Soba Canada (1) Aging society and Soba's incredible effect
(2) Futuristic Food "Soba" and US study
(3) Safety of Foods against GMO/Environmental Hormones
(4) Inmune Mechanism of Human Body
(1)Aging society and Soba's incredible effect
A first wave of Baby Boomers starts retiring and we are entering into an
Aging Society. And we are getting more and more health conscious in these
days in order to enjoy the life. Food and exercise are two main factors
to determine our health condition. All animals and plants constitute a
self-completed small universe. Generally speaking if you could eat the
materials as a whole in its original condition, it would be the best because
you eat the whole universe and all necessary substances for growth and
survival are contained there. In such meaning, for example, to eat entire
small fishes are very good for our health. But as you can easily notice
that we are normally eating only a part of the food materials. Meat, Fish,
Fruit and Grain. we only eat them after processing them into pieces by
eliminating hard-to-eat or bad looking parts. So unless you eat calculating
the balance factor of each nutrition, you will be prone to be off the balanced
nutrition by only chasing your favourite taste. Wheat and rice are nourishing
but because of their structure of the kernel, after refining process most
nourishing part(Embryo) is already gone and only nice looking and comfortable
to the tongue part would be main merchandises sold in the market. Though
you can see whole wheat or brown rice in the market recently, still it's
not so popular yet.
In case of Bcukwheat, structure of the kernel is advantageous. ie, Embryo
is burried deep inside the kernel and process of peeling off its thick
epicarp doesn't affect to its nourishing part.
☆☆(See Ingredients Comparison Chart of Buckwheat Flour and Wheat/Rice etc.)
Buckwheat itself in comparison with other grains is superior in almost
all ingredients and together with above mentioned structural advantage
of its kernel, the buckwheat is deserved to be called as "a King of
the Grains" because it fullfils three functional requirements described
below quite well. As you may recall the classes at your good old school
days, there are five essential nutrients for the survival of the human
beings. ie, Carbohydrates, Proteins, Lipides, Vitamins and Minerals. Protein
of buckwheat is high for outer parts of the kernel which contains about
15% of protein. Biggest trait of buckwheat's protein could be described
for its high amount of Lysine (700mg/100g) comparing with other grains
which works to prevent high blood pressure and apoplexy. And Amino Acid
Score to measure the quality of protein (eggs are best protein and rated
as 100) for buckwheat is 92 while best wheat flour is 44, brown rice 65,
white bread 44 and that gluten free which is a good news to Celiacs.
But these nutrients represent only one part of the important functions
of the foods. Other than these nutritional functions, there are still two
other functions of the foods. 2nd one is sense function which satisfies
our 5 senses consequently the dish must be delicious to satisfy the appetite.
This is the difference from the drugs and this is the source of our cultural
creation. The last function is the adjustmental function of our living
body, the organism. Recently this last function attracts a great deal of
attention from various fields. To strengthen the immunity, to restrain
the symptoms of aging, to prevent getting cancer or high blood pressure
and to adjust our nerve or digestive systems are the examples. In the buckwheat,
it contains good amount of "Rutin" which is one of Polyphenol
families and this Rutin is exactly one of such functional ingredients which
is especially said to strengthen capillary vessels consequently preventing
cerebral apoplexy and disease with hemorrhage or blood related diseases
etc.. Furthermore recent study revealed that buckwheat contains more functional
ingredients on top of Rutin. Noteworthy role of newly found substances
are Anti-Oxidization effect. Human being without oxigen cannot maintain
its life, of course. But when breathing, 3 to 10% of the oxygen utilized
at respiration will be changed its form to very unstable activated oxigen
which is a material to cause various lifestyle diseases such as diabetes/cancers
and promote aging etc. This Anti-Oxidization effect is to remove the activated
oxigen from our body. Polyphenols such as Rutin of buckwheat and Catechin
from tea and Vitamin E and C etc. are all Anti-Oxidaization substances
and also are the components of buckwheat except vitamin C.
It is a common feature of all grains to have mainly starch in the endosperm
at center core and are enriched with other nutritious ingredients toward
the outer parts of the kernel. So method of de-hulling and milling of the
kernel is very important not only for the taste but also for the nutritious
aspect. That's why we do all these jobs by ourselves.
Main ingredients of Whole Ground Buckwheat are as follows.
Carbohydrates 69.6%, Moisture content 13.5%, Proteins 12.0%, Lipides 3.1%
and Ash content 1.8% backed up by Minerals, Vitamins, Non saturated fatty
acids and Vegetable fibres etc. Different from other grain like wheat and
rice, feature of buckwheat's protein is to have Essential Amino Acids which
cannot be created by our body. So this must be supplied intentionally from
outside source. Among Minerals in the order of high component, it comes
Potassium, Phosphorus, Magnesium as top three followed by Calcium, Iron,
Zinc, Natrium, Mangan and Copper. As to Vitamins it comes Niacin, Pantothenic
Acid which are Viatmin B compounds, Vitamin E, B1, B6 and B2but doesn't contain any Vitamin A and C nor bad cholesterol too. How these
ingredients contribute to our body will be discussed separately at later
stage.
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(2)Futuristic Food "Soba" and US Study
US Department of Health and Human Services has NIH(National Institutes
of Health) which is a biggest medical research institute in the world.
In 1992 NIH has created NCCAM(National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine) in order to study more effective way of implementation of superior
medicine of other world. The background of this movement was to stop and
cut ever increasing budget for Medicare cost of the government. In 1940
Medicare cost was only US$4 Billions but in 1992 (the year when NCCAM was
established) it jumped up well over US$800 Billions and 1994 it easily
exceeded US$1 Trillion and still accelerating upward with the arrival of
the Aging Society. And the tax-payers will not be tolerable for such a
heavy burden on their shoulders. Something must be done. Everybody thought.
Analysis revealed that 70% of the Medicare costs were paid for the chronic
diseases such as Cancer, Diabetes and Heart and blood related diseases
etc. called Life-style disease or Adult disease. These Life-style diseases
could be prevented and cured just by changing their lifestyle introducing
proper exercise and/or dietary precautions. Thus promotion of such healthy
lifestyles would surely contribute to reduce the backword cost to be used
for the medical treatments. NCCAM defines the word "Alternative Medicine"
as the Medicare systems to put an emphasis on the improvement of the quality
of life and prevention of diseases which current western medicine doesn't
have an answer. In 1995 they have issued a huge report titled "Alternative
Medicine: Expanding Medical Horizons" in which they have deeply thought
current main stream of western medicine have been really effective for
treatment of external wound or pain relief etc but it also has revealed
its weakness for chronic diseases called life-style diseases. Diseases
must be cured fundamentally not only doing symptomatic/clinical treatments
killing pain etc.. Based upon such recognition, they have given priority
to the following research fields.
1)Dietary treatments for the prevention and treatment
of the chronic diseases
2)Implementation of the traditional Oriental mecicine
such as Acupuncture and moxibustion
3)Mutual relationship between body and mind such as psychological
treatment, meditation, imaging and music therapy etc.
4)Chiropractic and massage therapy
5)Herbal treatment and drugs which are not approved by
current western medicine. 6)And a few more fields.
As the study goes, it revealed the defects of current American style meal
diet definitly lacking minerals and vitamins etc.
Recently Japanese traditional dietary style mainly relying upon grains
such as buckwheat/rice, vegetable and fish are reviewed and proved to be
better than that of Western style which tend to induce lifestyle diseases
by over consumption of lipide from meat etc. And reported that such dietary
style like Japanese dish, vegetarian and macrobiotic meal would easily
reduce the risks of being in cancer and heart/blood related diseases etc..
So 21st century should be the century of the real fusion between West and
East culture based upon self-examination.
Now I just stop saying that eating Soba means to stay healthy and to stay
young.
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(3)Safety of the Foods against GMO / Environmental Hormones
In the past in order to be healthy it was OK just to follow above mentioned
nutritious precautions. But regrettably nowadays there is one more basic
issue you have to bear in mind. That is "the Safety of the materials"
by avoiding the risks of the exposures to newly created chemicals by man
such as hormone disrupting chemicals (Environmental Hormones) and GMO (Genetically
Modified Organism) etc.. It is said that there are about 70 environmental
hormones listed at present including famous deadly dioxin. Recent development
of the science especially in Biotechnology is surprisingly remarkable.
In 1996 it appeared clone sheep and soon commercialized clone beef and
in 2003 news says first human clone was born though no scientific proof
was given. And attempt of DNA treatment at some hospital, GMO vegetables
such as never rotten riped Tomato (Flavor Saver) sold in USA or insect-resistent
Corn which has programmed built-in insecticide in it and herbicide resistent
Soybean(Round Up Ready) and very end of 2002 Application for approval of
Round Up Ready Wheat was submitted quietly in Canada. Happily it was not
approved because the applicant failed to convince the parties concerned
with proof of safety. And there are many more GMO foods in the market.
And now GE(Genetically Engineered) fishes are under way. With this GE technique,
it is easy to create an animal with a new characteristics, but large mammals
like cows, pigs and goats don't multiply as plentifully or as rapidly as
fish. GE fishes with continuous production of the growth hormone gene grow
as much as 10 to 30 times faster than normal fish. And there are already
more than 35 species being developed around the world and pushing governments
for approval. In China, it is reported that GE carp is already in commercial
production and in Cuba GE tilapia is being sold to consumers. Most GE fishes
are cultivated in ocean net pens which are highly susceptible to breakage
caused by weather, human errors etc. and average 15% of farmed fish escape
also sometimes there are incidences of mass fish escape. One of the reason
for GMO is to prepare for possible famine by the increase of population
on the earth. But on the contrary it might work adversely. Study says GE
fish is more aggressive, consume more food and attract more mates but their
offspring will be less fit and less likely to survive. As a result such
GE fish will cause natural species to become extinct within only a few
generations.
These GM products would be nice only if scientists could prove their risk-free
nature to our human bodies and/or environment. But it seems that promoters
of these projects are too busy to acheive their main goal of "making
money" by just saying GM foods are substantially equal to the natural
foods they immitated. Can we believe such words? We have so many studies
and experiments which show clear danger to humanity and environment.
Can promoters simply say that animal experiments could not be applied to
human? We can suppose what would happen in case of human. We cannot wait
till we have definite proofs by the disaster on humanity and environment.
It's too late by then. We have to humbly follow the warning signs of the
studies. Also it must be the responsibility of the promoters to prove scientifically
the safty of their products. Traditional doctrine of Criminal Code is "Suspicious
should not be punished" but in this case the doctrine should be "Suspicious
should not be released".
Not only GMO issue, there are so many problems on the Safty of our Foods.
Examples are post-harvest agricultural chemicals and so called "Environmental
Hormones" like Dioxin which are endocrine hormone disrupters. It is
said our bodies are now contaminated with more than 300 man-made chemicals
which mojority of them were not in the bodies of our great-grandparents.
It is definitely prudent to minimize the daily exposure to humans especially
pregnant women and children because some chemicals that we cannot break
down will accumulate in our body's tissues known as "Bio-Accumulation".
It is not known what the long term effects might be (but we have so many
signs already) and we would be unable to remove them from our bodies and
environment even if found to be harmful. . Contaminated environment and
foods are directly affecting to humanity as the top of the food chain.
If you wouldn't take good precautions to avoid these risks, your precaution
toward nutritions and excersises could result in vain. It is almost impossible
to eliminate these dangerous chemicals but it is possible to reduce the
risks of being exposed to them by correct selection of our foods with good
knowledge. We will discuss how to reduce risks at next updates of this
homepage.
Little is known about the possible risks of these Environmental Hormones
and GM Foods because these are quite new issuses. Most of the evidence
for these Endocrine Hormone Disrupting Toxicity are from studies on animals
or on cell cultures. There is little data available on human effects due
to unacceptability of doing experiments on humans.
However there are many worrying signs and trends in the health of the humanity.
1) Steady increase of cancer. No.1 cause of death. About one third are
death from cancers. 50 years ago, the cause of US womens's (age between
40 to 55) death by breast cancer was only 5% but a report says it increased
1% every year since then.
2) Sperm counts have reduced by about 25% in recent 20 years. Especially
those born most recently having the lowest sperm counts. Recent report
says that 20 year old lad counts only a half of 40 year old man's sperm.
The ratio of male to female births has declined during last 20-40 years
in Europe and North America by reducing proportion of male babies through
environmental pollution and hormone disrupters.
3) Decrease of immunity, disorder to brain nerve system and endocrine system
by hormone disrupters.
4) Increase of the new born babies with atopic dermatitis. 1997 in Japan
7% of new borns were atopic allergy since fetus through prenatal infection.
And with breast feeding, incidence ratio increased another 8%.
Human organism during its 1.5 millions years history of evolution has developped the internal defence system of degrading and detoxifying phytoestrogens (estrogenic chemicals produced naturally by plants are called phytoestrogens) and other chemicals by metabolism but it is not ready yet to build up new antibody or new enzyme for the newly man-made chemicals in such a short time of 30/50 years. And only with ultra small quantity, they start working and give us a various harms. Can you guess how small is it for "small quantity"? Unit being used normally is PPt (Parts Per Trillion) ! And we cannot imagine anything at all with it but it could be explained as a dew drop of 1 g dripped into a gorgeous swimming pool with size of L500m x W200m x D10m . Products contained with these bad chemicals are saturated around us and almost next to impossible to eliminate using all these products. But even if it's the mission very difficult we have to try to do everything possible starting from not buying such suspicious products and studying the way of safe eating because nearly 100% of hormone disrupters are through foods.
Understanding above situation well, Soba Canada is trying to select only
the materials to be "Safe" for our health and environment. And
we can proudly say that;
----Through Soba , to get health and happiness are our objectives-----
Happilly, there is no GMO Buckwheat in the world yet and we have some non-GMO/organic
growers in Canada for other grains and beans too.
(4) Inmune Mechanism of Human Body
Our body is well maintained and adjusted atomatically for the optimum condition
for survival. It is not necessary to order consciously to make a breath
to our lung for example. Our lung works depending upon the situation, faster
or slower. It's the role of Autonomic Nerve System which consists from
Sympathetic Nerve and Parasympathetic Nerve. During the daytime, Sympathetic
Nerve dominates the body for a support of our various activities and coming
back home in the evening the switch changes to Parasympathetic Nerve for
relaxed time. Thus Autonomic Nerve toggles between Sympathetic nerve and
Parasympathetic nerve in a Circadian Rythme if working normally. But in
the modern world we are surrounded by so many stresses which would lead
us to autonomic ataxia.
The blood consists from two types of blood cells (corpuscle). Majority
is the red blood cell (Erythrocyte) which function is to carry oxygen and
carbon dioxide and exists about 5 million/cubic mm. And another one is
the white blood cell (Leukocyte) which is in charge of Immunity and number
is only 5-6,000/cbc. mm. It's only 0.1% of the Erythrocyte. 60% of the
Leukocyte is Granulocyte whcih eats and decomposes invading bacteria/virus.
But the life of this Granulocyte is only for 2 days after differentiation
from marrow. It blows up itself and scatter the activated oxygen which
makes harmful substances and attack and destroy human body. 35% of Leukocyte
is Lymphocyte which recognizes these invaders as Antigen and works up Immunity
by making Antibody together with B-Cell and T-Cell. And the last 5% is
Monocyte (Macrophage) which also eats bigger microbes Granulocyte cannot
eat. All these corpuscles are under the command of the Autonomic Nerve
System. So human immune system is made and maintained when Parasympathetic
nerve is taking a lead , in another word when you are relaxed listening
a favourite music or soaking in a bath, your body start enhancing your
inmunity. That's why sometimes taking a day off is so important. And the
vegetables are also having a great power to soothe and tranquilize our
body and stimulate Parasympathetic nerve to taka a lead for relax.
Do you know the cause of a cancer? Cancer cell is a inferior cell at the
time of regeneration. If your body's inmune system is working properly,
such cancer cell would be killed and disposed by Leukocyte. But by some
reason such as strong stress, if your inmune system is down or low and
not working properly, such cancer cell proliferate themselves in your body
and cause cancer. So now you know, to keep your health means to keep autonomic
nerve system especially parasympathetic nerve working in our daily stressfull
world. That's so simple by words.
It is reported that the Buckwheat especially has the effect to calm down
brain cells thus having a plan to make a medicine from buckwheat for brain
related diseases. Activated oxygen made after completing Granulocyte's
job are harmuful as discussed above but Rutin of Buckwheat acts as an scavenger
to remove such substances from our body.
(Easy and Effective Way of enhancing the Inmune System):
The easiest and effective way to enhance our immune ability would be to
pinch the bottom of your finger nails for 10 seconds which will surely
help Parasympathetic nereve taking a lead. (But only your third finger
should not be pinched because it stimulates Sympathetic nerve.) If it is
especially painful, then pinch it for 20 seconds. Preferably the pinchings
should be done 2 to 3 sets per day. After 2 weeks of diligent pinching,
you will realize the change.
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