Our newsletter is also available on our website in English and French

March 2010
Food Matters

Message to Members

This month's newsletter's focus is food. Read on to learn about our upcoming organic heritage seedling sale, a member survey on food at the Co-op, CSA baskets and the trouble with soy products. Happy spring!


From The Liaison Committee

The members of the Board of Directors have unanimously appointed Jennifer Grier as our new President of the Board. Jennifer has been a user member for 10 years and a Board member since 2006. She is enthusiastic about our upcoming projects.

With the building purchase behind us, we are all excited about the planned renovations. It is a whole new chapter in the life of La Maison verte. By the time you read this, renovations will be underway from the basement to the top floor. They include a new energy-efficient heating system for the building, new windows for the apartments on the upper floors and remodeling and redecorating of the store space. We will keep you informed about the work in the coming months!


Member Survey

Following the purchase last November of our new home at 5785 Sherbrooke O., the Co-op has begun renovations that will update the building’s structure, create new offices downstairs and open up the store’s floor space to make room for a variety of new products. Excitingly, these physical changes will finally allow us to expand into the area of natural food, bringing a variety of organic, bulk and local foods into the store!

We now turn to you, dear members, to find out how we can make the store ever more relevant to your needs. During the first two weeks of March, we will carry out a wide-scale consultation through a member survey.

We cordially and joyfully invite you to contribute your ideas to this process! You can contribute online by clicking here or by filling out an in-store survey with one of our lovely cooperators. We would like to have this data in by Monday, March 15. We appreciate your input!


Heritage Organic Seedling Sale

Coop la Maison verte and Ferme du Zéphyr are once again pleased to offer healthy, robust, organically grown herb and vegetable seedlings that you can order through the Co-op's online store.

Ferme du Zéphyr grows a wide variety of open-pollinated and heirloom seedlings that will produce colourful and flavourful tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, greens, salads, and herbs in your backyard or on your balcony.

Browse our online photo gallery: choose from over 40 varieties of tomatoes - the delicious Cherokee Purple, the crazy Green Zebra; our unusual Lemon Cucumber, and exotic Asian Lemon Grass.

Ordering can be done online or at the Co-op. Plant pickup begins in early May and runs to mid-June.


Alter-Native Bio Food Baskets

Alter-Native Bio delivers food baskets to the Co-op every other Thursday. Baskets consist of organic and, whenever possible, local fruits and vegetables. For more information, or to register for the baskets, please visit their website.


Membership Rules Reminder: Spousal Membership A “No No”

Many of our members share one membership card between two spouses. Our bylaws state that only the person who signs the membership form and pays the $10 membership fee is considered a member, and thus eligible to receive discounts. If this situation applies to you and you wish to continue to receive discounts, you must purchase a new membership or upgrade your membership to “family” status (for the same price) where up to four people can be signed on to the same card. For more information, visit the “Membership” section of our website or talk to our staff.


Eco Logic - We Want You!

The Co-op is looking for regular contributors for its blog. If you would like to write about the environment or local issues, please send an email to Franco Boriero at newsletter@cooplamaisonverte.com.


Thanks to: Joanne Deshaies (translation), Geneviève Tardif (translation) and Katerine Grandmont (revision)

Events

To sign up for an event, please call or visit the Co-op. Unless indicated, events are bilingual and free. For more information, visit our website.

Eco Logic

Are Soy Products Harmful?

By David Merson

Walk through the aisles of a health-food store or super market these days and you will find ever-increasing varieties of soy-based products being promoted as healthy alternatives to our traditional diets. But soybeans have long been understood to be toxic for humans, and the way in which they are cultivated on a large scale is now wreaking social and environmental havoc as well. Indeed soybeans are one of the two most heavily used transgenic (GMO) crops in production in Quebec and worldwide, and as such threaten to destabilize the very security of our food supply.

The earliest historical evidence from Asia indicates that, unlike other legumes such as lentils, and grains like rice and wheat, soybeans were not grown as a food crop, but were originally used as a "green manure" to supply nutrients to farmers' fields as part of a crop rotation. Unlike other beans, soy was considered inedible until processes were developed to ferment it, thus reducing its phytic acid content and transforming its nutritive properties.

The first edible soy products were sprouts and fermented foods like tempeh, miso and shoyu (soy sauce). Although these products are available on the market today in Canada, their consumption pales in comparison to foods made from unfermented soy waste products such as textured vegetable protein (TVP). "Health-food" products made from TVP, such as veggie deli slices, contain phytoestrogens, phytates, antinutrients and growth depressant substances. Tofu, unfortunately, is not much better. In the making of tofu (which is not a fermented product), the bean curd is separated from the whey, with the latter absorbing much of the antinutrient enzyme inhibitors, thus reducing but not eliminating their quantity in the tofu. If eaten with meat, as is done in Japan, the mineral-blocking effect of the high levels of phytic acid in tofu is reduced, making tofu a safe food. However, in Canada, tofu is rarely eaten with meat, thus negating its traditional nutritional value. Also of concern is the fact that all non-organic soy-based products, including tofu, are now made from genetically modified organisms, which are increasingly being understood to have detrimental effects on human health and the environment.

So how did soy products suddenly become so common? Soy oil has been in wide use in Canada since the beginning of the processed food revolution in the 1950s, being a major ingredient in margarine and most highly processed and packaged foods, and as interest in processed foods skyrocketed in recent decades so did oil production. However, oil makes up only a small part of the soybean, and there were massive amounts of free protein and carbohydrates in the waste sludge from the oil extrusion process. So in the 1970s, the Archers Daniels Midland corporation ingeniously invented TVP as a way to convince people to pay money for the soy oil waste. The promotion of soy as a healthy food over the last 30 years has been a cynical ploy perpetrated by corporate agribusiness to stimulate the consumption a highly profitable crop. An acre of soy offers high yields of protein, carbohydrates and fat, which made it attractive to food processors and feedlot operators alike. And modern nutritional science, which simplistically valued food primarily on the basis of those three chemicals, was a cheerleader in this effort, condoning soy as a suitable human food.

Recently, though, our theory of food has slowly begun to shift away from chemical nutritional science and back towards the understandings earned by our ancestors over thousands of years of trial and error. As authors like Michael Pollen have pointed out, chemical nutrition theory in cahoots with agribusiness is creating an over-fed yet malnourished society, but the solution to this problem is simple: We just have to go back to the way our grandparents ate.


Sources:

Russell L. Blaylock, Excitotoxins. Health Press, 1996.

Dianne Gregg, The Hidden Dangers of Soy. Outskirts Press, 2008.

Michal Pollen, In Defense of Food. Penguin, 2008.

Ron Schmid, The Untold Story of Milk. New Trends Publishing, 2003.

"The Simple Soya Truth"
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/articles/simple_soya_truth.htm

"Antinutrients- Your Key to Bad Health"
http://paleolithicdiet.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/antinutrients-your-key-to-bad-health/

"Is Soy Healthy?"
http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/soy.htm

"The Trouble with Tofu"
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/articles/soya_jola_chudy.pdf

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Eco Logic is a place for members to write or suggest articles about environment or community-related subjects. Email your ideas to newsletter@cooplamaisonverte.com

5785, Sherbrooke street West, Metro Vendome + bus 105 - call us! 514-489-8000