Why Cider (Real Cider) Can Be the Healthiest Form of Alcohol

(Below is an excerpt from a lecture at UVM School of Medicine, 2020)

Preface:

Alcohol is not a healthy thing -- you know that, I know that -- so let’s start there. The fact is, frequent consumption of alcohol in medium amounts or as occasional binge drinking (large doses) can damage the liver, harm the kidneys and pancreas, destroy gut health, weaken the immune system, and can contribute to mental illness… so , YES, alcohol is dangerous! Let it be known that I think alcohol is not good for you.

But, alcohol can also be a beneficial thing in many circumstances. There’s a window in which it can play a positive roll in human health and in society if the negative impacts of alcohol can be contained. Alcohol is known to temporarily relax people in times immediate grief or stress (“Line ‘em up, Sam”), it can help in society-building, both on the local and macro scale (as in the Irish Pub or Greek symposium), and it can inspire creativity (as in everything Hemingway or Fitzgerald ever wrote.) I’m just saying… alcohol has it’s place.

And then there’s “the French argument”, which defends daily red wine consumption as specifically good for your health. They claim it’s the main reason they, as a nation, have lower heart problems than most. They say the grape’s natural phytonutrients lay waiting in an old bottle of wine just as they would in the fresh fruit itself. And when these phytonutrients (which are specific only to wine grapes not table grapes) are passed to the human body they help attack “bad cholesterol” in the blood.

I’m not going to restate the French argument but you can read the common explanations and research on phytoalexins, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoalexin), and specifically resveratrol, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol) to see why many people think that if a plant has a strong immune response then that beneficial quality is then transferred to humans after we consume the plant’s fruit. Likewise, you can also see the logic in the argument that if a plant has a weak immune defense (genetic), or if the plant’s immune system is repressed or controlled by human intervention (environmental), then the nutritional value of that plant will be reduced for humans.

The pivotal condition for all of this is the plant’s immune response, a form of natural intelligence which has systematically been breed out of cultivated plants over the past 150 years (except some wine fruits), and this is why it’s absolutely crucial cider detached itself from existing apple farms and the predominant cultivation methods.  

Summary Statement:

Factoring the above pro-alcohol arguments I still say, “alcohol ain’t good for you” but I will argue (as I tried to do at UVM) that if cider fruit is grown correctly*, the fermented drink has the potential to be the healthiest of all common forms of alcohol -- healthier than even French red wines!

I think this because (1) real cider has less alcohol than it’s only other healthy rival, red wine; but also (2), if the right apples were selected (genetic varieties), and (3) if they were grown the right way (such as wild-simulated, or as I call it, “uncultivation”), then these particular “cider-apples” will express all the properties that the French espouse in their grapes, and maybe more. These apples (which, I'm sorry to tell you, are all but absent in 99.999% of all the cider made in America) deliver infinitely greater sums of tannin and polyphenols, more nutrients and phytonutrients (like anti-oxidants), and more beneficial acids and minerals (like Vitamin C and Vitamin E.) In short, they are the exact opposite of the kinds of apples grown on modern apple farms and purchased in stores.   

Plus, if the person making the cider does not** add sulfites, sorbate, sugars, commercial yeast strains (which are also cultured on GMO corn), or run the juice through sterile-filter (stripping out whatever nutrients were left), then the finished drink can potentially remain health-positive despite the presence of alcohol. (Note that I’m talking about fully fermented ciders. Ciders with partial sweetness, or ciders that are chapitalized with foreign sweeteners, produce a hypoglycemic effect, disrupting the body’s transfer of energy and mental function, and are likely a source of “wine headaches.”)

Ultimately, I will show that when cider-farming focuses on the health of the fruit first (it’s nutritional capabilities, not the superficial health of the tree) then the cider from those apples will switch from being health-negative to health-positive. But interestingly, I will also show that a happy consequence of that switch is the monumentally better taste the cider has. Or said concisely: Cider’s taste and health potentials are intertwined.

This is all but absent in modern cider and apple farming given that customer patronage is what governs agriculture (all of agriculture, not just of apples.) Customers need to understand the full scope of cultivation options and farmers need to fully disclose their particular practices, neither of which happen beyond the surface level. Later, I will detail the obstacles we face when trying to reverse the trajectory of unhealthy cultivation, including transparency and customer participation.

The above graph was published in 2013 by the NY Times as apart of Jo Robinson's article, "Breeding the Nutrition Out of Food." The notes in black are clarifications I made to illustrate the trajectory of apple agriculture.  

Note about this essay: It's currently about 20 pages long but I consider it a "start." Last winter while preparing my talk at UVM Medical Center I realized it would take volumes to bring consumers up to speed on what's going on in apple farming and cider making. Even among apple farming professionals this understanding is almost completely absent (they either except the wisdom of progressivism or they don't feel it's possible to turn back now.) 

Rather than posting this paper all at once I’m going to post it in installments or, if you can link me to the right agent, I’d be happy to craft it for the appropriate publication. This is all to be continued…   

The Art of Blending Cider is a LOT like Color Relations to a Painter

The following color chart is designed as an aid to help map taste properties for the art of blending cider. The first chart is for your printing at blending time. The second chart is an example I made using the apples (or ciders) from my orchard in lower New York State.
Click on the images for enlargement or email: AaronBurrCider@gmail.com if you would like me me to send the PDF file. (I'm very slow at responding but I will.)

Notes: Painters know the importance of "COMPLIMENTARY COLORS" and if you are going to use this chart in the art of blending this is the most important skill to learn and practice. The complimentary color is the opposite of the primary color. This color is a secondary color. Green is the opposite color of red; Orange is the opposite of blue,  Purple is the opposite of yellow. These "opposite colors" create contrasting poles for finding balance. For example, if you have a lot of red in a painting, green colors will counteract the "redness." Similarly, if you have too much acid in a cider, bittersweets will offer balance. (This is why old-timers always include crab-apples in ciders made from conventional eating apples.)
Once you get a feel for blending colors and using color-relations you will be on your way to constructing a painting. This is true for cider and wine blending too. Hope this helps.

Cultivated and Uncultivated

Let me sum it up for you: The environment is what adjusts in a cultivated setting, whereas it’s the species that must adjust in an “uncultivated” setting. In other words, mankind either stacks the deck, changes the environment, to advantage the crop and themselves (since human culture is our greatest cultivation), or… the crop must adjust to the environment in order to survive. It’s that simple. 
(Check out this slide show from my series of talks to promote my book #uncultivated, published by #chelseagreen.)

 

Now, the complicated part to all this, and where politics comes in, is figuring out what’s ultimately best for the crop, the environment, and for us (which includes our economy) because, they are all ALL related in a push-and-pull kind of way! (NOTE: every farmer adapts a “policy” for how to deal with adversity. Make no mistake about it, this policy is 100% related to personal politics and cultural politics.)

For example, if you, as a pro-active consumer want to support a natural farm policy (which, BTW, is an oxymoron, farming can only be "more natural" or "less natural") then chances are you have a different cultural politic than the people who lean toward “conventional agriculture” which intervenes greatly to produce the majority of our foods. (Fun-fact: nine times out of ten, “organically-grown” crops are also a form of high-intervention agriculture. There’s “good organic” and “bad organic” but consumers rarely bother to align their personal policies with which one.) What I’m saying here is this: Do customers and farmers align their health politics, their voting politics, their food-consumption politics and their environmental politics? Or, is it all superficial?… “Just tell me it’s natural and I’ll support it.” I’m sorry, but you are having to do better than that. If you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth you are going to have to lawyer-up and ask a lot of questions. It’s going to be a fight if you truly want to match your politics.

Here’s a confession: I wrote the book Uncultivated (shameless pitch here to buy it or listen to it on Audible) because I am a critic of culture. (If you haven’t read my book then you might brush past the fact culture, as in “high-culture”, and cultivation, as in “agriculture” share the same roots.) The book is an exposé! As an agricultural-insider I know that there’s a major disconnect between what customers think they are buying and what they’re actually buying. And it’s soooo easy to “man”ipulate in this situation! What is “local”, for instance, is very often just the local re-selling of not-so-local produce, like when a farmer stands in front of crops at the farmer’s market to suggest he/she was the one to grow it. (I’m one of those people who consider purposely omitted information a lie.)

But as a critic I also don’t want to seem embittered. To be a critic is to love something. No one, for example, and I do mean NO ONE, loves art more than an art critic. So in the book I tried to temper my exposé with positive experiences. It’s true, in this environment of fear, distrust and partisan politics we are, more than ever!, in need of positive examples. So let me offer this to you: The apple tree gets it’s ass kicked by nature. They die, they get diseases, they lose out… they are the underdog. But they keep coming back and finding ways of adjusting to the situation. Even when farmers try to eradicate wild apples (as they often do) the apple tree keeps popping up again in new locations. Life is resilient. 

AG and Health Evolution

The Western Relationship to the Land

Agriculture is a relationship.

It’s a relationship between Man and Nature.

Or, if you want to be specific, it's a relationship between farmers with a particular land and crop.

In this case: it's apples, apple trees, and the apple farmer's connection to a place. 

Ok, so agriculture is a relationship, we've covered that.

But what do we know about relationships and how do the fundamental properties of relationships appear in agriculture? 

One universal property of relationships is the "economy of care."

This economy is easiest seen in that ole quantity-versus-quality tension but it's a simple rule: 
The quantity of relationships you have directly effects the time and concern (the care) you are able to give. 

For instance: If a doctor is limited to 10 patients per day the the doctor will budget time and concern per those 10 patients (budget and economy are synonyms.) But if the hospital system tells the doctor they must see 100 patients in a day then the amount of time and care will be diluted. Things will get overlooked, patients will feel cheated and mistakes will happen. 

Same is true for the teacher/ student relationship and same is true with farmer-to-land relationships 

There is NO DOUBT stretching the quantity effects the quality of relationships. 

And yet every farmer and business owner I know thinks they'd be more successful if only they could scale up their production. 

Like lemmings to the ocean, we are chasing an illusion that completely contradicts the irrefutable laws of relationships. 

Someone else's financial numbers (the illusion) leads us, the herd, to the sea ignoring the very qualities, the intimacy, of what lies right there beneath our feet. 

I'm no exception. It's bred in me too.

"Get more land, plant more trees, incorporate crops harvested from other farms into our operation..."

This knee-jerk reaction is bred into us by a culture that is incurably progressivist (and by progressivist I mean philosophically: We are a people who assume good things happen if we just keep pushing in this direction. Progressivism is a way of being "based on the idea of progress in which advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition" - straight from the dictionary) 

My point is, western people have all the wrong instincts. By now we should've proven to ourselves we're unfit to lead this planet. It's time just to stop moving, stop growing, and look down. Care.