Healthy Product News – September 2010
12:41 pm September 1, 2010 •
KIKI MAPLE SWEET WATER
A Cool New Drink Hits Ontario’s Thirsty Marketplace
Review by Julia Woodford
One of my favourite beverages over the past couple years has been coconut water, a light refreshing drink made from the water inside young coconuts. It’s low calorie and nutrient rich. And it’s been endorsed by movie stars like Madonna, who recently invested in a coconut plantation so she could have a direct pipeline to the best coconuts. But there were two things that bothered me: 1) It has a ton of ‘food miles’ under its belt, being imported to Canada from faraway places like Brazil and the tropics, and 2) the tetrapak packaging is not recyclable.
Well, move over Madonna, there’s a new kid in town. It’s called Kiki Maple Sweet Water®, and is made from the sap of local maple trees, and packaged in glass bottles. We recently did a taste test in our office, and the product got positive reviews from 4 out of 7 of our crew. As one of the folks giving it a big thumbs-up, I have now found a great local alternative to coconut water, and I’ve even made up a new cocktail in honour of the upcoming Autumn Equinox:
Mix one part Sweet Water with one part organic red wine, and throw in a dash of Treehugger Organic Lemonade. Presto!! A light combo that quenches your thirst and leaves you with a warm glow. (I call it ‘Hoser Sangria’.)
Troll Bridge Creek, the company which produces Maple Sweet Water, was founded by Keith and Lorraine Harris when they discovered that local indigenous people had a long history of using maple sap as a health tonic.
So the Harris couple set up a facility to tap the abundant maple trees on a property they rent from the Thomas family of Priceville, who have been producers of maple syrup since 1938. The unsprayed trees in this sugar bush are cold-tapped in early spring harvest season as the sap begins to run over the best 8-21 day period for a medium grade pure maple syrup (the best grade for a flavourful sap).
Instead of boiling the sap to make maple syrup, KiKi Maple Sweet Water is simply “filtered by nature”. Before bottling, the sap is frozen to maintain its healthful benefits and maximize its fresh shelf life. At a local bottling plant, a hot fill process, with the liquid heated to just below 96 degrees Celsius, ensures that the drink remains below pasteurization temperature to preserve its purity, highlight the flavour and maintain healthful benefits. The product is then shipped, stored, and served chilled.
The resulting beverage is 100% pure maple sap, a slightly sweet elixir (2 - 3% glucose) with a hint of natural maple flavour.
Maple sap offers a number of healthful benefits aside from being a good hydrator for all ages. It’s tasty and quenches the thirst, without an aftertaste. With each sip, you get a hint of the iconic Canadian maple flavour of spring, available to us year-round.
The neutral pH encourages lower acidity in the blood and a more balanced system. Maple sap contains calcium and iron, as well as trace amounts of naturally occurring minerals such as potassium, manganese, magnesium, and zinc. And because they are suspended in liquid form, these minerals are highly bio-available. The product also contains trace amounts of B2, B5, B6, Niacin, Biotin and Folic acid.
Overall, Kiki Maple Sweet Water has a lot going for it – from the minimal processing of the sap to its rich nutrient profile to the non-toxic packaging (glass is BPA-free and recyclable). It’s low in food miles and high in thirst quenching ‘tree energy’ (thus the name Kiki).
News flash: Two new flavours have now been added to the lineup – Kiki Lemon Ginger and Kiki Lemon Mint.
You can find Kiki Maple Sweet Water in the refrigerated section at the Big Carrot (348 Danforth Ave, Toronto 416-466-2129), as well as Noah’s Natural Foods (4 locations in Toronto), Harmony Whole Foods (Orangeville), Fountain Head Health Store (Fergus), Nature’s Emporium (Newmarket), McEwan’s (Don Mills & Lawrence, Toronto), and JoAnne’s Place (Peterborough). For a complete list of retail outlets, and more information on the company, visit their website at trollbridgecreek.ca, email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or call (519) 848-2231.
(Note: After reviewing Sigrid’s Solomon Seal Salve in the previous issue of Vitality, I had occasion to revisit the product when my right hand started to seize up after too many hours spent at the computer. After massaging the salve into my hand, wrist, and arm over a couple of days, the tension and pain disappeared. I love this stuff.)
SELENIUM
Top Mineral for Prevention of Heart Disease, Cancer, and Thyroid Disorders
by K-G Wenzel, MD & R.J. Pataracchia, ND
(The following is an excerpt from Wenzel and Pataracchia’s book The Earth’s Gift To Medicine: Minerals in Health and Disease, translated from German by Claudia Rank. This excerpt was first published in Vitality five years ago, and is being re-released here by popular demand.)
From a scientific standpoint, selenium has had an eventful history. Discovered in 1817, it was first used medicinally in the treatment of inoperable tumours, where it was surprisingly successful. In the 1930s and 1940s it was deemed to be poisonous, and often was mistaken for arsenic. Intensive research began worldwide on a larger scale after 1957, when it was proven that selenium is essential to human life.
Selenium preparations have been used routinely in veterinary medicine for a long time, and not only for the infamous selenium deficiency disease of lambs – the “white muscle disease.” Selenium’s therapeutic benefit to humans is rarely recognized, however it has been used extensively in several countries. As a result of governmental decisions in Finland, selenium has been added to grain since 1984.
The adult human body contains about 10-30 mg of selenium. The highest concentrations are found in the kidneys, glands, liver, blood platelets, and in the lens of the eye. The daily requirement for adults is 50-200 µg (250-300 µg is optimal). The minimum requirement is estimated to be at least 1µg/kg of body weight. 50-75% of selenium contained in salts is absorbed in the intestine, while the absorption of selenium from organic compounds is 100%. In some cases, up to 1 mg doses have been applied therapeutically (individual cases have exceeded this amount). Some regions on earth have high selenium content in their soils. Even though poisoning symptoms can be expected among sensitive people taking prolonged daily doses of 2 mg, people living in these areas have been tolerating 3 mg/day for prolonged periods of time without complications.
In principle, selenium is consumed by humans following absorption from the soil by plants. Plant sources are the main way that animals and humans get selenium.
Many regions were washed out to a great extent during the Ice Ages, thus reducing the selenium content of these soils. Remaining selenium compounds become insoluble due to acid rain, hindering their ability to be absorbed by plants. Also, environmental pollution alters the acidity of soil and deposits heavy metals (in considerable amounts) into the soil. These heavy metals react with selenium to form insoluble compounds.
- Heart attacks and Big-joint Disease – Selenium deficiency diseases that occurred in the Chinese province of Keshan include Keshan disease and big-joint disease. In Keshan (pop. 50 million), up to 10% of the population had been dying of heart failure over many decades. This included a high proportion of young children, adolescents and young women. Eventually, the main cause was determined to be heart damage due to selenium deficiency. Viral infection in the end stages often resulted in accelerated death. Today, the people in this region are obligated to take a 1 mg selenium tablet each week. As a result of this large-scale administration, Keshan disease has almost been eradicated.
In the same region, an illness known as “big-joint disease” exists (named after the monstrous joint swelling that occurs). In some villages, the illness was so common that fruit was left unpicked because nobody could climb the trees. Selenium deficiency was also identified as a major factor contributing to this illness. X-ray results surprisingly confirmed that selenium intake improved arthritic conditions.
The importance of selenium in heart disease remains clear – selenium deficiency increases the likelihood of heart attack (myocardial infarction). This fact was established through research conducted primarily in Finland (also in New Zealand and Germany). Finland once had the highest incidence of heart attacks in Europe, even though this country is certainly not stressed by politics. Finnish people tend to be healthy thanks to their sauna. Selenium deficiency in this country can be considered a cause, or at least a significant factor, in the increase in heart attack risk. Soils in this region were severely depleted of selenium when they were washed out during the Ice Age. Now, selenium levels in Finland are becoming further diminished by acid rain coming from Europe. The government of Finland began a selenium campaign in 1984, which involved increasing public awareness, selenium fertilization of soils, and the addition of selenium to grain.
The use of fertilizers that contain sulfur, such as ammonium sulfate, hinders the ability of plants to absorb selenium and should therefore be avoided. Unfortunately the success observed in Finland goes almost unnoticed in other countries. Perhaps if the incidence of heart attacks decreased due to selenium supplementation, waiting lists for coronary by-pass operations would not be as long. After all, selenium treatment is a much cheaper alternative to surgery, and cheaper than the cost of heart medication used following the operation. Selenium deficiency increases the tendency of platelets to aggregate, which also plays a role in heart attacks. Blood thinning drugs have been used for many years to prevent the occurrence (or recurrence) of heart attacks. For these patients, plasma selenium levels should be 60µg/L (versus the 20 µg/L seen among Keshan patients) to obtain a protective effect.
- Pancreatitis, Cancer, and AIDS – The list of diseases associated with selenium deficiency has continued to grow. For example, in 1993 a large clinic in Germany reported that immediate selenium treatment prevented patients from dying of acute pancreatitis.
Extensive literature concerning selenium and the development of cancer dates back to 1920, when Watson-Williams successfully treated 72 inoperable cancer patients with colloidal selenium. Eight of these patients were reported to have completely recovered. Many examples provide evidence that selenium inhibits cancers of the skin, liver, lung, breast and intestine.
It is generally known that cytostatic treatment (i.e. chemotherapy) weakens the immune system, allowing otherwise minor disease agents to become life threatening. Cytostatic treatment often leads to selenium deficiency. Selenium supplementation can diminish the toxic side effects of cytostatic treatment.
Animal research has shown that selenium supplementation can decrease the damaging effects of the drugs Adriamycin and Cisplatin on the heart and kidney, respectively. Some patients who did not respond to cytostatic treatment improved after selenium was incorporated into the treatment.
Therefore, a daily selenium supplement of 100-300 µg is often recommended for cancer patients.
The possibility of selenium deficiency should be considered in cases of aberrant immune function. Individual reports cite the role of selenium in hemolytic anemia, cardiomyopathy, chronic infection, and even in multiple sclerosis (research by Danish MS society).
One of the main factors in the rapid spread of AIDS ... is the deficiency of selenium from our soils, food and water. In those African countries with selenium-rich soils there is a lower incidence of AIDS. Current information on selenium and AIDS is described in the book What Really Causes AIDS by Professor Harold D. Foster.
- Enzymes and Arteriosclerosis – Selenium is a component of glutathione peroxidase, an enzyme found in almost every cell. This enzyme is particularly abundant in red blood cells and is found primarily in platelets, phagocytes, liver cells and retinal cells. It is composed of four identical subunits, each containing one atom of selenium. Because glutathione peroxidase is active in the cytoplasm, its antioxidative effects are considered about 1,000 times stronger than those of the fat soluble antioxidant vitamin E.
Selenium is a significant protective and defensive factor against free radicals and oxidative damage from both external (radiation and environmental toxins) and internal sources (metabolic by-products). Its effects on arachidonic acid and prostaglandin metabolism in platelets are well-documented.
Selenium deficiency plays a significant role in the development of arteriosclerosis, including coronary heart disease (where we are increasingly finding chronic inflammation as a major pathogenic factor). Heart muscle cells seem to have special proteins that contain selenium; this is an area of continuing research.
- Selenium and Thyroid Hormone – A selenium-containing enzyme responsible for the production of thyroid hormone was discovered in 1991. Therefore, selenium deficiency in addition to iodine deficiency can contribute to diminished thyroid hormone production (leading to thyroid problems such as goiter). It is possible that both selenium and iodine deficiencies can have simultaneous effects in some cases.
- Alcohol and Liver Cirrhosis – It has been noted that blood fats or cholesterol only become problematic for blood vessel walls (arteriosclerosis) after they have been altered by free radicals and peroxides. This also seems to play an important role in the development of liver cirrhosis among alcoholics, since alcohol influences liver metabolism leading to an increased production of peroxides. Due to the poor selenium content of alcoholic beverages and the unhealthy diet followed by many alcoholics, selenium-dependent protective mechanisms are ineffective.
Selenium also plays an important role in the detoxification of various heavy metals, especially mercury and cadmium.
This excerpt from The Earth’s Gift to Medicine: Minerals in Health and Disease, is reprinted with permission from the publisher, KOS Publishing Inc. To order the book, visit www.kospublishing.com or call 519-927-1049.