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Eating Low In The Food Chain—Cooking With Boiling Water


June 2003

Healthy Meals

Eating Low In The Food Chain—Cooking With Boiling Water

by Al Hanners

Al Hanners is a retired oil geologist who worked worldwide for a major U.S. oil company for nearly four decades, and who was a Middle East geologist for that company in the early 1970s.

These recipes evolved over a period of about three decades. My first serious thought that there must be a better way came on a canoe trip of 460 miles down the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson, 10 days on the water. My canoeing partner insisted on fried bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning.

Instead of scrubbing greasy dishes, I would much rather have been watching birds, looking for bear tracks and wild flowers and relics of gold rush days. Now I know that hot oatmeal—peanut cereal prepared with boiling water—not only provides as much energy, it is tasty and requires almost no work. Now when I eat bacon and eggs, I do it in a restaurant.

Utility

These recipes are recommended as high calorie meals for backpackers, and for car campers doing day hikes in remote areas where garbage must be packed out. The ingredients require no refrigeration, no metal cans, and little water is needed for cooking and dishwashing. Moreover, they also are healthy, tasty foods quickly prepared at home. Try the recipes first at home to determine whether or not you would like them on a camping trip.

Balance

Prepared foods often require a minimum of cooking. However, many prepared foods, but not all, have excessive amounts of salt, sugar, or fat, or all of them. These recipes balance those ingredients: excess salt in instant soups versus salt-free cereals, high-fat nuts versus nonfat powdered milk, etc.

Health Benefits

These recipes contain no or very little animal fat and no hydrogenated oils. Protein is provided by powdered milk and by oats and wheat, the high protein cereals. Walnuts are a good source of omega-3 acid, the highly beneficial ingredient in fish.

On one hand, the media commonly makes recommendations to eat more fish because it contains omega-3; on the other hand, the media commonly warns against eating too much fish high in the food chain, especially swordfish, tuna and salmon that tend to be high in mercury, PCBs and other dangerous pollutants that abound these days.

In addition, because of high mercury content, restricted consumption of fish is recommended for fish from Lake Whatcom, the Everglades and many other lakes in the United States. Note that mercury in human bodies is not eliminated, it just increases if consumption of mercury continues.

I have yet to see an article or program in the media that comes to grips with those conflicting recommendations. Note that salmon farmed on the Pacific Coast are Atlantic Pacific salmon, not native Pacific salmon. Farmed salmon are fed fishmeal, so they must be considered high in the food chain.

Moreover, because they are Atlantic salmon, they are fed a food colorant to make the farmed fish red like popular native Pacific salmon. The food colorant is canthaxanthin, which has links to eye problems. Note also that the European Union recently decreased the legal limits of canthaxanthin to one-third of that legally allowed in the United States.

Alternatively, some of these recipes simply recommend eating walnuts because they are a good source of omega-3 and are much lower in the food chain than fish. Besides, walnuts taste good.

Health Warnings

People allergic to peanuts shouldn’t eat foods prepared from these recipes containing peanuts. In addition, children probably shouldn’t eat peanuts because eating peanuts when young may lead to peanut allergy.

All of these recipes contain powdered milk and should not be used by people allergic to lactose. While the effect of hormones in foods from animals fed hormones is not established, people who have concerns about hormones should be aware that powdered milk most likely contains hormones from cattle fed hormones, as does fresh whole milk.

Notes on Ingredients

Some economy brands of powdered milk may clot, so if you are trying the use of powdered milk as liquid for the first time, I suggest you start with a small box of one of the more expensive brands so you know how easy it should be to mix it with water. Powdered milk mixed with water according to recommended proportions on the containers tastes positively awful to me. I mix it almost one part powdered milk by volume, to two parts by volume of the final mix. To my palate, that way it tastes neither like liquid fat-free milk sold in supermarkets, nor like whole milk. Importantly, it tastes good and a little sweet.

To my knowledge, Adams brand peanut butter is the only brand marketed locally that has no hydrogenated oil. Some oil rises to the top, so you can pour it off if you want to reduce the fat content. I prefer the crunchy type that is salted.

Walnut halves and pieces now are $2.50 - $3.00 per pound at Costco. In most supermarkets you’re likely to find them in the baking goods section, not with peanuts, and at higher prices. §


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