Farm Fresh Foods throughout Florida

Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

Grass-fed Foods and Vitamin B-12

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

The Best Sources of Vitamin B12

Do you get enough vitamin B12? Studies show that as many as one in four adults, or almost 80 percent of people in the United States, may be deficient in this important nutrient.

Known as the “energy vitamin,” B12 is essential for many critical functions in the body. Not only does it help produce energy, but it also supports the immune system and the nervous system, and regulates the formation of red blood cells.

Lack of B12 can result in anemia, nervousness, depression, lack of energy and all around poor health.

There are several reasons for B12 deficiency, but the main one is the modern diet. Since the vitamin is only present in animal sources of food, those who don’t eat animal products are more likely to suffer from low B12. But consuming poor quality animal products from animals that are fed unhealthy grains, or eating pasteurized dairy products, in which the B12 is destroyed, is also a large part of the problem.

So what’s a body to do?

Since our bodies do not easily or efficiently absorb B12 supplements (including those added to foods), and painful, expensive injections are not usually helpful, the best and easiest way to get enough B12 is to eat nutrient-dense animal products naturally rich in the nutrient. Grass-fed beef, fresh pastured eggs, and grass-fed dairy are some of the best natural sources of this important vitamin. And the best way for our bodies to absorb vital nutrients is through natural sources.

Local Central Florida farms offer farm fresh foods loaded with vitamin B12 and other nutrients.

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5 Reasons to Buy Local Food

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

1 – Food grown locally tastes better and is better for you. In the time it takes to get produce from harvest to the table, it loses a lot of important nutrients. The shorter travel distance, the more nutrients are preserved. Eggs from free-range chickens, grass-fed raw milk, and grass-fed beef are fresher and last longer when they are purchased locally.

2 Reduce global warming pollution and gasoline demand. Instead of traveling many miles on fossil fuels from farm to table, your food travels from your local farmer to your table, saving the planet. When you buy locally grown and produced food in Central Florida, you are also helping preserve the Florida agricultural landscape.

3 – Keep the money in the community. For every 100 dollars spent at a locally owned business, $45 goes back into our community. For every $100 spent at a chain store, only $14 comes back. Local food also keeps your taxes in check because local, independent farms contribute more in taxes than they require in services.

4 – Buy what you want, and not what someone else wants you to buy. Small businesses and farms choose products that are based on what their customers want and what is in season instead of relying on a national sales plan. Eating local food that is grown in season rather than eating food shipped from faraway places like Chile, also keeps your body in tune with the environment.

5 – Create jobs and better wages. Locally owned businesses create more local jobs and, in many cases, they provide better wages and benefits than chain stores do.

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Farm Fresh Eggs

Friday, March 27th, 2009
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Eggs are a nutrient powerhouse!  Better yet eggs from hens allowed to roam far and wide.  These types of eggs of course are becoming more available to us in the Orlando metro area.  As the demand increases so will the supply.  There is of course confusion with the terms so I below I wanted to give you some definitions:

Cage-Free: The idea here is that hens are allowed to move about unrestricted. However  this usually means that hundreds if not thousands of birds inside a building with artificial lights.  They can be feed the same genetically modified feed.  The same goes for organics cage free  except they get organic feed.   Hens should be out on grass, in natural sunlight, fighting for the bugs and other insects. Such an operation can happen here in Orlando with our sunshine year round.

Free-Range: This term is similar to the one above and the one most of us see in the local grocery store.  Like cage free, the USDA has no rules on what can be considered free-range or not.  It is presumed that free-range hens are allowed to roam outside, but that simply is a small fenced in area.  Again for truly free- range eggs seek out local farmers.

Pastured:  The is a very recent term and means the hens are allowed outside and forage on green grass, bugs  and supplemented with some feed.  The biggest dangers here are predators and farmers are always on the look out for them.  In the Florida sunshine these make some of the most nutrient dense foods available.

Farm eggs nutrients:

These are the nutrients  found in truly pastured eggs: Vitamin’s A,D and especially rich in the B vitamin choline.  The phyto-nutrients lutein and zeaxanthin have been found to be essential to prevent macular degeneration.  Finally, pastured eggs are excellent source of omega 3 fatty acids.

So remember in Orlando your local farmer is the bet source for local farm fresh eggs.

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Local Food in Orlando

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

As many of you might have already noticed, finding local sources of local farm fresh food is difficult.  The Orlando metro area, which once had thriving agricultural enterprises, instead is filled with urban sprawl.  Fortunately, the times are changing.  People in Orlando are searching high and low for free-range eggs, fresh milk, local organic produce, and much more.  Many have formed co-ops and bring in food from around the US.  While commendable, I’m of the opinion that we should support and source food from around Florida and Orlando as much as possible.  There some obvious obstacles of course, chief among them is the price of land.  Second we need suppliers of natural, non-toxic feed for the animals.  Third, we need laws to encourage the growth of local meat processing operations.  I do not mean the large slaughterhouses on an industrial scale but rather small mom and pop operations.  Smaller operations are easier to keep clean and you can build a personal relationship with them.  Can you imagine the return of your local butcher that offers grass-fed meat, lamb and truly pastured chickens?  So what can you do?  Buy local first.  Follow the 80-20 rule.  Try to buy a larger portion of your food locally and the remainder from conventional sources.  Second, write your local, state and federal representatives to make your voice heard.  In these economic troubles, buying locally will have an immediate positive impact.

Please visit these resources below to get started:

Click on Find Local Food

http://www.holisticlivingschool.org/coop

/

http://apmarket.wordpress.com/

http://www.localharvest.org/

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CLA- The good fat

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

As we move in to the spring and summer months I thought a few words were needed about CLA.  What? You’ve not heard of this amazing fat?  CLA, or Conjugated linoleic acid, is a type of fat created by the bacteria in the digestive track of ruminant animals.  Research shows that it has significant anti-cancer properties and helps the body to lose weight and put on muscle. Yes you read that correctly!   Our obsession with the low-fat diet has caused us to overlook this particular nutrient and challenges conventional medicine notions of fat as dangerous.
Now here comes the good part.  Dr. Dhiman, a CLA researcher, has found cows who have grain as the predominant part of their diet (the kind whose beef and dairy you find in your grocery store) produce four times less CLA in their milk than cows eating their natural diet, rapidly growing green grass.  This also translated to the meat as well.
Perhaps we can start turning the corner on associating red meat with cancer and other ills and see it as a nutrient dense power house.  This is especially the case with Florida grass-fed beef, milk and butter.  Living in Orlando we can take advantage of the year round sunlight for our health needs.

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