Ugg...that Davis book and his lack of knowledge about horticulture/crop production. He may have a handle on health, but he's missing a lot when it comes to crop development. First, Dr. Davis is a medical doctor with no background in horticulture. Second, the "mutant" wheat he goes on about is 1- not created by Monsanto (it is BASF and some educational institutions) 2- it's Clearfield wheat which is naturally resistant to certain herbicides early in it's growth by this forced chemical mutation hybrid 3- Clearfield varieties are planted on about 1m acres...out of the 62m acres of wheat planted. Third, the mutant genes came from a French wheat variety called 'Fidel' which was naturally resistant to a specific class of herbicides, but was not a commercially viable variety in the US. The crossing process used was used to speed up crossing these traits, not because it wouldn't be able to be done naturally. Texas A&M actually did most of the heavy work on this cross in conjunction with BASF. Also, this didn't happen til the late 1980s and it didn't hit the market til the mid/late-1990s. Fourth, his notions about wheat protein diversity are off base. His claim that modern wheat varieties only contain 10-15% protein compared to older varieties is just bunk. Variation from 7-25% are quite common in older varieties and are all over the place. His claim that wheat was "left alone" for 200+ years up until the 1940s by breeders is simply bunk. Fifth, Monsanto isn't the beginning, nor end of the world, but it seems to be the only corporation some people are aware of in the world. Wheat is a complex crop cultivated over many thousands of years for different purposes. From a genetic point of view there are diploid (2 sets of chromosomes), tetraploid (4 sets of chromosomes), and hexaploid (6 sets of chromosomes) varieties out in the wild before science even had the means to determine chromosome content...much less mess with them. The genetic diversity is wide in scope I can't speak on the medical stuff he claims...such as linking wheat consumption to autism and schizophrenia, though there's a lot of people upset about those claims, too.

I keep a small 4 litre pail by the kitchen sink. All of my coffee grounds, egg shells, veggie scraps, mouldy bread and other non dairy, non meat scraps go in there. I only put a tiny amount of this into my worm bin at a rate that they can handle. The rest goes outside to the compost bin at least every week. I never store food for the worms as there is always an endless supply of fresh scraps for them. Since I use small pieces of corrugated cardboard for bedding, the worms will survive for months and months just on their bedding alone. The worms don't actually eat the bedding and compost scraps; they feed on the mould, fungus and other organisms that are breaking down the bedding and the kitchen scraps. I add a bit of powdered limestone to the bedding as the worms use this "grit" to grind up their food. (Red wigglers don't have teeth for chewing). The limestone also helps to neutralise acids in the worm bin. I do NOT bring food for the worms back in from the outdoor compost pile as this can be a source of some nasties that I don't want inside my home or in my worm bin. At the first "whiff" of rotting material (like the inside of your garbage can on a hot day), my pail of kitchen scraps goes outside to the compost pile. If this smell should ever come from my worm barrel, it means I'm feeding them too much and the moisture content is too high. It's better that the worms have too little food as opposed to too much. The key thing to me is the temperature and the moisture level. I think that the commonly used phrase, that " A worm can eat it's own weight in food scraps every day" is somewhat misleading. Most vegetable scraps are mostly water and the idea that one pound of worms will eat one pound of lettuce (for example) in a day does not hold water ( Yes...... pun intended). Most of the vegetable matter simply loses it's water content into the bedding and to evaporation. Besides, it takes several days for the scraps to decompose to the point where there is food in a form that the worms can process (digest).

Abt in Glenview?

Lord, I hope Twinkie doesn't hear this. He talks all the time about how crazy people are getting and how you could just be sitting in a restaurant and somebody come in and start shooting. (Which is true but I try to downplay it.) There's no sense worrying about it all the time. On the other hand, it DOES happen and it sure is horrible when it does. Those poor families - to have to be notified that their relatives were just out minding their own business, doing nothing wrong, and now they'll never come home!