Rising stress levels an indicator of progress in food rights during 2011

From David E. Gumpert on The Complete Patient blog:

“What is the mark of a vibrant movement?

For the food rights movement in 2011, at least, it seems to be the frequency of major disruptions, or what I would call “shock events.” These include court decisions, government enforcement actions, and internal organizational moves.

Over the last year, we had any number of all of these.

On the legal side, there were major initial losses in Missouri, from Morningland Dairy, and Wisconsin. But they aren’t over till they are over, and the cases are all on appeal. (Appeals were just filed in the last few weeks on the Wisconsin cases involving Wayne Craig and Mark Zinniker.)

The art of making raw milk cheese

From the Happy Homesteader:

Curds in the whey ... where is little Ms. Muffet? Photo via Happy Homesteader.

“Cheese making is most certainly an art, not a science.  There are many ways in which the cheese making process can go off track.  This is in part because the process is mostly open to the air, and also because there are many variables.  As a small-scale cheese producer, you can follow the same recipe twice and get different results.

I have been fortunate enough to experiment with the art of cheese making, which has been both a source of great joy and frustration.  I have produced cheeses that have been the toast of the table and garnered rave reviews.  I have also produced a cheese that much resembled a rubber disc.  It even bounced.

What is “organic”?

From Russ on his “Volatility” blog:

“For food or anything else to be organic is for it to exist and evolve in harmony with the rest of nature and human history. Our natural history, in its culinary aspect, can be called grass farming. We worked hard to maintain the savannah as the best habitat for our food and for our safety.

Over thousands of years we were forced by elites into the strait jacket of agriculture based on annual grasses with giant seed pods: wheat, corn, rice. Although agriculture had many potential forms, on account of the malevolence of the hierarchies in control it became politically and socially destructive and environmentally unsustainable.

Why we love raw milk…

From Nourished Kitchen.com:

“We drink raw milk as many people who prefer clean and unadulterated foods do. Traditional dairying cultures studied by Weston A Price always consumed their milk in a raw and unadulterated state.

Pasteurization, invented in the 19th century, began to applied to milk and cream in the early 20th century. Raw milk is extraordinarily rich in nutrients: natural vitamins that are otherwise destroyed by pasteurization, food enzymes that help you to better digest the milk and beneficial bacteria that support immune system health.It is critical, however, that the raw milk you drink is not ordinary raw milk; rather, make sure you’re choosing a good supplier.

The protective effect of raw milk on asthma in children — Gabriella study

From PressTV.com:

Photo via PressTV.com

“Children who drink raw milk are at a significant lower risk of developing asthma and allergies than those consuming safer pasteurized version.

Researchers from Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel interviewed a group of European parents about their children’s milk consumption while collecting 800 milk samples from the participants’ households, Reuters reported.