be helpful in the treatment of the condition known as leaky gut.

And a study completed in 2020 found that powdered okra fruit helped obese mice maintain healthy blood sugar levels, body weight, and liver composition. The powder appeared to achieve its effects by increasing the ratio of “good” to “bad” bacteria in the mice’s microbiomes. (Lest you get all warm and fuzzy at the idea of researchers seeking to alleviate the health problems of mice, I need to point out that the researchers were the ones who made the mice fat in the first place. Our view on the use of animals in medical research is here.)

Okra for Diabetes

The ability of okra to regulate blood sugar that we saw in that mouse study also makes it a useful plant food in the management of all forms of diabetes. Like other plants in the mallow family (no, that doesn’t include s’mores), okra appears to improve cells’ ability to absorb insulin. Unfortunately, most of the evidence comes from trials conducted on diabetic rats. For some reason, okra has not been extensively studied for its effects on human health. This is unfortunate since as a prolific tropical and subtropical plant, okra could be an inexpensive and widely accessible part of diabetes treatment.

Okra Can Help Fight Malnutrition

In that vein, okra may also be a potent ally in the effort to eradicate malnutrition globally. Specifically, okra plants accumulate several minerals critical to human health and store them in their seed pods. These include calcium, zinc, iron, potassium, phosphorus, and sodium.

If you’ve ever grown okra, its ability to bioaccumulate minerals from the soil will make sense — the plants’ roots are strong, thick, and tenacious (I know more than one person who had to replace their digging fork after attempting to clear the okra bed for fall or winter planting).

Real-world efforts show that okra’s promise to provide minerals to undernourished populations is no myth. Okra grown in kitchen gardens in Ethiopia and Uganda improved the health of the most vulnerable residents of refugee camps, including young children and pregnant and lactating women. Indeed, some cultures in Indonesia and Southeast Asia have encouraged pregnant women to eat okra or even drink okra water — its high folate content might explain why. (And there’s a tradition that consuming okra may lead to pregnancy by acting as an aphrodisiac — I couldn’t find any scientific evidence for this, so here’s a case where you might want to do your own experimentation.)

Okra May Help with Pain Relief

A very cruel-sounding 2013 study found that mice who received powdered okra extract exhibited reduced responses when subjected to various forms of pain, leading the researchers to assume that the powdered okra had an analgesic (pain-relieving) effect.

In 2020, an international team of food scientists assessed the chemical makeup and nutritional profile of Tunisian okra pods. They found several potential analgesic compounds among the dozens of phytonutrients. And for good (or bad) measure, they repeated the mouse experiments and reproduced the results of the 2013 study. The mice who consumed okra appeared to weather the pain inflicted by the researchers with less distress than those given a placebo.

Okra May Help Cognitive Performance

Okra may also enhance cognitive performance, or at least mitigate cognitive impairment. A 2014 study found that okra seed extracts improved the performance and reduced the stress of cognitively impaired mice on various tasks, including mazes and forced swims.

And a 2021 study found that okra can raise levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein related to the brain’s ability to learn new information, in mice with Alzheimer’s disease.

(My hope is that researchers can drop the animal experiments and focus on the effects of dietary excellence in people, since giving humans okra seems a lot kinder and also more relevant to humans than inflicting pain or forced swims on mice.)

Environmental Impacts of Okra

With okra, there’s both good and bad environmental news. On the plus side, it turns out that some of the carbohydrates in okra, when combined with fenugreek and tamarind, can remove microplastics from water.

This is a big deal. Microplastics are ubiquitous in our oceans, and end up in the tissues of fish. In 2019, the World Wildlife Federation estimated that the average person consumes around five grams of microplastic every week, with potentially devastating health effects, including endocrine disruption. And the microplastic-removing chemicals commonly used in water treatment facilities can themselves be toxic to humans, so these plant-powered polymers of polysaccharides (how’s that for putting p’s into production?) are welcome news.

On the other hand, conventionally grown okra can come with a large side of organophosphate pesticides. These chemicals are potential neurotoxins and have been found to cause cancer in both humans and animals. Indian researchers found over 18 kinds of organophosphates on okra sold in markets in the city of Hyderabad.

In addition to the organophosphate pesticides, conventional okra production relies heavily on the pesticides belonging to organochlorine, carbamate, pyrethroid, and neonicotinoid groups. Neonicotinoids may be harmful to bees and other pollinators, which is why the European Union has banned several of them.

The answer to avoiding pesticides is pretty simple — we can grow okra organically. And it’s fairly easy to do because the plant is resistant to most pests and diseases. Stink bugs and beetles can colonize the plants and chew up their leaves, but in small-scale growing operations such as home gardens and small farms, these are relatively easy to pick off by hand. So look for organic okra, or okra grown using integrated pest management protocols, or better still, if you live in a warm enough climate, grow your own!

Okra Side Effects

While okra is a nutritional powerhouse, some people should limit their consumption, or avoid it outright. Those with sensitivity to the salicylates or FODMAPs in okra may experience gastrointestinal symptoms upon eating it. Also, the saponins in okra (and other foods, including quinoa) are typically poorly absorbed and may cause irritation or other gastrointestinal symptoms in some people. Fortunately, soaking raw okra pods and cooking them (in the plant science community, these techniques are referred to as “standard processing methods” — gotta love some good jargon!) can mitigate these effects. Just like with quinoa — it’s best to soak okra first and rinse it well before cooking.

Okra is also known to interact with a couple of very common medications — the diabetes drug metformin, and the anti-clotting compound warfarin (due to okra’s high vitamin K content). So check with your health care professional if you’re taking either of those drugs before adding okra to your diet.

Finally, let’s talk about allergies. While the World Health Organization hasn’t found any research showing that eating okra can produce full-blown allergic reactions, there is some evidence that workers who pack or process okra may experience immediate hypersensitivity, or type I, allergic reactions. These immunoglobulin-mediated reactions, which trigger histamine production in response to exposure to the allergen, have only been documented in Nigeria.

Where to Buy & How to Choose Okra

When shopping for okra, look for bright green pods with no discoloration, scarring, or shriveled ends. A good length for an okra pod is 2–4 inches, although the main thing is that the fresh pod isn’t woody. You should be able to snap it in half or cut it easily with a sharp knife. If you find yourself reaching for a chainsaw, you are dealing with a post-consumption pod. Some farmers sell “baby okra,” which are simply smaller and less mature pods.

You can also find presliced, frozen okra, as well as commercially prepared canned or jarred pickled okra. Glass jars are preferable because the cans may contain BPA in the lining, but check the ingredients if you’re trying to avoid preservatives, excess sodium, or added sugar.

In terms of availability, you can generally find frozen, canned, or pickled okra in most grocery stores and supermarkets. Some will offer fresh pods in the produce section — this is common in regional stores and markets that serve Southern US states.

If you live in an okra-growing region, you are likely to find fresh okra at farmers markets from midsummer through fall, when it’s in season. And you can also procure fresh okra at international markets and grocery stores, especially South Asian or Indian markets.

How to Cook Okra & Use it in Recipes

The key thing when cooking okra is, for most people, to neutralize the sliminess while highlighting its uniquely pleasant flavor. One method involves roasting or baking whole pods. Depending on your oven, 10–15 minutes at 425° F (220° C), with or without oil, should cook okra thoroughly and do the trick.

If you have an air fryer, it was pretty much made for preparing yummy okra. See Nichole’s recipe below.

Other methods include sautéing, boiling, and grilling. (Follow the links for instructions and recipes.) To ensure that your sautéed or boiled okra is slime-free, let the pods soak with salt and an acid like vinegar or lemon juice, or cook them in tomato sauce. Soaking isn’t necessary for air frying, grilling, or roasting/baking because the slime dries out in the heat.

Of course, you can make the sliminess your friend by using okra to thicken soups, stews, and gumbos as well as sauces. Okra shines in curries and other fragrant Indian dishes and can make an elegant appetizer or side dish. You can also preserve a large harvest (which you’ll get if you grow your own) by pickling or canning the pods.

Okra also adds pizzazz to salads, like this Japanese-style one, and stir-fries.

Here are some recipes to help you build your okra momentum.

Okra Recipes

Are you ready to give okra a try? Crispy Okra Fries with Garlic Cashew Cream are a crunchy, dippable, and craveable delight that makes okra a shining star. Red Bean Gumbo with Okra is a traditional and savory stew that is satisfyingly delicious and makes okra both appetizing (trust us, you’ll understand once you try it) and also exciting! And if you’re ready to take on the title of okra connoisseur, then Pickled Okra is a deliciously tangy way to enjoy okra. You’ll be surprised to find it’s bursting with lots of flavor, texture, and crunch — it may become your new favorite way to snack on vegetables throughout the day.

1. Crispy Okra Fries with Garlic Cashew Cream

These undeniably delicious fries and dipping sauce come together in just minutes to make the perfect snack or side dish for any of your favorite plant-based sandwich recipes. Crunchy, dippable, craveable, and incredibly delightful, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t tried okra this way before. Its versatility, flavor, and nutrient profile — boasting high calcium, zinc, iron, potassium, and phosphorus — make it a veggie deserving its time in the spotlight. We hope once you give it a try, you’ll love it as much as we do.

2. Red Bean Gumbo with Okra

As we have learned, okra can be a polarizing vegetable, but if you’re on team “no okra, please,” you might want to reconsider — starting with this dish. Okra is rich in magnesium, folate, vitamin C, vitamin K, fiber, and more! Add stewed red kidney beans, savory herbs and spices, and whole grains to it and you have a bountiful, nourishing, and tasty dish that will be hard not to love.

3. Pickled Okra

Pickling vegetables is a culinary tradition, not only as a means of preservation but also as a way to add briny and acidic pungency to dishes. You might wonder how to use this seed pod in pickled form — do you eat it on its own, top it on a salad, or add it to a soup or stew? The answer to all of the above is yes! Pickled okra is a deliciously tangy way to enjoy the veggie — it’s bursting with flavor, texture, and crunch, and best of all, none of the slime. Try it on any savory dish that needs a little extra tang and nutrition.

Okra IS Good for You!

Okra is a controversial food due to its tendency to be slimy when cut, and because of its complicated history and the tragic context of its journey to the Americas and Caribbean. If you didn’t grow up eating it, you may think of okra as exotic and it may feel at first like an acquired taste. But for many people around the world, okra is a beloved vegetable of great culinary value and deep historical roots.

And whether you know okra well or are just learning about it, the fact remains that it is a highly nutritious vegetable with multiple health benefits and few potential downsides. Raw, cooked, or pickled, okra deserves your attention, and — I predict — your appreciation as well.

Tell us in the comments:

• Have you tried okra? What was your first impression?
• If you have a cultural tradition of cooking with okra, what’s your favorite way to enjoy it?
• What plant-based okra recipe will you try?

Feature Image: iStock.com/HONG VO

Read Next:

• Making Food Accessible for All: An Interview with Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm
• Healthy Vegan Soul Food

The post What Is Okra & Is it Good for You? appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

That cornfield was a cornfield last year, and the year before, and it will be a cornfield next year, and into the foreseeable future. It’s a monoculture because corn holds a monopoly on that field — no other crops allowed. Because monocultures typically exist at large scale, and can accommodate both conventional and organic farming, the vast majority of the agricultural yield in industrialized countries comes from monocultures.

The question is, why? It’s obvious that nature doesn’t monocrop. You’ll never see an area untouched by humans that is completely dominated by a single species of plant. Nature abhors not just a vacuum, but sameness. Biodiversity is the signature of a natural system.

To understand the reasons behind the global shift to monocultures, and why the agricultural sector has embraced it so wholeheartedly, we have to look at the Green Revolution of the 1960s, and the hopes of the scientists, policy makers, and farmers who were struggling with the twin scourges of poverty and starvation.

How Did Monocropping Come About?

Monocropping was a cornerstone of a series of initiatives intended to address hunger throughout the world by increasing agricultural production. The plan was to develop a wide array of effective pesticides and herbicides, create and teach farmers to use new synthetic fertilizers, breed new and improved “high-yield varieties” (HYVs) of calorically dense crops, and mechanize farm equipment.

The thing that was going to make all of these innovations work was a shift in how agricultural land was used. Traditionally, subsistence farmers and smallholders planted a variety of crops, from grains to pulses to nuts to vegetables to fruits to herbs. But the new technologies and systems of mass production were only going to work, the thinking went, at a large scale.

The big machines were expensive and were designed to handle a specific crop. You don’t harvest wheat with the same equipment you use to harvest soybeans. Each crop required a custom application of biocides and fertilizers, as well. In order to get the most out of these technological advances, farming had to change from the workshop model to the factory model.

To replace biodiverse gardens and farms with industrial-sized agriculture, vast swaths of arable land were converted into single-crop use. That way, the farmers could use their new equipment and synthetic chemicals on new HYVs that were bred to tolerate the toxins and make the most of the fertilizers.

As a result, farms around the world increased in size, on average doubling the number of acres under cultivation, in order to produce more food with less labor. With a single farmer able to produce more food, the number of farmers and farm laborers decreased, as human inputs were replaced by machines and by chemicals, often delivered from the air. Over time, more and more farms relied solely on these high-yielding crops, in the form of monocropping, to increase yields and profits.

This logic led to vigorous efforts to bioengineer HYVs to produce heartier, faster-growing, and more resilient crops that define monoculture, rather than relying on trial and error or “natural” breeding.

Now, let’s look at some of the monoculture advantages and disadvantages for farmers.

Economic Advantages of Monocropping for Farmers

At first, farmers thought they were on to a good thing. They could now produce more food, and opted to cultivate the one crop that had the greatest profit potential for their soil and climate.

Another monocropping benefit to farmers was the perceived simplicity that saved them time and money, at least in the short-term. Focusing solely on a single crop meant the costs for seeds, equipment, fertilizer, and so on, remained relatively consistent over time, and farmers didn’t have to keep looking for new suppliers.

GMOs and Monocropping

As bioengineered (BE) crops (formerly known as GMOs), such as Roundup Ready corn, soybeans, and sugar beets hit the market, the pairing process got even simpler. The farmer had a standing order of glyphosate (one of the active ingredients in Bayer’s — formerly Monsanto’s — weed killer Roundup) that accompanied every purchase of BE seeds.

Harvesting also got much simpler, as a single machine designed specifically for corn, wheat, or beets could do the work of hundreds of human laborers.

The Emergence of Factory Farms

And last, but certainly not least among the perceived benefits of monocultures, monocrops became inextricably interlinked with a massive expansion in factory farming (or what the industry calls Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs). Today, much of the world’s corn and soy are fed to livestock, not to humans. And CAFO-raised cows, pigs, and chickens represent an almost limitless market for these crops.

The overall result of monocropping, for the first couple of decades, appeared to be mostly positive — at least in terms of the goals of bringing the world more and cheaper calories and increasing the economic security of the farmers who provided it. But all those perceived savings came with hidden costs that added up over time.

Monocultures (and the Green Revolution in general) were promoted to increase the global food supply. While that’s happened, there have been several attendant negative consequences. (I’d say “unforeseen consequences” but I’m not sure that’s true. It didn’t take psychic powers to imagine the effects of a dietary pattern made up largely from factory farmed animal products and processed corn, soy, wheat, and palm oil replacing traditional diets.)

Economic Disadvantages of Monocropping for Farmers

The fundamental issue with monocropping is the “all the eggs in one basket” problem. Crop failure is an inevitable part of farming. For myriad reasons that farmers can’t control (most of them falling under the categories of weather, pests, and disease), not all plants thrive and produce a bountiful and profitable harvest every single year.

In a biodiverse ecosystem, a threat to one crop may not be a threat to others. An infestation of stem borers can destroy summer squash but may leave eggplant untouched. An unexpected hail may crush corn and not bother beets.

But when fields contain just one crop, from genetically identical stock, every single plant is equally vulnerable to threat. A pest population can jump easily from one plant to another, especially when there are no other species of plants in between and when crops are planted close together for efficiency.

Monocropping Through History

To see the devastating results when a monocrop comes under threat, check out the history of the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, in which a single genetic variant of potatoes was wiped out by a water mold. The Irish people’s dependence on that variant for the majority of their calories meant that over a million people starved to death (an eighth of the entire Irish population), and millions more left the country as refugees.

The history books offer at least one more example of the dangers of relying on monocrops. The world’s most popular banana up until the 1950s was a variant known as Gros Michel. You can’t find a single one anymore, as the world’s supply was knocked out by a fungus that caused Panama disease, which led to banana wilt.

In response, banana producers turned to a less tasty variety, the Cavendish, which is the fruit we know today. Unfortunately, the banana industry didn’t learn its lesson, as the Cavendish comprises 99% of the world’s banana production, and is now under attack from a new variant of Panama disease called TR4. Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, predicted in an NPR interview that the Cavendish could become extinct in the next 10–30 years.

A Trap for Farmers

Monoculture farming can become a trap for the farmers, who often have no choice but to keep purchasing the same seeds and biocides from their agribusiness vendors. Since the seed and agrochemical market was consolidated through mergers and acquisitions into just four main global players, these firms can exert monopolistic power over the farmers who depend on them for seeds and chemical inputs.

The result is increased costs and eroded profit margins for farmers. For example, the price of corn seed rose from under $27 per planted acre of seed to over $90 from 1990 to 2019, far outstripping the rate of inflation. And because monocrop corn farmers have invested so heavily in machinery and infrastructure for growing and harvesting corn, they can’t easily exercise free choice and move to another crop or growing model.

The consolidation of seed and supply companies into just a few global companies isn’t the end of the “bigger is better” story. Farms themselves are growing larger, by buying up competitors’ land or squeezing family farmers out of business. Bigger farms that buy at large scale are rewarded with favorable pricing, which makes it much harder for smaller farms to compete fairly in the marketplace.

Many farmers are forced to buy Bayer seeds and pesticides even if they don’t want to. When neighboring farms spray so much of the weed killer dicamba that the air turns hazy, those toxic clouds can waft for two to three miles, killing any soybean plants that aren’t bioengineered with dicamba-resistant genes — which is to say, any soybeans not made by Bayer.

Government Subsidies and Monocultures

Not coincidentally, crops produced in a monoculture system are often the same ones that are subsidized by the government (at taxpayer expense, of course). Subsidization is generally delivered in the form of insurance for farmers, guaranteeing that they can sell their crop above a certain price, no matter how low the actual market value for that crop falls. The primary subsidized crops in the US are corn, soy, wheat, and rice.

One out of every five dollars earned by US farmers comes directly from government payouts. These subsidies now buffer farmers not just from the threat of a bad harvest or market crash, but from any marketplace fluctuation. Without subsidies, it would be economic insanity to grow just one or two crops. If the price of corn dropped sufficiently, a farm that relied entirely or mostly on corn for its income could get completely wiped out in a single season.

Finally, subsidies tend to favor large farms, as government payouts often disproportionately go to the biggest producers.

Monoculture’s Impacts on the Food Supply & Food Insecurity

At a large scale, monocropping means that poor countries must compete with wealthy ones, in the open market, for a slice of the same global food supply. While traditionally a poor country might be able to grow its own food more cheaply, since wages were also lower, now the entire world bids for commodity crops, which places lower-income nations at a disadvantage.

Because the Green Revolution, in general, and monocropping, in particular, prioritizes efficiency over resilience, there’s very little slack in the system when anything goes wrong. And in agriculture, things often do go wrong. Shocks and uncertainties are part of the web of life, which is why nature builds redundancy and diversity into its design.

When humans decimate that diversity through monocropping, any event that leads to a diminished harvest has ripple effects, such as increasing food prices and bringing about greater food insecurity.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Monocropping

We’ve seen this play out during the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Bank, a long-time supporter of industrialized agriculture at scale, has admitted that even before the pandemic, monocropped agriculture was collapsing. Here’s a remarkable sentence from an article on the World Bank’s website: “Even before COVID-19 reduced incomes and disrupted supply chains, chronic and acute hunger were on the rise due to various factors, including conflict, socio-economic conditions, natural hazards, climate change and pests.”

As the pandemic unfolded, the article continues, these already scarce resources became even more expensive, with the Agricultural Commodity Price Index increasing 25% from January 2021 to January 2022. Again, the global economically poor were getting priced out of access to food grown on their own lands, which replaced the diverse and healthful horticulture and subsistence practices that had fed their families for generations.

For example, monocropping has displaced regional staples, such as millet, sorghum, and cassava, all culturally and nutritionally important sources of calories throughout much of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and South America. These foods have been part of traditional healthy diets for hundreds of years, and their displacement threatens global crop diversity.

Monoculture’s Impacts on Human Health

Human health also suffers when factory-farmed animal products and processed grains and oils replace traditional whole foods in our diets. Monocultures of corn and palm oil can produce more calories — but far less nutrition — per acre than many other crops. In a world of cheap calories from fractionated foods, malnutrition now refers as much to micronutrient deficiencies as to starvation.

A 2021 research paper on the effects of monocropping on the health of the economically poor highlights the scope of the problem in its first sentence: “Approximately 2 billion people globally are affected by micronutrient deficiencies; much of which is attributed to consuming a monotonous diet of nutrient-deficient staple crops.”

Researchers have also documented a relationship between the decrease in dietary diversity and a reduction in the diversity of the human microbiome, with accompanying health challenges. And once a particular strain of beneficial microbes goes extinct in a population, there’s a risk that it will never return.

Monocropping also makes it harder for farmworkers to lead lives of dignity, freedom, and security. As pests become resistant to pesticides, and weeds gain resistance to herbicides, agricultural chemical manufacturers have engaged in an arms race, increasing both the quantity and toxicity of chemical applications. While there’s some debate about how much exposure to these agents harms consumers, there’s no doubt that farmworker exposure to biocides is extremely hazardous.

Monoculture’s Impact on Children

Children of mothers who work in pesticide-contaminated fields experience more neurological issues, cognitive impairment, and autism. Girls who grow up exposed to pesticides are at greater risk of infertility and breast cancer.

And throughout the world, children involved in monocropped agriculture, such as on oil palm plantations, are being exploited. Globally, millions of children and adults are essentially enslaved by their agricultural employers.

Environmental Impacts of Monocropping

Humans aren’t the only species being harmed by monocropping. The practice is making the planet more susceptible to the ravages of climate change by eroding the land’s ability to retain soil and water.

A 2020 study published in the prestigious journal Nature reported that land used for agriculture or tree farms, which comprises 40% of all the non-ice-covered land on the planet, “… is less able to withstand fires, pests, and extreme weather events.” And since monocropping farmers lack the agility to shift their planting strategies in the face of climate change, they’re extremely vulnerable to these effects.

Pest and Weed Resistance

As we’ve seen, monocropping and pesticide use go hand in hand. But insects and weeds are rapidly developing resistance to the most widely used pesticides, which creates a vicious cycle — when bioengineered, pesticide-resistant crops fail, agribusiness has doubled down on the strategy by unleashing an “arms war” of increased and more diverse pesticide deployment.

This creates two additional problems. First, since the costs of losing the battle to a pest or pathogen can mean economic disaster for growers and consumers, there’s little appetite to risk alternative approaches to pest management that don’t involve all-out chemical warfare. Second, climate change means that new pests can now thrive in areas where they until recently had never been seen.

Effect on Pollinators

I’m sorry to say this, but it gets worse. According to a 2019 report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), monocropping, and the pesticide use that accompanies it, now threatens not just plant diversity, but pollinator diversity as well. According to the FAO, over one million species of plants and animals are endangered, including many insect pollinators without whose hard work we would be in real trouble. Of the 20 fastest growing crops in the world, 16 require pollination from insects or other animals. And the danger is not evenly distributed — the most affected countries are the emerging and developing nations in Africa, Asia, and South America.

Disrupts Water Supply

Monocropping also compromises our precious water supply. Fertilizers add nitrates, nitrites, and phosphates to our drinking water, as well as to other bodies of water. Nutrients leach out of our food supply and into water — which not only don’t benefit the ecology of rivers, lakes, and ponds but can harm them by creating the conditions for algal blooms that starve aquatic creatures of oxygen.

And impoverished monocropped soil is less able to absorb rainwater, leading to more flooding and more dependency on irrigation.

Decreased Soil Biodiversity

Fertilizers, pesticides, and factory farm waste also harm the ability of soil to sustain life. Monocrops keep adding the same things and depleting the same things, leading to less biodiverse, resilient, and mineral-rich soil (and more dependence on external inputs such as chemical fertilizers).

Monocropping reduces organic matter in soil and can cause significant erosion. This decreases the diversity and abundance of bacterial communities in soil, which in turn undermines plant health and ultimately the health of the humans who eat the plants.

Sustainable Alternatives to Monocultures

As scary and sad as all this is, there’s some good news that’s also part of the story — we know how to grow food in ways that heal rather than harm the earth and ourselves.

Regenerative Agriculture

What’s known as regenerative agriculture, and millennia-old, indigenous growing ways, prioritize practices that mimic natural ecological processes and promote biodiversity. Shifting to regenerative agricultural processes is also one of the most powerful levers at our disposal to combat human-caused global climate chaos.

Regenerative farming focuses on the health of the soil as a top priority. Unlike monocropping, which sacrifices long-term soil health for the short-term production of marketable crops (did none of these scientists or policy makers encounter the story of “the Goose Who Laid the Golden Egg” as a child?), responsible land stewards treat the soil as their primary asset, which produces wealth in the form of food year after year.

Regenerative practices have been shown to enhance soil health, increase soil-based carbon stores (which is good for the climate as well as the plants growing in that soil), improve the physical structure of the soil so that it can hold more carbon, water, and oxygen, and boost soil biodiversity.

Intercrops, Cover Crops, and Polyculture

Other examples of sustainable growing include intercropping — planting more than one crop in a field — and polycultures, which means planting multiple crops together that all help each other grow better.

A well-known example of such a polyculture is the “3 Sisters” of South and Central America: corn, beans, and squash. Planted together, all three do much better than any one on its own. The squash puts out big leaves that outcompete weeds, but only after the corn and beans have grown taller than the squash leaves. The corn provides a frame upon which the beans can climb. And the beans, like all legumes, fix nitrogen in the soil for the other two sisters. The result is healthier plants and higher yields without the need for so many (or any) chemical fertilizers and herbicides.

Another technique, planting cover crops on part of the land to serve as “green manure” for other crops, adds nutrients and reduces the need to import fertility from outside the farm.

Integrated Pest Management

A sophisticated method of dealing with insects that eat crops, integrated pest management (IMP) also mimics nature, which doesn’t try to eliminate species entirely but keeps them in check through predation. Rather than killing life and reducing biodiversity, IMP takes the opposite approach, nurturing the presence of organisms that prey on the critters that prey on the crops.

Agroforestry

Nature, of course, doesn’t grow food in rows, but produces its bounty in meadows, orchards, glens, jungles, and forests. All these ecosystems are characterized by robust biodiversity that’s expressed in vertical layers, with roots, ground cover, shrubs, bushes, short trees, and tall trees all sharing the sun, soil, and rain to their collective benefit. Agroforestry is an approach to growing crops that mimics the design and function of a grove, with crops and trees interplanted.

While there is always more to learn, and there are many new breakthroughs to be had, this isn’t entirely new science. Indigenous farmers have been refining these techniques for millennia, to protect their crops from extreme weather events, maximize the resources that can be harvested from a single location (legumes and lettuce and lumber, oh my!), increase soil fertility, and store carbon.

Indigenous farmers also save and treasure many varieties of each crop, which increases the odds that any disease that attacks a particular strain won’t be able to destroy the entire crop. And the genetic variability also provides nutritional and usage variability, so the community can get far more from its arable land than a single crop would provide. This approach truly provides the farmers with land for life, rather than cash crops for a few seasons.

What Can You Do as a Consumer?

Given the urgency of our collective generational challenge — to produce food sustainably and ethically so that all may be fed — what can each of us do to participate in the shift from industrial monocropping to regenerative agriculture?

At a personal level, we can start by directing our hard-earned money towards foods that align with our values.

1. Eliminate Factory Farmed Meat and Dairy

A strategy with a particularly big impact is to steer clear of industrially produced animal products such as meat and dairy. That’s because much of the monocropped and bioengineered corn and soy grown around the world goes to feed livestock.

2. Cut Down on Processed Foods

You can also say no to monocropping by reducing your purchases of processed foods, especially those made with palm oil, non-organic corn, and soy by-products. This isn’t as simple as looking for “corn” or “soy” on a food label: corn by-products can hide behind words like maltodextrin, sorbitol, and fructose (here’s a primer on avoiding these substances in packaged foods), while soy can be found in mono- and diglycerides and monosodium glutamate, among many other sources.

3. Buy Sustainable and Ethically Sourced Food

If that’s what not to buy, what shopping strategies encourage more environmentally friendly and regenerative methods of growing food? As much as possible, buy a diversity of locally grown, non-BE, fair trade, and organic produce. The good news is, most of the world’s farms are still small and family-run, and typically don’t grow crops in monocultures. Smaller-scale farms are more likely to practice composting and other sustainable methods that reduce soil erosion and in some cases, even sequester carbon into the ground.

4. Shop Local and Small

To really increase your odds of supporting an environmentally responsible farm, frequent your local farmers market, support a nearby farm stand, or join a CSA (community supported agriculture) collective. It’s a great way to connect with small-scale folks who are more likely to practice crop rotation, companion planting, and other sustainable techniques. You can ask them how they grow their food and learn about what they are doing, too. A lot of thoughtful farmers love to be seen for, and to brag about, the good things they do. And by spending money within your local economy, you help your community become more abundant.

5. Go Organic

Buying organic can be another way to steer clear of monocrops, as organic farming methods are typically not compatible with monocropping. While some large-scale organic operations may adopt aspects of monocropping for certain crops, this is more often the exception than the rule.

The majority of organic farms are practicing polyculture and crop rotation, prioritizing soil health, and using cover crops. And by definition, they also can’t use most conventional pesticides or bioengineering, so overall their farming practices tend to be better for people and the environment.

6. Grow Your Own Food

You can also lead by example by growing some of your own food. It’s a great way to reduce or eliminate your reliance on industrial agriculture in all its problematic forms. You’ll also buffer yourself from future disruptions in the world’s food supply such as we saw during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you have a lawn, you’re actually tending your own tiny monoculture of grass. You can show your neighbors (and yourself) what’s possible by turning that lawn into something more diverse and useful. You can grow food, or you might also plant a pollinator garden, grow food for birds, or sequester carbon by planting small trees. All of these options can improve the health of the soil and give a hand to your local wildlife.

Say No to Monocropping

Monocropping is an unsustainable farming system that has serious negative impacts on farmers, farmworkers, society, and the environment. What began as a proposed solution to world hunger turned into a race for ever-higher yields and short-term profits.

For humans and the environment to thrive, we need to shift to farming methods that are sustainable and even regenerative, putting more back into the soil than we extract.

And all of us can play an important part by not buying food produced using monocropping methods on large-scale industrial farms — instead supporting local, small-scale, and organically produced food.

Tell us in the comments:

• What’s one change you can make to support regenerative agriculture?
• Do you support farmers’ markets, CSAs, or local family farms?
• Do you grow any food?

Feature Image: iStock.com/FrostRoomHead

Read Next:

• Seed Saving: Every Seed Has a Story
• What Are GMOs or Bioengineered Foods? And Are They Safe?

The post Monocropping: A Disastrous Agricultural System appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

You know what else is everywhere, and mostly inaccessible? Nitrogen. And in order to understand the science of nitrates and nitrites in food and water as they relate to our individual and planetary health, we have to learn a bit about the nitrogen cycle, and why this most abundant atmospheric element plays so hard to get with the organisms that depend on it for their existence.

But why do we care about nitrates and nitrites in the first place?

Nitrates and Nitrites: Friends or Foes?

Scientists began sounding the alarm in the 1960s when it was discovered that nitrates and nitrites, which were used to cure meats such as hot dogs, ham, and bacon, appeared to cause cancer in laboratory animals. (Our view on the use of animals in medical research is here.)

Paradoxically, at the same time, we were learning that the nitrates and nitrites in plants, which are chemically identical to their synthetic counterparts found in meat preservatives, seemed to be good for us. The 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine went to three researchers who figured out that nitric oxide gas does our cardiovascular system a world of good, dilating arteries and blood vessels and thereby lowering blood pressure.

And we get nitrates and nitrites from environmental sources, like drinking water.

So what’s the deal? Should we avoid nitrates and nitrites from all sources, or only some? And if some are good and some aren’t, what’s the difference?

The Nitrogen Cycle

Before we define ‘nitrate’, let’s start with the basic science that you might have learned in high school biology. The most common thing in the air all around us is the chemical element nitrogen, abbreviated N in the periodic table. Nitrogen makes up 78% of our atmosphere, while oxygen comes in second at around 20%.

It’s a good thing there’s so much nitrogen because it’s a critical component of protein, as well as DNA, the genetic code that makes life possible at all. Without nitrogen, plants and animals simply wouldn’t exist.

But here’s the rub. Like Coleridge’s mariner, nitrogen that we can’t access surrounds us. The nitrogen in the air (chemically abbreviated as N2, since it’s two nitrogen atoms bonded together so tightly that nobody else stands a chance, like that popular couple from 12th grade) is biologically inert. Plants can’t use it for structure or growth, and animals can’t breathe it into their cells.

Nature compensates for this gap in two very cool ways. One is lightning, which “fixes” nitrogen (no, there’s nothing wrong with it; “fixing” is just science-speak for “making bioavailable by adding oxygen”). The other is a wonderfully complex process involving bacteria that live in the soil, either freely or attached to the root nodules of legumes. These bacteria perform the super-crucial task of adding hydrogen atoms to the inert nitrogen gas. This converts the nitrogen into ammonia and ammonium, which plants can turn into nitrogen-containing organic molecules, such as amino acids and DNA.

So What Are Nitrates and Nitrites?

Still with me? After the nitrifying bacteria does it’s thing, some of the ammonia and ammonium is converted into a chemical compound called nitrate (NO3) by other bacteria that strip out the hydrogens and replace them with oxygens. And some nitrates get converted to nitrites (NO2) by microbes, either in the soil or in the microbiomes of animals.

In essence, the definition of nitrates are chemical compounds, either natural or manmade, containing both nitrogen and oxygen atoms. Nitrates formed as part of the natural nitrogen cycle are major plant nutrients. Nitrites, while also part of the nitrogen cycle, are formed by the oxidation of ammonia and Nitrobacter bacteria.

However, the plot thickened when humans discovered how to produce nitrates and nitrites synthetically. That 1998 Nobel Prize in Medicine, awarded for the discovery of nitric oxide, was funded from a bequest by Alfred Nobel, the guy who figured out how to turn nitroglycerin (see that “nitro” prefix there?) into dynamite. In addition to explosives, synthetically fixed nitrogen helped create fertilizers and food additives.

It’s the synthetic creation of food additives that triggered the initial concern about the health effects of nitrates and nitrites.

So, to answer the question, “What are nitrates and nitrites?” The layperson’s definition of nitrate is it’s a chemical compound (NO3) that combines nitrogen and oxygen, which plants need to grow. And the definition of nitrite is it’s also a chemical compound (NO2) that is often used as a food preservative.

The Controversy Over Nitrates and Nitrites in Food

So, are nitrates and nitrites bad for you? To answer that, we have to consider what source they come from, as well as the effects of nitrates and nitrites on the human body.

Now, let’s get to the heart of the puzzle: Naturally occurring nitrates and nitrites in plant foods appear to be really good for us, while the same compounds — when used to preserve and intensify the flavor of meats, smoked fish, some dairy products, and even beer — raise our risk for certain cancers. Processed meat also appears to increase our risk of other chronic conditions, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

How is this possible? Why does the source matter so much?

It turns out that nitrates and nitrites are heavily influenced by the company they keep. When they hang out with fruits and veggies, they convert into nitric oxide (NO), which helps our cardiovascular system operate at peak capacity. But when they’re paired with animal products, or created synthetically, they end up as nitrosamines, which may lead to malignancies in our digestive tracts.

Synthetic Nitrates & Nitrites

So what’s wrong with using nitrates and nitrites to preserve meat? There are a few key factors.

First, synthetic nitrates and nitrites are often combined with minerals, such as sodium. When you see sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite on a food label, that’s what we’re talking about. And these forms of the compounds cause disease in humans.

Sodium nitrates and nitrites react with other molecules, which is where the problem starts. Some of those molecules include degraded bits of amino acids that develop as proteins naturally break down in our bodies. The compounds that emerge when nitrates and nitrites are combined with degraded amino acids include N-nitroso compounds (mysteriously abbreviated NOCs, because I don’t see anything starting with “O” in there) and nitrosamines. We can start producing these compounds in our mouths and stomachs after ingesting sodium nitrates and nitrites.

Second, nitrates and nitrites in processed meat come packaged with their own generous supply of amino acids, right there in the food they’re preserving. Meat and other animal products naturally contain proteins, made up of amino acids, and the high heat used during the preservation process produces the NOCs and nitrosamine compounds even before we start digesting the meat or dairy.

Third, cooking preserved meats at high heat increases the conversion of sodium nitrates and nitrites into more dangerous compounds. Bacon, typically fried, is of particular concern here.

Nitrates, Nitrites, and Cancer

So what’s the problem with nitrosamines? They are strong carcinogens that may produce cancer in diverse organs and tissues including the lungs, brain, liver, kidneys, bladder, stomach, esophagus, and sinuses. One form, dimethylnitrosamine, causes liver tumors in rats. Of the other known nitrosamine compounds, 90% have been found to be carcinogenic.​​

It’s partly due to the nitrosamine content of processed meats that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared their consumption as “carcinogenic to humans.” The IARC assessed processed meat as a “highly probable” contributor to stomach and colorectal cancers.

It’s not just the body that gets messed up by synthetic nitrates in processed food. An analysis of more than 1,000 people with and without psychiatric disorders has shown that nitrates found in beef jerky, salami, hot dogs, and other processed meat snacks may contribute to mania — a potentially dangerous mood state that may involve sleeplessness, along with hallucinations, psychosis, grandiose delusions, or paranoid rage.

How are Nitrates and Nitrites in Vegetables Different?

Ok, so if nitrates and nitrites are so dangerous in processed meats, should we try to limit their consumption across the board? What about in plant foods?

It turns out that certain plant foods, especially green leafy vegetables and root vegetables, are loaded with nitrates. In fact, plants provide about 80% of the nitrates in our diets. The plants get them directly from the soil, as part of the nitrogen cycle we examined earlier.

Our contribution to this process is to chew these plant foods well. Bacteria in our saliva, along with the physical mastication of food, convert the nitrates into nitrites. We swallow that saliva, which exposes our gut to high levels of nitrites that then turn into nitric oxide.

Nitrates from plant foods are not harmful, for a few reasons.

1. Plant-Based Foods Contain Less Overall Protein

First, there’s significantly less protein in plant-based foods than animal foods, so there’s much less raw material out of which to make nitrosamines.

2. There’s No Heme in Plant Foods

Second, even in the presence of protein, there’s another chemical that’s needed to form some of the most concerning nitrosamine compounds: heme. And heme, and the proteins that bind to it, are found exclusively in animal foods. Red meat, in particular, contains heme proteins (which give it that reddish color). And research shows that heme reacts with nitrates and nitrites in an acidic environment (and remember, your stomach is a churning vat of acid that would put any horror movie scene to shame) and forms nitrosamines in the lower intestine.

Plant foods are heme-free, with one recent exception: the Impossible Foods brand uses bioengineered (BE) heme from hemoglobin in soy root nodules in their meat analogues. Their goal, which they accomplish, is to create plant-based meat that “bleeds,” and that has the slightly bloody taste that many meat-eaters have grown accustomed to. We don’t yet know with certainty how the BE hemoglobin affects human health because it’s so new.

3. Plant-Based Foods Contain Antioxidants

In addition to plants being lower in protein and devoid of heme, they also contain compounds that actively inhibit the formation of nitrosamines in the gut or mouth. The big ones are the antioxidants, especially vitamins C and E. And neither occurs naturally in animal products.

A 2013 study of over 70,000 women found that the risk of colorectal cancer in those who ate a lot of red and processed meat increased only in those women who didn’t consume sufficient vitamin C. In fact, the bottom fifth in terms of vitamin C intake was 245% more likely to develop colon or rectal cancer than the top fifth.

The link between vitamin C and reduced cancer risk from nitrates prompted legislators to require some meat producers, particularly the bacon industry, to add sodium ascorbate or sodium erythorbate (both chemically similar to ascorbic acid, or vitamin C) to prevent the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines. Nice idea, but the science shows that it’s probably backfired big time. For reasons we don’t understand, adding these vitamin C analogues to bacon just turbocharges nitrosamine production, by up to a whopping 140 times.

Uncured Meats with Plant-Based Nitrates Are Still Harmful

Some processed meat brands claim not to include nitrates. The punchline is, they do. In an example of bureaucratic insanity, bacon that doesn’t contain synthetic nitrates or nitrites must contain the “uncured” label. But despite the “uncured” label, in reality they are cured — using a vegetable extract naturally high in nitrates (celery is the most common, but beets and other veggies are used as well).

Remember, the problem with nitrates and nitrites in animal-based foods is the company they keep — animal protein, heme iron, and high heat. Organic nitrates from celery act just like synthetic nitrites when added to bacon and sausage links.

Do Nitrates Offer Any Health Benefits?

It’s not just that plant-based nitrates and nitrites aren’t bad for you; they’re actually full of important health benefits, thanks to the wonderful effects of nitric oxide (NO) on cardiovascular function. When you eat leafy greens or root vegetables — and chew well — the bacteria in your mouth strip away one of the oxygen molecules from the nitrates, to make nitrites. Next, the nitrites metabolize into NO in your stomach and blood vessels.

Heart Health Benefits from Nitrates in Plants

Healthy arteries benefit from NO, which helps prevent atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, and erectile dysfunction in men. Plant foods high in nitrates, such as beets, also appear to aid athletic performance by allowing the cardiovascular system to work more efficiently under stress. In fact, one of the reasons vigorous exercise can be good for you might be the extra NO produced when you’re slightly oxygen-deprived.

In short, the more leafy greens and root veggies you eat, combined with other lifestyle habits like not smoking and maintaining a healthy weight, the more NO you make, and the less likely you are to suffer from heart disease.

Plant-Based Nitrates May Help with Aging and Memory

Nitrates in vegetables may also help in the prevention and treatment of age-related cognitive decline. NO has been shown to increase blood flow to at-risk areas of the aging brain, particularly the frontal lobes. A small 24-person study published in 2019 gave high doses of nitrate-rich beetroot juice or a placebo (sorry, but we won’t be sharing the recipe for “placebo beetroot juice” below) to a group of younger and older people, measured their vitals (heart rate and blood pressure), and gave them a cognitive challenge called a Stroop test. (It’s a fun test; you can take it yourself in 60 seconds.) Those who had just consumed real beetroot juice did significantly better on the test, suggesting that plant-based nitrites can help all ages think better.

Another study found that a single serving a day of leafy greens or other plant foods rich in antioxidants and nitrates may help to slow cognitive decline. Almost 1,000 participants (ages 58-99) of the Memory and Aging Project were followed for about five years. Researchers asked about their diets and gave them cognitive tests. The participants who consumed at least one daily serving of high-antioxidant and high-nitrate plant foods were found to be a whopping 11 years younger, on average, from a cognitive perspective, than those who ate the fewest of these veggies.

Nitrates in Our Water Supply

Nitrates aren’t just in veggies and processed meats; we can also get them from our water supply. And that isn’t a good thing.

The combustion of fossil fuels over the past couple of centuries has dramatically increased the amount of nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere. This can lead to smog and acid rain; that is, a transfer of active nitrogen compounds from the earth to the air and water. (Go here if you want a kid-friendly discussion of the nitrogen cycle.)

Since humans figured out how to produce nitrogen compounds for explosives and fertilizer, we’ve been using them like they’re going out of style (which wouldn’t be a bad thing, if you ask me). Farmers and large agribusinesses routinely apply nitrogen-rich chemical fertilizers and manure from factory farms to crops that are grown on nutrient-depleted soil. (Important sidenote: A large share of the corn, soy, and other fertilizer-intensive crops in North America go to livestock, not humans, so the meat industry’s fingerprints are all over nitrate-related pollution.)

​​Unless farmers build specialized structures to contain the runoff, heavy rains can shuttle these materials into nearby streams, lakes, and groundwater. Some of the highest levels of nitrate are in shallow wells and surface water subject to runoff from nitrogen fertilizers and confined animal feedlot operations. The problem isn’t just bad numbers on a water test; the excrement and contamination from agricultural runoff can make life all but unbearable for nearby residents.

Nitrates in Drinking Water

Nitrates in drinking water have been implicated in the development of methemoglobinemia, a mouthful and a half — known more colloquially as “blue baby syndrome.” In this sometimes fatal condition, the hemoglobin in blood is unable to carry oxygen throughout the body.

In general, the nitrate contribution to our diets from drinking water is low. But in places where synthetic fertilizer use is widespread, water may be a significant source of nitrate exposure in humans. If you have access to a test of your water quality, you can see if the nitrate levels are in the acceptable range. The nonprofit Water Quality Association recommends nitrate levels no higher than 10 mg/liter, and nitrite levels at 1 mg/liter or lower.

Unfortunately, conventional drinking water treatment processes (like those used by local treatment plants) do not remove nitrates from water. I’ll share more on what you can do about this below.

It’s not just humans who suffer when nitrogen compounds flood our waterways. Excess nitrogen from agriculture can also lead to toxic algal blooms in rivers and lakes. What happens is, the nitrogen acts as a fertilizer for algae that grow in the water. They proliferate, use up all the oxygen, and thereby suffocate all other aquatic life.

What You Can Do About Dietary Nitrates

While unwanted nitrates and nitrites in our food and water supplies are a global health and environmental issue, there are things you can do to reduce your personal exposure to the “bad kinds.” First, avoid or limit foods already high in synthetic nitrates or nitrites or which convert to harmful nitrosamines in the absence of antioxidants.

Examples of nitrates in food to avoid include:

• Bacon (for healthy alternatives click here)
• Hot dogs (for healthy alternatives click here)
• Sausages
• Many brands of beef jerky
• Processed deli meats
• Beef, pork, lamb, and other meats
• Some kinds of smoked fish and poultry (those cured with brines that contain sodium nitrite)
• Any other cured or smoked animal products
• Cow cheese (for healthy alternatives click here)
• Beer (for more on the health impacts of alcohol click here)

Determine your drinking water exposure and, if indicated, use a water filtration system. If you live in the US and don’t have access to a test, here’s an EPA chart that gives you a sense of how contaminated your water is likely to be, by state. If your nitrate levels are too high — or likely to be too high — you may choose to install a home water treatment system such as an ion exchange, distillation, or reverse osmosis system. If the nitrates are fine but the nitrites are high, you have an additional option: a Berkey water filter can remove nitrites, but not nitrates.

Plant-Based & Beneficial Nitrates

Of course, let’s not forget about the good guys! Even though nitrates in the wrong context can be harmful, nitrates in plant foods can be fabulous.

And eat foods high in beneficial nitrates that are also a rich source of antioxidants, such as:

• Leafy greens
• Herbs like basil and cilantro
• Beets
• Rhubarb
• Celery
• Radishes
• Green beans
• Broccoli
• Mushrooms
• Strawberries

Recipes Using Good Dietary Nitrates

Swap out dishes that aren’t serving you, like meat-based soup, cheesy salads, or beef burgers, with Creamy Arugula and White Bean Soup, Crunchy Kale Slaw, and Beet Burgers. These dishes are not only satisfying and bursting with flavor, but the leafy greens, beets, and celery also provide healthy nitrates and other plant-based nutrients — such as fiber, vitamin C, and folate — that can help you thrive and feel your best. Heck, if you’re going for the gold, enjoy all three as a meal, starting with the Creamy Arugula and White Bean Soup, followed by the Beet Burgers topped with Crunchy Kale Slaw. Yum!

1. Creamy Arugula and White Bean Soup

Get three nitrate-rich ingredients — cilantro, celery, and arugula — in just one soup! And that’s not all — you’re also getting plenty of fiber, vitamin E, and healthy fats from the avocado and hemp seeds, more fiber plus protein from the beans, and vitamin C from the tomato. And that’s just the short list of nutritional awesomeness!

2. Crunchy Kale Slaw

Nitrate-rich Crunchy Kale Slaw requires no cooking and just a little shredding (which may be therapeutic for some!), making this a dish that gives back oodles of nutrition in exchange for very little effort. The kale, cabbage, and carrots provide health-promoting nitrates, plus lots of other nutrients as well. Enjoy it solo, as a side dish, or on top of tacos and wraps.

3. Beet Burgers

Swap out carcinogenic meat nitrates with health-supportive plant nitrates in these oh-so-satiating veggie burgers. You’re also adding potent phytonutrients from the beets, beans, and spices that act as antioxidants and fight carcinogens. And did we mention that these tasty patties are simple to make?

In Conclusion

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner brings about near-disaster by killing a helpful albatross. As punishment and in the hopes of appeasing the spirits that torment them, the sailors force the mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck. The expression “albatross around the neck” has referred ever since to a heavy burden of guilt that becomes an obstacle to success.

Our reliance on industrialized animal agriculture not only harms the animals involved; it’s also an albatross around our own necks, leading to individual and public health harms and environmental crises. Nowhere is this clearer than the widespread problems caused by excess nitrogen compounds added to meat products, and now found in our air, water, soil, and bodies.

But it’s important to remember that not all nitrates and nitrites are bad, nor do they act in similar ways in the body. Plant-based nitrates and nitrites, especially those from whole leafy greens and root vegetables, and especially when combined with plant-based antioxidants, contribute to cardiovascular, sexual, and cognitive health. The problematic nitrates and nitrites are those added to animal products, and those from industrial — especially animal — agriculture that make their way into our water supply and water ecosystems.

It may take a while for our society to stop killing the metaphorical albatrosses and find our way into a harmonious relationship with our environment. But while we strive together for that better world, we can take individual steps to come into right relationship with the natural world, for its sake and our own, through the food on our plates.

Bottom Line: Should You Avoid Nitrates or Nitrites?

The short answer is: Say yes to plant-based nitrites and nitrates. Say no to synthetic and animal-based nitrites and nitrates. And have your water tested if you are concerned about NO2 or NO3 in your water.

Tell us in the comments:

• What are your favorite leafy green and root vegetables?

• Have you ever had your water tested? What did you learn?

• What plant-based, nitrate-rich recipe will you try next?

Feature Image: iStock.com/Zbynek Pospisil

Read Next:

The post The Truth About Nitrates and Nitrites in Your Food & Water appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

The 152 rolls into Highway 99 as you continue through Fresno and finally reach your destination, the small town of Dinuba, California. You’ll find yourself at the base of Smith Mountain, smack dab in the center of the San Joaquin Valley.

Around 66 million years ago, the Pacific Ocean was having trouble deciding how big it wanted to be. Over the next 60 million years, the San Joaquin Valley was repeatedly flooded with ocean water as the sea level rose and fell. Then, thanks to some tectonic friskiness, the coastal ranges were lifted to the point where the ocean could no longer breach them on a regular basis. Two million years ago, the glaciers flowed through, converting the sediment-rich valley into a giant freshwater lake.

To the naked eye, that lake is gone — but if you had X-ray vision, you’d see that it’s just moved underground, creating a giant freshwater aquifer. The fertile soil, watered by the remaining lakes, rivers, streams, and springs were more than enough to support several indigenous peoples, including the Yokuts and Miwok, who hunted, foraged acorns, berries, and pine nuts, and even cultivated tobacco.

Over the past 50 years, the San Joaquin Valley has become the most important agricultural land in the US, producing the majority of the crops grown in California, which itself provides almost 13% of the nation’s total.

How Small Farms Are Impacted By Agricultural Water Usage

Today, you’re here to meet Rebecca and Tory Torosian, who own and run Tory Farm in the San Joaquin Valley, a small citrus and stone fruit farm that’s been providing healthy and delicious produce to their community for over five decades. The pride and joy of their operation is the five acres of orange, mandarin, and grapefruit, especially their prized oro blanco (“white gold”) variety.

I mean, those orchards were their pride and joy.

Faced with a worsening statewide drought, their irrigation district cut off their water supply, which they had received via a canal from the nearby Kings River. At first, they thought they might be able to save their citrus groves by watering them from the wells on their property. But small farms can’t afford to dig deep wells. And the Torosians found that they could draw only a fraction of the water needed to keep the trees alive. Not only that, the extra energy required to operate the struggling pumps increased their electricity bill by 30%.

As a result, they’ve had to make the tough decision to abandon the citrus orchards in order to save their apricot, peach, plum, and pluot groves. Whether they or the other 70,000 small farms that make up the beating heart of California’s agricultural economy will survive is now in serious doubt.

Meanwhile, what happened to all that water? Sure, there’s been a historic drought, which hasn’t helped matters. But that’s what groundwater is for, to keep the people and farms alive until the rains return.

Unfortunately, the lion’s share of the groundwater isn’t going to the farms that provide us with healthy and delicious plant foods. While the Torosians steward their dwindling water supply drop by drop – and lawmakers urge California residents to replace their lawns with cacti and stones, install low-flow shower heads, and only flush their toilets when truly needed – other agricultural sectors in the region are awash in freshwater. And those sectors have one thing in common: they all go “moo.”

Freshwater Is in Decline

The problem is global. Water covers 70% of our planet. But despite the fact that we live on “the water planet,” the reality is that fresh water — the stuff we bathe in, drink, and irrigate our farms with — is remarkably scarce. It makes up only about 3% of the world’s total water supply. (And I’m not just worried because my name is Ocean. My son River shares my concern, too.)

Every day on this planet, there are more people. But the global supply of freshwater is in decline. In fact, the available freshwater resources per person have declined by more than 20% over just the past two decades.

The largest consumer of water worldwide is agriculture. But certain foods and dietary patterns have a much larger water footprint than others. If the rest of the world ate like Americans — consuming large quantities of meat, eggs, and dairy products — the planet would have run out of freshwater 15 years ago. Even executives from Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, privately told US officials that the world is on a collision course with doom because non-Americans are now also eating too much meat. (It took Wikileaks to reveal this information, which was documented in a secret US government report.)

Why is agriculture putting such a drain on our water? How do different foods measure up when it comes to water usage? And how can you make an impact by choosing what you put on your plate? Let’s take a closer look.

The Link Between Agriculture and Water

Currently, agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption. Some of this is direct use — like watering crops and providing drinking water for animals. And some is indirect – like the water used in the production of feed, fertilizers, and pesticides.

The problem isn’t that we’re using water, but that we’re overusing it. The world’s supply of usable water is finite (and it doesn’t look like we’ll be mining outer space for H2O anytime soon).

But industrial civilization, in general — and industrial-scale agriculture, in particular — has ignored this constraint, choosing instead to draw down Earth’s water inheritance: groundwater.

Groundwater Overuse

Groundwater is what it sounds like: water that’s under the ground, rather than the stuff that falls from the sky, or exists above ground in rivers, lakes, streams, glaciers, and so on. Immense underground aquifers store water that has been purified through long and winding journeys from the sky through the soil. It’s precious stuff.

About 140 million residents of the US, and more than 2.5 billion people worldwide, depend on groundwater for their water supply on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, increased demands placed on our groundwater resources have overstressed aquifers in many areas of the world. More than three billion people live in areas with significant water shortages. And agriculture is the leading cause of groundwater overuse or depletion, which is what happens when water levels decline because of sustained groundwater pumping.

Effects of Groundwater Depletion

In addition to reducing the amount of life-giving water available, the effects of groundwater depletion include:

• Lowering of the water table, which can reduce the amount of available water for all uses
• Land subsidence, which is a fancy term for the shifting, compacting, and degradation of land (including land on which buildings sit) due to the overuse of water from underground aquifers. (Imagine all these buildings resting on a giant waterbed, and picture what happens when the water is slowly pumped out.)
• Water contamination, largely from the threat of saltwater intrusion (basically, when oceanic salt water enters areas of fresh water because the fresh water reserves are so low)
• Higher costs and energy usage, because water has to be lifted higher to reach the surface, which often requires pumps that require more energy to run.

Groundwater and Drought

Where is this happening? Almost everywhere. Increased demands on groundwater resources have overstressed aquifers in many areas of the world, but arid nations are particularly vulnerable because of drought.

When drought hits, agriculture is the first and most intensely affected sector. Severe drought can lead to widespread famine as well as migration of people due to its dire conditions and consequences. It can also worsen social tensions and civil unrest that are already on the rise in certain areas. (If you want to get a sense of the suffering that can come from drought, read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath or watch a documentary on the Dust Bowl that blanketed the American Southwest during the 1930s.)

With nearly 40% of the world relying on agriculture as a primary source of income, drought threatens the livelihood of many families. It can be so severe that it reverses advancements made in reducing poverty and improving food security.

How are farmers supposed to respond during drought? Often, they drill wells deeper into the earth to tap into already dwindling groundwater, in an attempt to save high-value, water-intensive crops and livestock. But this solution, too, is short-lived. What happens when the even deeper wells run dry? We can’t keep kicking the can down the road forever.

Groundwater Pollution

Pesticides and fertilizers used in agriculture can contaminate both groundwater and surface water, as can livestock wastes, antibiotics, and processing wastes from plantation crops. For instance, manure used as fertilizer is often overapplied to fields, causing it to run off the fields and into rivers and streams.

Nitrates from agriculture are now the most common chemical contaminant in the world’s groundwater stores. Drinking water contaminated with nitrates can cause a number of health problems. It’s linked to an increased risk of blue baby syndrome, which can cause deaths in infants, as well as spontaneous abortions, and disease outbreaks traced to bacteria and viruses in waste.

Animal waste runoff from factory farms also contributes to groundwater pollution. Pathogens, like E.coli and Salmonella, are abundant in animal waste. These can run downhill during a rainstorm or seep into underground aquifers — getting into nearby water systems that spread the pathogens elsewhere.

And over the last 20 years, a new class of agricultural pollutants has emerged in the form of veterinary medicines — like antibiotics, vaccines, and growth promoters — which move from farms through the water to ecosystems and drinking water sources.

Not All Food Is Equal When it Comes to Water Consumption

When it comes to agriculture, do you know what the biggest water depleter is? It’s animal agriculture. And if there were an olympic event for the world’s biggest agricultural water waster, there’s little doubt that beef would win the gold.

In fact, it generally takes over 20 times more water to produce a pound of beef compared to rice, grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables.

In the United States, it takes almost 1,800 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef.

To put that in context, let’s compare that to something most of us do every day (or almost every day): showering. The average American showers for about 7.8 minutes per day, with a flow rate of 2.1 gallons per minute (lower if they have a low-flow showerhead) — thus using about 16 gallons of water showering each day. So the bottom line here is that you would save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you would by not showering for nearly four months.

This satirical video makes the point (and might make you laugh, too!):

A Protein Factory in Reverse

Why is livestock so water intensive? Are cows just really thirsty?

Sure, cows drink plenty of water. But that’s not the problem. The vast majority of the water that it takes to produce meat is used to irrigate the land that is growing their feed.

Globally, livestock production uses around 80% of the world’s agricultural land, but only provides 18% of the calories consumed by humans. And in case you were wondering, grass-fed beef has its own massive drawbacks, including the vast areas of land it requires — and whether it’s irrigated by rainfall or sprinklers. Even grassland uses large amounts of water.

With livestock, you’re getting nutrients second-hand instead of directly from the source (the plants fed to those animals). Since it takes anywhere from — depending on who is doing the calculation and what they include — four to (according to some estimates) as many as 20 pounds of grain to make a pound of feedlot-derived beef, we actually get far less food out than we put in.

It’s like a protein factory in reverse.

High-Income Countries Have The Biggest Water Impact

High-income countries like the US vastly overconsume livestock products, which puts increased pressure on water resources. And as developing countries grow their own economies and see incomes rise, their citizens also demand more “wealthy” foods like meat and dairy.

While the demand for animal products in wealthy countries in North America and Europe has remained stable over the last couple of decades, developing regions such as Asia and Latin America have seen a rapid increase in the consumption of animal products. In Brazil and China, for example, livestock farming is playing a huge role in an increasing demand for ever-more scarce supplies of water.

Case Study: California

I live in California, the most populated state in the US. Like many parts of the world, California today faces a serious water shortfall. Up to 65% of the state’s water comes from groundwater, which, in recent years, is not being replenished nearly as quickly as it’s being consumed.

California is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. It’s a major producer of many nuts, fruits, and vegetables, exporting more than $20B worth of these crops. It’s the only US state to export almonds, artichokes, dates, dried plums, figs, garlic, kiwifruit, olives, pistachios, raisins, walnuts, and many other critical foods.

So a drought in California is a big deal, not just to California residents like me, but to the millions of people who get their food from our fields.

And we’ve been living in drought conditions for decades. The US Drought Monitor website shows that the weather in California has been deemed “abnormally dry” (the yellow regions in the graph below) for all but about eight months between 2000 and 2021. And the darkest region signifying “exceptional drought” lasted from 2014-2017, and returned in 2021.

The Water Impact of California’s Livestock Industry

Changing weather patterns due to climate change are at play here, for sure. But government and media calls for people to take shorter showers and replace their lawns with rock gardens — which are important steps and we should absolutely do those things — obscure the real culprits. Agriculture accounts for approximately 80% of all the water used in California. And in case you’re wondering where that water is going, specifically, consider that the state is home to at least 5.2 million cows.

Much of the production of grain and pasture crops in California feeds the state’s meat and dairy industries. Even grass-fed cattle depend on irrigation or feed imports in places with dry summers, like California, where the grass turns brown and dies before the winter rains come (if they do).

Growing hay, mostly alfalfa (which is a very thirsty crop that covers more acreage than any other crop in California), and other pastures for livestock takes at least 10 million acre-feet of water in an average year. That’s the equivalent of a quarter of an acre, covered a foot-deep in water, for every citizen of the state. And much of California’s alfalfa is being shipped to countries like China and Saudi Arabia, for them to feed to their livestock.

At a certain point, you have to wonder: what’s wrong with this picture?

Californians are being told to flush the toilet less often, and to take shorter showers. They’re giving up lawns, and in some cases, even vegetable gardens. But California’s livestock industry alone uses more water than all the homes and businesses in the state combined. And even with all that water, California still imports most of the meat consumed in the state.

Reducing Water Scarcity Through Diet

So what can you do about agricultural water usage? Changing your diet can reduce water scarcity in some of the hardest-hit places, by helping to replace water-intensive animal agriculture with water-wise fruits, veggies, legumes, seeds, and whole grains. Diets that consider sustainability, as well as animal welfare and individual health, can reduce water consumption and help make the world a better place.

1. Swap Beans for Beef

One of the most common recommendations to improve the sustainability of your diet is the alliterative act of swapping beans for beef. This shift highlights a general principle: swapping plant-based foods for animal-based foods, thus eliminating the middleman (or middlecow, as the case may be). Instead, you get your nutrients directly from the source. This is one of the most impactful lifestyle changes you can make in the service of global sustainability and water conservation.

2. Try Meat and Dairy Alternatives

If you’re totally new to the idea of eating more plant foods, you can use plant-based meat and dairy analogs — like the Beyond Burger, for example — to become more comfortable eating this way. These are so similar to their animal-derived counterparts in taste and texture that many meat eaters and non meat eaters alike can’t tell the difference.

According to the UN, these types of meat substitutes use up to 99% less water, up to 95% less land, and generate up to 90% fewer harmful emissions than regular beef burgers, while consuming about half the energy.

That’s a great start, for sure. But at the end of the day, these foods are still processed. And the healthiest diets for most people are those primarily based on whole plant foods.

3. Choose Plants to Fill Your Plate

Overall, the foods with the lowest water usage are vegetables, fruits, and cereal grains. Pulses — or beans, peas, and lentils — are mid-range in terms of water usage, and nuts and seeds are higher. But any of these categories are still a vastly better choice than meat or dairy products. If you want to save water, reducing industrialized beef consumption could be the most powerful single step you can take.

For crops grown specifically in California, where I live, the foods that use the least amount of water are:

• Asparagus
• Apples
• Hot Peppers
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Beans
• Grapefruit
• Onions
• Pears
• Potato
• Raspberry
• Sweet Potato
• Tomatoes
• Blueberries

This chart from a 2020 article in the journal Water, shows a visual representation of the water footprints of various foods. These numbers are based on the water footprint of a liter of water per kg of product (a) and the water footprint of a liter of water per kcal of nutritional energy (b).

What About Almonds?

This isn’t an idle question, since the demand for almond products continues to be on the rise. The largest almond producer in the world is California, where the number of almond orchards has doubled over the last two decades.

One of the most common arguments against choosing plant-based milk products, like almond milk, over dairy products is that almonds are still water intensive. And there’s some truth to that. A single almond takes 1.1 gallons of water to produce, or approximately 10 gallons per handful. One reason for this is that almond trees require water year-round, even when they’re not producing nuts.

Before you start slapping an “Almonds are Evil” bumper sticker on your car, let’s put those numbers in perspective. While almonds may not be the most sustainable crop around, almond milk still uses less water, overall, than cow’s milk. And on the whole, they’re a substantial improvement over the footprints of animal agriculture. (For our article on plant-based milks, click here.)

Further Ways to Reduce Your Food and Water Footprint

If you’re wondering how to change your diet to become less water intensive, I applaud you for being willing to examine your personal choices in this way.

The world is shaped, in part, by the choices that each of us makes, every single day. When you bring your food choices into alignment with your values, you contribute to building a healthier world for future generations. It may be only a drop in the bucket, but when it comes to water, every drop really does count.

The #1 thing you can do is to eliminate — or at least reduce — your consumption of animal products; especially those, like beef and dairy products, that come from cows. Instead, shift your diet to one that’s more focused on whole plant foods. This also means getting most of your protein from plant foods, which includes things like beans, peas, lentils, nuts, seeds, soy (go organic to steer clear of GMOs), and grains.

Additionally, making strides to eat locally grown foods whenever possible is a great way to support the environment as well as your health. For instance, try a CSA or a U-Pick farm in your area. This both reduces the environmental footprint of your food and supports your local farmers.

To make things even more local, you might consider starting your own food garden. And if you have some land, practice permaculture principles, like rainwater catchment, berms, and swales, to make use of the water that comes to you, and help it go into the soil instead of running off into rivers.

Your Food Choices Can Help Save the Planet

Meat and dairy production has by far the largest water footprint of any human activity. As demand for animal products increases worldwide, stress on increasingly limited groundwater supplies also increases, threatening the ability of future generations to be able to grow food at all. Reducing or eliminating animal product consumption could be the #1 thing you can do to minimize your water footprint. By adopting a more plant-based diet full of whole, organic, and local plant foods, you can vote with your dollars for a healthier, ethical, and more sustainable world for us all.

Tell us in the comments:

• What’s one thing you learned from this article?
• Do you live in an area that has been affected by drought? How has this impacted your food choices and lifestyle?
• What’s one thing you can do to make your diet more sustainable in terms of water consumption?

Feature Image: iStock.com/AkarawutLohacharoenvanich

Read Next:

• What You Eat Can Impact Climate Change! See 9 Foods That Harm the Planet and 11 Foods That Can Help Save It
• Unhealthy Conditions for Farm Animals are — No Surprise — Bad for Humans, Too
• Can Eating Cows Save the Planet?

The post Food and Water: What You Eat Matters for People & the Planet appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

If the beaches are a sea shell museum, then the sea plants that wash up on shores must constitute the vegan option in the museum’s cafe. Popularly known as seaweed, and recently rebranded as sea vegetables (which are technically the portion of all the seaweeds that are edible to humans, though we’ll use the terms a bit interchangeably in this article), these marine plants are poised to become, in the eyes of culinary trendspotters, the “new kale.”

And why not? They’ve got all the buzzwords going for them: organic, regenerative, non-GMO. And they’re versatile: from sushi to roasted seaweed snacks to smoothie ingredients, more and more people throughout the world are eating a wide variety of sea veggies.

While sea vegetables have long been a staple in Asian cultures, until recently, they’ve been largely absent from western cuisine. Only with the rise in popularity of sushi have they made their way into prominence on the world stage. And still, there’s a big gap between daintily nibbling on rice and veggies wrapped in nori, and viewing mounds of seaweed washed up on a beach and thinking, “Oh, yum!”

But that’s changing, and rapidly. Seaweeds — or as they’re often called, sea vegetables — now have some marketing muscle behind them. And there’s a lot to market; many varieties offer intriguing health benefits and may even be associated with increased longevity. Case in point, the centenarians living in the Blue Zone region of Okinawa, Japan, regularly incorporate sea vegetables into their diet.

But despite their benefits to both our health and the environment, there are some potential downsides to consider on both fronts.

So what’s the deal with sea vegetables? Are they good for you or the environment? Where do you find them? And, what are the best ways to use them in your diet?

What Are Sea Vegetables?

In most cases, sea vegetables are actually edible marine algae, or macroalgae. This is different from freshwater algae, like chlorella or spirulina (which also have great health benefits!). The macroalgae are plant-like organisms that generally live attached to rock or other hard surfaces in coastal areas. They have no true roots or leaves, and are more similar to mushrooms or lichen than terrestrial plants. But just like terrestrial plants, sea vegetables use photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy.

Since the mid-19th century, cooks have categorized sea vegetables by color: green, brown, or red.

There are several popular types of sea vegetables:

Nori

Most commonly known for its use in rolling sushi, nori is a dried, pressed red seaweed. It has a naturally salty, umami flavor and is low in calories and high in minerals like vitamins B12, A, and C, along with iodine, magnesium, calcium, iron, and potassium.

Dulse

You can find dulse — a red sea veggie — in dried flake form, which you can shake onto other prepared dishes like pasta, stir-fries, and casseroles.

Arame

More of a garnish than an actual dish, arame is a brown seaweed served in long, thin strands, often as part of a Japanese-inspired salad. With a slightly sweet flavor, it is high in fiber, calcium, iodine, iron, magnesium, and vitamin A. When sold, arame can be found shredded, cooked, and air-dried and can be reconstituted with water. You can steam it, sauté it, or add it to hot soup.

Kombu

Unlike other types of seaweed, kombu can be used to make an umami soup stock called dashi, which is the foundational flavor of Japanese cuisine. You can also use kombu in dishes to impart a crunchy, firm texture or as a soft and pliable addition. Kombu is rich in calcium and contains more iodine than other seaweeds. This brown sea vegetable is also beloved for its ability to increase the digestibility of beans (making the “musical fruit” less musical). Thanks to its versatility and ubiquity in Japanese cooking, kombu has earned the nickname “king of seaweeds.”

Wakame

Frequently used in Asian dishes like salads, soups, and snacks, wakame also gets used as a seasoning. It’s sometimes known as “sea mustard,” referring to its visual resemblance to mustard greens when cooked. Not surprisingly, it’s a very good source of calcium, iron, riboflavin, folate, and magnesium.

Wakame has a mild flavor and generally comes either dried or salted and fresh in the refrigerated section. If purchased dried, wakame has to be reconstituted by soaking in water for five to six minutes before using. Rehydrated, wakame has a slippery, rubbery, almost squeaky texture. (Maybe one day it will replace plastic in the rubber duck industry!)

Other Less Common Sea Vegetables

Less commonly consumed outside of Asia are sea moss, sea grapes, and sea beans. While not exactly seaweeds, these are also classified as sea vegetables.

• Sea moss (Chondrus crispus) is also called Irish moss, and often gets sold as a dietary supplement in powdered form. The red algae are also the main source of carrageenan — a polysaccharide used to thicken some foods and beverages (You can read about carrageenan concerns here).
• Sea grapes, or umibudo, come from southeast Asia (not to be confused with the seagrape tree native to the Caribbean). If you don’t live within driving distance of one of the villages where they’re grown, you’ll have to order the dried version online. These sea veggies look like tiny bunches of grapes on strands, and deliver a satisfying, crunchy texture and pop when you bite into them. However, unlike regular grapes, sea grapes taste like the ocean and are more salty than sweet.
• Sea beans, or salicornia, may look more like a fish tank decoration, but can be found at many farmers markets in the summer if you live near the shore. Sometimes called “sea asparagus,” sea beans are often used in crunchy salads, as a garnish, or in chickpea frittatas.

Nutrition of Sea Vegetables

So are sea vegetables healthy? Well, they’re packed with nutrients, but are more appropriate as a garnish rather than something to pile on your plate every day. In fact, even in Japan — where sea vegetables are more common — people typically don’t eat them daily.

Sea vegetables are such a rich source of many micronutrients that it doesn’t take much to meet or even exceed our daily requirements for those nutrients. That’s why moderation is key, to keep you from getting way more of certain nutrients than is actually healthy.

Most types of sea vegetables are good sources of protein, fiber, healthy polyunsaturated fats, antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins. Some of the most concentrated minerals in sea vegetables are iodine, sodium, magnesium, and calcium. They’re also rich in B vitamins like folate and vitamin B12, as well as vitamins A, D, and K1.

Certain types of marine algae can even be made into algal oil, a vegan source of the very important omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA.

In one sheet of nori, for instance, you’ll get around 10 calories, 0 grams of fat, one gram of protein, one gram of carbs, one gram of fiber, six percent of the Daily Value (DV) for vitamin A, and four percent of the DV for vitamin C. It also has B vitamins, manganese, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. One sheet also provides around 11% of the DV for iodine, which could be health bringing, or not, as you’ll soon see.

While different varieties of seaweed contain similar nutrient types, the amounts can vary greatly by species and preparation method. For instance, while 100 grams of dulse contains 307 mg of sodium, 100 grams of rockweed contains over 4,000 mg (more than the average American eats in an entire day)!

7 Health Benefits of Sea Vegetables

Sea vegetables, rich as they are in so many important nutrients, offer a number of health benefits.

1. May support thyroid health

Sea vegetables are the second richest source of iodine, after iodized salt. Iodine is an essential mineral, needed to make thyroid hormones that control your metabolism as well as other important functions for health. Many healthy, plant-based foods contain compounds that can interfere with iodine uptake, making it all the more important to get iodine from reliable sources, like iodized salt and/or small amounts of sea vegetables like dulse, kelp, and wakame.

2. May support pregnancy and postpartum recovery

The recommended daily intake of iodine during pregnancy is 220 micrograms to both meet the mother’s needs and pass on the nutrient to the baby. But many pregnant women don’t get this much. Families in Korea often make seaweed soup, or “miyeok guk,” for new moms to aid in postpartum recovery. It’s intended to provide nutrients like iodine for a baby’s brain development, iron to prevent anemia, calcium to prevent bone loss, and fiber to prevent constipation, among an array of other benefits.

3. May offer anticancer benefits

Sea vegetables may inhibit cancer cell growth and offer therapeutic benefits in the treatment of liver cancer. Red seaweeds contain compounds called porphyran and carrageenan that may help protect against cancer by boosting immunity and promoting cancer cell death.

Other types of seaweeds also contain anticancer compounds like terpenes, polyphenols, phlorotannins, fucoidans, and polysaccharides, which can help defend cells against environmental stressors that may lead to cancer. A 2014 review published in the journal Marine Drugs discusses how bioactive compounds in seaweed may offer therapeutic effects in cases of breast and colorectal cancers, primarily by inducing cancer cell death in both lab and human studies.

4. May support heart health

Sea vegetables are rich in dietary fibers, polyphenols, peptides, phlorotannins, lipids, and minerals, which may have a role in both preventing and treating cardiovascular diseases. Seaweeds are rich in antioxidants, which can help protect cells from oxidative damage that leads to heart disease. Other compounds in them may promote blood vessel dilation, which can bring down high blood pressure.

Additionally, sea vegetables contain flavonoids that may have beneficial metabolic effects on obesity and atherosclerosis, which are two risk factors for heart disease. Still other research has observed the ability of seaweed compounds to help lower blood fats, like total cholesterol, LDL “bad” cholesterol, and triglycerides.

5. May have antiviral benefits

Brown seaweed contains compounds called sulfoquinovosildiacylglycerols (which, sadly, is two syllables short of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, so that particular mnemonic melody won’t help you remember it) — mercifully abbreviated to SQDGs —  that have been found to have antiviral properties, particularly when it comes to herpes simplex viruses or cold sores. Many types of marine algae contain structural sulfated polysaccharides, which inhibit viral replication early in the process, preventing these viruses from attaching to a host (in other words, us).

6. May protect against obesity-associated metabolic complications

Sea vegetables are a rich source of compounds that appear to support a number of metabolic functions. A 2020 study published in the journal Current Developments in Nutrition examined the effects of Pacific dulse (a red algae) and wakame (a brown algae) on metabolic complications in obese mice. (Our view on the use of animals in medical research is here.) The authors found that even when fed a high-fat diet, the mice who were fed sea vegetables excreted more fat, experienced less systemic inflammation, and had healthier gut microbiomes compared to mice who did not eat them.

7. May protect gut health

Research shows that disturbances in the gut microbiome can underlie many chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and cancers. To help prevent these changes, prebiotics are often recommended to promote an optimal balance of good gut bacteria. Compounds in seaweed, such as polyphenols, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and carotenoids, may help break down polysaccharides and oligosaccharides, and promote prebiotic activity in the gut that helps to reduce occurrence of chronic diseases.

5 Health Concerns Associated with Sea Vegetables

Despite their many benefits for your health, sea vegetables also come with potential downsides to consider before adding them to your diet.

1. May contribute too much iodine

As mentioned, sea vegetables are a rich source of iodine. And while iodine is an essential nutrient, there is such a thing as getting too much of it, which can be easy to do if you’re eating a lot of sea vegetables daily. Too much iodine can lead to hyperthyroidism and can also interfere with thyroid medications, like Synthroid.

In fact, some species of kelp (such as kombu) are generally not recommended because their iodine content is so high. The recommended average daily intake of iodine is 150 mcg/day for non-pregnant, non-breastfeeding adults. And most people may want to stay below an average of 300 mcg/day on a day-to-day basis, and definitely below 1,100 mcg/day, which is the daily tolerable upper limit for people without thyroid disease. Since a single tablespoon of dried kelp may contain up to 2,000 mcg of iodine, even modest amounts of this sea vegetable on a regular basis could cause problems.

On the bright side, cooking significantly reduces the amount of iodine you get from sea vegetables. For example, boiling kombu for 15 minutes can make it lose up to 99% of its iodine content, while iodine in sargassum, a similar brown sea vegetable, loses around 40%. Much of that iodine may be released into the water, however. So if you’re cooking sea vegetables and then drinking the broth it’s cooked in, you could still be getting a hefty dose of iodine.

2. May contain arsenic

Arsenic is a naturally occurring heavy metal found in the environment.  It tends to accumulate in air, water, and soil, and shows up in certain foods that are grown using these resources, including seaweed. As you probably know, arsenic can be poisonous to humans and is also a carcinogen.

One type of seaweed, hijiki (sometimes called hiziki), is actually no longer recommended for consumption because it tends to contain high levels of arsenic. Hijiki is an uncommon type of seaweed that’s black in color and primarily sold in dry shreds for use in Japanese and Korean cuisine. While other types of seaweed likely contain some arsenic, it generally shows up in such trace amounts that they’re not considered a threat to health when eaten in moderation. One study of 31 samples of five varieties of seaweed found that only hijiki contained concerning levels of inorganic arsenic.

If you are concerned about the arsenic content of seaweed, or find yourself forced to eat some hiziki (I’m drawing a blank as to how that might happen, but hey, you never know), boiling it in saltwater will reduce the arsenic levels.

3. May interact with medications

As we’ve seen, because of their high iodine levels, some kinds of sea vegetables may interfere with medications used to manage thyroid conditions. If you are taking such medications, you should probably check with your healthcare provider to find out if seaweed is safe for you to eat.

Sea vegetables are also considered leafy greens, which means they’re high in vitamin K. This nutrient is a natural coagulant, which means it helps your body form blood clots. This could be problematic if you’re taking anticoagulant medications, like Warfarin, which are designed to do the opposite.

While it’s not generally recommended to totally avoid vitamin K-rich foods while using these medications, it is important to keep your intake of this nutrient stable. If you take an anticoagulant medication, it may be best to talk with your healthcare provider to make sure your intake of vitamin K-rich foods like sea vegetables isn’t going to interfere.

4. May contain heavy metals

In addition to arsenic, seaweed can contain other heavy metals. For instance, varieties of red seaweed may contain cadmium, copper, manganese, and nickel in higher concentrations than other types of seaweeds. This appears to be especially true if they’ve been grown in southeastern China.

Mercury, a heavy metal linked to cognitive impairment and neurodevelopmental problems in babies when consumed by pregnant women, is a contaminant of concern in all types of seafood. Unfortunately, some research has found that blood levels of mercury are higher among people who eat the most seaweed, compared to people who eat the least. Warmer water temperatures can increase the amount of mercury absorbed by fish in these areas, and the same effect may occur in seaweeds — which is especially concerning with global warming trends.

The presence of heavy metals in seaweed — especially red varieties — is another reason to consume these foods in moderation.

5. May be high in sodium

Many sea vegetables contain high levels of sodium, which can be detrimental if someone already has a diet that’s high in this mineral.

Too much sodium can lead to increased blood pressure and fluid retention in the body, which can raise your risk for cardiovascular disease. This is because high blood pressure stiffens the arteries, reduces the flow of oxygen and blood through them, and makes the heart work harder to pump blood throughout the body.

Sodium intake may also need to be monitored in the event of an existing health condition like kidney disease or hypertension, to prevent the condition from worsening. High sodium intake can increase protein in urine, which can further the decline of kidney function among people with already deteriorating kidneys.

To avoid excess sodium intake from seaweed, it may be prudent to only eat it in small portion sizes, especially if your diet contains other sources of sodium or added salt. You can also soak dried sea vegetables in water, and then pour off the water, which may get rid of a lot of the sodium.

Environmental Benefits of Sea Vegetables

Just as sea vegetables come with both health benefits and concerns, they offer a similar mix of pluses and minuses when it comes to the impact of seaweed farming on the environment, too. Let’s start with the benefits.

Carbon Sequestration

First, sea vegetables help reduce carbon emissions by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. In fact, coastal marine systems can absorb carbon at rates up to 50 times greater than forests on land. Kelp can grow at a rate of over one foot per day. On a global scale, seaweeds sequester nearly 200 million tons of CO2 each year. And in regenerative ocean farming systems, by removing kelp from the ocean rather than letting it decompose, it prevents the carbon sequestered in the kelp itself from returning to the water. Australian scientist Tim Flannery estimates that if nine percent of the ocean was covered with seaweed farms, it could effectively absorb all CO2 emissions from humans.

Reduce Ocean Acidification

Kelp, specifically, also has the added benefit of helping reduce ocean acidification. Ocean acidification mainly occurs from carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere dissolving into the ocean. This leads to a lowering of the water’s pH, making the ocean more acidic, which threatens the survival of many marine species. Kelp traps carbon from the water and produces oxygen, which may help alleviate some of the acidification. Of course, the most effective way to sequester carbon is to not release it in the first place.

Oceanic Reforestation

Seaweed is essentially the forest of the ocean. Over 95% of sea vegetables come from farms, which are contributing to a kind of oceanic “reforestation.” There are even organizations working on managing seaweed reforestation projects around the world, such as SeaForester, which has the simple (yet actually highly complex) mission “to restore the forgotten forests in our ocean.” How does this work? Regenerative seaweed farms take kelp spores and grow them in tanks before reintroducing them into the ocean to grow, which then produces more spores, promoting reforestation.

Reduce Methane Emissions from Cattle

Sea vegetables can also help reduce methane emissions by adding certain forms of red seaweed (Asparagopsis taxiformis, to be exact) to cattle feed. According to researchers at the University of California, Davis, doing so may be able to reduce methane emissions by 82%. Of course, while this might make industrialized beef production a bit less environmentally damaging, a much more effective approach to reducing methane emissions (and a host of other environmental problems) would be for humans to reduce our consumption of red meat and reliance on factory farms altogether. But as long as people are eating industrialized meat, adding seaweed to cow feed is an intriguing step that could help reduce environmental impact. (I’m wondering if anyone has researched red seaweed’s gas-reducing ability in humans as well.)

Create Biofuels

Lastly, seaweed can create biofuels — renewable energy sources produced from organic matter or waste. This includes biofuel for the transportation sector, reducing consumption of fossil fuels. Compared to soybeans, which can also make biofuels, growing seaweed is faster, more space-efficient, and doesn’t need fresh water or fertilizer to flourish. Seaweed also doesn’t need land to grow.

Environmental Concerns Associated with Sea Vegetables

Despite all its environmental benefits, seaweed also comes with some potential eco-negatives.

Wherever seaweed is grown, it might compete with native species for things like light and nutrients. Without proper management, seaweed farms may also contribute to the problem of plastic, gear, and other types of pollution in the ocean, which can damage ecosystems and threaten marine life.

There are also monocultures of certain seaweed species, which reduces genetic diversity associated with domesticated seaweed species. This makes crops more vulnerable to disease. Plus, growing seaweed in areas where it doesn’t usually grow can increase the risk for invasive species to expand and throw off the natural balance of the ecosystem.

Over-foraging of wild seaweed can also pose problems. Currently, only five percent of all the seaweed that humans eat, globally, is the result of wild harvesting. Small-scale wild harvesting of seaweed happens by hand and is often referred to as seaweed cutting. If this is kept small-scale, and done sensitively, it may not cause much damage, and can even be beneficial if accompanied by reforestation techniques that stimulate the growth of more seaweed in the future. However, too many single wild harvesters collectively can do a lot of damage. For example, Chilean wild harvesting is especially damaging. As a result, the Chilean authorities made wild harvesting illegal in 2016 and are incenting wild harvesters to switch to sustainable cultivation of seaweed.

Where to Find Sea Vegetables

Fresh sea vegetables are generally hard to find, unless you live near the ocean and have local sources available. It’s more common to find fresh sea vegetables in Asian countries or Nordic countries in Europe. In the US, you may have a local source if you live in an area with ocean access, like near San Francisco or the coast of Maine.

If you’re feeling adventurous and want to forage your own sea vegetables, you might even find classes that can teach you how. Some classes offered on the west coast of the US range from a few hours to several days in length, and include harvesting sea vegetables from a kayak and even cooking it.

Fortunately, unlike foraging mushrooms — which can be deadly if you eat the wrong kind — there are no known poisonous varieties of seaweed, though some should be avoided because they can cause gastrointestinal distress if you eat too much. Your instructor should be able to steer you clear of any varieties that might cause problems.

Purchasing Sea Vegetables

Sea vegetables are typically sold in dried and packaged form, to help preserve their nutrients. But if you have a hankering for fresh seaweed, simply rehydrate the dried version before eating. To do so, place it in water until it softens right up — which could happen in as little as five minutes for some varieties.

Nori is typically sold in dried sheets, and is used to roll sushi. It also comes in smaller sheets as a snack food, or a kid-sized addition to bagged lunch. Some varieties, like dulse, are sold in shakers as small flakes. You can use these to sprinkle on dishes like stir-fries, casseroles, soups, and pastas. They also add a hint of ocean flavor to plant-based, fish-free tuna salads. Wakame and kombu seaweed varieties may be sold in dried strips or shredded.

You can usually purchase sea vegetables through online retailers, in many grocery stores, and in Asian markets.

When choosing your sea vegetables, look for organic brands that also use third-party testing to help make sure there aren’t high levels of heavy metals. If you can, it’s often ideal to buy sea vegetables from brands you trust, or from small, locally owned businesses run by people who live in coastal communities.

How Sea Vegetables Are Used

If you haven’t been used to eating sea vegetables as a regular part of your diet and lifestyle up to this point, you’re probably wondering how to use them.

Seaweed is actually commonly used as a thickening agent in food and cosmetics, so you might find it both in your kitchen and your bathroom. For example, carrageenan, a mixture of polysaccharides from red and purple seaweeds, may be found in both conventional and organic foods, including plant-based milks.

Sea vegetables may also be found in supplements. Algal oil is becoming more frequently used in vegan omega-3 supplements. Kelp and other seaweed may also be used in iodine supplements.

And, of course, many varieties of seaweed can be eaten on their own, usually in dried or dehydrated form. Just make sure to follow the recommended serving size to avoid overexposure of nutrients like iodine and sodium, as previously discussed.

Cooking with Sea Vegetables

If you’re suffering from flatulence after eating fiber-rich foods like beans and legumes, kombu can help. Adding kombu to your cooking pot, along with the beans, can help reduce the carbohydrate raffinose that’s found in beans and causes unwanted gas. (See, we are a bit like those cows!) This works because kombu contains the enzyme alpha-galactosidase that breaks raffinose down. Alternatively, you can use cumin or fennel seeds to get a similar result if you want to reduce gas but need to avoid high amounts of iodine in sea vegetables due to a thyroid disorder.

When eaten as a food, you can also use sea vegetables in the following ways:

• Eaten on their own as a snack (dried or toasted nori sheets)
• Crumbled up or sprinkled over various foods as a condiment
• In soups, especially miso soup or ramen bowls
• Used in grain bowls
• Blended into sauces and dips
• Rehydrated and made into salads (either on their own or with other veggies)
• Used to roll up and make sushi rolls
• Used as a sandwich wrap

Seaweed Recipes

If sea vegetables are new to you, it’s time to have fun experimenting! If you’re a sea veggie connoisseur, then we have some new tasty recipes for you to try. And, if you love nori rolls, then you’re going to love preparing the Veggie Nori Rolls even more. The key is letting go of all expectations in creating the perfect roll — enjoy the process of getting creative with your hands!

The Sea Veggie Gomasio is one seasoning that is tiny in size, but big in flavor — and even bigger in the nutrients it offers. Enjoy the colorful Warm Arama and Kale Rice solo as a meal or as a side dish to grilled tofu or tempeh. Arame has a mild flavor, so its use in meals is very versatile. So go ahead — have fun experimenting with sea veggies!

1. Veggie Nori Rolls

Making nori rolls at home doesn’t require fancy tools or equipment. If it’s your first time, don’t expect it to be a perfectly put-together little package. You can, however, expect it to be a fun experience that results in lots of delicious flavors, varied textures, and loads of nutrition from the mineral-rich nori sheets and nutrient-packed veggies.

2. Sea Veggie Gomasio

While this flavorsome condiment may not seem like much at first glance, with its short list of ingredients and five-minute preparation time, it’s actually packed with nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and zinc from the toasted nori, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds. It’s also filled with healthy plant-based fats and protein. Sprinkling just a bit on your grain bowls, stir-fries, and avocado toast not only adds lots of flavor but also oodles of nutrition.

3. Warm Arame and Kale Rice

Mineral-rich, sea veggie arame is sold in its dry form and needs to be rehydrated before using. With its mild flavor, it is a well-suited addition to a variety of taste profiles in stir-fries, salads, and bowls. Here, kale, edamame, peppers, and onions add pops of color, flavor, and nutrition. To highlight its natural and beautiful black color, make this dish with red or brown rice (black works too, but you won’t see the pretty arame!).

A Little Seaweed Goes a Long Way

Sea vegetables are uniquely nutrient-dense foods that are used all around the world — albeit to varying degrees — including in some of the areas associated with longevity. As such, eating them is associated with numerous health benefits and uses. However, many of them are high in iodine, which can be good in moderation, but may cause problems when overconsumed — especially for people prone to hyperthyroidism.

Many seaweed varieties are also high in sodium. And seaweed can contain contaminants as well as high levels of heavy metals. So it’s best to buy organic, locally sourced, or heavy metal tested sea vegetables when possible, and to consume sea vegetables with care and in moderation.

Seaweed also brings multiple environmental benefits, especially as an alternative to land-based agriculture and factory farming. But unsustainable practices occur in seaweed farming and foraging, so how it’s produced matters. Overall, sea vegetables can be a valuable source of nutrients when used in moderation, and can be a sustainable source of nutrition when farmed or foraged responsibly.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you eat sea vegetables?
• What are some new ways you’re interested in trying sea vegetables?
• Have you ever tried seaweeds like dulse, kelp, nori, or wakame?

Featured Image: iStock.com/joakimbkk

Read Next:

• Vegan Sushi: How to Make It & the Benefits of Fish-Free Sushi
• Is Eating Fish Good For You? The Truth About the Health and Environmental Impacts of Eating Fish

The post Are Sea Vegetables Good for You and the Planet? — And Are Some Better Than Others? appeared first on Food Revolution Network.