Anyone eating corn for nutrition...be it now or 100 years ago...is "doing nutrition wrong." It's never been a nutrient-dense food as far as vitamins go, though it does have some nutrient quality in the way of carbs and vitamin B. It's a minor, yet noticeable, vitamin A+C contributor to nutrition. Also, the notion that our lines of supersweet corn came from radioactive/mutating experiments is grossly off the mark. Most come from lines of natural selection and breeding by John Laughnan at UI working with a gene most other breeders wouldn't touch. It is a total bastardization of John Laughnan's work (who, unlike what was stated WAS a plant breeder and botanist at U.Illinois) to claim he was by-chance poking around human-mutated "radioactive" corn to make supersweets happen. His work on the sh2 gene is one of the most important breeding pushes in the line of sweet corn. His crossses with Golden Cross Bantam (not to be confused with Golden Bantam which has been around since the early 1900s) for enhanced sweetness are his babies and it was developed with much resistance from his peers because they didn't see the value of the sh2 gene, which usually caused undesirable shrived kernels (because of less starch content and higher sugar content). One of his crosses, Illini Chief, is still sold by Burpee (who developed the initial Golden Bantam, btw), Shumway, and a few other seed sellers over 50 years after it first hit the market. Until his research into this gene it was believed to be a gene that led to inferior product rather than a line worth investigating. When his work led to incorporating the sh2 gene into corn which can produce full/plump kernel cobs, people paid attention. Btw, this was not a 1959 discovery, as stated by the author...he published his initial work on the sh2 gene as a breeding gene worth investigating in 1953 and his work started years earlier. I have no idea where he/she got her information on Dr. Laughnan from, but he/she should check that source again. John Laughnan is a bit of a hero to many in the breeding industry. This kinda pokes me wrong a bit personally to see his name/work trashed like this...and his work cheapened to being some fool who stumbled upon his discovery. It's so off the mark it's insulting. He was far ahead of his time given that supersweets took another 1-2 decades to even become popular in breeding. His work with developing the sh2 gene from a shriveled-kernel "undesirable" gene into a farmer/consumer market changer ranks right up there with Lamborn and Parker's work with the sugar snap pea that led to the "modern" sugar snap we've enjoyed since the 1970s. It was a game changer that went ignored for far too long given the long cultivation history of the plant(s). This post was edited by nc-crn on Sun, May 26, 13 at 20:56

The plant material deteriorating uses up essential nutrients so unless you feed the living plants a bit more than enough there wouldn't likely be enough for the duckweed. The only thing affected by mosquito dunks are mosquito larva and black flies.

The there's the pretty-much-opposite approach to the usual pyramid: plenty of protein and fat. I know you said you're not interested in the paleo diet, but so many people tell me they feel better on it, and have much more energy. I could sure use that, but I don't think this diet would be for me, because I love carbohydrates and wouldn't be happy without them. But. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are back east to visit, and I just heard a whole lot about how much better this works and why. She has a degree in food science and actually researches the stuff in the footnotes of all the books. I myself don't want to think that much about my food, but it is kind of impressive to listen to all the stuff she says has been studied. At dinner they were pouring cream on everything while she told me she lost 20 pounds without trying.

I looked at the Innova, Ziwi, and Pitcairn(sp) information. Since I do not have cats, I did not look there. the two websites simply say what every other dog food manufacturer says---we do it better, use better ingredients and are safer than any other manufacturer. (They both use grains, BTW) There is nothing abou poisoning by products or any other threat. the Pitcairns web site is best summed up by this paragraph---- "ANHC was founded by Richard Pitcairn, DVM, in 1986 as a clinical and teaching center for the understanding and use of homeopathic medicine in the treatment of disease. We also emphasize the use of excellent nutrition using home-prepared & raw foods." No telling what stories they tell to convince people of the horrors of using pmanufactured foods.