Foodie Feature: Purple Pride Pies

It's no secret that I am a big K-State Fan. I've stood in line for a picture with Willie. I've crowd surfed in the student section at The Bill in Coach Snyder's earlier glory days. I've chanted along to an ear-deafening "Fra-nk Mar-tin. Clap clap, clap clap clap" in the Octagon of Doom. And I'll admit to belting out the fight song while bobbing to the Wabash.

"Fight, you K-State Wildcats! For Alma Mater Fight! Fight! Fight! Glory into combat for the Purple and the White!"

Well, you get the point.

Now you see why I could revel in the kind of K-State fandom this Foodie Feature reaches. It's a new level folks!

A horticulture professor here at Kansas State University, Ted Carey, cloned the most colorful purple sweet potato plants that he grew from seeds taken from the International Potato Center in Ghana. The result, brilliantly-colored purple potatoes that are very sweet.

A researcher in our department of human nutrition, George Wang, found that the purple sweet potatoes have a significantly higher level of anthocyanin. Anthocyanin derivatives inhibit human colon cancer cell growth in cultured human colorectal cancer cells. Wang's research attracted Soyoung Lim from Korea and Tzu-Yu Chen from Taiwan who have come to K-State to focus in cancer preventative nutrition research.

Trading in their test tubes and petri dishes, the team decided to turn these special spuds into something people would enjoy. Purple sweet potato pies were baked, tasted and deemed a success! Since the purple sweet potatoes are naturally sweeter, the recipe calls for less sugar.

"I hope we can promote a health food for functional cancer prevention," Wang said. "Our research is focused on cancer prevention so we hope to translate our discovery from lab to humans."

Talk about Purple Power!!!

Thank a Farmer on Thanksgiving

As you give thanks this year, don't forget to thank those who help provide for use 365 days a year, every year. Thank a farmer.



Remember, one farmer feeds 155 people.
Best,
Chelsea

Welcome to my Family's Factory Farm

Frobose Family Farms

Fortunate enough to be home for the Thanksgiving Holiday, I thought it would be an appropriate time to highlight our beef cattle operation back home. We raise quite a few cattle as a family, not a factory!

I am very grateful to have a great family and a fourth generation farm outside of the small town of Pemberville, OH. For those of you who read my last blog, "Animal Welfare Judging", I briefly described that our team assessment involved evaluating a covered beef feedlot. This assignment struck particularly close to home as we operate a covered feedlot back home.

Since beef feedlot production systems have been criticized heavily over the past few years, I thought it would be beneficial to show some pictures of our feedlot, where we house approximately 100 head of beef cattle for approximately 150-200 days. Because we live in an environment that recieves 35-40 in of rainfall each year and about the same amount of snow, raising cattle outside in a dry lot situation is really not an option. We feed our cattle in the original Frobose barn, built in 1868, and have built additions in order to provide appropriate space for the amount of cattle we raise. We aren't about to haul out manure and fertilize our fields as often as would be ideal because of the added rainfall, so we provide straw or corn stalk bedding throughout the year in areas where the cattle rest.

The cattle on our operation are fed high quality ingredients including shelled corn, oats, a soybean meal supplement to provide additional protein, and a red clover hay as a forage to maintain gut health. Our cattle also have free access to wheat straw in order to prevent acidosis, a condition that can occur when cattle eat too much grain and not enough forage.

Our cattle are marketed through Ohio Signature Beef, a branded product line that our family and other Ohio producers created in order to provide an outlet for Ohio consumers to purchase a high quality beef product that was raised and fed in Ohio. Through our production system, we choose not to implant our cattle and we do not give antibiotics to our cattle in order to provide beef that some consumers prefer. Oftentimes cattle can get sick and need to be given an antibiotic, and in such case we market them through other outlets or often just process them and put them in our own freezer at home, because we know there are no issues with antibiotic or hormone residues in beef raised with traditional methods.

I hope you've enjoyed the story of our feedlot operation, if you have any questions about our family farm and dispelling the idea of factory farms, please feel free to email me at frobose@ksu.edu

Thanks,

Hyatt

Animal Welfare Judging

I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Lansing, Michigan where myself and the rest of my teammates are preparing for the 8th annual Animal Welfare Judging Competition hosted by Michigan State University. This is KSU's first venture into this new world of animal welfare judging, a competition that I can imagine a lot of people would have no idea what is involved. I'll try to explain by giving a little background.

As many of you know, animal welfare is a topic of growing public concern nationwide, and as such, the livestock community has adapted to these concerns by offering production systems that produce beef, pork, lamb or poultry in ways that may alleviate some of these consumer concerns (ex. antibiotic-free pork, cage-free eggs and pen-housed sows). There has also been a push amongst universities to provide a educational experience activity to teach students how to more effectively assess the well-being of different animal species in separate situations.

The judging contest here at MSU is a two day event that starts with seminars by animal science professionals tomorrow morning covering the species and topics that will be evaluated during the contest. In the afternoon, each team competes in the "Group Assessment" live scenario which this year revolves around beef cattle that are housed in a covered feedlot. We will be traveling to the MSU Beef cattle center where we are given information and a scenario and are told to evaluate the conditions in which the animals are kept. Afterward, we present an 8-10 minute presentation regarding the strengths and possible improvements necessary in the given scenario.

On Sunday, we will be evaluating scenarios individually. Each year, three scenarios are given covering a livestock specie, a domestic animal specie, and an exotic specie. This year's chosen animals are: broiler chickens (meat chickens), police dogs, and giraffes housed in zoos. In each scenario, we will be watching a Powerpoint presentation illustrating two constructed scenarios and we are asked to compare/contrast the advantages and challenges in both settings. As you can imagine, each species has unique considerations and it is important to know alot about each specie and how they naturally act before assessing their housing and environment. After each of these scenarios, we will be asked to give a 3 minute speech to a judge covering our summary of the comparison of the two-settings.

Overall, I am really excited for the competition and I think that it is a great way to teach students how to recognize situations where animals are handled extremely well, and also to identify places in livestock operations, pet environments, and even zoos where changes could be made to improve the well-being of the animal. I for one hope this competition continues to grow and people like myself in the livestock industry can continue to train young professionals to not only understand the technical aspects of food production, but also teach them how to be good stockmen and women as well.

If you would like to find any more information about Michigan State's Animal Welfare competition, please go to: https://www.msu.edu/~zanella/awjc.html for details.

Thanks for reading,


Hyatt Frobose

Thanksgiving Dinner Costs a Little More this Year

A “classic” Thanksgiving dinner for 10 will cost $43.47 this year, up 56 cents, or 1.3%, from 2009, but down $1.14, or 2.6%, from 2008, according to an annual survey conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation (A.F.B.F.). Still, that cost is just $4.34 a person. This is a reminder of how affordable food is in the U.S., especially when compared to per capita income. The cost of three of the thanksgiving dinner items decreased, eight increased and one was unchanged, according to the 12-item survey, which has been conducted annually since 1986. The survey price for a 16-lb turkey was $17.66, down 99 cents from last year. I think the turkey in the picture is much larger than this 16-lb size, but I had to share it anyways. Whoever eats it will likely get enough tryptophan to send them into hibernation. Green peas and frozen stuffing also decreased in price. The price of fresh cranberries remained the same. Items increasing in price included milk, cream, pumpkin pie mix, pie shells, sweet potatoes, rolls, carrots and celery. The cost of miscellaneous ingredients, such as coffee, onions, eggs, sugar, flour, evaporated milk and butter, needed to complete the meal was also considered. The survey, conducted by volunteer shoppers, is "an informal gauge of price trends around the nation,” according to the A.F.B.F.

What was Dr. Temple Grandin up to?

If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you are well aware that we hosted Dr. Temple Grandin on campus at Kansas State University recently. The main lecture, which you can view online here, was given to an overflow crowd in Forum Hall at the Student Union. So overfilled, in fact, that people were filed into the food court and Grand Ballroom to watch the lecture via projection screens.

Besides the main lecture being so full, I feel that Dr. Grandin's impact on campus was very widespread at the multitude of activities we had planned for her. Here are some pictures of what she was up to while visiting Kansas State University. I believe this is a testament to Food For Thought really making the most of our Diversity Programming Committee grant that we received to help facilitate Dr. Grandin's interactions with students and community members of the K-State family! To the best of our ability, we tried to keep track of all the people in attendance at the various lectures and forums. The grand total?

2,451!

That doesn't count the numerous amounts of people who will be viewing the lecture online. Our website crashed the night of the main lecture as over 1000 people tried to log on to view the live feed. We now have the video posted here for your viewing pleasure. Speaking of viewing pleasure...check out these photos!!!

Standing ovation that the crowd gave Dr. Temple Grandin following the first official Upson Lecture in our Food For Thought Upson Lecture Series.

Dr. Grandin being swarmed by a crowd of people. She stuck around after the lecture to visit with people and sign autographs. One young man exclaimed to me, "This was better than any Christmas, she thinks like I do!"

Here is a look inside the overflow Grand Ballroom during the main lecture.

Dr. Grandin even took time to have lunch with our Food For Thought group. We enjoyed the opportunity to discuss our group's goals with such a proactive member of the agriculture industry. We each took a lot out of this session and the food was great too!

If you have ever had a chance to interact with Dr. Grandin, you'll agree with what this photo captured! She has an uncanny sense of humor and we enjoyed it!

Dr. Grandin spoke to a group of architecture students who are working on building plans for an autistism center in the community. She offered insight on different aesthetics in a room or building that can make it more comfortable for people with autism.

The following two pictures are from the open forum held with parents, educators and members in the community interested primarily in speaking with Dr. Grandin about the challenges that autism presents. There were 90 people in attendance at this question and answer session. In the first picture, Miss C, a girl with autism who attended the forum, was talking to Dr. Grandin and getting her advice on learning how to drive.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Pictured below (Back, L-R): Hyatt Frobose, Dr. Dan Thomson, DJ Rezac, Miles Theurer, Garrett Stewart. (Front, L-R): Brandi Buzzard, Dr. Temple Grandin, Tawnya Roenbaugh, Chelsea Good, Tera Rooney, Kiley Stinson. All of our photos were taken by Wrenn Pacheco. Wrenn works at the Beef Cattle Institue with Dr. Dan Thomson and she is an amazing photographer. Go check out her work at www.wrennbirdphotography.com!

If you are interested in contributing to our cause, we have launched a 500 for $500 Campaign to help fund our Upson Lecture Series. We are going to use this series to bring relevant and crowd-gathering speakers to campus. Whenever we have a speaker we will provide a live feed to the internet or DVD copies will be made available to those interested in watching the lectures.

Thanks for checking out our photos of the events!

Tera Rooney

Upson Lecture Series: Dr. Temple Grandin