What's the hidden ingredient in "pure" maple syrup? FIND OUT HERE.

Will you be at the Weston Price Conference?

written by

Marie Reedell

posted on

October 19, 2018

If you are reading this, then there’s a good chance that you already know about the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF). 

The WAPF’s goal is to provide accurate, scientifically-backed information about health and nutrition. Its philosophy is that you can heal your body and maintain good health by sourcing quality, properly-raised, nourishing, traditional foods from small farmers. 

Dr. Weston A. Price (1870-1948) was a dentist. In the search for the cause of tooth decay, he studied people who had nearly perfect teeth - isolated non-industrialized people. This ultimately led to a worldwide intensive study of nutrition and lifestyle.

Dr. Price found that a traditional nutrient-dense diet gives the body everything it needs to thrive. In today’s world, these are foods sourced from small farmers, that are naturally raised and properly produced. These whole foods date back thousands of years - raw cultured dairy, grass-fed meat, healthy animal fats, fermented foods, and properly prepared grains and beans.

If you’d like to learn more about the WAPF, you can certainly visit the WAPF website

Better yet, you can attend their upcoming 2018 Wise Traditions Conference in Baltimore from November 16-18. You can meet the farmer, two on-farm staff, and myself there!

I attended the Wise Traditions Conference last year in Minneapolis. It exceeded my expectations for what a conference could be. 

First, the food was absolutely amazing - all sourced from small farms and prepared by professional chefs. I’m talking raw cheesecake, organ meatloaf, raw panna cotta, varieties of raw cheese, juicy roasts, and seasonal veggies. Our farmer donated A LOT of food to this year’s conference.

Second, the seminars were conducted by people with incredible backgrounds. They went in depth on topics like disrupting the trend of chronic disorders, healing cancer naturally, aging gracefully, surviving in a toxic world, glyphosate, vaccines, and childhood disease. In comparison to reading books and online articles, you can ask questions directly to the source of the info, and you can converse with like-minded folks afterwards. 

Third, the vendors were everything I would actually buy. From tallow balm to infrared saunas to pork rinds to quality books to grass-fed gelatin. Lots of things to sample, and you can most likely talk to the actual farmer or producer in person.

I hope you can make it to the conference. It’s not too late to sign up. If you can’t make it, you can watch for the newsletter follow-up after the event.

Farm Updates

Health and Nutrition

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Food web vs food chain. I'll use the crazy egg recall as an example.

At Miller's, we're building a food web. This is a lot different than the modern food chain most Americans rely on. A food chain is a factory-filled engine.  Here are the links that usually make up the food chain. Mega feed mills and fertilizer plants --> mega factory farms --> mega processing plants --> mega distributors --> mega supermarkets. And in between all of those things are mega supplies and transportation companies.  When one link breaks, the whole chain goes down! Sure, it's made food more affordable. But, it's also made our food system fragile. Let's use the egg recall that's happening right now as an example. It's a conventional egg recall (NOT our eggs, which we have plenty of btw). The current salmonella outbreak has sickened at least 89 people to date. It's affected 1.7 million cartons of eggs in 9 states, starting in March. Hundreds of thousands of people have eaten contaminated eggs. Wow, I mean, that's awful on such a big scale. But, here's what's interesting to me - there are 29 different products affected. How could that be? How could they be related? Well, those products come from 10 different egg brands who all have their eggs packed at 2 facilities. Talk about mega ag! Now, I don't know this for sure, but I would bet that all of those millions of eggs come from one mega-farm that has a salmonella outbreak inside one of its mega buildings. Keep in mind that a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) is defined as having a minimum of 82,000 laying hens. In other words, it's plausible for those millions of eggs to come from one "farm". And the saddest part? All of those hens were likely culled to stop the outbreak quickly. One last note here -- the egg recall example is actually a small one. It's even worse with beef. Did you know that 85% of all grain finished beef is processed by just 4 companies? Geez! And, I mean, we all saw the food chain break during COVID.  On the flip side (and gosh, I'm happy there's an alternative), a food web is a collection of small feed suppliers, farmers, processors, etc.  They are all independent, and each has an important role in getting your food to you. When one intersection in the web breaks, it's fairly easy to repair it and find someone else to fill in. It's a resilient way to produce food. The downside to a food web is that the food does cost more. Let's take our egg farmers as an example. They work in small "pods". They all get their feed and cartons from the same place. They all follow the same farming practices. But, other than that, they work independently in "pods". Right now, we have 2 egg pods. A "pod" consists of 1-5 family farmers with small flocks (no more than 3,000 birds each). And that group of farmers has their eggs packed at one small family egg packer. If we need more eggs, then we need to start another pod. If one pod (or a part of a pod) goes down, another can likely fill in.  What do you think? Is it worth it to pay more for food from a resilient food web? Do we need the food chain to supply affordable food? What does our food future look like? I'd love to hear from you. Comment below (no account required) or contact us 😊 ----- PS: Did I mention we have plenty pastured, honest yolk, corn & soy free eggs right now? There's no outbreak or shortage for us! ----- Sources Eggs sold at Walmart, other grocers in 9 states recalled amid salmonella outbreakExplainer: How four big companies control the U.S. beef industry

Hidden ingredient in pure maple syrup? Yup, a defoamer! Ours is PUFA free.

I know you've seen it advertised everywhere - "PURE MAPLE SYRUP". But, is it really and truly pure? Not exactly. Why is maple syrup is advertised as "pure" anyway? Well, it's because it's being compared to the Aunt Jemima kind of syrup, which doesn't even have maple syrup in it! It's fake maple syrup made with corn syrup with colors, flavors, thickeners, and preservatives. It mimics maple syrup, but it's definitely not maple syrup. So... for companies that are selling actual maple syrup (you know, the kind that's cooked down from the sweet sap from a maple tree), they like to differentiate their syrup from fake syrups. They do this by calling it "pure". I've even seen it as "100% pure". But, that's not really true either. The dictionary definition of "pure" is "not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material." Well, in order to make real maple syrup, you kinda need to do just that. Enter defoamers... Here's how maple syrup is made, including when defoamer is used. First, you harvest the sap from the trees. This happens at a specific time of year. In early spring, as the weather starts to warm up, the sap starts flowing. Here are the lines that run through the maple forest in Vermont that our syrup comes from: Then, the sap (which tastes like sweet water), is pumped into a big stainless steel tank: After that, it goes into another big stainless steel pot in the sugar shack (yup, that's what an old fashioned place that makes maple syrup is called). And then, the heat is turned on. Our maple syrup is cooked over a wood stove! As the maple sap cooks down, it bubbles. Like a lot.  To prevent the pot from overflowing with maple lava, not only making a mess but also creating a dangerous situation, syrup makers use a little defoamer. A defoamer is a fat that breaks the surface tension on the bubbles. Only a little bit is needed. *There are all kinds of defoamers, natural and absolutely not natural. But first, let's finish making the syrup. Keep scrolling to learn more about defoamers. Here's what those bubbles look like as a defoamer is added: When the bubbles are smaller and the syrup has cooked down to the perfect thickness and specific gravity, it's done! It's drained into another stainless steel pot.  Final thickness and color testing is done before it's bottled. The Virkler family is serious about color distinctions. They always keep some super dark and super light syrup around to make it just right. Why is maple syrup different shades anyway? It's a natural thing! It has to do with the changes in the sugars within the sap as the season changes.  As the temperature warms up, naturally occurring bacteria become active and break down the sugar into glucose and fructose. These simpler sugars caramelize more easily during boiling, making a darker syrup. That's why lighter syrup is generally made at the beginning of the season when it's colder. But, just like the weather, the color varies throughout the maple syrup season. The Virkler family documents this every year. In the pic below, the first sap of the season is in the bottom left. And then every harvest after that goes to the right and then up to the next row. Pretty neat! And voila! That's how maple syrup is made! What's in a defoamer? A defoamer is a fat. It disrupts surface tension, breaking those syrupy bubbles down, because it contains non-polar molecules that are attracted to water.  Conventional Defoamers Conventional defoamers are a blend of who knows what kind of cheap oils. They can be mineral oils, silicone oils, vegetable oils (canola, soy, olive, etc), or other hydrophobic oils. Some contain up to 10% silicone. Did you know "pure" maple syrup can have that in it!? Conventional defoamers are a lab and factory made thing. And you know what that means - the actual ingredients are proprietary. 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