Winter Heather to Feed the Bees

I've been feeling a bit bad for the bees in our garden - they've been out and about for a while now due to the mild winter but, except for the odd primrose and a few short-lived crocuses, there are hardly any flowers round here for them. And we've just cut down several years' worth of overgrown honeysuckle, which they'll miss. And I can't expect them to pollinate my tomato plants all summer long if I don't look after them in the winter, can I?!

Reading up on the subject tells me all the usual spring flowers are good for bees - crocuses, primroses, daffodils, rosemary, dead-nettles, forget-me-nots and fruit blossom - but when bees come out super-early like they did this year (I saw several in January) these may not have bloomed yet. Early in the spring, pussy willow and hazel catkins can provide nectar, and winter-flowering plants are a great help too - heather, hebe and lungwort are particularly recommended (though I don't see our lungwort flowering yet...)

So when I spotted these little winter heather plants for sale yesterday, I had to get a couple - it's well known that bees love heather, and winter varieties flower extremely early and for a long time. I picked plants with lots of buds, so I knew they still had plenty of flowering-time left in them.

I planted them out today, forking some compost into our heavy soil first, planting them level with the surface, and treading them in lightly. It may be too little too late this year really, but they'll be much bigger and much earlier next year, to feed our precious pollinators.

Charity for the Facebook Generation

In this age of information, I am regularly appalled by the amount of misinformation out there, and the number of people who repeat what they've heard without verifying their facts. Sharing links is one thing - you're just pointing people to an author's opinion. Taking on that opinion yourself and spreading it without even a cursory look at the evidence is inexcusable, and foolish.

You probably already know that a campaign video made by charity Invisible Children has taken the world by storm. The campaign's aim is to raise awareness about Joseph Kony, the leader of a guerrilla army in central Africa responsible for the abductions of up to 66,000 children and the deaths and displacement of many thousands more, and to put pressure on governments (who apparently think the matter is irrelevant) to do something about it. If you haven't seen the video, you can find it here. You'll need half an hour, and tissues.

Not long after the video started trending on the internet, the backlash began - a couple of bloggers pointed out what they felt were flaws in Invisible Children's methods, and an apparent lack of transparency surrounding their finances. You can read all that here, here and here, if you want. Accusations have spread about as fast as the video itself did, and include spending too much on awareness and media and not enough on actually helping people, oversimplifying a complex issue, exaggeration and manipulation of facts, foolish tactics, funding Ugandan militia who are known for their own humanitarian crimes, perpetuating the 'white man's burden' and saviour complex, promoting 'slacktivism' (the belief you might be able to change things by sharing stuff on the internet), over-sentimentality, propagandism, and being 'a scam' - an accusation made without any indication how so. Invisible Children posted this this morning to rebut all the claims made about them - a must-read for anyone who is not sure what to think. (This brief interview with the man behind the film is worth a read too.) For the record, they absolutely deny that they fund the Ugandan military, and their financial records are online for all to see.

But I'm afraid the damage has already been done. Most people see too much in black and white, and will have dismissed the campaign. It makes me furious how some cynics will condemn something when they find it isn't perfect, without recognising the value it has even in its flawed state.

Sure, if you don't want Invisible Children to have your money, don't donate. But don't dismiss the campaign to make people more aware, or to pressurise governments to act. Those are the key things here and they're entirely valid.

So called 'slacktivism' is better than ignorance. Simplification is unavoidable in a short campaign video, and in any focused campaign. No-one's claiming this guy is the only evil in the world or that getting rid of him will solve all of the region's problems - again, he's just the focus of one little campaign, and it's a step in the right direction. The white saviour thing is something we should think about but not a valid criticism. Anyone accusing the filmmakers of making an uncomfortably moving and provocative piece of propaganda has failed to realise that's just the way the world rolls these days. And on some rare occasions, sadly, military intervention is a necessary evil.

Invisible Children, as well as building schools and managing welfare and economic projects, puts more importance on producing media and spreading awareness than most charities. So what? Who says there's only one way to run a charity? I give monthly to a major global charity, but I don't keep up with what campaigns they're working on or where my money's going. Isn't that wrong? Aren't I just giving to satisfy myself, sitting comfortably at my computer, rather than because I see an injustice or feel a burden for someone? If the charity I support, or any other, made moving and rousing films about everything they got up to, less money would go to their causes - but I might be prompted to give more, and more might be prompted to give. It's different, but it's not wrong. Kony 2012 is charity for the facebook generation - it's visible, it's colourful, it's focused, it's exciting, it's dramatic. It's waking whole generations of kids up to the fact that Justin Bieber/being thin/Twilight/Louis Vuitton is not the only thing that matters. I never saw Christian Aid, Oxfam, Greenpeace or Cancer Research do that.

Awareness is so important. I know how it is - everyone's so busy worrying about money and school and work and chores and family that there's no time to think about stuff that doesn't affect them. And there's so much stuff going on in the world we'd never catch up with all of it, anyway. But it's dangerous to assume that foreign issues will never affect us. There's a hell of a lot going on out there - I've been blown away by some of the things that have shown up on my radar since I've had enough spare time and energy to start paying attention. My whole world view has changed (it's amazing how narrow the lens of the mainstream media is, when you look outside it). We must always strive to be more aware of what is happening in the world.

This guy has to be stopped. However much research you do into the situation in central Africa, however complex things are over there, you won't find a reason to justify what he's doing nor to allow it. And if we don't act, that's exactly what we're doing - permitting it. Yes, you and I are extremely limited in what we can do, but I'm not letting the government who represents me - who can do something - turn a blind eye just because it doesn't affect our country. If enough of us put the pressure on, maybe we can change things. Maybe we can't. But shouldn't we try?

You can find more info on Kony 2012 and what you can do here, and a UK e-petition here. There are also many, many more charities supporting human rights, peace and development in Africa.

Overwintered Peppers

As temperatures dropped last autumn, I brought my favourite pepper plant and my only chilli plant indoors to see how they'd last. A friend of mine kept peppers all winter in a south-facing attic under a velux window and they did great - I only have an ordinary south-eastish-facing windowsill, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

The chilli did fine for about six weeks and produced a new flush of flowers, then suffered some ailment and dropped lots of its leaves as Christmas approached - but it has pulled through, put on some new growth, and given me occasional fruits throughout the winter, which has been really nice. (I had to hand-pollinate the flowers, of course - as easy as dusting the centres with a soft paintbrush.) As you can see, it's looking a bit spindly (and one-sided) from less-than-ideal light levels and the dropping of its leaves, but it's doing fine now and producing more and more flowers. If you look closely, you'll see three little chillies on its branches. Let's see how long I can keep it going...

The pepper, however - the 'Dedo de Mocha' sweet Aji type which was wonderful when it finally fruited early autumn - has not enjoyed being indoors one bit. The fruits remaining on it ripened to red in the warmth of the house, which was nice as they'd showed no sign of it outdoors, but when the days got shorter, the plant got taller and taller, reaching for light that I just couldn't provide, and the thing ended up crawling over my curtain rail, producing long spindly branches which it couldn't support, and finally getting very unhappy indeed.

Ah well; you win some, you lose some. If I had a heated greenhouse or conservatory I'm sure I'd have got much better results. I think it's certainly worth overwintering more chillies in future. But the pepper plant has gone in the compost bin now, to make way for this year's new subjects!

Rapeseed Oil is GOOD for you!

For as long as I've been cooking, olive oil has been the oil to use. It's heart-healthy, stable, natural, comes with or without its fruity flavour, and most of all it's trendy - it's what the food-loving Italians swear by, after all, and what TV chefs told us we had to use for years.

But it's from Italy, Spain or Greece, and in my efforts to buy less from overseas and reduce my food miles, it just wouldn't do. Heck, I'm far from perfect in that endeavour; I still buy Spanish tomatoes in the winter when I feel the need, asparagus from Peru when I crave it, oranges from goodness-knows-where, and the occasional avocado, but I try to keep these things to a minimum, and cooking oil is something I use every single day. So about a year ago I gave up olive oil completely, in favour of cold-pressed British rapeseed oil - a truly British product grown here for centuries, with an impressive nutritional profile, a pleasant floral flavour well-suited to cooking or raw use, and a high smoke point making it suitable for all types of cooking.

Photograph by David Castor, via Wikimedia Commons

So imagine my surprise and horror when an online acquaintance told me rapeseed oil was terribly bad for me and should be avoided by the health-conscious individual at all costs!

A few minutes of internet research showed that she wasn't alone - it appears a great many people believe rapeseed oil (or Canola oil across the pond) is dangerous stuff. But I quickly noticed virtually all the information cited on the subject of its dangers was from just two articles; one derived from a book by a certain John Thomas and the other a viral email that did the rounds years ago, which borrows heavily from John Thomas' theories. These articles have been reproduced over and over again on blogs and websites - a Google search suggests some 6000 times - despite being packed with misinformation, misquotation, innuendo and lies, and widely discredited (see here, here or here)! So I want to set the record straight here. And unlike the anti-rapeseed articles, I will make all my sources available via links, so you can check it out for yourself and make up your own mind. 

The Myths About Rapeseed Oil

So for what reasons do some people think rapeseed oil is bad news?

Canola is not the name of a natural plant. 
No, but it is a natural plant. Canola was a trade name derived from the words CANadian Oil, Low Acid. Rapeseed oil was originally grown for industrial purposes and was not very palatable because of its high levels of bitter erucic acid and glucosinolates, but in the 70s, agricultural scientists in Canada developed a low acid, disease- and drought- resistant cultivar which made an excellent and cheap cooking oil. In Canada, much of the Canola grown is genetically modified to be resistant to herbicides. Here in the UK, it has been bred naturally to achieve the same low-acid properties, just as we have cultivated and domesticated pretty much every other food crop we grow to reach its maximum commercial potential. Canola is now a generic name given to rapeseed oils up and down America. Here, we just call it rapeseed oil.

Rape is part of the mustard family. It's the most toxic of all food-oil plants. Insects will not eat it; it is deadly poisonous.
Rape is indeed in the mustard family (usually called brassicas), along with such nutritious and common edibles as, well, mustard, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, swedes, brussels sprouts, kale, radishes, horseradish, pak choi, rocket and cress. Although eating the wrong parts of a few species of wild mustards might upset your stomach, it does not follow that rape is toxic. Rape stems and leaves have long been used as a food in parts of Asia. Insects do eat rapeseed plants; flea beetles and cabbage moths are a particular problem, as with most brassicas.

Rapeseed oil is used in insecticides.
Any gardener who knows his stuff will know that many oils can be, and are, used as insecticides. A spray of oil easily blocks the spiracles (air holes) which allow insects to breathe, and they suffocate.

Rapeseed oil is an industrial oil, used as lubricant, fuel, soap and even in making plastics.
The author had obviously forgotten that olive oil was used as lamp oil for millenia and makes excellent soap, and that flax oil has long been used in paint, sealants and linoleum. They obviously didn't realise that sunflower, palm and castor oil have all been used widely as lubricants, and had never heard that Rudolf Diesel designed his first engines to run on peanut oil, nor that Henry Ford's first automobiles were actually made from hemp and soybean, two more highly nutritious food oils which also make excellent plastics.

Rape oil is strongly related to symptoms of emphysema, respiratory distress, anemia, constipation, irritability and blindness in animals and humans. Also increased risk of heart disease, low birth weight, disruption of the nervous system and cancer. It inhibits proper metabolism of foods, prohibits normal enzyme function and suppresses the immune system. In the blood, it causes red blood cells to stick together in clumps and congests blood flow.
No sources are given, and no evidence is available. Most of these claims appear to come from the book 'Young Again: How to Reverse the Aging Process' by John Thomas, in which the author makes many unusual claims which are completely unsupported. He uses no citations or scientific references, and in fact eschews science, calling the scientific mind 'muddled'. Some anti-rapeseed articles cite the Encyclopedia Britannica as saying rape is toxic. The online version does not make this claim, but clearly notes that it is a popular food crop. 

It contains unhealthy trans fatty acids.
Fats become trans fats when they are processed with hydrogen to make them solid, stable and increase their shelf life. It is true that a refined and processed canola oil may contain small amounts of trans fats - as any refined and processed oil may. Trans fats are legally limited to just 2% in Canada and banned in an increasing number of cities and countries. No cold-pressed oil contains trans fats. Some anti-rapeseed articles claim that the oil must be heavily processed to get rid of its strong odour, colour and flavour. Any fan of British cold-pressed oil, with its rich golden colour and peppery floral flavour, will disagree. 

Feeding rapeseed oil to livestock caused mad cow disease.
There is no evidence for this and no sources are given. It was rapeseed meal with the oil pressed out, not the oil itself, which was used as animal feed. Here in the UK, rapeseed meal is still used as nutritious animal feed and fish food, but there is no longer any CJD problem.

Rapeseed oil was the source of the chemical warfare agent 'mustard gas'.
This is just plain falsehood. Mustard gas is made from chemicals in a laboratory; commonly by treating sulfur dichloride (chlorinated sulfur) with ethylene. (Ethylene serves as a plant hormone in all plants, but has no special connection to mustard or its relatives.) The name simply came from its yellow colour and pungent mustard-like smell.

When rapeseed oil was fed to rats, they developed fatty degeneration of heart, kidney, adrenals, and thyroid gland. The fatty deposits disappeared when the oil was withdrawn from their diets but scarring remained.
The natural diet of a rat is grains and other plant matter. Is it any wonder that feeding them high levels of fats caused health problems commonly associated with consuming high levels of fats?

Rapeseed oil contains VLCFAs which can cause a rare fatal degenerative disease called adrenoleukodystrophy.
Adrenoleukodystrophy is an inherited disease which causes a disastrous build-up of fatty acids in the blood; not because sufferers consume too many VLCFAs (very long chain fatty acids) but because they simply cannot process those they do consume. The VLCFA present in rapeseed oil is erucic acid - the very acid that was bred out of rape cultivars (down to a maximum 2%, usually less) in order to make the product palatable. The source cited for this little claim (Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, by Udo Erasmus) is severely misquoted; in fact the author actually goes on to describe how erucic acid has been used to normalise fatty acid levels and treat this very disease.

Rapeseed oil is a penetrating oil which leaves a stain on fabric that won't wash out.
Maybe I'm doing my laundry wrong, but I've never been able to get olive oil or sunflower oil spots out of clothes either... This does not make it toxic! 

Rapeseed oil causes lung cancer.
Any oil heated past its smoke releases carcinogenic free radicals. No cooking oil should be heated above its smoke point, nor reheated so many times that its smoke point is significantly lowered through deterioration. 

The Truth About Rapeseed Oil

Cold-pressed rapeseed oil is a healthy, natural, low impact food with an erucic acid level of around 1%. It contains only 6% saturated fat - that's half as much as olive oil - and has up to 11 times more essential omega 3 fatty acid and much less omega 6 than olive oil, giving it an essential fatty acid balance better suited to human consumption than any other oil (not enough omega 3 or too much omega 6, which is common, make us prone to inflammatory conditions and blood problems). Rapeseed oil provides lots of antioxidant vitamin E (though sunflower oil trumps it), is stable for up to a year, and has one of the highest smokepoints of any cooking oil, making it suitable for all kinds of cooking. (Source, source)

In short, rapeseed is the most heart-healthy oil, suitable for all culinary uses and with a far lower environmental impact than foreign oils.

Let me make a couple of disclaimers. First, processed oil is a different creature from cold-pressed, and the sterilising, deodorising, degumming, bleaching and chemical treatment of any processed oil will increase its bad fats and decrease its micro-nutrient content. I do not recommend processed or refined oils, or generic vegetable oil which is usually full of low-grade and refined oils. Second, Canadian/US Canola is (largely, though not exclusively) genetically modified and I do not support this. Time is showing that GM/GE crops give lower yields and pose other risks, and multinational GMO agribusiness Monsanto is very scary indeed, threatening farmers and crops all across America and Canada - watch this video or read this or browse here. We need to fight back against GM foods and I do not recommend GM Canola oil. Thankfully, GM crops are not grown in the UK.

As long as it's cold-pressed and British, rapeseed is the oil for me.

Photograph by Prazak, via Wikimedia Commons

A Quick Lesson in Fats (more here)

Cholesterol is a substance made in the body (and consumed in animal products) and essential to cell structure, hormones and vitamin D production. Cholesterol also moves fat around the body. There are two main types of cholesterol, with which we are concerned here:

Low-Density Lipoproteins (LDL cholesterol) are manufactured by the liver to carry cholesterol to the body’s cells and tissues. When there are too many, LDLs form deposits on the walls of arteries and elsewhere, and increase your risk of heart disease.

High-Density Lipoproteins (HDL cholesterol) pick up and carry excess cholesterol from artery walls and bring it back to the liver for processing and removal. HDLs decrease your risk of heart disease.

All fat has the same number of calories per gram (9) and will make you fat if you eat too much, but fat is an essential nutrient for our brains and nervous systems, not to mention joints, skin and hair. We must all eat fat, but the type of fat we choose can make a big difference to our health. Dietary fat is made up of fatty acids, which are grouped into three main types:

Saturated fats increase bad (LDL) cholesterol. They are usually solid at room temperature. Examples are butter, cheese, animal fat, coconut and palm oil.

Monounsaturated fats decrease bad (LDL) cholesterol but maintain your good (HDL) cholesterol. They are liquid at room temperature. Foods high in monounsaturated fats are olives, avocadoes and many nuts.

Polyunsaturated fats decrease your good (HDL) and bad (LDL) cholesterol. They are liquid or soft at room temperature. Sources include corn oil, soybean products, many seeds, and oily fish.

Trans fats are man-made; they are unsaturated fats which have undergone processing (hydrogenation) to make them more solid (as in many margarines), or just to increase their shelf life and make them more stable (this is partial hydrogenation). They not only increase bad (LDL) cholesterol, but they reduce the good stuff (HDL) and have been reported to cause a number of side effects too. They occur almost exclusively in processed foods (small amounts also occur naturally in some animal products) and are the unhealthiest fats of all - in fact many countries are moving towards banning them. Unsaturated cooking oils (such as rapeseed) can break down and turn to trans fats when heated in cooking, but in a domestic environment under normal conditions this risk is negligible, unless your oil is already oxidised by age, air/light/heat exposure, repeated use or overheating past its burn/smoke point.

Thank you to Hill Farm Oils and Yellow Fields Oil for providing information for this article.

Kale and pepper update

Remember my perennial kale, that drooped in the snowy weather? Despite lots of care, it didn't get better - the leaves went dry and crispy and I thought it had died. I was pretty miffed - it cost £5 plus £5 postage and it really should have withstood the cold weather better. Today, however, I spotted these new shoots coming from the base of the stem, so it looks like all is not lost after all! Hooray!

Sowing begins today - I'm planning a trough of mangetout, a tray of peas for shoots, two pots of parsley, a few early Swiss chard seeds in the greenhouse as an experiment, short rows of carrots, radishes, spinach and lettuce, and tomatoes and celery in the heated propagator. Really must get my broad bean seeds in at the plot soon too...

And to make space in the heated propagator, I've potted-on all my early chillies, peppers and aubergines. They're doing great and many are on their third pairs of leaves. I'm making a few extra sowings though, as one variety gave me zero germination (from seeds bought just last year!) and the ancho/poblano chillies, which I was really looking forward to, have only given me one seedling from ten seeds. Rubbish!

I'll leave these pots on the windowsill for now, to get used to not being heated from underneath, but as soon as we get some decent March sunshine I'll get them out into the greenhouse during the days and bring them in at night.