A few years ago, I was your typical office-worker: stressed out, uneven energy, overweight, and inconsistent complexion. Now I'm just your typical 28-year old urban hunter-gatherer on a quest to be healthy, and having a few adventures along the way. See my full bio.
Comments
If you like to eat meat, just
If you like to eat meat, just eat meat. There's no need to complicate it with all this "paleo" mumbo-jumbo. You clearly break the rules where it suits you anyway: "drink less alcohol". Hey, how about drink NO alcohol? This is just the Atkins diet with a bunch of pseudo-scientific crap thrown in. Eat at Chipotle. Order like a caveman ("Hey, make sure to throw enough saber-toothed tiger on there!") but spare us the "this is how man is supposed to live" hogwash.
Man is "supposed to" live in a cave and hunt bears with a wooden spear--that's the natural, paleo way. I'll bet you break that rule too.
This is dumb because you can
This is dumb because you can by products all mentioned above that are certified vegan.
not only is half the stuff
not only is half the stuff on the chart dated/stupid, so is your concept of "hunter-gatherers in the modern world" speaking as if hunter-gatherers are relics and that the "modern world" is comprised of "modern humans". whoops. time to catch up on your holistic philosophy, yo. maybe you can make a new blog when you do.not to mention most of the things on your list go completely against your supposed hunter-gatherer "ethos" and are ecologically damaging. so whats your point? that youre as full of shit as much as the vegan and just make petty consumer choices? or the fact that vegans cause just as much 'death' by eating plants and your lame (and vegans), rigid view of animals being more alive than plants by using a cow as your example of how many great products are made from it. throw up a set of plants up there too and say how many great things come from it. it really doesnt matter."vegans" in a more refined sense just choose to eat different species of life, for their own reasons, . theres no hard edged deterministic way for humans "must" eat. humans can be highly plastic in many different areas, including diet. neither way is more right or wrong. hell, some "hunter-gatherers" in those communities never hunt a day in their life. what does that make them in the grand model of "prototype human"?these blogs are fucking lame and so typical of trying to some up a highly chaotic and changing world into short, fragmented, ideas that are suppose to be axioms - but theyre mostly full of shit.
Not that John can't take care
Not that John can't take care of himself but I'd like to chime in.Modern hunter-gathers are modern people. No one is debating that. And you've apparently labeled primitive agriculturalist or those converted to an agrarian lifestyle through force or starvation conditions as modern hunter-gatherers. They are not. Hunter-gatherers hunt and gather. There are modern hunter-gatherers (I believe eight left in the world) and they hunt animals and eat them.Human diet is not as plastic as you would assume. Those dedicated vegetarian cultures have higher instances of diseases of civilization (currently India is confounding doctors with a sky-rocketing cancer rate despite a "healthy" vegetarian diet). Vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists are listed in the Blue Zone but if you look at disease rates they do not fair better than Americans who eat the Standard American Diet (which I think we can all agree is relatively unhealthy). Adventists' lower rate of mortality has more to do with easy access to healthcare.Thanks for playing!
This is definitely one of the
This is definitely one of the strongest (of the 80 bazillion) fracture points in the vegan mythos that has caused many a well-meaning vegan to snap "well, we all can't be perfect in an imperfect world!" and start talking about how, in the inevitable veganic Garden of Eden that will obviously be the world someday soon, they will be able to attain the level of compassionate purity that they seek. I used to say a lot of the same crap when I was vegan. It was only after I slowly moved towards a way of eating/lifestyle that was based on health, science, affirming life, and comfortable with complexity (paleo) rather than based on guilt, pseudo-religious rhetoric, denying death, and unable to deal with anything beyond childlike simplicity that I realized how silly it all was. Now it just makes me sad. A particularly depressing example of the there-is-no-veganism-fr-rlz conundrum: www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php.
We can justify animal slaughter in that it gives us pharmaceuticals with horrible side effects, but not enough to eat the foods that would help us avoid all of this crippling misery in the first place! ARGH!
We can justify slaughter and
We can justify slaughter and livestock because without human interaction to perserve and grow the population of livestock species they would have died off by now anyway. We took over the land and if we didn't breed cows for our own reasons they would be nearly extinct.
Heh. I'm a meat-eating yoga
Heh. I'm a meat-eating yoga instructor as well. I live on a small family farm and we also belong to a couple of local CSAs. I feel fortunate that we have access to not only organic vegetacles, but cage-free eggs, organic raw milk, and organic, free-range meat.However, in considering the hunter-gatherer/Paleo/primal diet and lifestyle, one topic I've not seen anybody address in depth is that of environmental impact and the effects of such a change on the world food supply. If everyone in the U.S. began eating Paleo, would it be at all sustainable? Would it negatively impact hunger and food shortages elsewhere? Would it be a case of the elite eating well while everyone else (here or abroad) was forced into eating a lot of junk calories and chemically-laden crap? Can the planet even maintain, say, a quarter of its population eating Paleo?I'd like to know your thoughts on this, as I'm really interested in eating Paleo, but worry about its impact on the rest of the world around me.
Hey Elizabeth! Fortunately,
Hey Elizabeth! Fortunately, we live in an area that has several small farms. So we eat organically as well with local grassfed beef. We love to support the local farmers! I'd imagine the reason why no one has addressed the impact of the entire world eating paleo, is because realistically, it would never happen. But you hit the nail on the head... you referred to the other stuff as crap. So we are fortunate to know what is healthy, and we have the option to eat Paleo or crap. Why not just eat only the good stuff in the first place? That is all Paleo is doing. IMO. ;0)Shanti'Carrisa
I have a hard time imagining
I have a hard time imagining the Native American ancestors on my mom's side having diabetes before the introduction of Western, grain-based diets. It's really prevalant now, though. Ironically, my dad's side of the family, which is Southeast Asian, is also prone to diabetes, but that seems to be a matter of bad genetics -- although I do wonder, since it's commonly held that traditional Asian diets, even with the heavy reliance on rice, are better than Western diets and the incidence of diabetes, heart disease, etc. is lower in Asia. Does anybody have any info on that as it relates to Paleo eating?
On the Native American
On the Native American Heritage.... an couple years ago I spent some time in northwest New Mexico and what the "system" for lack of an better term has done to the Native Americans there is nothing short of Human Slavery and torture. An once very proud Race of free people are going into the stores and buying Blue Bonnett flour by the 20lbs bag for fry bread and filling up small shopping carts with every junk food/candy item that it will hold. They are free to do that and is their choice but to see them so unhealthy and grossly overweight weighed heavily on me even though I usually only help or feel sorry for animals or small childern.
Very interesting! As
Very interesting! As a meat-eating Yoga teacher (yea, ironic, I know), I find it almost comical to see just how many everyday items are deceptively animal by-products. But it is good to know that there is little waste. :)
Its good to know that every
Its good to know that every part of the cow is used. I'm not even being ironic!
The pig one is illuminating
The pig one is illuminating too...