What's our food eating ?
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This post not CC’d by email >ROSS MACKENZIE: Sorghum is notorious for having a certain amount of >cyanide at most of the time. Now under normal circumstances grazing >quietly on a crop like that wouldn’t have any problems. >But under drought conditions where the plants are under stress, you >tend to get increased concentrations of cyanide in the plants. And if >animals go onto these crops under drought conditions and they’re >hungry, they will eat more in a shorter space of time, and therefore >get a bigger dose of cyanide. If that happens, it just overwhelms the >defence mechanisms that the body has.
G’day G’day Folks, Several things are of interest here. One is that plants tend to produce protective chemicals when under stress. Plants often seem follow a strategy of growing faster than the plants they compete with and if that fails protecting their investment. The other is that sorghum has some highly desirable features that diabetics have learnt to appreciate. It has a low glycemic index. The fibre is moderately fermentable. We sometimes discuss fibre in terms of being soluble or insoluble. Basically we need insoluble fibre with some soluble fibre to provide the bulk to have a good crap. The fibres called pentosans are the key. However there is another dimension to fibre that also needs to be considered. How fermentable is the fibre? If the fibre is too fermentable one gets farts, bloating etc. If the fibre is non-fermentable then the cells making up the intestinal walls suffer. The ideal is to have moderately fermentable fibre that produces short chain fatty acids SFA, acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid. (ethanoic, propanoic, butanoic acids in modern parlance) The joy of SFAs is that they actually repair the cells that exist in anaerobic conditions, apparently even the DNA. Put simply to have a healthy gut one needs moderately fermentable fibre. Two sources of moderately fermentable fibre are beet pulp and rice bran. When I make bread I add rice bran which seems to improve the bread. Best wishes, — Quentin Grady ^ ^ / New Zealand, >#,#< [ / / "… and the blind dog was leading." http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/quentin
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Cow custard sounds edible to me. Loretta — In tribute to the United States of America and the State of Israel, two bastions of strength in a world filled with strife and terrorism.
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>Cow custard sounds edible to me. >Loretta >– >In tribute to the United States of America and the State >of Israel, two bastions of strength in a world filled with strife and >terrorism.
Hi Loretta Yes it is , they seem to love it. soft drink,corn chips, potato’s etc must be a nice change from grass. My concern ( because this story is about the area where I live ) is the cows that are dropping dead from cyanide poisoning due to eating drought stressed sorghum. I wonder how many sick animals are making it to the supermarket shelves. and weather eating meat from a sick cow from cyanide poisoning would be safe for human consumption. I don’t know the answers to these things but at the moment I am not serving up beef. Regards Cat.
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Are we going to be eating diabetic cows? The cyanide in particular has put me off beef for now. Cattle eat custard. HAMISH ROBERTSON: As drought stricken farmers across the country struggle to find fodder to feed their stock, producers in Western Queensland are feeding their cattle custard. But it isn’t the kind of custard that goes well with apple crumble. Among its ingredients are mashed up corn chips and potato peelings. Brigid Glanville reports. BRIGID GLANVILLE: Rosemary Champion from Longway Station in Longreach is currently feeding 1600 cattle a day. To keep up the supply needed during the drought, she’s turned to a product known as "cow custard". As well as being great tasting, it’s cheap and is very fattening. The cattle love it so much Rosemary Champion says she’s been through 400,000 litres since September. ROSEMARY CHAMPION: Well, actually it’s like a, a thinish porridge or, we affectionately call it "cow custard", but lots of people call it different things. And it’s the consistency of sort of, I’d say, sort of thin porridge. It’s quite lumpy. It’s got the potato starch as a basis and then it’s got things like soft drinks, maize, potato chips, corn chips, vegetable peelings. Anything at all that is a by-product of the, coming out of the supermarkets basically. BRIGID GLANVILLE: Is it good for them? ROSEMARY CHAMPION: Oh, it’s wonderful. ‘Cause it puts a, a nice shiny coat on them and the cows have better quality and quantity of milk. BRIGID GLANVILLE: The inventors of this porridge-like product pulled a number of scientists together to come up with the drought feed. The need came directly from farmers looking for something to feed their cattle because of the shortage of hay and molasses. Greg Chappell from AGR Science and Technology. GREG CHAPPELL: That was a question of our scientists looking at the animal needs and what we set out to do was to come up with a product that was designed to match the digestive rate of the rumen to maximise the uptake of the animal. And not all of the sorts of waste streams that come from human food manufacturing are suitable for that. So we really identified the ones that were most suitable for that. And obviously because we have a bent towards using waste streams, we looked at ones where they were otherwise going to landfill or unsuitable purposes. BRIGID GLANVILLE: With the shortage of feed available during the drought, many farmers put stock on sorghum crops. In a good season, sorghum is great cattle feed. But the drought has seen an increased level of cyanide in the crops and consequently has killed some of the cattle feeding on it. Seventy cows from southern Queensland and northern NSW have already died because of it. Dr Ross MacKenzie is the principal vet pathologist with the Department of Primary Industries in Queensland. ROSS MACKENZIE: Sorghum is notorious for having a certain amount of cyanide at most of the time. Now under normal circumstances grazing quietly on a crop like that wouldn’t have any problems. But under drought conditions where the plants are under stress, you tend to get increased concentrations of cyanide in the plants. And if animals go onto these crops under drought conditions and they’re hungry, they will eat more in a shorter space of time, and therefore get a bigger dose of cyanide. If that happens, it just overwhelms the defence mechanisms that the body has.
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