Good Food Resources

Planning a trip to the farmers market takes only a moment. There is no need for a shopping list or pre-planned menus. Decide to go because you know real food is good for you, and then go. Farmers markets offer an opportunity to talk one on one with local growers, to look them in the eye and have real conversations with them about their just-picked produce. It is common to have meaningful discussions with growers about lettuce varieties, or how to use nopalitos, or whether carrots deliver more nutrients raw or cooked.

Read more: Environment Friendly Visual Feast

Consider a 2006 experiment filmed by the BBC. Nine participants spent twelve days living in a tented enclosure at the Paignton Zoo in Devon, England. Their “Evo” diet comprised up to eleven pounds of raw vegetables and fruits; similar to what apes eat. Midway through, a little oily fish was added, adding a hunter-gatherer dimension to the diet. Although the volunteers consumed approximately 2300 calories a day, all experienced weight loss, and an improvement in blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Read more: The Raw and the Cooked

Omnivores are animal species that eat both plants and other animals as their primary food sources. They are opportunistic, general feeders not specifically adapted to eat and digest either meat or plant material exclusively. Pigs, rats, grizzly bears, raccoons and crows are well-known example of omnivores.

Read more: A Rainbow of Colors

Pedro and Amalia Gracia, of Gracia Farms in San Benito, rediscovered each other late in life, after having raised large families with their first spouses. They had known each other in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, where Amalia had a restaurant that Pedro remembers fondly. They consider their daughter Heather to be their miracle child, coming so late in their lives as she did. Heather lives and works with her parents, in addition to being a pre-med student at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

Read more: Gracia Farms Inspires a Healthier Tomorrow

The people of the Rio Grande Valley, on both sides of the Rio Bravo, are interested in eating. This we know to be true. Demonstrated in countless ways every day, the one million plus residents of this alluvial delta love to eat, and they spend a lot of money in order to do it.

Read more: Farmers Market - A Rio Grande Valley Trend

One of the key methods of modern scientific analysis is to reduce the complexity present in any given problem down to smaller components that can be analyzed individually. Reductionism assumes that a complex system is the sum of its parts. If you analyze the parts, you will understand the system. This approach works well in the mechanical world but shows its weaknesses in the life sciences, where extremely complex systems can be highly unpredictable, and research often shows more shades of gray than black and white.

Read more: No Science Required