Road’s End Organics Dairy Free Shells & Chreese

If you can’t or won’t eat anything dairy, yet occasionally want to eat something “cheesy”, there’s a growing number of vegan cheese substitutes available to you. Depending on your expectations, these may satisfy your craving for something cheesy, or they may just be poor imitations of cheese. I think they are all worth a try.

If you are looking for vegan mac and cheese, the best dairy-free substitute I am aware of is Road’s End Organic’s Shells & Chreese. That’s right, “chreese”. Chreese, which sort of tastes like cheese is a mixture of yeast, wheat flour, tapioca starch, mustard powder, garlic powder, onion powder, annatto powder, and salt(no casein or lactose).

It’s pretty easy to prepare. Just pour the contents of the chreese powder mix into a sauce pan with rice milk(or any vegan “milk”), and some oil if you want, and mix it with the already cooked shells at medium heat. Stir thoroughly to make sure the powder is dissolved into the mixture.

Without the rice milk or oil, the shells and chreese is 320 calories per serving(2 servings per package). I love having broccoli on the side. It satisfies my cravings for something “cheese-like”, but it doesn’t taste exactly like cheese. And it doesn’t trigger my dairy allergy, a huge plus. I always add a lot of cayenne pepper powder, and garlic powder to improve its taste.

Scurvy is still with us

Lemons are a good source of vitamin C. Wikipedia, Karwath

Beriberi. Pellagra. Scurvy. These nutritional deficiency diseases have such short, pithy names, it should be difficult to forget them. But forget them we have, since in the developed world they are relatively uncommon nowadays. On the other hand, they are still common in the developing world.

Scurvy, which is caused by lack of vitamin C, used to be much more common in the west. Sailors at sea seemed to be particularly prone to getting scurvy, some even dying from it, for reasons not well understood centuries ago. Scurvy is characterized by bleeding gums, spots on the skin, fever, weakness, and depression. These symptoms result from the body’s inability to produce collagen, which requires vitamin C(ascorbic acid) to be synthesized. Collagen is an important protein that is the main building block of the body’s connective tissues.

It was sometimes mistakenly thought that scurvy was a contagious disease, until it became clear that there was something missing from the sailor’s standard diet of dried meat, dried fish, and grain. Simply adding fresh fruits and vegetables to their diet, in particular citrus fruits, seemed to cure scurvy, though they didn’t know why.

The Royal Navy’s solution in the early 19th century was to add lemon or lime juice to their sailor’s daily ration of watered down rum(grog). This is how the word “limey“, the derogatory word for people from Britain originated. Many other countries soon followed the British example(though some used sauerkraut instead of citrus juice), thereby reducing scurvy cases among seamen.

It wasn’t until the 1930s that scientists isolated and identified the mysterious “anti-scorbotic” factor(the factor that prevents scurvy), vitamin C. Studying the history of nutrition and nutritional deficiency diseases in particular is a great way to see how science works.

Nowadays scurvy is pretty rare in the U.S, but it is more common among certain subgroups like the elderly and homeless drug addicts. According to the Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, Arizona, in Scurvy: a disease almost forgotten(2006):

RESULTS:

In addition to our patient, seven of 11 patients whose records in the institutional database mentioned vitamin C deficiency were women. The age ranged from a neonate to 77 years (mean, 48 years). The most common associated causes were concomitant gastrointestinal disease, poor dentition, food faddism, and alcoholism. Vitamin or mineral deficiencies other than vitamin C deficiency were also found in our patients who had scurvy. The most common symptoms were bruising, arthralgias, or joint swelling. The most common signs were pedal edema, bruising, or mucosal changes. Four patients had vague symptoms of myalgias and fatigue without classic findings, and five had concomitant nutritional deficiencies. Follow-up available for six of 12 patients treated by vitamin C supplementation showed complete resolution of symptoms in five.

CONCLUSIONS:

Patients with scurvy may present with classic symptoms and signs or with nonspecific clinical symptoms and an absence of diagnostically suggestive physical findings. Concomitant deficiency states occur not uncommonly. Taking a thorough dietary history and measuring serum ascorbic acid levels should be considered for patients with classic signs and symptoms, nonspecific musculoskeletal complaints, or other vitamin or mineral deficiencies.

In other words, scurvy hasn’t been completely eradicated, and we should be on the lookout for symptoms of it in the elderly who are eating poorly. This doesn’t mean that the elderly or you should be taking vitamin C supplements, though taking the occasional multivitamin for insurance probably won’t hurt.

Drinking orange juice or eating enough fruits and vegetables will give you well beyond the 60 mg of vitamin C we need to prevent scurvy. However, there’s no good reason to mega-dose with vitamin C, or any other nutrient for that matter.