Near my house in Winnipeg, there’s a summertime Farmer’s Market that I used to go to every weekend to buy fresh local fruits, vegetables and honey. I grew up in rural farming communities and come from a long line of farmers, so I like supporting the little guys who still run family farms and sell their own product. Many people who buy there have the same logic – Manitoba is still a small province and a lot of us are only a generation or two removed from the farms. However, after two summers spending my Saturday mornings there, I’ve noticed there is also a growing population that shop there for “natural” products. Of course, like any market, the Farmer’s Market has responded to the demand by upping the supply.
There’s the bison meat sellers, who sell bison as “healthy meat.” This claim is somewhat dubious, as what they really mean is healthier than beef. A lean 85 g (3 oz) bison steak will give you only 7% of your daily intake of fat, but about half of that is saturated fat, and it also contains 25% of your daily intake of cholesterol. How does the beef steak compare? For the same portion, it’s 8% of your daily intake of fat, but there is actually less saturated fat, and it has the same amount of cholesterol. If you’re counting calories, you’re looking at 145 kcal for the bison versus 158 kcal for the beef. It’s better, though marginally. By contrast, a chicken breast(also 85 grams) is 142 kcal, 5% of your daily fat intake, with a third of the saturated fat of the other two, and slightly less (24% of daily intake) cholesterol. So, healthy? Well, all things in moderation, but if you insist on eating a lot of meat, chicken is a better choice.
Then there’s the raw food people, who insist that eating only raw grains is better because your body doesn’t use up as many enzymes to digest raw food. This is not how digestion works. Most of your food digestion is mechanical (chewing, rolling around in the stomach, being kneaded by the intestines) and chemical (saliva, stomach acid, bile, pancreatic secretions). Enzymes do help too. If you’ve ever taken a saltine cracker and stuck it on your tongue without chewing, part of the process at work is salivary enzymes breaking down the starches. Anyone who is lactose intolerant can tell you what happens when you body doesn’t produce the enzymes to breakdown milk sugars. However, for the vast majority of people, “lack of enzymes” is simply not a problem. Our bodies evolved to be incredibly efficient at taking up nutrients from food, hence the current issues with obesity. There is no reason to believe that simply by eating eating food, normal, healthy people could become digestive enzyme deficient.
It’s also important to note that the definition of an enzyme: a protein that catalyses a reaction without participating it. In other words, an enzyme doesn’t get used up during the reaction. Even if enzyme deficiency were a problem, there’s no reason to suspect that it could cause health effects like diabetes, allergies, and premature aging. Talk to the lactose intolerant and you’ll find that their symptoms are more along the lines of diarrhea, bloating and abdominal pain. And even if enzyme deficiency were a problem, and even if there was some mechanism linking digestive enzymes and allergies, there’s no reason to believe that raw foods would consume less enzymes. If anything, raw foods are much more difficult to digest, and therefore the enzymes would be working figuratively harder. This is not to say that there isn’t benefit to consuming some raw foods, like fruits and vegetables. They’re a low-calorie source of dietary fibre, which can improve blood sugar control in diabetics and reduce cholesterol. They’re also a good source of various vitamins. However, it’s important to remember that raw foods haven’t been “sterilized” by cooking and so can carry disease, like the outbreak in Germany this past summer from bean sprouts, or spinach in North America a few years ago. Steaming your vegetables reduces that risk without losing any of the nutritional benefits, so again, raw food comes up short.
Thanks for the great article. I recently went to the farmers’ market in Edmonton, and experienced much the same. My favourite claim: honey is “god’s natural sweetner.” I did wonder how other sources of sugar, like sugar cane, missed the cut on that one.
I think there is one very solid claim to be made in favour of local farmer’s markets: the shorter transportation chain means that the food is, on average, fresher and better tasting than what you will generally find in the supermarket.
My wife & I recently had a similar experience with the family-run butcher near our house (which we finally visited recently despite being in the neighbourhood for over a year): the steaks & bacon she bought the other day were probably the best I’ve ever eaten (while admitting this is N=1 anecdote, I defy anyone to buy NoName bacon and the stuff the butcher sold and proclaim the former superior).
Really, when you have freshness/flavour on your side, who needs dubious health claims? Turning perfectly good food into a component of nutritional quackery is hardly a positive.
I totally agree! Surprisingly, I also found that the produce is mostly less expensive that at any of the local supermarkets. Why wouldn’t you want cheaper (your results may vary), fresher, more nutrient dense food (soil beats hydroponics), all while supporting local family-run businesses?
That’s odd. The vast majority of produce at farmers’ markets in Edmonton is generally twice what you would pay at a supermarket.
It depends a lot o on the season and the vendor – we typically go to the same few vendors because their prices are the most reasonable. That being said, yes, typically locally grown produce is more expensive than the grocery store stuff.
My wife and I got to our local farmers’ market whenever we can. Everything else aside, it’s a fun experience. The dubious claims always make me grin, however.
I find this remark really odd with respect to the steaks. The last thing I want is a ‘fresh’ steak. If I can get them aged 21 days or more, then I love them. I used to be able to get beef that had been hung for 35 days when I lived in Montreal. Talk about, tenderness, flavour, and melt in your mouth goodness!
Nobody has mentioned my favourite reason for buying locally produced food yet: the shorter transportation chain doesn’t just mean that the food is more fresh, it also means that less energy has been used and environmental pollution produced transporting it!
These chains can be enormously long for supermarket food, it can even be coming from a different continent, or even more bizarrely: locally produced, then shipped to another continent, and then back again! It is therefore much more environmentally friendly, especially if it is also organically produced.
Actually, it is not necessarily true that reduced transportation of local food means less energy has been used. In many cases it is actually the reverse. The only time you can make that assumption is if the production environment and system is the same in both cases. Unfortunately, that is often not the case, and in a number of instances, the foods produced and transported over long distances are produced in a much more energy efficient manner than the same produce locally. Likewise, organically produced foods are not necessarily any more environmentally friendly than foods produced with non-organic methods.
Thank you SO much for posting this Richelle! I live in Portland, Oregon and the amount of alternative clinics and non-sense diets that advertise around here is staggering.
Question: Can you recommend blogs/book/resources about dietary skepticism? I certainly find enough people debunking alt. medicine, but there seems to be a lack of strong, evidence-based resources debunking raw diets, anti-anti-biotics, the “superiority” of a vegan diet in terms of health, etc.
Thanks in advance!
Jalk, I wish I had a book to recommend to you! Over coffee one day at the lab we sat around talking about writing a cookbook just like this – full of actual scientific data about the stuff in the recipes and debunking the bad information!
Sadly, I’ve not seen anything of the sort. All of the commercial books I’ve perused about diet have trademarkable “plans” that don’t necessarily conform to the best evidence. If someone else has some recommendations, I’d love to read them as well. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to write articles on these topics for you!
I love my local farmers’ markets here in Québec for making it possible to eat almost entirely within the 100-mile rule (more or less) during harvest season.
That “using up enzymes” claim is a new one to me – the one I’ve usually heard from raw foodies is that the not cooking food means you don’t lose the *food’s* enzymes(!) I’m not usually popular for pointing out that any enzymes in food (usually plants, since meat-eating raw foodies are pretty rare, no pun intended) exist for the *plant’s* metabolic benefit, not ours, and are only nutritionally significant to the extent that they are proteins and thus a minor source of them. (The papain in papayas and the bromelain in pineapples are rare exceptions, as they do have digestive properties – i.e., they can help break down proteins, hence the use of papain in meat tenderizer. But for some people there are also adverse health effects from their ingestion.)
I guess not many people take high school biology anymore.
Richelle, about your paragraph about the bison meat:
Your argument is predicated on the assumption that cholesterol and saturated fats are bad for you. I believe it’s not that simple.
Otherwise, I agree with your sentiment regarding foodies.
I’d agree that cholesterol and saturated fats aren’t always bad for you, but I’ve not seen any compelling evidence that they’re good, either. We produce more cholesterol than we consume, so small changes in diet in healthy people are probably pretty irrelevant. There was some hullaballoo a few years back about higher blood cholesterol not being as bad as we thought it was – this is a refinement of our understanding rather than an overturning of an entire school of thought. With increasing obesity, and with the prevalence of statin therapy, high cholesterol is no longer the only risk factor we’re concerned about. However, we still have solid basic science and classic clinical trials to support cholesterol being harmful. If you want to read more on it, the Framingham Heart Study, the MRFIT, Nurse’s Heart Health and the Seven Countries are some excellent large scale epidemiological trials. The Coronary Primary Prevention Trial, the Helsinki Heart Study, and the Coronary Drug Project provide solid evidence for the benefits of lipid lowering therapy.
As for saturated fats, I’ve read studies indicating that stearic acid (the short chain saturated fat from plants) can be beneficial, but these benefits pretty quickly disappear when comparing them to other types of fatty acids. (http://www.jlr.org/content/33/3/399.short & http://www.springerlink.com/content/f711762755301456/). In fact, the Seven Countries Study I mentioned above found “Strong positive associations were observed between 25-year death rates from coronary heart disease and average intake of the four major saturated fatty acids, lauric, myristic, palmitic, and stearic acid (r > 0.8, P < 0.001)" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743585710493
Given the predominance of both saturated fats and cholesterol in the North American diet and the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, I don’t think it’s off base to suggest that minimizing foods rich in these (and other unhealthy) nutrients would be a healthy choice.
Your reasons for frequenting Farmers Markets are still valid. And the small local farmers do need your support. Just stay away from the dubious products. If people don’t buy those products their purveyors will disappear.