bam ! and bing ! WIBackpacker
one question about wild rice though " wild rice (actual wild rice, not cultivated)"
what is that? are you talking about the "wild rice" lwhich is long and black and harvested by
going out onto the water and whacking the seeds into the boats ?
not rice . close - but not the Asian variety ---
this seed is a member of different grasses enjoyed by our native peoples .
If you soak it to sprout it just splits like a wiener too long on the grill.
Rice again ---
In the 1980's , at the U of Toronto , Dr Jenkins developed a scale that everyone is familiar with --- the Glycemic Index .That measures the conversion of carbohydrates into sugars and blood sugar levels which need to be controlled in diabetic patients.
In the 1980's dogs were fed some pretty poor kibbles. Hamsters would have thrived on it . Full of corn.
Some of the corn was easy to identify because it was a full hard kernel that went in and came in the same way.
Roughage.
People saw the waste . Plus corn has competing interests -- used in the making of drugs, cosmetics, fuel, alchohol,
sweeteners and feed-lot plumper upper of meat-animals and even at one time "money".
Read Michael Pollan's the Omivore's Dilema. A surfeit of post war ammonium nitrate , bomb-making material, was spread on fields and so the chemical fertilizer industry began . Corn needs huge amounts of nutrients and can lay an already fragile topsoil to depletion.
one of my favourite U of Toronto writers and lecturers was Margaret Visser whose first book was Much Depends upon Dinner .
I was never able to look at a field the same way again.
Every time I pass a field with a test sign on it for Pioneer or Hi-Bred corn I have to think of visionary USA Vice President Henry Wallace . Secretary of Agriculture in FDR's cabinet.
Food stamps , crop insurance, lunches in schools , health care , and improved genetics for crops - able to endure the drought of the dust bowl years.
With a nod to black history month , fellow agronomist George Washington Carver , was taken in to the home of the Wallace family.
A daring move for the time.
Wallace learned a great deal from Carver.
Later in life he would proudly ride through segregated south with his black secretary beside him.
He believed in the common man -- his famous speech dawning the Century of the Common Man celebrating freedom and the dignity of the individual.
That speech and philosophy inspired Fanfare for the Common Man , chosen by former President Obama for his inauguration.
Don't know it? I am sure you do -- have a listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KxMc_tyQBo
I wonder what and how we would be in a different place had Wallace been President instead of Truman.
eat an egg lately, had some corn or corn by product -- then Wallace has touched your life.
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so in comes Rice . Embraced as a better and virtuous grain . Meanwhile all you were getting in kibbles was floor waste .Broken bits of white rice and flour dust.
Low nutriton. Carbohydrates.
Can we plot the tsunami wave of skin problems , YEAST and fungal problems dogs have been experiencing since the late 1980's to the trending of white rice in kibble?
I think it does. Because there is no FIBRE , the pure starch of the rice endosperm converts to sugar favouring yeast and cancer and spikes . Full circle to the opening on the glycemic index. Same would go for potatoes and sweet potatoes.
mmm.
they don't even use brown rice and never would have sprouted brown rice. (white rice can't aprout).
that requires an educated consumer.
brown rice isn't even marketed as a dinner table alternate , because of the perception of white and purity of food .
too much marketing going to promote a product -.
slim to no commercial availabilty so even the health food magazines don't make mention.
meanwhile --- sprouted brown rice is sold at a premium as a protein supply in supplemental food formulations ,
those people , many of them would be vegetarian or vegans would be informed - so selling easy "preaching to the choir"
Margaret Visser's book takes a look at a common food item and explores history, commerce, botany, agricultural and social issues . good read !