Scurvy is a disease that likely conjures up images of sickly sailors from hundreds of years ago, but doctors in Canada are being warned to look out for the condition now, as a result of growing food insecurity.
A report published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) details the case study of a 65-year-old woman diagnosed with scurvy at a Toronto hospital last year.
The authors say the case points to the need for physicians to consider the possibility of scurvy, particularly among patients at higher risk for nutrient deficiencies, including people with low socioeconomic status and isolated older adults.
“This isn’t the first case of scurvy that I’ve seen in my career so far,” said Dr. Sally Engelhart, the study’s lead author and an internal medicine specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
This may be an outrageous thought process, but I genuinely wonder if the comparative wealth of the 60s and 70s kids contributed significantly to the loss of knowledge on how to make decently nutritious food for cheap.
My parents were well off, mostly as a result of being born when they were. My mum tried to cook but never really had to contend with how to get by with the odd bits of food, ends of vegetables, etc. Now that it’s 2024, I’m finding that my grandmother’s old recipes are supremely more practical than my mother’s recipes because they don’t rely on having only the premium meats and only the best parts of the vegetables. I wonder how much cultural and culinary knowledge was diminished as a result of a generation or two of high food waste.
That could be part of it.
My grandmother grew up in a poor town during the depression and she considered it a cardinal sin to throw out “edible” food. My mom grew up poor too and she cooks much the same way, but she’s okay with throwing things out. Mom taught my brothers and I the basics, but I never really needed to cook much until I moved out.
I got a lot of experience with less common foods growing up — recipes like pig-feet ragout and recycling leftovers and trimmings and stems into soup or stew or casseroles all the time. A lot of those older recipes that my mom and grandma made are lost to me though. I should really ask my mom for more of them.
I’d love a movement to revive the old ways of cooking in accessible ways.
I think another issues is I can make a great tasting and highly nutritious soup from spare veggies and broth in half an hour, but making broth at home (from essentially waste materials) takes hours to brown+boil+sieve. It’s easier to just pick up a costco club pack of chicken/beef broth.
That’s certainly true.
I’ve been making my own broth recently and while its low effort it’s definitely kinda slow. Every so often I’ll get a costco rotisserie chicken and when it’s done, use the carcass for broth. It always gives good results, but ultimately those costco broths are reasonably cost efficient and much more time efficient.
I definitely am trying to increase my flexibility in terms of what I can cook with to cut down on food waste.
I do the exact same thing with the Costco rotisserie chickens, they’re a good buy.
I need to make more of a routine out of making and freezing broth. It’s something you can do while watching a movie or two.
Ham bones make a great soup base as well. And depending on where you shop beef bones are good too.
My easy soup is a bag of frozen veggies, yams, broth, spaghetti sauce ('cause it has spices already in it) and whatever meat I have available. Spices depend on meat used, ie: garlic and ginger, peanut butter (for a play on West African peanut soup), or a few tablespoons of spicy salsa.
Home made pea soup with a ham bone is my all time favourite soup, but I don’t have ham very often. I always joked with my mom that the uglier the pea soup is in the fridge, the better it will taste when you reheat it.
My easy soup is to pick 4-6 items from: mushrooms, carrots, leeks or onion, broccoli stems or fennel, and frozen peas. I add soy sauce to the broth for an umami flavour. I don’t ever have anything measured, but I do taste and sample a lot along the way.
I like to sauté my mushrooms with garlic in a pan, cook off the moisture, then add soy sauce and spices and let that simmer for a while. I don’t know if it makes a difference, but I like to think it infuses the mushrooms with more flavour.
I’ll try throwing in some salsa next time. My mom always put tomatoes in her soup and they were good, maybe it’ll turn out similarly.
I recently found out why my beef gravies/soups didn’t have that depth my grandma’s had … seems you have to add a bit of tomato paste/sauce to it. Something in the tomato brings it out.
Made a world of difference.