4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL February 24, 2016
O PINION
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Bravo, Barrell
I’d like to express my appre-
ciation to Pete Barrell, Com-
munity Services Director for
the City of Cottage Grove. My
understanding is that he wrote
the grant that brought the Ex-
ploring Human Origins Exhibit
from the Smithsonian to Cot-
tage Grove. This traveling ex-
hibit will only stop in 19 loca-
tions around the country, and
thanks to Pete’s efforts, Cottage
Grove is one of those places.
Having such a display in our li-
brary, even for a short time, is
a big accomplishment and one
that our community should take
notice of. Good job and con-
gratulations to Pete, the library
staff and everyone else involved
in bringing the Smithsonian to
Cottage Grove.
Travis Palmer
Executive Director,
Cottage Grove Area Chamber
of Commerce
We have to be on
the same side
Ranchers used to be heroes;
now some of our government
and their agencies call them ter-
rorists. What a shame — shame
on you. I would say that if you
are going to go against your
own people, that’s a crime.
The Bureau of Land Manage-
ment and other agencies have
been forming their own SWAT
teams since the current admin-
istration has been in the White
House, and maybe longer than
that. National Guard and po-
lice, we have to be on the same
side, as we are the people that
should push our government
back when they go against our
Constitution and our religious
beliefs.
If you don’t think there is a
very serious problem in this
country with our government,
then you too are the problem.
Stand together as one; when
we stand divided we lose. in
the end God wins. If you vote
for Bernie or Hillary, then you
want more of the same and
much worse. Inform yourself,
educate yourself before you
vote. Both parties are not what
they used to be. They are so-
cialist and worse.
Mike Ritter
Cottage Grove
Offbeat Oregon History
Benton County lad became the
'Nicola Tesla of Oregon'
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
probably would not have gone down
like it did. In fact, it might never have
gone down at all.
But, of course, Led Zeppelin jokes
aside, who’s ever heard of an all-metal
airship?
Well — 12 years before the Hinden-
burg disaster put an end to the era of
luxury airship travel, an Oregon inven-
tor fi led for a patent on one. And as the
“Roaring Twenties” drew to a close,
he was making plans to revolutionize
the industry — with an all-aluminum
airship called the City of Glendale.
His plans didn’t fail nearly as cata-
strophically as did the Hindenburg,
but they did fail. A combination of a
major engineering oversight and the
onset of the Great Depression left his
dreams of an airship empire, and his
fortune, in ruins. And the Zeppelin
company never got the chance — as
it might otherwise have done — to li-
A
lmost everyone has seen the
gripping footage of the great
zeppelin Hindenburg falling fl aming
out of the gray skies of New Jersey in
1937, crushing as it fell the dreams of
everyone who had hoped to see air-
ships developed as a regular means of
travel.
But most people don’t realize the
reason for the Hindenburg’s fi ery de-
struction wasn’t the hydrogen with
which it was fi lled — or, rather, not
entirely so. Whether the fatal fi re was
sparked by burning hydrogen or not,
the airship would not have exploded as
it did — and, indeed, might not have
been destroyed at all — if its fabric
skin had not been vulnerable to fi re.
In other words, if the Hindenburg
had been built entirely of metal, it
cense his patents when it built the ill-
fated LZ-129 Hindenburg.
Here’s the story:
Thomas Benton Slate was born
in the tiny hamlet of Tangent, near
the Calapooia River in western Linn
County, and raised in the almost-as-
tiny hamlet of Alsea, tucked into the
Coast Range west of Corvallis.
During the First World War, Slate’s
engineering skills were pressed into
service in designing aircraft technol-
ogy for the Allies; it was a time he
later referred to as “the highlight of
my inventive career.”
That, as you’ll soon see, was say-
ing something. Thomas B. Slate was,
in many ways, Oregon’s own Nicola
Tesla.
After the war, Slate built what may
have actually been the world’s fi rst
motor home: a large box perched
on the spindly, sagging chassis of a
Ford TT one-ton truck. He called it a
“Housecar,” and in it, he and his fam-
ily sallied forth for a cross-country
road trip.
In the early 1920s, Slate moved out
to the East Coast, where he founded a
company called “DryIce.” The invet-
erate tinkerer had developed a cost-ef-
fective method for making frozen car-
bon dioxide — dry ice — and, after
making the rounds of investors and
gathering together the necessary back-
ing, he’d gone into business.
That business, as you’ve no doubt
gathered, was a big success, as evi-
denced by the fact that the name of
Slate’s company is our generic term
for CO2 ice today. When Slate sold
out and came back to the West Coast,
he was a wealthy man. And he was
ready to put some of his most radical
and imaginative ideas to the test: ideas
that had developed out of those short,
productive years as an aeronautical
engineer during the Great War.
Slate settled with his family in the
city of Glendale, Calif., and, with his
brothers Grover and Frank, went into
business as the Slate Aircraft Co. The
new outfi t leased a piece of land at the
Glendale Airport and got busy bring-
ing Slate’s most outré, futuristic vi-
sions into concrete reality there.
Slate had, in his mind and in the
four patents that he’d fi led, completely
re-imagined airship travel. The way he
saw it, airships as they existed in the
early 1920s had several severe limita-
tions, which would, he felt, keep them
from ever becoming commercially vi-
able:
First, they were full of hydrogen, an
explosive gas. This could be remedied
by fi lling them with helium, which
was inert; but helium wasn’t nearly as
buoyant, and it was terrifi cally expen-
sive — far too expensive to be used
commercially in airships.
Secondly, they required enormous
ground infrastructure — mooring
masts hundreds of feet tall and built
strong enough to be reefed on, refuel-
ing apparatus, veritable armies of men
who had to run about catching hold
of ground lines and securing them to
winches and guiding their landing ap-
proach.
The third problem that Slate saw
with 1920s airships was their vulner-
ability to heavy weather. It took only
a relatively minor storm to turn an air-
ship journey from the lap of luxury
into the most terrifying experience this
side of an ocean liner in a hurricane.
Slate thought he had an answer to
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 5A
Do vegetables lose nutritional value when we cook them?
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
E
very day, we should eat a
combination of raw and
cooked vegetables, because the
effects of cooking are different
depending on which nutrients
we’re talking about.
Cooking modifi es the physi-
cal and chemical properties of
foods. It causes degradation or
leaching of certain nutrients and
phytochemicals, but also soft-
ens cell walls and other food
matrix components, facilitating
the extraction and absorption of
others.
Many nutrients are damaged
by heat, light or oxygen. Vita-
min C appears to be the nutri-
ent most vulnerable to cooking;
about 30 percent of vitamin
C in leafy greens is destroyed
by cooking (if cooking water
is consumed, as in cooking a
soup). Other nutrients degraded
by heat are folate, other B vita-
mins, and phenol antioxidants.
Minerals and fat-soluble vita-
mins (A, D, E, and K) are more
stable in heated conditions.
Cruciferous vegetables con-
tain valuable nutrients called
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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glucosinolates, which are con-
verted to cancer-fi ghting iso-
thiocyanates (ITCs) when the
plant cells are broken up by
chopping or chewing. Impor-
tantly, heat inactivates the en-
zyme (myrosinase) that drives
this conversion, so chopping
(preferably blending) these veg-
etables before cooking them is
important. Blending the raw
greens and then adding them to
a soup of stew is most conserv-
ing of ITCs. After that, steam-
ing—compared to stir-frying,
boiling and microwaving—re-
sulted in the smallest gluco-
sinate losses in broccoli, but the
less it is cooked the better. Re-
member though that the myrosi-
nase is deactivated by heat, so in
order to produce more isothio-
cycanates from the remaining
glucosinolates after cooking, eat
some raw cruciferous with that
meal or add some raw crucifer-
ous (such as shredded cabbage)
to the cooked greens.
Carotenoids, such as alpha-
carotene, beta-carotene and ly-
copene are not only heat stable
but actually more absorbable
once foods are cooked. Carot-
enoids are inside the plant cells,
embedded in the matrix of the
food, and some of the cellular
structure must be mechanically
disrupted (such as by blending
or heating) to make the carot-
enoids extractable by the diges-
tive system. Vitamin E fractions
from plant foods have also been
reported to be more bioacces-
sible after heating. A study on
raw foodists found that lyco-
pene status was low without
eating any cooked foods. Fat in-
take in that study was associated
with better plasma carotenoid
status—adding fat is a way to
improve carotenoid absorption
from raw vegetables. One study
measured alpha-carotene, beta-
carotene and lycopene in the
blood after subjects ate salads
topped with fat-free dressing, or
dressings containing either six
or 28 grams of fat. Carotenoid
absorption was negligible from
the salad with fat-free dressing
and high from the fat-contain-
ing dressings. Salad dressings
made by blending nuts and
seeds (instead of using oil) are
the healthiest.
Some nutrient loss occurs
when fresh foods are stored.
Produce that has been shipped
a long distance will likely have
less nutritional value than the
same produce bought locally.
Frozen vegetables do have low-
er levels of vitamin C, thiamin,
ribofl avin and niacin loss due to
the blanching step of the freez-
ing process. However, once the
food is frozen, nutrient losses
due to storage slow down sub-
stantially. Plus, frozen vegeta-
bles are picked fresh and frozen
soon after, preserving a large
proportion of the nutrients. For
frozen fruits, there is minimal
loss of polyphenol antioxidants
(such as fl avonoids) because
fruits are not blanched before
they are frozen.
Sometimes nutrients are not
destroyed by heat but can be lost
in the cooking water if boiling
or steaming—this is why soups
are a good cooking method for
vegetables, as long as the veg-
etables are not overcooked.
Remember to avoid high-heat
dry cooking and browning to
prevent the formation of acryl-
amide—a possible carcinogen
formed in cooked starchy foods.
A good general guideline to
maximize nutrient quantity and
variety is to eat a large variety
of raw and gently cooked veg-
etables—large daily salads plus
vegetable-bean soups or stews,
or vegetables cooked in a wok
with water or steamed for only
10 minutes.
Remember—Eat a large
green salad, containing a vari-
ety of raw vegetables, with a nut
and seed based dressing at least
once a day.
Suggested healthy cooking
methods for vegetables
Steam greens in a wok alter-
nating covering and stirring.
Steam greens in a steamer for
10 minutes or less
Halve artichokes up the mid-
dle and steam for 18—20 min-
utes
Boil sweet potatoes, cook car-
rots and parsnips in soups and
stews
Bake hard squashes at a low
oven temperature (325° F) for
one hour
Wok or steam mushrooms, or
add to soups and stews
Puree raw cruciferous greens,
shallots and onions before add-
ing to soups and stews
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New York
Times best-selling author and a
family physician specializing in
lifestyle and nutritional medi-
cine. Visit his informative web-
site at DrFuhrman.com. Submit
your questions and comments
about this column directly to
newsquestions@drfuhrman.
com.
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