Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I guess I'll have to try this out then. SO hates veggies, loves meat. But, given both our (similar) ethnic backgrounds, cutting out rice and beans is a hard sell. It's a daily thing for us nearly.
Cutting bread is easier, cutting pasta (for me) isn't. SO isn't a fan of pasta either. Thus my corn question - corn is grown and can be mushed up (masa) and I know I can make pasta from it...cuz I can make all sorts of things...

@Q: For the record, I love pasta, bread, pastries, etc. It's a sacrifice to (mostly) stay away from these, but well worth the short and long-term health benefits. There's no rice and beans in my ethnic background, but there may as well be, as i probably ate a burrito for 1 of every 3 meals when i lived in SF (first 29 years of my life).
Here's the best, pithy resource for beginner paleos:
http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/

I wrote out a huge long response yesterday but apparently it did not go through. Let's see what I can remember.
Re: Ecological footprints. I do think that there is probably a sustainable level of meat consumption, and certainly if you live in an area (i.e. East Coast) where the natural predators have been hunted out, then sure, hunting wild game is preferable to buying domestic meat, and also necessary to maintain ecosystem balance. I'll also agree that there are some areas that are not up to supporting intensive growing of crops and are better suited to responsibly managed grazing. However, the fact still remains that it is vastly more energy intensive to get calories from meat than from plant sources, and that the global population is currently large (and growing...). If, for example, the entire population of NYC decided to get all of their meat from wild game, I am guessing the deer overpopulation problem would be taken care of pretty quickly, and that there would not be enough meat to go around if per capita consumption were to be kept at the levels advocated by the paleo diet. Basically, given current populations, an environmentally sustainable level of meat consumption is far below what you'd generally consume on the paleo diet.
Re: soy, yup, I've seen the research, both for and against. I don't buy that it's all poison. I think one issue with soy is that there is a big difference between something like a handful of edamame and a soy burger that has been processed beyond recognition to resemble a piece of low quality meat. I avoid the latter.
Good point about Native Americans developing methods of preserving meat as pemmican and jerky, but Native Americans also farmed pretty extensively as well. And, it's possible to dry and preserve berries and nuts for later consumption too! I would guess also that the paleolithic diet varied somewhat depending on where the population in question was living. In colder, more northern climates, it's probably more reasonable to suppose that a lot of meat was consumed, because there would be less available in the way of plants. In warmer areas with a decent amount of regular rainfall, non-meat sources of food would have been more readily available and consumed more. The main thing you can definitely get out of "what they ate then" vs. "what we eat now" is that processed foods are a relatively recent development and therefore to be avoided as much as possible. Anything beyond that and it's possible to cherry pick the (limited) data available to arrive at whatever conclusion is desired.
To really conclusively prove the health benefits of any diet, you'd probably have to put together an enormous longevity study that provided acceptable food to each study group (otherwise you'd get into issues like if the added expense of a high-meat diet was causing stress about money canceling out other health benefits)--good luck getting IRB approval AND the funding for that!
Personally, I know that since I've adopted a vegetarian diet that's heavy on fruits, vegetables, and plant proteins, but low(ish) in carbs and processed foods, I feel really great. I can also sustain a pretty active lifestyle, and all my numbers (weight, body fat, heart rate, cholesterol, blood pressure) range between really good and excellent.

@catherine: that's really great that you've gotten such great health benefits from your low-processed food veggie diet. i think you've avoided a pitfall that a lot of veggies fall into--soy burgers, fake jerky, energy bars, etc. i really can't argue with your sense of well-being, as i think that's about as good of an indicator as any of the effectiveness of the diet.
rather than debate about various hunter-gatherer evidence and studies, i'll just point to the resources i mentioned earlier; they are much more expert than i. i totally get the "cherry-picking" point too--it's hard to make heads or tails of all the various studies. recent debunking of The China Study, however, on paleo sites and elsewhere, has passed the smell test with (biased) me. something else you may want to read a little about in those resources is the long-term problems some veggies run into, especially with bone loss.
i definitely take your point about the deer (and wild animal) population not necessarily being sufficiently large for everyone to be eating paleo. i admire folks like yourself who take it upon themselves to only consume their 'fair share' of the planet's biomass, and i concede that i'm probably overdoing it; this is something i have yet to reconcile/account for. but it just tastes so good, and feels 'right' with my body.
despite my respect and admiration for such self-restraint, i see it as a sort of asceticism/stoicism, which i don't really identify with. this is somewhat of why i brought up paleo on this forum, because there's this sentiment among Jacob and others of "food only as fuel" and not for pleasure--i don't follow this, and am interested in trying to reconcile ERE with my own, different view on food and other sensual pleasures. the big challenge with ERE, for me at least, is sustaining an enjoyable, even relatively luxurious lifestyle.
but i digress. i don't mean, catherine, that not eating meat is purely ascetic--i'm sure you, as many veggies do, can whip up a delicious meatless meal--but i daresay that i think humans, barring a few phenotypical outliers, are universally designed to consume a significant amount of meat in their diet.

I fed my dog the raw diet which sounds very much like the human paleo diet. It was even more exclusively meat, bones were consumed whole, and nothing was cooked. Free-range chicken backs are 45 cents a pound, so costs seemed reasonable to me. For dogs, it makes a lot of sense. We can observe their ancestors in the wild and see what they eat. They clearly have teeth adapted for eating meat. For humans, we can only *guess* what our ancestors ate and the evidence one way or the other (to me) is not clear. I eat very little meat and almost all of that is fish. Factory farming animals seems neither humane nor environmentally sound, so I participate as little as possible. I could seek out hunted or ethically raised meat, but the cost doesn't seem worth it. I feel healthy on a mostly plant-based diet. I don't even like the taste of meat that much. I think we can all agree that heavily processed foods and excessive sugar are a bad thing.

@S my cat is paleo too. as soon as i started feeding him raw chicken drumsticks, two things happened:
* he loved me more

* his poop barely gives off any odor
p.s. make sure to give taurine supplements to a raw-fed cat.

I didn't notice an increase in love from my dog (he was already a sweetie), but he stopped having accidents in the house and his breath smelled a lot better. He also grew the hair back on his hind legs. A lot of greyhounds go bald there when they get older.

Soooooooo - is corn good or what? I just ate two little hawaiian dinner rolls with my drinks, and they tasted yum! But, bread is an easy thing to give up...

Talk about a business idea! Selling the stuff usually thrown out in the meat processing process at $4.50/lb to pet owners!

http://www.amazon.com/Paw-Naturaw-Organ ... 62&sr=8-11

Wow... this must be pretty alienating to a lot of NPR's base, "Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter":

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =128849908

I want to revive the paleo discussion, or at least add this contribution, apropos to Catherine's (and my) environmental concerns regarding paleo:
http://paleohacks.com/questions/560/how ... paleo-diet
I think this is an important question/debate that's relevant to ERE because there's both a longevity and environmental component to the ERE lifestyle as outlined by Jacob, and I believe there's mounting evidence that paleo fulfills both criteria.

The key issue is footprint. The most efficient food production per area (without fossil fuel input or potassium mining) is probably that of combined crop and animal farm. If you take that as a baseline, there will probably be more food energy in the crops than in the animals. Maybe you can hook up with several vegetarians and take the meat portion.
Alternatively, everybody only have 1 or less children for a couple of generations until we bring the human population down to 100 million, that's for the world, then everything would be fine... sort of.
Of course these are population and ecological concerns, whereas the current concerns and ways of determining whether something is viable is strictly economical. The question then is whether you will be able to (in)directly own or "rent" enough grassland to support the paleo diet now and in the future.

I don't want to be combative, but I am not impressed by some of the statements I saw on that website and I see a lot of faulty logic or selective presentation of reality. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is caused mostly by runoff from corn farms in the midwest, and there's very little of that corn that is eaten directly by humans...the vast majority is going to feed cattle. Sure, they probably aren't an acceptable source of meat to someone really following the paleo diet to the letter, but they aren't an acceptable source of food to most vegetarians either.
We may currently produce enough food to feed the world (and I think most vegetarians would agree that the majority of world hunger is currently cause by politics, not a lack of global supply) but most of the world is not eating a paleo diet, and we could not feed the whole world a paleo diet in the long term unless there was a drastic reduction in world population (which I see was acknowledged, but realistically, will take time to achieve). Anyone who has taken a basic population biology class will be familiar with the fact that the higher up an animal is on the food chain, the smaller the population that can be supported within a given area. I haven't noticed the earth expanding in size lately. If meat production is limited to grazed, organic, etc., there will be a lot less meat available than there is now, and it will be way more expensive (I personally am all in favor of this--if the only meat options available were environmentally sustainable ones, I think the actual cost of meat would be obvious pretty quickly).
I do agree that industrial monoculture is a problem for either meat or crop production, but to say that's a vegetarian vs. paleo thing is a bit disingenuous. That's more like a "mainstream head in the sand" vs. "people who have noticed the current system is unsustainable" situation.
Are you familiar with approaches to farming that focus on building up soil quality as a primary goal (i.e., grow biointensive or similar)? The goal with these methods is to get maximum calories from minimal land, without using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc. and while sustaining or even improving the quality of the soil. I would say that if people are going to nitpick the environmental problems with being vegetarian (or eating less meat) and following a paleo diet, that might be a more appropriate method to compare against.

@catherine: no, not combative at all. i haven't read everyone's response to the question yet, just wanted to get your take. Melissa, whose response is near the top of that page, is the one from that site who I trust the most, so I will weigh her and your opinion against all the evidence. fora on specific topics often become "echo chambers," so if you're seeing cherry-picking, i believe you. if you're really feeling combative, put your own answer on the site! it would really benefit from having an alternative voice.
i've had a sneaking suspicion that paleo isn't something that the whole planet could follow, but i don't think that's always a necessary criterion for doing or not doing something. some commenters on Jacob's blog have written something to the effect of, "What if everyone did this?" and obviously everyone isn't; same goes for paleo.
on the other hand, i think everyone deserves to have more freedom, the sort of freedom we (ERE aspirants) will have, and i think everyone deserves to have better health too, but there are different roads to these goals, and limited time for those inclined to evangelize while also living their lives--not to mention sorting through all the studies.
as mentioned in an earlier post, i'm planning to start hunting this fall/winter as a way to minimize my environmental impact--even though this isn't a universal option for all of humanity, it nevertheless will have a small positive impact, and always will until the hunters out-number the sustainable deer/bear/duck population. the reality is that it's actually going the other direction--less hunters every year; out of control white tail population; somewhat oversized bear population in some parts.

Wow, this thread is getting Malthusian! We saw how right he was. 100 million? Yikes, reminds me of the Georgia guide stones... I don't know if enough technology could be lost to make it go that low. A less traditional disaster perhaps, for example if the fertility keeps heading the direction it is.
Sure there is a cap on population, but who knows where it is? As long as easy energy is around life will probably continue like it is. Even UN figures are showing population will stabilize and even decline before 2050.
Frankly I don't care if paleo can feed the world or not, it can feed me... The rest can feed themselves. Most people tend to choose frosted treats over health anyway.
Let them eat cake!
Grass fed meat ensures a somewhat natural environment, as it used to and should exist complete with innumerate little critters aren't tolerated on big ag farms...
Will meat get hyper expensive? I doubt it, but so what if it does? Let the market do its work... If it gets too expensive, there are still eggs. What a gift the chicken is.

@JohnnyH
"Frankly I don't care if paleo can feed the world or not, it can feed me... The rest can feed themselves. Most people tend to choose frosted treats over health anyway.

Let them eat cake!"
This is gold! Can I quote you on this?

I am about half way through Taube's book Good Calorie, Bad Calorie. I am more convinced that paleo is the right diet for me because I have been a victim of the HFCS surge in the typical American diet. He makes the point that many of the Asian who subsisted on a diet based primarily on carbs from white rice nevertheless did not suffer from the diseases of civilization like diabetes and heart disease because their total caloric intake was low and their level of physical activity metabolized the glucose before it could be stored as fat or increased triglycerides. So, we in the West, who need the saturated fat from meat to reverse our problems can do so; while those in developing countries can continue to rely on carbohydrates.

@Maus: yes, and their rice was brown with the husk intact... The west didn't start to get into big trouble until we started eating the endosperm alone. Compounded by problems with transfats, vegetable oils, feedlot meats, etc.
HFCS, what a health blight; liver/kidney problems, promotes diabetes (much more than cane sugar), fuels cancer cells. A good example of unintended consequences from political interference in the market.
@Marius: haha! sure thing:)

Sorry to keep beating this dead horse/thread, but I wanted to note that I'm about to embark on an experiment of modified paleo å la Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, which espouses the high-animal fat and moderate meat intake of paleo, but augments it with traditionally prepared grains and legumes--the more budget/ERE-friendly staples--"traditionally" meaning soaking, fermenting and grinding as part of the preparation, thus neutralizing the detrimental components of these produce and making them more digestible--especially the protein! Raw dairy is also part of the suggested diet--I will probably restrict myself to heavy cream at first.
The un-soaked, un-fermented, even raw (Jacob!) oats proposed to be consumed in this thread are diametrically opposed to the theories proposed in Fallon's line of thinking. To add a little credibility to these claims, early cultures around the world independently came to these practices of soaking, fermenting and grinding, so it's unlikely to be superstition, and very likely to be health-bestowing.
In this spirit, here is an additional paleo resource with much scientific credibility who follows something more in line with the Fallon/WAPF regimen.
Catherine, your thoughtful objection to high meat intake, as well as my own concerns about my food budget, are what have sent me in this direction. Stephan Guyenet's blog (linked to above) explodes the myth of low-carb eating, so I feel free to broaden my horizons a bit with regards to grains and legumes. If you haven't read the Fallon book already, I highly recommend it! It is primarily a cookbook, actually, and has interesting fermented veggie recipes, among other things. I think there are some convincing warnings about soy as well.

@NYC ERE

Thanks for the latest post. I've added Stephan's blog to my favorites list and will peruse it later. I've really been enjoying my first forays into paleo, but was reluctant to give up legumes altogether because they are cheap and provide good bulk. So this is a modification I'm keen to explore.
BTW good luck with deer season. I haven't hunted in years, but it is trickier than it sounds to bag a deer. Here in California you can get one tag for regular season and one for bow hunting season. But we also have wild boar, which is even tastier.