Raw vs Cooked: the great food debate

Many claims have been made for the benefits of the raw food diet. It has been touted as a means of increasing health and longevity, of getting more nutrients from food, even of "increasing the radiance of your vital life force". Cooking, according to raw food advocates, "not only destroys nutrition and enzymes, but chemically changes foods from the substances needed for health into free-radicals and poisons that destroy our health!"

The implications of cooking are apparently so terrifying that it's a wonder the human race has survived for thousands of years of adulterating perfectly good food with fire. According to biological anthropologist Richarg Wrangham, cooking was in fact a crucial factor in our evolution as homo sapiens. In addition to the use of tools, the discovery of fire has long been believed to be the evolutionary starting gun that led to humans becoming the dominant species on Earth.

In his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Make Us Human, Wrangham explains that the application of heat rendered previously indigestible roots and vegetables edible. Time spent masticating was also drastically reduced. While other primates such as chimpanzees spend six hours a day chewing, cooking allowed evolving humans to devote time to other activities. Eating cooked foods changed the shape of the jaw, shrunk the digestive tract and allowed for the development of the brain.

Furthermore, cooking has become an integral part of the human psyche. The idea of transformation implied by cooking has compelled human beings for millenia. In his seminal work The Raw and the Cooked, legendary anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested that cooking is inextricably linked with culture. In the mythologies of places as diverse as Ireland and Latin America, cooking is a metaphor for the transition from wilderness to society. In the Old Irish tale Táin Bó Cuailgne, liminal hero Cú Chulainn is sent into a seething frenzy by the sight of naked women. He is plunged into a series of vats, causing the water to boil over. He is symbolically 'cooked' in order to render him fit for society.

In addition to its metaphorical implications, Wrangham contends that cooking is essential to long-term survival. Accounts of people isolated from society, such as castaways and people lost in the wilderness show how essential fire is to health. Virtually every example of people forced to eat a solely raw food diet died, whereas those who managed to make fire had a much greater survival rate. The answer to this riddle comes from caloric intake. Among those who eat a cooked diet, there is no difference between the energy absorbed by vegetarians and meat-eaters.

However, studies have found that an exclusively raw food diet does not provide adequate amounts of vitamins B12 and D, zinc, and calcium. The Giessen Raw Food study, conducted between 1993 and 1994 found that over a quarter of the participants were underweight and women often found that menstruation became infrequent or stopped altogether. Studies also found that people who were overweight or had high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol achieved good results from a raw food diet. Such studies suggest that raw foodism can be a short-term way of achieving balance in one's health. However, the long-term affects of a strict raw food diet can be detrimental to human health.

Proponants of raw food diets have responded to such challenges to their claims. Dr. Douglas N. Graham suggests increasing the number of bites taken per meal in order to increase the elasticity of the stomach and "to gently encourage your digestive system to regain its flexibility". To those of us who don't want to spend the day masticating furiously, this might prove something of a challenge.

Why I switched from soya milk

Being lactose-intolerant and vegetarian, I have been drinking soya milk for many years now. The high carbon footprint of cattle has meant that soya milk has been promoted as an ethical substitute for cows' milk. But is it as green as we think?

The recent murder of Brazilian activist José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife brings to light the epidemic of illegal logging and forest burning in the Amazon. However, a more pressing problem is the drastic increase in deforestation caused by soya farming in the last few months. The most significant rise has been seen in an area which produces a quarter of the Brazilian soybean crop. Soybeans are predominantly used as animal feed for the meat industry, but increasingly for the production of soyamilk.

In her book Stolen Harvest: the hijacking of the global food supply, Vandana Shiva discusses the growing hegemony of soy in the global food supply. Like the growth of cash crops all over the world, this has been to the detriment of localised food culture. In India, soybean has annihilated the traditional growth of mustard in many areas, where it had previously added distinctive flavour and colour to food. It also provided a great deal of locally-based employment and contributed to social cohesion. The takeover of soy has meant that India has become thethered to genetically-modified seed. Because the EU has placed strict labelling regulations upon GMO ingredients, U.S. companies are dumping much of their products on countries with fewer restrictions, such as India. 

What are the alternatives? Reducing our consumption of meat and other animal products is advisable, not merely for our individual health, but for the environment as well. However, we must also be careful that the alternatives we choose do not also negatively impact on the health of the planet. I believe that sustainable and locally-appropriate food is as important as issues such as vegetarianism and environmental protection. The inception of GMO and industrial agriculture and food production has had a devastating impact on delicate ecosystems as well as food cultures throughout the world. 

It is for these reasons that I have started buying Avonmore Lactose-Free Milk. The situation is not ideal, as it is not organic, and I know that I am contributing towards the pollution caused by cattle farming. Further to this, there is very little information available about the human impact of the hormones used to increase fertility and lactation in cattle. However, I feel that the closer I am to where my food is sourced, the better for me and for the environment. In addition to this, studies have found that milk from grass-fed cattle contains higher quanitites of healthy conjugated linoleic acid, vitamin E and omega-3 than from grain-fed cattle.

The higher rates of cholesterol in milk might have a negative impact on my health down the road, but as I don't tend to consume a lot of milk, I am hoping to avoid that in my quest to eat more sustainably.


 

What I learned from eating only Irish for a week

When I heard that Brendan from Castlemine Farm planned to eat nothing but Irish food for a week, I was intrigued. As someone interested in food security and growing my own vegetables, I wondered if I could survive a week eating only food produced in Ireland. Somewhat naively, I decided to try it out for a week, imagining that all the preparation it would take was the purchase of a few necessaries like Irish organic rapeseed oil and Irish honey. I generally do my utmost to buy Irish vegetables, so I assumed that eating nothing but Irish would be easy, especially for a vegetarian (technically pescaterian). However, I did not take into account the staples that veggies like myself usually depend upon, such as lentils, rice, pasta etc. are sourced hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. Nor did I consider the monstrous caffeine-deprivation headache that I would get on Tuesday, which was embarrassing after my boasts about the virtues of nettle and peppermint tea on Facebook. 

Breakfasts were easy enough to manage, as I usually eat a bowl of Flahavan's Organic Porridge, sweetened with Mileeven Irish Honey. Monday's lunch was a two-egg omelette consisting of Irish Free range eggs, Avonmore Lactose Free Milk, Keoghs' Organic Potatoes, Atlantic Seaweed Salt, Organic Irish Garden Herbs, Organic Irish Rapeseed oil, Nettles. I'd never cooked with nettles before, and I found them surprisingly yummy, despite the few stings I got in the preparation. I also used them in the stuffed pepper I had for Tuesday's lunch.

Dinner on Tuesday night was where I began to stumble into dodgy territory where Irish food was concerned. The rules for Eat Only Irish For a Week stipulate that the produce must come from Irish soil or Irish territorial waters. The hake I had for dinner was sourced from 'N.E. Atlantic' and therefore may not have been caught in Irish waters, but as that was the day I submitted to the aforementioned caffeine deprivation and drank a cup of green tea, I have to confess to not sticking to the letter of the law this week.

To alleviate the sweet cravings I was experiencing, I make some oatcakes with honey and butter, which were rich but delicious. 

Wednesday was where I experienced real problems, but discovered some fascinating insights into cereal production in Ireland. I bought Odlums Plain Flour to make handmade pasta, assuming that because the packet said 'Milled and packed in Ireland', that the wheat was grown in Ireland too. However, on enquiring of Josef Finke of Ballybrado if the wheat they sold was grown in Ireland, I was told the following:

'One needs about 12 – 14% protein to get good baking results. However, the wheat which we produced was always too low in protein, sometimes as low as 7 – 8%. That meant that we had to blend in superior organic wheat from Canada. But after years of unsuccessful trying we eventually gave up. It is my belief that one cannot grow successfully organic baking wheat in Ireland.'

This was a surprise to me, and so I sent an email to Odlums, who said the following:

'Odlums do try to source wheat from Ireland as often as possible, but due to various circumstances such as weather, this is not always the case.'

The reason why the Irish traditionally used soda in bread was that Irish wheat contained low quantities of the gluten which reacts with yeast. Ireland has one of the highest rates of coeliac disease in the world, which would indicate that high-gluten wheat is simply unsuited to the Irish physiology. For this reason, I turned again to the much derided oat, which I believe should become a symbol of Irish cuisine in the same way as maize is redolent of Latin America. It is surprisingly versatile, as I discovered when I ground it in the pestle and mortar to make oat flour for pancakes. It tasted exactly like wheat flour, but I recommend a gluten substitute for ordinary baking.

Aside from this, dinners did not provide me with any major challenge; Wednesday's included honey-baked parsnip and potatoes, and Saturday's consisted of a casserole of garlic, onion, leek, parsnip and carrot.

Friday was when I discovered the wonders of lemonbalm, which I found to be growing in abundance in my back garden. It works as a great citrus replacement in salad dressing, pesto and marinade, but be aware that it has a strong minty aftertaste.

Though my adventures in eating Irish were not as strict as they should have been I made some interesting discoveries regarding food in Ireland and the challenges which ordinary consumers like myself face in sourcing Irish produce. We have a long way to go towards being self-sufficient, or even achieving food security in this country. Hopefully, Eating Only Irish For a Week will get people - both ordinary citizens and policy-makers - thinking about the steps we have to take to reach these goals.

Phillip Boucher Hayes causes a stir with RTÉ's 'What's Ireland Eating?'

Last night I tuned into journalist Boucher Hayes's foray into the Irish food sector just at the half-way point, but I was in plenty of time to see the depressing state of Ireland's food growing industry.

The main supermarket chains in the Irish market are Tesco, Dunnes Stores and Supervalu, which hold a huge amount of power over how prices are set. This has meant that produce growers have faced drastically decreased prices over the past thirty years, while the cost of growing has grown exponentially. This has led to many farmers being forced out of the industry. More significantly, the lack of power held by producers has meant that cheap produce can be easily imported from overseas, which is not only economically, but also environmentally and often ethically unsound.

Boucher Hayes revealed the completely unsurprising fact that, despite promises to the contrary, the arrival of large shopping centres near town centres such as Naas, Co. Kildare actually leads to jobs being lost in the town. Small businesses which were the lifeblood of communities are forced to complete with the perceived wider choice and lower prices of the Tescos and Supervalus. This has a knock-on effect on the local businesses they support which frequently go under due to the pressure of such mighty competition.

Small butchers, bakers, greengrocers and other artisanal businesses provide an arguably more valuable service to the community by using local produce and sustaining jobs within the community, they continue to stuggle to provide a niche service which cannot be expected to compete with behemoths who give an impression of lower prices. However, as Boucher Hayes revealed, these bargains are often shouldered by the producer, already straining to get their product to the supermarket shelves at even the rock-bottom price that the big supermarkets demand. They are often too frightened to speak out about such price gouging techniques for fear of being blacklisted.

The most astonishing revelation was that Tesco earns more of a profit in Ireland than any other country in the world other than South Korea. This piece of information is hard to come by, given that they do not disclose their profits for Ireland. This seems highly irregular, especially given their massive profits in this country, and might lead one to wonder how they manage to pocket such impressive sums. One can only hope that their tax returns are all up to date, especially at a time when the state could use every bit of revenue it can lay its hands on.

Ciaran Murphy from Murphy's Ice-cream recommended regionality in terms of selling products, which would mean that producers would be able to stock items in certain areas of high sales and have more autonomy over selling their produce. I see this as the way to go, in addition to developing local economies, where co-operatives would help to give growers the support and solidarity they need.
 
'What's Ireland Eating' seems to have sparked a frenzy of online debate about what we are eating in this country and where it comes from. It was refreshing to see a quality piece of journalistic investigation on RTÉ, usually the home of moronic entertainment and fawning political debate. This programme will be available online until 29 May on the RTÉ website here, and I certainly recommend a watch.

For the rest of the week, I will be taking part in Eat Only Irish for a Week. I'll be keeping a food diary of what I eat, and will write about my experiences as I go on.

An introduction to food culture in Ireland

What is food culture? Even with the wealth of knowledge which the world wide web can bring, it is extremely hard to find a definition of this concept. You would think that with something so fundamental and basic to human life, food culture would be something that would be easy to define. A general definition would be the types of food eaten in a certain place, but this does not give an idea of how deeply food culture impacts on our identities within the society in which we live.


Here in Ireland, we do not have a very sophisticated food culture. You only have to ask the average person what type of food is most redolent of Ireland - by and large their answer will be the potato. Ireland's uncomfortable relationship with the tuber only began in 1589 when it was introduced into the country by Walter Raleigh. Because it was cheap and easy to grow, the dirt poor and dispossessed population became dependent on it as a staple crop. This lead to disaster when a series of blights lead to the deaths of at least one million and the emigration of another million during the Great Famine of 1845-52.


This was not the only disaster which stunted the development of the Irish cuisine. There had been a series of famines in Ireland throughout the ages, such as one which devastated Munster in the aftermath of the 16th century Desmond Rebellions. Plantations dispossessed the native population of their land and English efforts to eliminate the indigenous culture meant that food culture never developed in the same manner as it did in Europe. This was also partially due to the country's remote position from the rest of Europe, but can mainly be attributed to the deliberate way in which the English establishment attempted to control the Irish by destroying their food sources. While history cannot be blamed entirely for our lack of control over our food production, it is important not to underestimate its psychological impact.


One only has to look at the sophisticated cuisine developed by the poor of France, Spain, Italy and the whole of the Mediterranean to see that even food from the most humble of sources can still be delicious. Ireland's climate means that we are ideally located to produce a variety of foods, ideal for both vegetarians and meat-eaters. Historically, the population of Ireland subsisted on a varied diet. In the early Christian period, many lived on dairy products, cereals such as oats and barley, fish, vegetables and ocassionally a fletch of salted pork. Beef was not as common a food as it is today. Because of the economic importance of the cow in early times, milk, butter and cheese were a large part of the diet and bulls were generally slaughtered when too old for draught work.


In Ireland, despite our huge production capabilities, we are extremely vulnerable to any collapse in the food supply chain. The Sustainability Institute, a Mayo-based organisation, predicts that in the event of any such collapse it would take 5-7 years to re-build its food growing capability to a level compatible with feeding its population. 


This is why organisations such as Grow Your Own Ireland and Out of Our Own Back Yard are important, but they will not make the comprehensive changes we will need to face the challenges in food supply that are inevitable in the years to come. Droughts and famines are becoming more frequent due to climate change, supplies of petrochemicals - on which the production and transportation of many of our supermarket vegetables depend - are reaching crisis levels. It is high time we faced these issues before disaster strikes. Cuba was forced to face their loss of the Soviet oil supply and entirely transformed its food production in the process, wheras North Korea suffered a devastating famine in which 3 million people died.

A raising of consciousness is required, by both the government and the population at large. Becoming more self-sufficient is not a hippy dream or a yuppy fad but something that each family should take as a personal responsibility. Movements such as Food Sovereignty will help the growth of community solidarity in a country ravaged by the economic collapse, but will also encourage tourism and promote employment in the food industry.
   
Eat Only Irish week 9th-15th May is a great way of raising consciousness of our dependence on foreign imports. While returning to locally-produced, seasonal, organic vegetables is a great start to increasing our self-sufficiency, what is required is a government-led push to rethink land use in Ireland. Something like 167,000 hectares of land is dedicated to barley growth, which is used almost exclusively for animal feed and for use in the malting and brewing industry. This is a short-sighted waste of a delicious grain that can be used as a replacement for the rice which we import from thousands of miles away. With some imaginative thinking, we could lead the way in developing a sustainable, self-sufficient food-growth policy in Ireland.