If you live in San Francisco, this study is good news, as sourdough bread is available everywhere. If you live elsewhere, or you want to be adventurous, you may want to try making sourdough bread yourself. The tricky part of this is making what’s called the sourdough starter.

Sourdough starter is a bubbly, fermenting mess of flour and water that gives the sourdough its tangy flavor. It’s also what will boost your magnesium levels.

Organic and (even better) whole wheat bran flour is the way to go here. You want lots of natural microorganisms to help the fermentation. (The bran flour is magnesium superstar to start with, too.)

For the fast method, all you need is to blend one cup of flour with one cup of warm water in a wide-mouth jar to get started on your sourdough culture. To ensure success, add a few wash organic grapes (which will have yeast on the skin) or a started such as kefir. These are not necessary, but they will make it more of a sure thing. If you choose to go it without these added ingredients, try starting with just a half tablespoon of flour with 3 tablespoons of water. The add equal amounts of flour and water each day for a week until you have a full cup.

A clear glass will allows you to see how the culture is developing – and, believe me, you will want to check it often. Leave the jar in a warm and light location, at around 70 to 80° Fahrenheit (21 to 27° Centigrade). If temperatures go over 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius) you will end up killing the culture. A cloth or paper towel should be placed loosely over the top of the jar to help keep it moist and to keep out bugs.

Every day, you need to empty out half of your starter culture, and fill the jar again by adding equal amounts of water and flour to the level it was at before you emptied half. It will be ready for use anywhere from 5 days to a month later, depending on temperature and location. This is weird thing about starter – telling when it’s ready.

Just remember, though, that once its ready it just continues to get better – so don’t feel rushed. As long as no purple mold shows up to kill it all off, you’re good to go.

Sourdough starter is alive, and thus it must be fed regularly. When not using your starter, it is important to dump out half the batch from time to time, and mix in fresh flour and water to equal the lost volume. Exactly how often this should be done depends on storage temperatures and the local strain. An active starter should be fed daily (if not multiple times per day depending on temperature and other conditions). See the note below about dormant starters.

Sourdough is best stored at room temperature or slightly warmer. Anything outside of this range will

How the starter might look

change the proportions of the bacteria and yeast, which affects the flavor of the result. It can be safely stored in the fridge, but temperatures over 80F are too hot. If you store your starter in the fridge, then let it sit out several hours after feeding before returning it to the refrigerator. This allows the yeasts to get active and feed. The temperature in the fridge is enough to slow down the yeast, but not the lacto-bacteria. So after a while your starter will begin to smell boozy and have a sharper tang to it than you might want. To fix this, just dump out 90% and start the feeding cycle again. When it’s ready, you can slow things down by putting in covered (but not too tightly) in the fridge.

To make sure that your starter is full strength before committing it to a dough, you should check to see if it quadruples its size if fed and left for an hour. Feed starter by adding equal amounts of water and flour, and put ¼ cup in a measuring cup. If it hits the one cup marker in an hour or so then it is ready to go. If not, then it needs to be fed more. Accelerate your feeding schedule until it passes the test.

There’s a wonderful explanation of this at breadtopia.com, with a helpful video as well.

Making your own sourdough is a wonderful experience, and a super way to really soak up all the magnesium you need.

You betcha!

Magnesium Filled Chocolate

Benefits of Chocolate

Magnesium in Chocolate

One of the benefits of chocolate is significant amounts of magnesium. Peter Meisel, of the Department of
Pharmacology, Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany, says “a bar of this chocolate supplies the recommended daily allowance of magnesium.”

Jean Mayer, of the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (J.B.B.), Tufts University, Boston, Mass., said “Consumption of flavanol-rich dark chocolate (DC) has been shown to decrease blood pressure (BP) and insulin resistance in healthy subjects.

Estimates range from over 100 mg of magnesium per 100 grams of chocolate, but lets start with the cocao bean. At 131 mg per 100 grams, raw cocoa powder, which is extracted from the cocao bean with the fats removed, would seem to be the richest natural source of magnesium we know of. That’s great…but who eats raw cocoa powder? It’s more reasonable to look at 25-30 mgs of magnesium in your chocolate, the kind you buy at the store, and that all depends on the cocoa content. 70% or higher cocoa content chocolate is a good snack. This applies specifically to dark chocolate, not milk chocolate.

Milk chocolate only has about 25% of the magnesium that dark chocolate does.

That hot cocoa you drink on a cool morning does more than just satisfy a sweet tooth, as long as it is rich in cocoa powder. (In fact coconut milk with cocoa is another super magnesium concoction-and tasty!)

This would seem to be to good to be true, but it has been sufficiently verified to gain the acceptance of the medical community.

A new study, which involved a review of three prior studies, suggests eating about a bar of chocolate a week can help cut the risk of stroke and lower the risk of death after a stroke. Neurologist Gustavo Saposnik at St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto says the evidence is still limited, but he suggests further investigation.

One study they looked at found that 44,489 people who ate one serving of chocolate per week were 22% less likely tohave a stroke than people who ate no chocolate. Another study found that 1,169 people who ate 50 grams of chocolate once a week were 46% less likely to die following a stroke than people who didn’t eat chocolate.

Going back a little farther, Jean Calment lived to the age of 122, healthy to the end in 1997. She attributed herlongevity to olive oil, two cigarettes a day and a kilo (2.2 pounds!) of chocolate per week. Admittedly, this is liking asking someone why they have a full head of hair. Ms. Calmert was blessed with longevity, and at the veryleast we can say that 2 kilos of chocolate a week didn’t likely shorten her life.

Still, there’s enough here to say that dark chocolate covered almonds are one doozy of a magnesium boost. Almonds are high in magnesium as well.

The only question here is this: Can we make up for our magnesium deficiency by indulging in daily chocolate binges?

Well….maybe that’s not such a good idea.

Here’s the bad news (you knew there had to be a catch, right?)

Chocolate is still a junk food. While the magnesium in chocolate will be a benefit, as will the anti-oxidants in it, you are getting a lot of other stuff you might be better off without. Sugar, for one. Fatty calories for another. While magnesium works to prevent the onset of adult Type II diabetes and reduce inflammatory diseases, the sugar will be working to screw up your insulin levels and increase inflammatory conditions.

Chocolate also has high copper levels, which can bring on a number of problems over years. Accumulated copper levels actually worsen many of the conditions that magnesium makes better.

This is not meant to scare you, as chocolate is a pleasurable food. Just keep in mind that it’s not a cure-all, and shouldn’t be overindulged in.

So, if you want something sweet and fun, buy all means make sure it’s chocolate with a high cocoa content. Mixed with almonds is even better. While your main source of magnesium shouldn’t be the magnesium in chocolate, there’snothing wrong enjoying the benefits of chocolate at your usual dessert or snack time.

Magnesium deficiency keeing you awake?

Magnesium Deficiency – What are the Signs?

A magnesium deficiency is very hard to detect without a visit to the doctor for an actual test of your blood levels. However, there are some factors in your life that may suggest deficiency in magnesium that are worth looking at first. These factors fall into two categories:

1- Symptoms of magnesium deficiency
2- Things you are doing or drinking that leach magnesium from your body

Let’s look at the symptoms first, varied as they are:

Insomnia-
Tiredness and insomnia (funny how there go hand in hand) are the earliest signs of a deficiency. You are restless at night, and may wake up frequently. During the day, you’re just tired. Any reason for this? It could be stress, yet stress itself is know to use up the body’s magnesium.

Nausea and vomiting, with loss of appetite-
Another early sign.

Later stage signs of numbness, muscle twitching, irregular heartbeat and coronary spasms-
These are scarier. Nothing like laying awake at night with insomnia, and feeling your heart struggle. It certainly was enough for me to start looking at sources of magnesium in food.

Headaches-

These are frequently reported, and I have personally heard from people who have stopped chronic headaches that they have suffered for as long as 2 years by simply upping their consumption of foods high in magnesium. Others have supplemented the foods with magnesium “oil,” a topical application.

There are numerous other signs that cover just about everything you can imagine, including depression (insufficient magnesium lowers the body’s production of the neurochemical serotonin), mood swings, jumpiness and more.

Remember, even before you consult with a doctor, there is no harm in increasing your natural intake of magnesium. It is only with supplements that you need to be careful of dosage.

Now…take the symptoms above and consider what you are doing to your body that might be draining you of magnesium.

Stress, both mental and physical, excess coffee, sugar, salt, alcohol and sweetened sodas all have an effect. So does tobacco and excess sweating. Various medications are also know to deplete the magnesium in your body.

Moreover, there’s the big issue of excess calcium. Yes, it’s possible to take in too much calcium, which ironically has the effect of making your bones weaker. Excess calcium depletes your magnesium. Osteoporosis and fragile bones can actually be caused by calcium rather than prevented.

On the other hand, too much magnesium is simply not possible when you source it naturally from food.

If you can identify with some of the signs above, it’s a very good idea to start increasing your magnesium intake immediately. Follow the links above to see what foods you need, and get ahead of any magnesium deficiency that may be dragging you down in every area of your life and health.

For comparison, Crystal Geyser has 6mg per liter.

San Pelligrino has enough magnesium for me...

That expensive water from Fiji? Only 13mg.

Vittel? 19.9mg
Evian? 24mg
San Pellegrino? 55.9mg (Not too bad. Comes with bubbles, too!)
Perrier? A miserable 3.2mg!

Want to look for your favorite water and see how it measures up? Head over to this comprehensive bottled water guide and check it out.

Additional news about mineral water….

I was rather put back to be told that San Pellegrino has high levels of uranium, especially as I had never considered drinking uranium as a possibility. This was upsetting, because I love San Pellegrino and I like the minerals in it (well, except for the uranium mineral).

Rather than rush back and warn all my readers that they should don protective gear and line their intestines with lead (not a good idea either), I decided to research this a bit.

First the good news…it seems we are taking in uranium all the time – in our food, our water and the air we breath. Doesn’t that make you feel better?

Since we are not all dead or glowing, however, it seems that there are after all tolerable amounts of uranium in nature. So I looked into that, too. It seems there are worse things than uranium.

Many nations have a requirement that the amount of uranium in mineral water be less than 10 micrograms per litre. In other words, they consider that safe for drinking water. For water for other uses, such as agriculture, it might be something like 50 micrograms. (For your reference, the human body passes out 99.5% of the uranium we ingest. That means we absorb 0.5% of the stuff – which, remember, is a natural mineral.)

San Pellegrino has 8 micrograms, Perrier has 4, some other waters have over 20.

Here, I’m going to defer to a British government survey of drinking water in Devon.

Buckwheat Soba Noodles

Buckwheat tastes great. This didn’t used to be a secret, as buckwheat pancakes were a southern staple. But, somehow it all got lost to us. So, buckwheat tastes great… even though it’s maybe the best source of natural magnesium out there. One cup of buckwheat gives you about a third of your magnesium needs for the day. It also gives you as much protein as eggs….but actually reduces your cholesterol and blood sugar levels! A study published in a study published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology that covered 16 years and 69,000 women demonstrated a 13% to 17% reduction in gallstones. Another study, in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry reported in success in controlling diabetes through increased buckwheat consumption. Heart and colon conditions have also been known to respond favorably to buckwheat’s goodness.

Moreover, buckwheat is not technically a cereal grain. It’s a fruit seed. That means it can be eaten by people who cannot tolerate grain or gluten foods.

So why isn’t the whole world raving about this food? Well, in Japan (where buckwheat is called soba), this is nothing new. There is delicious buckwheat noodle soup, cold buckwheat noodle salads (zarusoba), fried buckwheat noodles (yakisoba) and many other variations -  all of them delicious.

You can use buckwheat flour to make your pasta at home, or buy already prepared buckwheat noodles at the shop. Buck wheat grains can be added to soups for a hearty flavor, used in place of oatmeal, added to whole wheat to make fantastic bread, or used to make muffins and pancakes. It is also often added to rice to give it extra flavor, texture and color.

And of course, you can fry up the noodles yakisoba style, which means throwing in all your favorite stuff and making a very filling meal.

However you do it, once you start to add buckwheat to your diet, you won’t want to stop. And your body will thank you.