Everybody is talking about ice cream.

Photo by Mo

Personally, I think Ice Cream may be the most over rated food, but I still find myself indulging every now and then.

And so does the rest of the United States with annual sales exceeding $21 billion. But why let the corporates have all the fun.

You can make your own!

Make Vanilla Ice Cream

Photo by Chris Metcalf

Ice Cream Ingredients

• 1 cup Milk
• Pinch of Salt
• 3/4 Cup Sugar
• 2 cups Heavy Cream
• 1 Vanilla Bean, split and scraped
• 5 egg yolks

Procedure

1. Combine the milk, sugar and salt and heat.
2. Remove the bean from the vanilla; either by snipping one end and running your finger along the hull as if where a toothpaste tube or but slicing the bean with a paring knife down the entire length and extracting it. Add the removed vanilla into the milk.
3. Mix your egg yolk, and gradually add some of the warmed milk while string to combine yolks with the milk.
4. Return milk and yolks to heat and continue to cook of low heat, constantly stirring to avoid scorching, until thick enough to coat on spoon.
5. Strain into the heavy cream.
6. Chill, with the remainder of the vanilla bean to allow for the remaining to be absorbed.
7. Remove the bean a let freeze in cream maker.

Make Ice Cream with out a Machine

1. Prepare your ice cream mixture. (Steps 1-6 above)
2. Pour mixture into a chilled durable bowl and place in the freezer.
3. Let freeze for about 45 minutes. You should see the edges start to form large cyrstals.
4. If so remove and mix thouroghly with a wisk, breaking up all the frozen parts, and return to freezer.
5. Every half hour or so recheck and rewisk, quite vigioursly, for 2-3 hours. You will want to break up as much of the crystals as possible to get a nice smooth and creamy result.

During conversation yesterday an interesting question arose; Why put Vitamin D in milk instead of other foods? If Vitamin D is added as a dietary supplement than why put it in foods that are more commonly consumed, like hamburger buns or water.

What is Vitamin D?

Vitamin D is a fat soluble prohormone. It is not really a vitamin for it is generated within the body, but it is only known to be derived with the presence of a form a UV light.  Prohormones have no hormonal effect in themselves but will be converted by the body into an active hormone. In the case of Vitamin D, it is converted into active 1,25-D in the second of two hydroxylations in the body, first in the liver and than in the kidney. Vitamin D₃, one of the two major forms of Vitamin D, is produced in the skin when exposed to ultraviolet B radiation in sunlight.

Vitamin D in Humans

Vitamin D is essential in the body and affects many organ systems. In humans, it promotes bone formation, stimulates activity in the immune system, stimulates insulin production, as well as performing its vital functions in the Intestines and Kidneys.

Deficiency.  The classic outcomes of the absence of vitamin D or lack of sunlight exposure will lead to the bone disease called rickets in children or osteomalacia in adults.

What does all this have to do with milk?

Well simply, the body can not break down calcium as efficiently without Vitamin D and stimulates increased absorption of calcium from the small intestine. Without adequate vitamin D, the body absorbs no more than 15 percent of dietary calcium. With sufficient vitamin D, calcium absorption increases to 30 percent and, during pregnancy or lactation and in periods of growth, absorption can approach 80 percent.

Milk is high in calcium. Vitamin D helps ingest calcium.

It comes down to the calcium ingestion. Since it is conceived that a large population of humans suffer from Vitamin D deficiency, it was proposed as a supplement in the very food that would need it the most.

Does it need to be there?

This question is something of what has been consuming my recent thoughts. The necessity of programs. This addition to milk is somewhat of a quick fix. What it is doing is not solving the problem but curing the effects. These programs seem to be overwhelmingly present in our society, and in my opinion it is what is pulling us down. Limiting us.

What do you think?