Nuts, Weeds and Nourishment
(Page 2 of 3)
July/August 1987
By the Mother Earth News editors
As thousands of Seventh-day Adventists can attest, nursing mothers can get all the nutrients they need on a vegetarian diet, especially one that includes dairy products and eggs. You do need to make sure you get the nutrients other people get from meat, fish and poultry, however. These include protein, niacin, iron and zinc.
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The diet you've described provides more than enough protein, considering that you're drinking eight glasses of milk a day. However, you are probably getting less than the recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) of the other three nutrients. Because those recommended levels are higher than the average person's needs, it is unlikely that you've done your baby harm. But it's still a good idea to shoot for the RDAs.
Your best bet is to eat more legumes, including beans, green or split peas, lentils and peanuts. They're good sources of all the nutrients you may need more of. Whole grains, such as bulgur and whole wheat bread, supply iron and niacin and more modest amounts of zinc. Leafy green vegetables, such as broccoli and collards, are rich in iron. Also, try doubling your serving of wheat germ. It's one of the richest plant sources of zinc.
Even with more of these foods, you may still fall short of the RDA for zinc, as do millions of other nursing women, meat-eating or not. That's because these RDAs are set very high during lactation. If you want to be sure you're getting enough, you might take a standard dard multivitamin and mineral supplement that provides 15 milligrams of zinc.
—Bonnie Liebman
Bonnie Liebman, M.S., is Director of Nutrition for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Poison Compost?
On my property there's a large mound of dried brush, about a third of it poison oak. I want to chip all this up and use it in my compost pile. Will the poison oak ruin my compost?
No, but it won't do you a whole lot of good.
During the composting process, the poison oak—including the urushiol oil, the irritating substance present in all parts of the plant—will break down into its component parts. Thus the finished compost will harm neither you nor your plants (no itchy tomatoes). No one seems to know just how long this decomposition will take, however. Poison oak is a woody plant, so it should require lengthy composting—six months, at least. If you do compost it, add plenty of nitrogenous material (manure, leather meal, etc.) to assure a "hot" pile, which will cook faster.
Meanwhile, that pile will be hot in another sense. Like poison ivy, poison oak becomes more toxic as it dries; it loses mass (water), and the urushiol oil becomes more concentrated. If you're allergic to the weed, it's going to be a long, unpleasant winter as you chip the brush and build and turn the compost. Unless you and yours are allergy-free, I'd recommend against composting.
