extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

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sky
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by sky »

Vermiculture, eat worms.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

"straight face" i've studied it for 3 years. geoff lawton, matt powers, the film maker from the loess plateau, and many other folks have also studied it. for me the missing link was the methane info and the stuff about supplemental feeding. strong plants have root systems, when those root systems dieback/regrow they allow water to seep into the resulting holes and stay there instead of running off. ive been skeptical the entire time, even until today i didnt know about how much methane was produced vs how much was sequestered/broken down.
my understanding that if nothing else is true about savory the idea of separating the grazing areas into as many as you can is a very solid idea. especially when you think about the photoactive surface area such a grazing plan creates. and if you add permaculture and keyline into the mix i can see it becoming even more resilient as a strategy.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

https://www.naturalvitality.com/blog/al ... 9pm3vvc6m3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrsFjW2dLiQ
he doesn't want to try in the sonoran desert, and like i have said before "appropriate technology" permaculture is more suited to the sonoran, im watching a bunch of videos of some desert permaculture sites. but the fun part about deserts is that if you go downstream a bit you can irrigate and get good results there especially with silvopasture and keyline. savory isnt a silver bullet, if you dont like his desert stuff watch this guys stuff he has statistics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9 ... ex=75&t=0s

theanimal
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by theanimal »

@bigato You are refusing to look at the video iDave provided because it goes against your current beliefs. How do you expect anyone to look up anything you are proposing with that attitude? You're acting more like the friend you describe than you think.

If you watch the video and look elsewhere online, you'll find the man's "con" has transformed millions of hectares of what was formerly desert.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/10 ... LvcT-hKjIU
electrostimulation is a thing but i dont see how magnetic fields could have any impact unless the plant absorbed a lot of metallic compounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CibxMknzZI8&t=9s
i donno what to tell you, cattle trample the ground mulching it preventing some negative type of decomposition and allow the plants to recover between grazing pulses to me it just looks like chop and drop of nitrogen fixing trees...grass gets tall grass gets eaten a bit cattle are moved to the next cell of high quality food the cell is left until it recovers and you repeat the process...its just like harvesting hay...cut hay fertilize ground let hay grow cut hay repeat if the grass gets tall before it is harvested wouldent the plants get stressed and store energy in their roots accelerating recovery and root regrowth and root shedding/decomposition
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyl ... ld-use-it/

Noedig
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by Noedig »

Anecdotally, here is my recent experience of doing keto

It works, there is no doubt of that. The tough part is sticking to the carb limit, other than that it takes care of itself, with many upsides aside from the weight loss: no sugar crashes, less hunger, less thinking about food.

The weekly food shop is now a bit less, despite the steaks salmon and protein. I suppose because, we're just eating less.

Sardines are very cheap
Eggs are very cheap
Chicken is cheap
Salad & other low carb vegetables are cheapish
OK Beef is moderately expensive (local Halal butcher in London)
Butter, Good cheese is moderately expensive
Salmon is expensive
Good beef is expensive

On a more constrained budget, I'd stick to the eggs sardines and chicken.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

thanks for the info

7Wannabe5
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

The recent uptick in petroleum prices has already resulted in an uptick in food prices, particularly fresh produce and meat. The problem with performing an arbitrary global calculation of dietary choices towards solution of non-arbitrarily global problem of atmospheric methane and CO2 concentrations is that global food production requires global food distribution and marketing which is a huge part of the problem. Approximately 2/3 of each dollar spent on food by Americans goes to processing, transportation and marketing of farm products after they leave the farm. Like everything else in our modern economy, these are all fossil fuel intensive activities.

Based on my reading of numerous publications, I think that many of the scientists employed by the USDA are actually quite forward systems thinkers, but current government policy was created in response to outcry by retail consumers the last couple times petroleum prices drove food prices upwards. That's one of the main reasons why you don't often see the sort of reasonably complex activities on a small family farm that used to exist; market vegetable patch, orchard, small dairy, 4 field rotation. It's all huge monocrops of Field Corn 2, Soybean, and Canola for miles and miles and miles. I defy anyone here to feed themselves directly on bushels full of these primary crops. Almost every farmer in my region grows these crops, but no gardener in my region grows these crops, BECAUSE they are not particularly good or easy to eat. These are food crops that are as dependent on industrial system, which is itself dependent upon cheap fossil fuels, as part of human digestive tract as prehistoric hominids were dependent on fire and cutting and grinding tools.

Most recent research indicates that there is no fine dividing line between foraging and farming. Nomadic humans make paths as they travel, and they concentrate the seeds of vegetative foods they prefer to eat in their own poop and waste heaps. In fact, this sort of co-evolution applies to many species other than humans and their food/prey. Corn, pumpkins and buffalo were all domesticated by Native Americans in a manner not immediately recognizable to European settlers who were already accustomed to a more industrialized means of production appropriate to higher human population density. The buffalo were favored by the Native Americans over other large mammal species which were likely rendered extinct by earliest waves of human population of the Americas.

Native Americans of my region (mainly Algonquin language speakers) were very good permaculturists in a low human population density setting. It might be argued that the best example of productive permaculture at relatively high population density was achieved by the residents of the Indian region of Kashmir prior to World War 1. The tricky thing to recognize when trying to think about these issues systemically is that humans are always providing labor towards producing and processing food as well as inserting themselves in the cycle of consumption, and there are great regional variations in land and labor costs. For instance, in Canada in modern era, labor has always been relatively quite expensive, whereas in India labor has been cheap relative to land in modern era. So, there is this long chain of hidden or semi-conscious ethical and quality of life considerations that are included in a metric that assigns the number 52 to responsibility for one additional birth of American/Canadian Level Consumer. Simplistic way of expressing it would be that Canada still does not have enough human population to provide enough farm labor to abandon industrial production of food, while simultaneously India now has too many humans to feed to abandon industrial production of food. It makes economic sense to let the cattle vs. petroleum driven machines do some of the work in Canada, whereas it makes economic sense to let humans do more of the work in India. I would even go so far as to suggest that these core underlying economic realities could go a good way towards explaining the difference between the philosophy of a Gandhi vs. a Peterson.

Anyways, when it comes to food production/dietary preferences, there is a quantum level of difference between voting with your food dollars and belly as a pure consumer vs. becoming more informed about issues related to diet and food production vs. actually walking out of your door in the morning and directly interacting with other species and the weather/your climate, and engaging in intelligent cognition with your environment in the attempt to provide yourself with nourishment. Easy/Moderately Easy/Damn Hard. And, trust me, she who currently drives her car to her garden projects is very much included including herself in the mess we have made of things.

orthodoxcaveman
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by orthodoxcaveman »

I've been 98% carnivore for about two years. I make exceptions for social obligations, special occasions, mass, and whenever I want to, which is rarely. I buy whole animals from local ranchers. I pay more than absolutely necessary to do that, for reasons given below.

However, if I were going to convert my current diet to the cheapest possible version of itself, I would keep nothing but my Weber charcoal smoker and eat nothing but smoked pork shoulder ($1.99/lb from Costco), brisket ($2.99/lb from Costco), whole chickens, and tinned fish, with the occasional kerrygold butter on the side. I could eat for about $200/mo doing that, including fueling the smoker, and no king has eaten better.
...And, trust me, she who currently drives her car to her garden projects is very much included including herself in the mess we have made of things.
Great post. I count myself in this category too, although my ERE direction is toward your "Damn Hard" category.

I struggled initially with the trade-off between convenience, price, quality, and morality. Trying to resolve that problem has led me pretty deep into the exact research and policy issues your post discusses.

Currently, my compromise has been to develop some excellent relationships with local ranchers and buy whole animals from them. I have a dedicated freezer and buy high quality, grass-fed meat for the most part. I could certainly spend less on food and skate by on crappy Wal-Mart ground beef and bulk eggs -- I've done it before -- but for now, it's more than worth it for me to pay a little extra for much better (in taste, nutrition, and societal impact) food than to eat as cheaply as possible. It's an issue of moral prioritization for me.
I think that many of the scientists employed by the USDA are actually quite forward systems thinkers, but current government policy was created in response to outcry by retail consumers the last couple times petroleum prices drove food prices upwards.
Tale as old as time. Unfortunately, I suspect the day will come that an outcry about the rising cost of food will no longer have the desired effect on policy and market structure because policy-makers and food-producers will have lost the ability to address the outcry. We will all be forced to internalize the actual cost of our consumption when we can no longer disguise the price in negative environmental externalities and tax subsidies.

Hopefully by then, I'll write myself an "exeunt orthodox caveman and wife" direction and have my own ranch full of happy chickens.

7Wannabe5
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

orthodoxcaveman wrote:However, if I were going to convert my current diet to the cheapest possible version of itself, I would keep nothing but my Weber charcoal smoker and eat nothing but smoked pork shoulder ($1.99/lb from Costco), brisket ($2.99/lb from Costco), whole chickens, and tinned fish, with the occasional kerrygold butter on the side. I could eat for about $200/mo doing that, including fueling the smoker, and no king has eaten better.
Yup, the math works out. Humans usually eat 3-4 lbs of wet food/day, so 3.5 X $1.99X 30 days = $208.95. Conservatively, half the consumer retail price of that meat can be tacked to gasoline prices, so if gasoline prices double, the cost of retail meat will increase by 50 percent = approximately $100 per month = $1200/year = an extra $40,000 cushion needed at 3% SWR.

The advantage of choosing either locally produced meat and/or lentils grown at a distance is that you don't have to pay for shipping water along with essential nutrients. Of course, this also applies to items such as cantaloupe.

The next obvious thing to think about is the security of your local water supply. I recently sat in with a science class of 5th graders in one of the best school systems in the U.S., and they were given the question "Should water from the Great Lakes be shipped to Western states in the event of a severe drought?" and the majority of the children answered "Yes." (deep sigh)
for now, it's more than worth it for me to pay a little extra for much better (in taste, nutrition, and societal impact) food than to eat as cheaply as possible. It's an issue of moral prioritization for me.
I don't even think it is necessary to frame it as a moral issue. All you need to do (as you demonstrated) is to do bare minimum systems analysis by including maybe 3 factors to analyse (as opposed to one factor to optimize) and also a healthy dose of (gasp!) subjectivity.
Tale as old as time. Unfortunately, I suspect the day will come that an outcry about the rising cost of food will no longer have the desired effect on policy and market structure because policy-makers and food-producers will have lost the ability to address the outcry. We will all be forced to internalize the actual cost of our consumption when we can no longer disguise the price in negative environmental externalities and tax subsidies.
Likely this is already happening. Just like decaying infrastructure of roads in my region is actually costing individual tax payers more in car repairs than they would have spent on shared maintenance expense.
Hopefully by then, I'll write myself an "exeunt orthodox caveman and wife" direction and have my own ranch full of happy chickens.
Fingers crossed for you. This past week I had fun liberating Jack Pine seed from cones over a propane heater (for rare bird preserve) and filling over 100 square ft. of beds with variety of cold crop transplants. I plan on being able to forage or grow more than the 1000 plus wet lbs. of food I need per year by Harvest 2022. As of yet, I am too soft-hearted to kill a rabbit, so likely I will land on the more veggie side of omnivore.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

here's a refined version thought i had a while ago; humans are adapted to long term fasting, the carnivore diet, intermittent fasting, and caloric restriction.
because we adapted for seasonal differences in food we are able to handle seasons of monsoons and droughts.
the two theories i can think of are the aquatic ape theory and the savanna theory

im thinking that chinampas and silvopasture will be my best bet for a specialty(flood management and drylands recovery)...

if i eat a plant based diet during summer and a meat based diet during winter i would likely be able to get the best of both worlds.
i suspect that winter is a time for your body to go into ketosis via fasting or a meat based diet allowing you to heal and that summer would be the time to gain weight for winter, in order to reduce the need to eat your livestock.
(im in a cold climate but if i was in a warm climate it would likely be the opposite)
milk is largely a seasonal product as well so such a seasonal diet would allow me to drink it. (YAY, fyi the reason i was thinking so hard about this was because i wanted to drink milk sooo im biased... the evidence and problems of the vegan/keto/carnivore diet seem to support this idea though)
im fairly sure tropical peoples are more likely to practice fasting, intermittent fasting, and caloric restriction while northern people are more likely to practice fasting and the the carnivore diet.

result of all my thinking:
first thought:...i wanna talk to someone about this :mrgreen:
result of first thought: welp i think wannabe and the guys might be interested in this idea so ill share it

(link for aquatic ape theory supporter https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Je ... lution.pdf)

7Wannabe5
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Very interesting. I would also like to believe the aquatic ape theory, because I prefer seafood to meat :lol:

Another factor to consider in the Northern vs. Southern diet of humans is that the human body is able to work more efficiently, or longer, at higher power in cooler weather. This is also true of draft animals. IOW, it's not just the feeling of discomfort that inhibits the ability to pull a plow when it is hot outside. Your muscles simply can't perform the work as well.

Cold winter weather also makes large quantity storage of crops easier due to natural refrigeration and killing off of many annual forms of pests, and necessitates seasonal slaughter of livestock unless they are also to be fed on valuable stored crops over the winter. This was the reality of life in my region not all that long ago. I have a friend in his late 70s whose father couldn't afford first wave of tractors, so he has clear memory of the problem of keeping their gigantic draft horses fed over the winter, and eating off of sides of beef hanging in their barn. He said his mother would only buy 5 or 6 different items, such as wheat flour and sugar, when she went to the store.

The Native Americans in my extended region roughly followed the same means of production as indicated by the 1930s government map of farm production. They were mainly agriculturalists, growing something approximating 3 sisters crop of corn, beans, and squash in the flat, fertile southern range, and they were mainly hunters, fishers and foragers in the northern range. The hunters preserved their meat making use of the osmotic effect of maple sugar. One of the Native fables tells of a time when the people became lazy, because the sap ran thick as syrup from the trees, so one of the gods caused it to run thin*. The agricultural tribes engaged in trade with the hunting/foraging tribes, because they also inter-married, so they all had a somewhat more varied diet.

Anyways, I would like to take up fishing as a hobby, because it would suit me to have a hobby which would allow me to just sit and read by a body of water, while nominally tending to a pole or two in order to experience the thrill of intermittent success.

*Very prescient if applied to our current dependence on petroleum.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

water is also quite good for cooling off. much of my focus for permaculture is on more extreme stuff like managing droughts and flooding.
https://richsoil.com/permaculture/1882- ... ithout-hay
im thinking that horses might be more financially viable for me rather than a atv like a 4 wheeler or a motorcycle until im a ways out of town or i start making enough income that i regularly need to travel. (lets assume i can make a profit off of owning the horse/horses, maybe 10-100 bucks)
i didnt think of maple sugar was a preservative but i guess people use both salt and sugar for hams.
if you feel up too it im sure you could build a waru waru or a pseudo-chinampa by whatever body of water you find they work quite well as fish habitat/fish farming ponds.
part of the reason i like permaculture and ere related stuff is because im concerned about shtf (not enough to be a hardcore prepper though, ill stick to critters and trees XD)

7Wannabe5
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Sugar acts as a preservative because it tends towards dehydrating the cells of bacteria that might otherwise invade stored meats or fruit made into jams or "preserves." Honey was also used as a preservative by many cultures. Of course, honey itself can be stored almost indefinitely. That's why we aren't the only species with a taste towards the sweet.

Another interesting bit about bees that I recently learned from the wonderful book "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" by Robin Kimmerer, is that different species of meadow flowers often naturally grow in clumps of color that contrast in a way that is pleasing to humans because our eye structure resembles that of bees to the extent that we share preference for bright orange next to purple. IOW, our "beautiful" is not by happenstance a bee's "something good to eat." So, that which we find beautiful in our gardens will also likely encourage pollination of trees and other plants that produce fruits which we find delicious to eat. Web of goals!

The bacteria that fixes nitrogen for legumes is also engaged in trade of "meat" for the driblets of sugar produced by the roots of the plants. There is really no getting away from being a sugar consuming omnivore. It just depends on what perspective or level you choose to engage in the cycles of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

i just remembered that lard is the cheapest food on the planet!!!

vexed87
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by vexed87 »

I don't want to derail this thread but;
Dream of Freedom wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 7:06 am
Well, the thing is that pasture land is not easily converted to growing crops. Usually they are raised on land with steep hills, poor soil quality, and far from canal systems. We kind of have to eat some animals to maximize food resources.
This is only true if you ignore the fact that marginal land can often be improved, it's often considered marginal because it was misused and abused by earlier generations, or because it's not suitable for industrial agriculture's extractive methods. Small holdings traditionally made quite productive use of these 'marginal lands' but that way of life has been forgotten as industrial ag and society has supplanted them. Most of the UK's 'marginal' land for instance was covered in great forests, so there is great potential for climax community ecosystems to establish, these could in theory could be engineered to meet our all our needs and be far more productive than using this land exclusively grazing livestock. Don't forget that introduction of grazing animals is one of the biggest factors for suppressing natural succession in these ecosystems. That is not to say that grazing animals are to be avoided, or that all marginal land can be used to create food forest, but our lens of possibilities is distorted by modern agri practices.

See examples of what can be done to improve such marginal land here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMXqgQIU9c

Dream of Freedom
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Isn't it fun reading a bunch of city slickers bloviate about farming and ranching practices when most of them have never spent time on a farm or ranch.

vexed87
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by vexed87 »

That's the whole point of an internet forum? Sharing interesting insights and broadening horizons?

Don't be so quick to judge. It's one thing to farm for commercial enterprise, it's another to grow just enough to make ends meet. I might be no 13th century subsistence farming peasant eking a living out of a cliff face, but even this 'born into landless urban working class' individual has independently earned enough experience growing vegetables on marginal land (in my case 2.5 inches of topsoil and imported turf dumped on barren rubble of a former building site) to know how hard it is using a conventional beginners toolkit to grow food. I'm also acutely aware how a change of mindset opens doors to other ways of doing things that doesn't necessarily involve attempting to improve said marginal land by shipping in 10 tonnes of top soil, or flushing fossil fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides into the water table in the vain hope of attaining self-sufficiency or a viable commercial enterprise.

I don't own a small holding or have access to common land of yore... but maybe I might if one day society wakes up and no longer expects me to earn a living in order to access titles to a suitable land owned and passed down for generations as ill-gotten gains resulting from the conquest of England by a certain Duke of Normandy. Marginal land or not I can only hope to keep working in a city slicker job and accumulate a lump sum sizable enough to buy a smallholding of my own. For now I am satisfied enough to reduce my dependence on industrial agriculture by supplementing it with my own produce and continuing to hone skills like seed savings and grafting fruit trees. I continue to work to improve my own modest patch of land, if not with as much effort as peasant, only because I have a profession to tend to.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

Simi rural Oregon townie here, I've worked on farms for 2 summers moving irrigation pipes, planting, and harvesting stuff. My grampa owns a ranch where I help set up the irrigation pump, clear black berries, clear the understory of the woods to reduce/wild fires and such. I currently work in the woods clearing fallen trees and such for fire season/firewood soooooo I'm doing ok on the experience bit... just saying, this kinda stuff has been my dream lifestyle sense I was 4 or 5. I've never wanted be rich (aside from medical Bills in the USA and the moral aspect of employing people and lately I've been getting more ambitious to fulfill part of my bucket list *jazz hands* working as the chill mayor or owning a small town just the idea of it sounds like a good way to get some social interaction in a more natural way for me) and live in a mansion I've always thought that I'd like to be a gardener/hermit living on a rich guy's land maintaining the area in exchange for basic supplies and such
Last edited by monkeymanwasd123 on Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

monkeymanwasd123
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Re: extremely frugal vegan keto,keto, and carnivore diets

Post by monkeymanwasd123 »

Buying is bad, get a job as a herder or rent some land and raise cattle until they raise rent or something. Cows are mobile plants are less so

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