Dana’s Big Gardening Adventure: give bees a warm welcome

Each spring I eagerly anticipate the first sighting of brightly coloured blossoms in the garden. After months of seeing nothing but brown foliage and mounds of white snow in the yard, those first flowering fruit trees truly give me a thrill. Later in the year and, quite undeservedly, I feel immensely proud of my gardening skill after a bountiful harvest. It’s so easy to forget that planting and watering are important but not the most essential tasks required to grow fruit and vegetables.

It’s the honeybees that really deserve the credit for the success of our gardens. Without these fuzzy little creatures buzzing from flower to flower, the pollination process that permits plants to propagate wouldn’t take place. It takes an entire colony of honeybees (about 30,000 bees on average) to pollinate an acre of fruit trees; as a result of the need to have many bees in one place at one time, commercial beekeeping has become a thriving industry with an estimated contribution of more than $1 billion per year to the Canadian economy. In fact, seed companies, large-scale fruit operations and vegetable farmers who need to ensure that their crops are pollinated commonly contract migratory beekeepers.

Of course, bees don’t realize that we need them so badly. For them, pollination is merely a side effect of their real job. Their mission is to gather nectar to take back to their hive where it’s used to make honey, which will be stored until winter when food is scarce. (The summer diet for bees consists of nectar, which provides energy, and pollen, which provides protein.)

Modern beekeeping encourages bees to live in high concentrations in commercial hives where they produce more honey than they need to nourish themselves. The extra golden, sticky production is harvested and sold to us in tubs and jars to slather over warm, buttery toast or to add flavour to sweet as well as savory recipes.

Gardeners are concerned about something called Colony Collapse Disorder, a mystery ailment that has plagued beekeepers in the United States since 2006 and is now playing havoc with Canadian bees, too. This little understood phenomena has sparked concern among scientists, farmers, orchard owners and vintners alike.

Want to learn more? Read these recent articles about the problem:

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=40acea23-f5c8-4e6a-8a4d-5960b94477ad

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080521205303.htm

Two new “F” words

As I proved yesterday with my post on weird restaurants, the food landscape is always changing. From new restaurant concepts to new food philosophies, people seem driven to reevaluate and revise their feelings about food on a regular basis. Part of my job as a food writer and trend tracker is to monitor the latest shifts in eating behaviour and attitudes. Recently two new terms have presented themselves quite often. Since neither of these new ideas is a very practical, appealing or even healthy approach to eating (just my opinion) I’ve dubbed these terms the new “F” words.

First is Freeganism. Freegans like to reclaim food that is going to be wasted – which is good. However, they often do their ‘shopping’ in dumpsters behind restaurants and grocery stores. Although the idea is that they are saving wrapped, just-at-its-stale-date food that is still good to eat, I think the risk of encountering scary germs, rabid rats and other gross stuff is far too high for me to recommend Freeganism to anyone I like.

Second is Fruitarianism. I’ve been given different meanings for this term. One follower of the movement told me that fruitarians only eat food that has naturally separated from the plant on which it grows. In other words they can only eat apples that fall off the tree not ones picked by hand. The broader definition I’ve found is that fruitarians are raw food enthusiasts who emphasize fruit over other raw choices such as vegetables and seaweed. Besides being sort of boring, being a Fruitarian seems like way too much effort to be practical for anyone who travels or works away from home. As a result I don’t recommend Fruitarianism either.

How to eat 278 fewer calories a day

Drink more water and eat fruit. Honest, these two small changes will make a huge difference to your caloric intake if you’re like most North Americans.

Late in 2007, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine revealed that since 1971, overall energy intake from sweetened beverages increased 135 per cent.

This change represents a 278 total calorie increase per person per day. If you do the math, that’s enough extra calories to result in a 25 lb. weight gain over the course of a year.

Although pop and energy drinks are often cited as one of the insidious causes of obesity, we need to remember that healthy-hailed fruit juices can be high in calories, too.

In fact, my colleague Amy Snider, a professional home economist who specializes in nutrition, recommends that we reevaluate our opinions about fruit juice: “Canada’s Food Guide makes the recommendation to ‘have vegetables and fruit more often than juice’,” points out Amy.

“There are scores of beverage products currently marketed that claim to contain superfruit-enhanced nutritional benefits. However, calorie-for-calorie, these beverages can’t match the nutritional benefits of eating real fruit. This is because whole fruits and vegetables contain more fiber and are more filling while containing fewer calories ounce for ounce. Likewise, the carbohydrates consumed while eating fruit are broken down less quickly than those from juice; helping to prevent blood sugar spikes.

“There’s also a school of thought that would say that eating fruit in its natural form should increase the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that you consume. Research is still working to identify all of the healthful components in plant foods and studies are still determining the bioavailability of nutritious plant compounds when processed into products such as juice or added as supplements into other products but why not hedge your bets?

“In my opinion, drinking juice can be a refreshing way to gain additional nutrients but should not replace whole fruit in our diets or water as our primary beverage source.”

This is great advice from Amy especially, as so-called “healthy” versions of products like Pepsi are launched and marketed to us.