Thursday, January 31, 2013

Get a little dirt on your hands...


Well, I might have finished lambasting poor old David Koch over his misplaced breastfeeding comments, but can’t stop about those good gut microbes. Great advice from Dr. Mercola who suggests that working in your garden and opening your windows to let the fresh air in are simple measures to enhance the health of the gut microbiota. 
Read the article in its entirety, its a goodie and Mercola’s recommendations are absolutely spot on and do-able. Who can say that they consume 30-40 different species of plants in a week??? Now that’s really something to aim for! 

Good place to start would be half a dozen different varieties of leaf lettuce in your backyard garden along with herbs like mint, parsley, coriander, basil, thyme and dill. Then pick them fresh and make them part of as many meals as you possibly can. 
Last night I managed mignonette, butter and cos lettuces (thanks Dave and Pauline), rocket, radicchio, cabbage, cauliflower, capsicum, mushroom, carrot, cucumber, tomato, Spanish onion, mint and parsley. Night before that it was potatoes, kumera, pumpkin, aubergine, fennel, brown onion, capsicum, tomato and rosemary - that’s 22 different ones already. A fruit salad for breakfast tomorrow will bring it close to 30. Then the challenge will be 10 more ... asparagus, broccoli, kale, spinach ...  I’m going very easy on the grains, but they count too ... couscous, quinoa, barley ... getting close to 40! What’s your score? Need some great recipes and the dirt on starting a garden?


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