I ’m staring at the most beautiful basket of just - rinse strawberries fresh from the farm . Their mysterious red glistening forms , so perfectly top with the little leaflets and traces of a bow , are irresistible . I toss off the whole thing in my mouth , mark the mildness of the greens in contrast to the tart sweetness and I marvel , “ Why have I never eat strawberry mark leave-taking before ? ” I ’m used to nibble the yield down to the green and setting it aside for compost , or carefully slicing the tiny yield and set up aside the stem . Isn’t that a waste ? Strawberries offer up a good example of eating whole : you could reduce waste and ameliorate sustenance by eat more of what plant life have to offer .
Strawberry Leaves & Watermelon Seeds
strawberry mark leaves are not at all harmful , and they are packed with great nutrient our soundbox need , such as vitamin C , antioxidants and flavonoids . herbalist have used strawberry leave of absence and raspberry leaves for spring tonics , to facilitate aches and strain , and as apartus preparatoror “ delivery preparer ” for pregnant women . Commercially available looseness of the bowels medicinal drug admit extract from strawberry leaves , and a tea made from the leafage is a good afflictive throat gargle .
When I get to know food well , and I get to live my own body better , I can sense what is practiced for it . Such as watermelon seeds . One hot summertime sidereal day while enjoying a cold , sliced watermelon , I chewed up the seed , just to see how they tasted . Not big , kind of nutlike , mildly acerb . I found that the gross crunchiness counterbalance the watery succus of the melon vine , especially if you like a little salinity disperse on it .
Wiser bon vivant urge not to corrode the raw watermelon seeds the path I care to , suggesting instead that the seeds are best either ridicule or sprouted . Soaking any eccentric of seed , bean or crackpot removes inhibiting layers and activates enzymes that make them more digestible . They pack a protein punch , with 10 gramme of protein per ounce , more than helianthus seeds or almonds . Eating protein with a honeyed is an easy way to keep the blood gelt in chit , and here you have both .
Un-learn Waste
It ’s partially our cultural conditioning that teaches us to separate sure constituent of our foods . Like reduce the crust off a sandwich , we find out to dislike sure food for thought from an early age . It ’s also a biological and survival scheme that has involve our gustation buds for millennia . We have co - evolved with plants . It ’s only born that we eat fruit because they are sweet while we spit out bitter thing , such as seeds and leave-taking . Plants create fruits so they ’ll be eaten . While certain works parts that make out with the package are inedible ( apple seed take cyanide , but you would postulate to finely chew about 200 to pall of intoxication ) , those wise plants want us dumb mammal to disperse their seed for them . The plant does n’t want us to demolish its photosynthesizing parts , and the seeds are meant to pass through our systems , rather than be digested . However , some of our habitual , cultural practices rob us of dandy food that nature packaged in a room to fertilize us what we need .
Outsmart The Plants
Nutritional researchers , like every parent ever , have tried to get Kyd to like vegetables . They conclude that the prank is early exposure to whole solid food and all the feel that do with them , such as blistering , which classifies many leafy greens . Bitter is salutary before babe is bear ( say that five prison term fast ) . Pregnant womanhood who run through leafy greens channelise some of the flavor profile through amniotic fluid , and breast feeding mother do the same through their bosom milk . This might helpbridge the centripetal experience for young childrenlater on , when solid food in the form of vegetables is introduced .
nutrient thriftlessness is about more than watching produce waste on fund shelf . It ’s a outlook that we carry into the garden as well as the kitchen when we prepare a plate of food . barbarian food encroach , and we call them green goddess , poison them , pull them and cut down them . Shifting our mentality to recognize the abundance of aliment surrounding us also reminds us that we are by nature design to be part of nature . At sentence , separating elements and distilling them into a medicine make expert sentiency , yet our New , warm - repair polish has taken this isolation resolution to extremes . As ethnobotanist and herbalistDawn comb points out on her website , “ When we apply plants in their whole sort , we are taking the arrangement as it was working directly into our body . Nothing inappropriate is amplify , and it is just potential that some of the things we think are dangerous on their own have a welfare when left amid both the chemicals we understand and those we do not yet . ”
There can be danger in isolating one chemical or sure constituent that makes up an entire medicative plant . Such is the case for isolating one works in a woods , one animal in a food web or one so - called “ pest ” in a garden . Even though we do n’t understand how all the parts work together , sometimes they are better together than apart . This might be the philosophy your slap-up - grandmother used : growing , cooking and eating with very little waste , an approach that authorMichael Pollanhas pointedly boiled down to the mantra,“Eat intellectual nourishment . Not too much . Mostly plants . ”I would tweak that a trivial to include , “ feed most of the plant , too . ”
