Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 - January 2016 i MOTHER EARTH NEWS

Our article “Fat Matters: Understanding the Science” (Page 45) may be the most important health news we’ve ever shared with you. Fats, it turns out, are far more complicated than we realized, and mainstream medicine and nutrition experts have misguided us — in a big way. For more than 40 years, we’ve been told that eating fat is what makes us fat. Now, a closer look at the accumulating evidence is revealing that this advice is wrong. The presumed link between heart disease and eating cholesterol and saturated fats is also questionable. What about the corn, soy and other vegetable oils that we’ve been told are better choices than butter and lard? We now know that butter and lard from pastured animals are better than the so-called “good fats” found…

If you’re trying to buy more grass-fed beef, you may be one of the smart shoppers who knows that meat from grass-fed cattle is higher in key nutrients, including crucial omega-3 fatty acids (learn more about these in Richard Manning’s article on Page 45). Raising cattle on carefully managed pasture will also lead to healthier animals, whose meat is less likely to carry foodborne pathogens. Grass-fed production offers major environmental benefits, too, such as carbon sequestration. (For more on these topics, see “The Many Benefits of Grass-Fed Meat” online at http://goo.gl/xBD3ek.) But labels can be misleading. Here are the verified, meaningful labels to look for to ensure your beef is from cattle that were grass-fed from birth to slaughter: • American Grassfed Association: Certifies producers using independent auditors; www.AmericanGrassfed.org. •…

Gardeners are inspired to grow their own vegetables for a variety of reasons: food purity, food security, family and cultural traditions, fresh flavors, stress relief, improved nutrition, and many more. Our tomatoes grow sweet with lip-smacking flavor, but also heavy with intent and purpose. Certainly, identifying your own incentives is critical to making it through the darkness of winter, flush of spring weeds, and stifling summer heat to, ultimately, the bounty of the harvest season. In the elegant portraits presented on these pages, photographer Lynn Karlin brings an oftoverlooked motivation to light: reverence for beauty. These works are part of “The Pedestal Series,” in which Karlin, quite literally, elevates the harvest. With an eye attuned to elegance where most people see utility, she ratifies the radish and champions the cabbage.…

Growing your own seedlings indoors can save you big bucks, as well as open up a whole new world of crop variety options. When you start seeds at home, you aren’t limited to the, well, “garden variety” plants available at most garden centers. You can order seeds of anything you desire to try — such as disease-resistant, organically bred, regionally adapted or rare heirloom varieties — from the many mail-order seed companies across the United States, and then sprout them yourself. The range of setups you can use to start your seeds is nearly as diverse as the plants you can grow. We reached out to our readers to find out what seedstarting setups work well for them, and this is a roundup of their ideas. As you get set…

Produce Homegrown Sweeteners What are the best options for syrups and sweeteners derived from plants I can grow and process myself? Depending on your region, your choices for homegrown sweeteners may include tree syrup, sorghum syrup (molasses), sugar beet syrup or paste, stevia, and sugar cane. Two popular homegrown sweeteners are tree syrups and sorghum molasses. Syrup-seekers living in cold climates often opt for sugar maple or black maple trees because they yield a high volume and concentration of sap that’s about 2 percent sugar. Making 1 gallon of maple syrup requires boiling down 40 to 50 gallons of sugar or black maple sap. Because red and silver maples produce a more watery sap, syrup-makers must collect and boil more of it to produce the same amount of syrup. Other…

EDITORS’ PICK Dedicated Reader Retires I’ve been reading MOTHER since 1975, and I still have every issue I’ve ever purchased. Because of your magazine, we bought acreage in the country — and still live on it! I can also quilt; make soap; and can, freeze and dehydrate a wide range of edibles. Unfortunately, it’s time that I retire my subscription. I’m afraid I’m getting a little old, and just can’t do what I used to. I’ll miss you, MOTHER. Thank you for 40 years of the all-time best magazine on the planet! Phyllis Johnson Dover, Florida You’re welcome, Phyllis! Thanks for staying with us through the years. We feel lucky to have such dedicated and engaged readers. — MOTHER A Solar Shed I’m interested in building a solar “power plant.”…

Kevin Kelly’s comprehensive, 470-page Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities echoes the classic 1970s Whole Earth Catalog, which Kelly helped edit. If you’ve ever spent time with the Whole Earth Catalog, you know how hard it is to put down. Cool Tools is the same way — the 11-by-14-inch pages are packed with all kinds of surprises, innovative products and ideas. Kelly describes a cool tool as “anything useful that increases learning, empowers individuals, does work that matters, and is either the best, or the cheapest, or the only thing that works.” For Kelly, who served as executive editor at Wired, this definition includes a wide array of items, from hand tools and maps to software and magazines. His review of MOTHER EARTH NEWS concludes: “Why I subscribe: Most magazines…

Cooking and baking with whole grains is a healthful choice that brings a much wider range of nutrients to meals than opting for refined flours or processed goods. And “whole grain flour” doesn’t have to only mean “wheat flour.” A variety of grains and grain-like seeds are available for bakers, each with its own special qualities and flavors — and you can grind them in your own mill right at home for exceptionally nutritious, fresh flours customized to your taste buds and recipes. Plus, with today’s modern mills, grinding grain is no longer slow, tedious work — you can go from grain to dough in a matter of minutes. Why Make Homemade Flour? Flavor. The No. 1 reason to mill your own flour is flavor, which can be equated with…

Remember those multipurpose, free-standing kitchen cabinets with pull-out bins, built-in flour sifters, and lots of storage? The “Hoosier” cupboard first appeared in the United States more than 100 years ago, bringing convenience and efficiency to the hodgepodge of shelves, tabletops, hanging pans and bins in cluttered turn-of-the-20th-century kitchens. (See “Hoosier History,” opposite.) We believe Hoosier-style cupboards deserve a prominent place in today’s kitchens. MOTHER’s updated design — part workstation, part storage cabinet — retains the original’s spirit and functionality. Our version features handy dispensers for grains or flour, and a pull-out work surface, making it a perfect baking cup-board. Instead of the mixer shown at left, you could place your grain mill on the swing-up shelf. You could also modify these plans to create a specialized space for fermenting, vegetable…

This new brand, labeled as “Open Source,” “OSSI” or “Open Source Seed Initiative,” takes its place alongside more familiar designations, such as “heirloom” and “Certified Organic,” meant to help shoppers narrow their choices. But OSSI is really more of an anti-brand because it designates “freed seed.” That means any variety carrying this label is unencumbered by patents and other restrictions that increasingly take varieties out of circulation, as patented seed can’t legally be saved, replanted or shared, and must be repurchased year after year. Most troubling: Patented genetics can’t be used for plant-breeding purposes, meaning breeders at universities and small seed companies — who do promising work, particularly on organic seed — feel this shrinking diversity head-on. Raw material is lost to corporate control. In this growing genetic vacuum, plant…