controversy

Conventional meat is still bad
07/15/2011 - 05:47

There are many reasons I became a vegan, but one of the main reasons was that I didn't want to support the industrial meat system, which is cruel to both animals and people, as well as destructive to communities and the environment. I know this point of mine has been controversial before, but I do believe that conventional meat is more unhealthy, not just because of the fatty acids, but because of other feed additives, hormones, antibiotics, and the continual stress animals are subjected to. I believe science will vindicate this position more and more in the future. The beginning evidence is there, it just needs to be further investigated. 

While I no longer believe that eating animals is immoral and I am no longer vegan, I do believe that animals that share characteristics with us like empathy deserve to be treated with empathy. The industrial meat industry treats neither humans nor animals with empathy. Foragers kill perhaps an animal a day or less, often offering that animals prayers of respect. Slaughterhouse workers kill hundreds of animals a day. It's not acceptable to kill fewer. In fact I know of a slaughterhouse that was shut down because they weren't killing enough animals a day and the USDA said it was inefficient to provide them with an inspector. The consequence is that slaughterhouse workers suffer repetitive stress injuries and there are some that suffer unusual autoimmune conditions as well, though the meat industry has done plenty to cover this up. But another consequence is callousness about life. Some studies have shown that presence of people who kill hundreds of animals a day in a community is associated with higher levels of crime. That doesn't surprise me at all. I've seen the undercover videos of factory farms and the brutality these animals are subject to. Only someone conditioned to accept brutality (or a psychopath) could commit acts like that.

And let's talk about community. As someone with a farm in the family and the desire to live a rural life, I'm loathe to support a system that destroys rural communities, driving small producers out of business (currently the matter of an antitrust investigation) and polluting the land and waters with waste.

Last year Don Mastesz from Primal Wisdom did a paleo on a budget series that I just remembered. The series advocated the consumption of supermarket industrial meat. I remember being rather disappointed, but not saying anything because I don't like getting into political arguments. It was based on a rather callous idea in the first place. He saw a poor family in Food Inc. and didn't believe their claim that they couldn't afford healthy food. He decided to design a low-carb diet based on spending as much money as food stamps provide. 

Some background: When I moved to New York City it was to work in public service. I accepted a salary that placed me below the poverty line. Millions of New Yorkers eat badly. Afford is such a loaded word. Perhaps a lot of these people actually could technically afford decent food if you just looked at their income. But many of them are caught in cycles of debt, not only from perhaps injudicious spending, but from our dysfunctional and uncompassionate health care system. Yes, the government will feed you garbage in public school for free, but when your medical bills come from the diabetes you acquired when you were only 25, it doesn't always pay them. Having gone to the ER when poor before, it's a bit like gambling. You might get your bills dropped when you apply for financial aid and you might get some medicare coverage, but you might not. Then these illnesses also affect many people's ability to work. 

Then there is the area of privilege. Yes, I ate decently when I was poor, but I am also very educated about nutrition and I grew up with a mother who attempted to teach me at least a few cooking skills. Not everyone has these things. 

So the Food Inc people got it wrong. That family doesn't need to eat at fast food joints. They could follow my plan, the whole family would lose body fat, the father would lose his diabetes, they would stop needing dental repairs, and they would then have the money he spent on medications for upgrading the quality of their food.

I wonder if Don would volunteer to come to East New York and actually work with a family on food stamps. The odds are that mom works full time and she was raised by public schools that shovel garbage into children's mouths and teach them the food pyramid without teaching them how to shop or cook. The odds are that there is no dad. The odds are that their apartment does not have the sort of kitchen most of us enjoy nor do they have good access to grocery stores. Given the state of public housing, the odds are that the stove is in disrepair, but maybe they have a microwave. I honestly don't think Don's experiment said much about the state of how the poor could eat, nor did it involve very good food. I really don't think that telling people to eat more factory farmed meat is a good solution to our current food system woes. I honestly believe such people would be very healthy on an affordable no veg oil/sugar diet that includes animal products from good farms in small enough amounts to be affordable. That's how the majority of tradition cultures eat. The truth is that we are going to have to get that into public service food projects (like those that deliver to elderly/homebound people), soup kitchens, and schools. And perhaps a return to home ec in schools would help. 

I try my best to not eat factory-farmed meat and I've been a higher carb advocate for some time now. Eating high-carb allowed me to survive on $10,000 a year while maintaining my commitment to grass-fed meat from small local farms. I also honestly feel better on a higher-carb diet. Meat has important nutrients, but you don't need a lot of it to get these. 

I've also resisted the assimilation of primal/paleo/ancestral with the low-carb community, since I believe they have different ideals and that low-carb has very little to do with the paleolithic or what foragers actually eat, besides the tiny sliver of the paleolithic where humans lived in far north environments and the few foragers of questionable health who eat mainly meat. The stupidity of some of these people is staggering. When I presented extensive evidence that even their beloved Inuit ate plenty of plants, all they could do is say "but vilhjalmur stefansson sayz." Never mind his habit of lying and why are we even talking about this since most foragers and cultures mistakenly cited by "paleo" diet advocates eat large amounts of carbohydrates?

When Don wrote his Farewell to Paleo post, saying he was leaving paleo for a high-carb diet (lol because the evidence that the paleo diet would have been high-carb is pretty damn strong) because of health problems, I didn't connect the dots. But now that I'm remembering his budget diet, it doesn't surprise me that it happened. There are lots of zero carb trolls that claim they are healthy on a supermarket meat diet, but as far as I know, all of those are men. For women, hormonal balance can be a much more tenuous matter. If you don't believe that the hormone-injected animals effect hormone balance, I guess you would also point to the fact they were eating cheaper meats that tend to be higher in omega-6 like chicken and pork. 

Thankfully, Don has come around and posted an update to his posts advocating industrial meat:

7/13/11 update: I decided that I don't want to endorse or appear to endorse the use of any meat produced by conventional methods of feeding the livestock grains, primarily corn and soybeans. Since animals consume 80% of the grain and soy produced by U.S. agriculture, this system drives the ongoing destruction of our topsoil both through crops and through grazing. Animal food production consumes 87% of all freshwater used in the U.S. each year, and thus is the primary driver of depletion of water reserves. This system also produces most of the water pollution occurring in the U.S. Our conventional livestock production system has enormous costs detailed in this article from Cornell University. Since I have known of these costs for more than 20 years, I feel embarrassed and remorseful that I wrote this series and other articles that endorsed the use of conventional animal products.

His wife has also written that she regrets forgetting compassion. This is great news. It's a bit of a shame that Don has gone on to advocate a very low fat diet and Chinese medicine for everyone, but I think it's great that he changed his diet in response to how it made him feel, whereas some low carb advocates would rather dose up with supplements than admit that a good diet probably wouldn't give them constant cramps and other health issues. And I'm glad he's fighting some of the paleo!stupidity, which means the paleo diet made up by people to fit their bias rather than one based on the real data. 

Real Life Faileo Dieters
02/02/2011 - 20:07

Chris Masterjohn's review of The New Evolution Diet was nicer than mine. Luckily for Chris, he already knows about the wonders of butter and egg yolks. But what happens when a normal person reads a lipid-phobia ridden paleo book?

An Outside Magazine reporter tried to follow one such book, focusing on lean meats and non-starchy vegetables. Here is how he felt:

  • "It's tough to exercise when you're hungry all the time."
  • "I spent all but the last two weeks of this diet feeling seriously underfueled—tired, spacey, and hungry."
  • "I grew so tired of the approach that boredom or upset stomachs would end meals before I had eaten enough."
  • "Woke up with a hunger way beyond what the fruit and vegetables in my house could cover."
  • "there's just no way I'm going to stick to a plan that leaves me hungry and tired all the time."

Such is the unfortunate plight of the faileo. Faileo dieters are rare because most succumb to extreme hunger in just a few days, similar to how cavemen who refused to eat fatty brain starved and died on the plains of Africa millions of years ago. It's actually a great example of evolution at work! Since Americans are so uneducated about evolution, perhaps faileo diet proponents are providing an important service.

But what about faileo diet proponents themselves? I've seen some hilarious meals on their plates like egg white omelettes with bacon bits. Hmm. I suspect most are eating a high fat diet without realizing it because they don't know much about meat. 

But they sow their delusion everywhere. Like this Time piece where the reporter must have been talking to some serious faileos:

There's no doubt that something is way off about our collective health; rampant rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes make that self-evident. And there's no doubt that this is a direct result of our high-fat, high-calorie, sedentary lives.

Otherwise the piece is quite interesting. I like how they have well-respected physical anthropologist Dan Lieberman quoted alongside non-anthropologists who think they are qualified to preach on human evolution.

I think you won't find many anthropologists to speak on the matter because the truth is that for most of our history, the homo species were very rare. Few actual remains have been found and there are multiple theories on the role of food in our evolution. For example, Richard Wrangham believes tubers spurred our evolution into the big-brained upright-walking ape. Dan is from the persistence hunting school of thought. I've also blogged about the idea that marine foods were the catalyst. My own pet theory is that the high-fat reservoirs of the head and bones were the truly important foods for our evolution as a species, but I'll blog more about that later.

I don't think that theory will ever be in Time magazine because it competes with the "Man The Hunter" spiel that has been generally rejected by anthropology, but which lives on in pop culture. Chris mentions anthropologist Katherine Milton, who is a big proponent of the importance of plants in evolution. Despite being an anthropology expert with a Phd and many published papers, I doubt you'll ever see her in such an article because she doesn't fit into the macho man meaty story reporters want to tell. 

As for the faileos, most will read their books, follow the diet, be miserable, and go back to eating SAD without ever knowing the value of foods like tallow or liver. 

Plants That We Eat
12/12/2010 - 00:00

One of the views that I get the most email about is my assertion that Inuit ate and still do eat plants. I have gotten dozens of emails saying I am wrong because of

1. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, an explorer, said so, in Fat of the Land

2. My professor/cousin/best friend's daughter lived with the Inuit and said they didn't eat any plants

Perhaps Anore Jones is part of a conspiracy, but if she is, it seems to be fairly usophisticated, because almost none of her book's content has been disseminated online and it contains recipes that use such crowd-pleasing ingredients like seal oil and fish heads. Her book is called Plants That We Eat and it's 240 pages, which is curious for a culture that supposedly eats no plants. If it's fiction, she's done a rather miserable job and I suggest you read Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings instead.

But I doubt it's fiction. She lived in Kotzebue with Inupiat for 19 years and has numerous photos of them preparing plants. I think people with plant-free anecdotes may have either not spent enough time with the Eskimos or might have not had enough contact with women. According to Anore

Generations of Inupiat have lived healthy lives eating predominately meat and fat. They got all the necessary nutrients because their diet included much raw or lightly cooked meats, including heart, liver, kidney, brain, eggs, the edible parts of stomach, stomach contents, intestines, bones, and/or skin. Essential or not, plant foods remain a treat. Inupiat have always eagerly sought and stored in quantity all that were available.

The main plant foods are:

  1. Greens in seal oil
  2. Cooked and pickled leaves
  3. Raw and fermented leaves
  4. Berries
  5. Tiny roots
  6. Tea and medicinal plants

Several ZC/VLC people have told me that they heard that Inuit spurned berries and considered explorers who ate them foolish. Having eaten many far-northern berries, this doesn't make any sense to me unless they had some religious taboo, which they don't. In fact, it seems Inuit women (and sometimes men) go to a great deal of trouble collecting seemingly trivial tiny plant foods even when ample fat is available. I suspect that many of the plants they eat are very powerful nutritionally.

Some interesting ones include Sura (Salix pulchra), which is preserved in seal oil after picking, and contains 7-10 times the vitamin C of oranges! I often gathered wild chives (Allium schoenoprasum L.) in Sweden and the Inuit also use them raw in seal oil or cooked with fish.

Anore found that Inuit used lacto-fermentation to store some greens in the winter. Sourdock (Rumex arcticus), for example, is fermented in an underground sod house stored in sealskin pokes. A recipe is provided in case you have those ingredients on hand :) The Inuit warn you to turn it every few days to keep the bottom from rotting and occasionally untie it to let gases out.

Some plants, like roseroot (Sedum rosea) are fermented in water.

My grandmother would always dig the roots of roseroot when she could. She buried them in sand and grass on top of a high knoll. If hard times came when we were short of food, we'd know they were waiting. As long as we had seal oil, we could eat them. - Bessie Cross, an Inuit who Anore interviewed

Berries were often made into a dessert called Akutuq. It was made with rendered whipped fat mixed with berries, sometimes with roots and greens. Tragically, now the dessert often is made with hydrogenated vegetable shortening and sugar. Traditional fats included hard back fat from the caribou or moose, or blubber from walruses or seals. So much for wild game not having much fat...the Inuit have enough fat to have excess to use in desserts and other food preserving.

Another popular treat is Ittukpalak, which is made with roe and berries. I have made this and it is beautiful and delicious! Most of the berries they gather are rather tart and include blueberries, salmonberries, bearberries, cranberries, and rosehips. I often gathered rosehips in Sweden even in the middle of winter when they were withered on the vine. They could then be boiled into a vitamin-C rich tea.

In a good berry year the otherwise green tundra actually has a blueish cast from so many berries. Even after people and all the creatures have taken their fill, the berries will still be thick. They freeze on the bushes and on the ground for the mice and ptarmigan to eat all winter and are there, dried and sweet, for bears, birds, and people to eat next spring. It’s such an enormous wealth of food, but one never to be counted on, for in a poor berry year you will walk all day and not find enough to taste. Then the animals that ate berries must find other foods and some must eat each other.

As for roots, they have a rather ingenious method of gathering known as Masrunniaq. They look for mouse diggings and dig up their nests. Sometimes they hit the jackpot and find a cache of tiny sweet roots known as masru. They take the roots and add a piece of fish into the nest to thank the mice. Then they cover the nest back up with dirt. Some of the best roots come from Eskimo potato (Hedysarum alpinum)

Some roots are poisonous and it can be hard to distinguish these from the sweet roots. Don't try this at home. Inupiat say "eat masru with oil, or else you may become constipated."

Another method of stealing from animals includes the consumption of nigukkaun, which is caribou stomach, put in a warm place for 1-2 days or longer to ferment. Humans can't eat lichens, but the enzymes in the caribou stomach break them down and once fermented they can be eaten by us. Anore recommends NOT making this without the assistance of an elder. She says it is an acquired taste, but that she has learned to love the sweet-sour fermented taste.

Another dish is Inaluaq, which is a particular part of the ptarigan intestines. She suggests "warm the green, pasty material inside but don't actually cook it." mmm.

While the Inuit culture is rather uniform from an anthropological perspective, there are differences in food culture

The root of the yellow flowered oxytrope (Oxytropis maydelliana) has been eaten from Sealing Point in the historical past. It is also known as aiqaq and eaten in Anaktuvuk Pass and Canada. It occurs nearly all over Alaska and Northern Canda but is eaten only in certain places. Even 20 miles east, at Sisualik and Kotzebue, aiqaq is not normally eaten.

Like in Sweden, medicinal teas are made from spruce and juniper. Unlike in Sweden, Inuit never eat fungi except as part of caribou stomach.

So is this a conspiracy? Some of my VLC friends wil probably insist that this is a result of colonial contamination of their culture, which makes absolutely no sense, considering these foods are very hard to process, some are poisonous if processed badly, and colonialism brought foods that are easy to cook and which are now widely adopted to the exclusion of many of these plant foods. Occam's razor! Obviously, their diet is still low carb, but there is evidence that the plants that they eat, even if they don't contribute a lot of calories, matter on a micronutritional level.

We aren't as strong as when we were kids. Few young people even know how to enjoy [berry picking]. We eat different foods now, a lot of store foods. Some foods we carry for our lunch are half packaging, and all the junk gets left on the berry ground. It's not good for the birds and animals, and it's not a thank-you to the land to cover it with trash. Now places on those good berry grounds look like a dump—Styrofoam cups, pop cans, paper plates, plastic wrapping, and aluminum foil. We want to treat the ground that grows our food better than that. It's good to remember the old custom of leaving a thank-you for the berries. The best thank-you we can leave today is to leave the berry ground clean.- from interview with elder

I wish this book had color photos, but while some of the recipes are impossible to make in Brooklyn, it's a beautiful testament to human ingenuity and opportunism. I trust Anores' information will stand the test of time and I'm some people who insist Stefansson showed Inuit ate an all-meat diet might not have read his complete work. I also think that Inuit food is probably more diverse than anthropologists traditionally thought— for example, in the works I just linked to he mentions several plants that are absent from Anores' book! I hope more of Anore's work and actual Native voices on food reach the greater world.

Alaskan woman gathering roots, from a book on Native Writers, which includes an essay by a Native woman corroborating Anores' work

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