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diet frustration!

Talk about bird illnesses and other bird health related issues. Seeds, pellets, fruits, vegetables and more. Discuss what to feed your birds and in what quantity. Share your recipe ideas.

Re: diet frustration!

Postby Greg » Tue Dec 29, 2015 11:56 pm

DanaandPod wrote:I'll dehydrate banana chips as foraging treats. How long can dehydrated foods keep for?

Banana chips keep for months if they are kept in the fridge and are dehydrated until crispy. If they are still chewy, they only last for weeks. If they are crunchy and you have them in foraging treats they should last for at least a month. I dehydrate bananas a lot, my wife and I munch on them a lot too. We keep everything we dehydrate in the fridge. We also do kale chips and the parrots all will eat them, even the ones that wont eat fresh Kale.
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby Greg » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:40 am

DanaandPod wrote:What is birdie bread typically used as? A treat? I'd like link to a recipe please.


It is used as a treat for some, I use it to get more nutrition into my parrots. This is a link to my favorite recipe. There are a lot of veggies and fruits in it and very healthy flours. The recipe is for baking, but I have dehydrated it at times and it works that way too.

https://thehappycockatoo.wordpress.com/ ... de-treats/
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby Pajarita » Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:56 am

Sound more like a giant cookie than bread (no leavening agent).

I use a bread machine and throw everything in it at night before I go to sleep and have freshly baked bread already cooled for the birds in the morning. You don't really need a specific recipe because the birds don't care if it comes out to dense, too dry, too moist or too anything, they like it anyway but to give you an idea, I use about 4 or 5 cups of 'dry' - for example, 2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 cup of coarse corn meal, 1 cup of steel cut oats (rolled oats or even oatmeal) and 1/2 to 1 cup of whatever other flour catches my fancy at the time (could be spelt, could be rice, could be whatever -I don't use buckwheat since one of my parrots started plucking when I added it to the gloop -I don't know if it was coincidence or not but, just in case...). To this I add one envelope of dry yeast (yeast has nutritional value while baking powder does not), grated carrots, mashed sweet potatoes, maybe grated zucchini, orange or grape juice to moisten enough for kneading and whatever goodies I have handy -could be raisins, chopped dates, currants, chopped figs, sweet corn, sweet peas, naturally dried organic apple chips, etc. Set the machine to whole wheat bread, go to bed and in the morning, voila! fresh birdy bread! They love it and know the word 'Pan' for it and go crazy when I tell them they are having it :lol:
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby liz » Wed Dec 30, 2015 12:27 pm

You have to be careful with dried fruit. A lot of it has sugar added. Most dry veggies have a preservative added. I put my old lady glasses on and read everything.
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby seagoatdeb » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:57 pm

liz wrote:You have to be careful with dried fruit. A lot of it has sugar added. Most dry veggies have a preservative added. I put my old lady glasses on and read everything.


People are talking about dehydrating their own fruit so there is no added sugar or preservatives unless they add themselves which I really hope they dont do. But that is one of the reasons why the things we dehydrate ourselves does not last that long. I have old lady glassses too....lol
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby JessiMuse » Wed Dec 30, 2015 2:10 pm

seagoatdeb wrote:
Pajarita wrote:
seagoatdeb wrote:Here is an article that tells you how to correctly dehydrate to preserve nutrition.
http://foreverhealthy.net/resources/art ... n-enzymes/

Dehydrating leaves more nutrition than cooked but it does remove water, so that neeeds to be taken into account. When I make raw smoothies for myself, I eat a dehydrated cracker with them, perfect companions. When my parrots get some dehydrated seed crackers, they are served with raw fruits.



The link on the second posting (the one above) actually contradicts the one on the first posting in terms of temperatures although the second one only talks about enzymes while the first one talks about general nutrition. It also references Viktoras Kulvinskas who, although self-proclaimed the 'father' of the raw diet, actually has no formal training or degrees in nutrition (he is a mathematician) not that this, per se, means that the man is a cuckoo but, added to the fact that he's a Bishop in some weird church that makes the raw diet part of their liturgy and that states that this diet was what made 'essenes' who lived before Christ live to be 120 years old... well, I don't mean to be rude but it kind of strains credibility, no?). The other link is an ad for dehydrated products... I might sound cynical but salespeople will always tell you that their product is great.

The chart I was referring to was actually a comparison between frozen, dehydrated and cooked. Here it is:http://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/processing

And, as an interesting note, freeze-dried actually retains more phytochemicals than dehydrated and, in some cases, almost as many vitamins. See this: http://preventcancer.aicr.org/site/News ... 7&abbr=pr_

and this:


Okay now I see why your data was off, you used the data from the dried section. Dried is not dehydrated. Consider dried vegetables and grains you would get for making soups....that is dried. All moisture is taken out. Those will keep for years in your cupboard. Raw dehydrated has to be kept in the fridge and only keeps for weeks.

I gave one link for raw food dehydrating that preserves enzymes and the other link was for all dehydrating, both just for more information. The temperatures dont contradict. One is for people that want to preserve enzymes. The other is for hotter dehydrating, not taking enzymes into account. So they are information for different dehydration styles. The link was not there to sell the bishop, or what he found for ages people lived in the Christian Bible, its just that he had info about dehydrating, so I used that link, it was the first one I found. I only used the links to show that dehydrating takes a number of temperatures into acccount and any charts comparing would have to state, what temps were used to dehydrate and also if there was protection from light.... to be usefull.

I was actually thinking of "dried" when I said "dehydrated" as well. :lol: I didn't realize they were two different things.
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby Wolf » Wed Dec 30, 2015 7:40 pm

I went looking and the only difference that I could find about a difference between dehydrated and dried foods was the difference between dehydrated and freeze dried. So if there is another difference would someone please tell me what it is?
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby marie83 » Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:27 am

I'm not sure if there is actually much of an official difference when it comes to defining it. It would be handy to know. At the moment I tend to look at "dried" as in the food you buy in packets in the shops and "dehydrated" as in home dried. I don't know why after all they are both foods with the water content reduced.
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby Pajarita » Thu Dec 31, 2015 11:31 am

Wolf wrote:I went looking and the only difference that I could find about a difference between dehydrated and dried foods was the difference between dehydrated and freeze dried. So if there is another difference would someone please tell me what it is?


:lol: As far as I know and from I could find, there is no difference, dehydrated is dried and dried is dehydrated. The only difference is one of usage, I think, where dried is referred to naturally dried (as under the sun or by just allowing air and time to dry the fruit -like figs, for example) and dehydrated when you use mechanical devices (which are called food dehydrators or food dryers indistinctly) to speed up the process but, as far as produce goes, it means the same thing and the only real difference is that amount of moisture left in the produce.

See these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_(food)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dried_foods
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Re: diet frustration!

Postby seagoatdeb » Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:48 pm

Wolf wrote:I went looking and the only difference that I could find about a difference between dehydrated and dried foods was the difference between dehydrated and freeze dried. So if there is another difference would someone please tell me what it is?


With dehydrating we have a choice of temperatures. It is all dehydrating in the sense that if you leave it in the sun, or dry it in a commercial oven, or use a low heat dehydrator it takes water out. But, when you buy a bag of dried beans, peas, carrots, they will never call them dehydrated they will call them "dried" They are hard like rock, they are completely dry. They will keep in your cupboard for years.

Dehydrated keeps for less time. If a high heat is used it will destroy more nutrition than a low heat. Darkness will also keep some nutrients intact. How dry it is will determine how long it keeps. The raw temperature I use means it must be kept in the fridge and most things only last a few weeks, some things longer.

Commercial marketers know that dehydrating of parrot food increases shelf life but not for that long, so they coat preservatives and a lot of Sugar on their dried fruit. Sugar acts like a preservative too.
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