A Saturday family meal had been planned but it is raining all day (since Israeli government has a 20-years contract to buy desalted seawater, the climate has changed and we are having copious rainfalls) so my wife went to visit the redhead granddaughter and left my food on the table (pic). What it is? It has a granulated contexture and tastes very bitter. She said it is "dohan" - millet, and in the Island of Sahalin they used to eat it a lot. VERY healthy.
I went to research the subject in the internet. Russians do grow proso millet for animal food. When she was growing up in post-war Russia, it must have been a valuable food. In fact, millet is a group of non-Gramineae with minuscule seeds, and as the wiki observes, its protein content is high but not digestible. It is not poisonous so I ate it with some kind of greenery. She cares for my health. I've always the same BMI ("obese"), but she has been losing weight lately.
PS.: She is back and I dared to say something. So she made me look up in the Russian wiki and learn that it is a very nutritious foodstuff, as seen below, it contains even GOLD.
Содержание белка в пшене довольно высокое и приравнивается содержанию белка в пшенице — около 11% по весу. Также пшено богато витаминами, особенно B1, B2, B5, а также витамином PP. Пшено содержит необходимые организму микроэлементы: железо, золото, фтор, магний, марганец, кремний, медь, кальций, калий и цинк.
38 comments:
Island of Sahalin? The Japanese call it Karafuto.
The Japs are just one island away of being rich in oil.
Ah! That's why we eat tofu instead of Argentine steaks.
I used to eat boiled psheno all the time as a kid, with butter, salt and sugar. Mine was never bitter, though-if you get the water just right, it's not the mush on the picture, it's distinct grains with perfect texture. We also used to eat lots of boiled buckwheat. Then in America there was nowhere to get it except the Jewish section at the supermarket, where they sold it as Wolff's Kasha, but you could never get that stuff tasting right. In Israel, they've got the real thing, and I eat it frequently.
Hey B, do you miss the Soviet Union?
In America, millet is bird seed (that people put out to feed wild birds) and not a normal part of the human diet. I did try it once and was not overly impressed. It was edible but not something that I would seek out if there were other choices available. The again there are a lot of foods that are part of the national diet in one country and in others are consider animal food or completely repugnant.
Gold is a noble (inert) metal that is not metabolized by animals and so it is not a necessary dietary trace mineral. You can have a diet with zero trace gold and it would not affect your health.
I am pleased to report that there are now Russian supermarkets in America (at least in Brooklyn and Philadelphia) where you can buy honest to goodness Russian gretchka - many different brands, a whole shelf full of choices.
I suppose you have seen the latest study which showed no effect on mortality from being slightly "overweight". My one aunt who was the plumpest of them all (zaftig rather than morbidly obese) has now outlived all the others.
K
B
You must be worth your weight in gold!
I see you are an expert. The consistency of my Shabbat meal was wrong because my wife didnt know the quantity of water required.
I dont know why it was so bitter. Maybe that is the way it is, and the reason why Russians eat it with milk and sugar.
Entre-nous, I prefer an Argentine churrasco.
From what I recall of millet, it is rather bland and tasteless (by itself) and not bitter. Sort of like rice in terms of blandness but inferior in texture and flavor. So maybe you got a bad batch or maybe it isn't what you think it is. Apparently the word "millet" is applied to a number of different seeds.
K
Cremaster-no, I don't miss the Soviet Union.
J-it's not bitter if you just boil it. A bit tasteless, but then rice and potatoes have that going on too. A bit of butter or oil and salt, and you're golden.
EVERYBODY prefers an Argentine churrasco or a kebab.
K-no amount of buckwheat in the galaxy is worth dealing with the people who sell it in Russian stores in America. Most of the good ones went to Israel, and only zhloby work in retail.
As much as I would like for the results to be true, I wouldn't put much stock in the weight meta-analysis study that K mentioned. It was discussed at Sigma's new blog, and numerous holes were found in the methodology.
Now I know what all these milletants have been eating, and why they are all so pissed off.
Anon.
I know what you mean. Last time I was in a Russian supermarket, my wife didn't want the cashier to put the bag of potatoes in a bag, since they were already in a bag and it's a waste for the environment in her view. The cashier insisted on putting a "paid" sticker on them instead. Then as we were leaving, this big Russian zhlub who works there insisted on moving aside the other bags in the cart and inspecting the bag of potatoes at the bottom to see if it had the sticker on it. My wife was very insulted, as the guy was in effect accusing us of trying to shoplift a $2 bag of potatoes (plus he had been standing maybe 5 feet in front of us when the cashier put the sticker on). It didn't bother me - I just laugh at such things. Actually, given the customer base, a lot of them probably WOULD steal a bag of potatoes (or the fillings from your mouth) if they could get away with it.
But aside from that little unpleasant exchange, it was pretty much a normal American style self-service supermarket (except with Tvorog and sausages and smoked fish and black bread and gretchka and pickles and everything that a Russian heart (or stomach) could desire) so very little human interaction was required. And the buckwheat was maybe 1/2 of what Wolff's gets for the little ground up particles that they label as "kasha". Wolff's is another one of those American products that once came in a logical 1 lb. box but every time you go to the store the weight of the contents gets a little less (so they can raise the price without making it look like they are raising the price) - I think it's now 13 oz.
K
Your wife is from Sakhalin?
How Russian culture is influencing israel.
Cremieux
Her father was a soldier stationed in Sakhalin. Families followed. Other times, hard times.
I eat paleo diet. Is that popular in Israel? You must have access to good beef and lamb though. When I was in Israel I couldn't find lamb shawarma. Too much turkey and eggs there, not enough real meat. Eggs are OK though, if they're pastured...
But is there obesity epidemic in Israel? It's happening everywhere now...
You must get off grains, and back on churrasco! Churrasco, and bone marrow, this is real food.
The obesity epidemic is nowhere to be seen in Israel. Some people are fat, within a reasonable range, but the waddling masses of flesh are nowhere to be seen.
Paleo sounds great in theory. In practice, raising six or ten kids on pasture-raised organic lamb is a bit pricey for normal humans who don't live by farming. Also, it really begs the question of how the human race has survived the last 10K years-everyone was living on grains (mostly) and as Cochran and Harpending point out, the rate of evolution during the time period was unprecedentedly high. Being ominvores, I fail to see how we could have NOT adapted.
I dont think paleo is popular here. All kind of health natural exotic expensive foods are popular. And exotic fruits and grains with wonder health properties, like quinoa and millet. Now we also eat Ethiopian bread made from sorghum or finger millet and so. It tastes like bitter beer.
My daughter lives on halvah.
J
I lived for a year in Buenos Aires, and the beef in Argentina is better than anywhere else, including Uruguay. It is said the earth has high concentration of nitrites which gives the beef a certain taste. Anyway, go back to that diet. These exotic grains you speak of are crap. Grains are not good for you in general. Fruit, yes...
Go back to eating churrasco and bone marrow, and liver, this is real food and you will be healthier.
Women = stupidity in the kitchen. They've been poisoning men for hundreds of years...I think on purpose sometimes.
Look up the archevore diet
http://www.archevore.com/get-started/
Worked for me. I'm stronger, healthier.
B: evolution just means change, not that things got better. Height of skeletons decreases dramatically with agricultural revolution, and stays low except for the nobles, who still kept a pastoral diet. Pastoral peoples are always bigger, stronger, healthier than farmers who live on grains. Grains allowed for cities and population expansion, but the life of the average farmer was not good. The nobles and kings continued to eat meat and live into their 70's.
Remember in the Bible, the offering of Cain is rejected, the offering of Abel is accepted.
Evolution means adaptation. Height has grown steadily in Western society with better nutrition. I grew up on a non-paleo diet and am over six feet-presumably, if I'd been eating hand-caught salmon instead, I'd be eight feet tall? I didn't see any obese people in Afghanistan-they generally looked healthy, despite eating lots of rice and bread. Could they have made some improvements? Not without sacrificing their reproductive success and economic future. As for the relative health of various populations-the Russians, who were pretty much acknowledged as the hardiest people in Eurasia, lived off grains and cabbage soup, and kicked the hell out of all the pastoralists between Kazan and Sakhalin. Not because there were more of them, either-check out Ermak or the wars with the Chukchi. Likewise, the Scots were known as epitomes of health, and they lived off some kind of horrible oatmeal cakes and porridge.
If a diet works for you, it works for you, but to posit that humans somehow have failed to adapt to 10KY of grains is retarded.
It is not debatable that height and other measures of health (strength of skeleton, teeth, etc.) decreased with the agricultural revolution, or that pastoral peoples overall are and were taller, more powerful, etc.; in the case of e.g., the Scots you have people who became farmers very recently. Tacitus describes the Germans in his time, they still had pastoral diet.
Remember also what I said about the Bible: the life of the shepherd is holy and good. The life of the farmer and city-dweller is not. This is a theme throughout the Bible, and it begins with the story of Abel and Cain.
PS Afghans are a pastoral people, as well, but depends on the caste. The lower castes/slaves are farmer, the upper caste tends the livestock in the pastures. Women and slaves are not allowed to care for the livestock.
PPS I forgot to add explicitly, not all humans have been farmers for 10,000 yrs. Chinese are probably well-adapted to a rice diet, plains Indians, Massai and Swiss or Swedish probably not.
...and if women have been poisoning men for hundreds of years...then we must be adapted to them too ...
A minority of the Afghans are pastoral (the Kuchi) and even they consume lots of rice and bread which they buy from the farmers. This has ALWAYS been the case-check out Wilfred Thesiger's books about travels with the Beduins, whose diet consisted largely of flour, tea and sugar. Pastoralists live not by themselves but in symbiosis with settled populations, and this includes an exchange of food.
B,
I don't agree about that. It may be that some pastoralists do eat grains, but it was not always like this. Weston Price found Swiss villagers who lived almost exclusively on dairy. Tacitus speaks of the German diet, based on game and wild fruit. Certain tribes in Africa like the Nuer live almost exclusively on animal products. Not all peoples around the world have had time to adapt to a grain diet.
Jews were initially pastoral too as I keep saying, the Bible looks down on farmers/cities. The life of the shepherd is holy and pure.
The Jews were initially pastoralists living in close contact with agricultural societies. There is literally no place from Egypt to Bengal where in the last 5KY nomads existed without constant and regular contact with settled agricultural societies, trading goods and genes. Symbiosis is the model.
Obviously not all people are the same, different diets work for different people, etc. However, J is a Hungarian Jew. To posit that the ideal diet for him is hand-caught walrus jerky or whatever is to ignore the last 6KY of his descent, maybe more.
The Bible doesn't see it as symbiosis; it's 2 opposed ways of life. You have a scientific/historical point of view foreign to the Bible and to most pastoralists, who look down on farmers.
That said, the question of diet is different. It may be that J has tolerance to grains, but he complains that he is fat. A low carb, moderate-high fat high protein diet helps people like him often. His women are poisoning him with grains!
J look at the archevore diet; it covers a large range of foods and eliminates the worst modern foods (refined carbs, sugars, etc.) at least...
Height is mostly determined by genetics assuming there are no severe nutritional deficiencies. The modern Dutch are the tallest people in the world, and they don't eat a typical pastoralist diet although they do consume a lot of dairy. Perhaps there is a connection between lactose intolerance and short stature.
Why should Ashkenazim selectively breed to become like a stupid male model? At least Woody Allen and Alan Dershowitz are intelligent. That Novek guy is no Einstein.
Common SNPs explain a large proportion of the heritability for human height
Argentine pastoralist (el gaucho) lives mostly on roasted meat, with lots of fat. They never eat vegetables because "vegetables are for cows". They drink mate as stimulant (instead of coffee). They smoke. They drink ginebra. Once a while buy "galleta" that is dry bread, like in the British Navy of the past. Source: Charles Darwin. I lived in the countryside but in my time they were more civilized and ate salads and drank wine.
Mr B, you seem to be knowledgeable in kasha-logia. Why in Russia gold is considered vital for nutrition? What is vitamin PP?
I don't know about Russian nutritional voodoo, but in the real world gold plays no part in normal human metabolism. If you would like more gold in your diet, pure gold leaf is edible and is sometimes used to decorate cakes, candies, etc.
K
Thanks K but I like my gold in bars.
Jew gold! :)
I never heard of gold being considered good to eat in Russia. There is plenty of other medicinal voodoo-ask your wife to hook you up with some "banki" the next time you feel under the weather. I remember my old man making me breathe potato steam when I got sick (which works,) and jamming crushed garlic up my nose for colds (which doesn't work and is absolutely fucking agonizing. Also, my old girlfriend used to make me stick my feet in near-boiling water and rub them when I got sick (which works pretty well-I even know why-and feels outstanding.)
They still apply cups in China also - it is very common.
In Yiddish, if an effort is futile, you say "s'vet helfen azoyve a toytn a banke" - it well help as much as cupping a dead guy.
K
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