The Omnivore's Delimma - Can't get it out of my head

[Atlas]

Interesting perspective, Lex

[JohninRI]

Be smarter just to buy land in an area of low property tax, and use the Current Use agricultural discount to pay nearly nothing.

I agree John, but Caleb was talking about starting a community.  Communities need income while they are building otherwise much of their energy will be taken up, away from the community.

[Lex]

There might be some info about The China Study/milk on here:

http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html

From reading the about page it appears that The China Study is just another 'reductionist science' paper about this or that nutritional component. He studied the kids intake of protein, well, how does he know it was specifically the protien component and not whether they ate chicken vs beef vs pork for example? What if upon further study he discovered kids who ate chicken where healthier than those who ate pork (hypothetical)? Scientists don't look at that stuff because it's inconvenient. It would require to study the habbits of the particular animals that those kids ate, etc.

For example, people in Italy/Crete eat WAY more pasta than Americans and are healthier and have less heart dieses EVEN THOUGH carbs are linked to heart disease. Well, because folks over there 1) excerise more and 2) go on fasts.

Point is, single nutrient "reductionist science" is so narrow minded it's not even worth following (yet).

Maybe in 50 years when they really figure it all out I'll listen to them, but right now it's all just one giant cluster f*k.

Eat real food, mostly veggies, exercise often, fast occasionally and I think you'll discover the 'secret' (not really a secret, just common sense) to true health. 

That's my story and i'm sticking to it! 

[Kat Kanning]

Watch the movie link I posted.  He says just the opposite.

There might be some info about The China Study/milk on here:

http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html

From reading the about page it appears that The China Study is just another 'reductionist science' paper about this or that nutritional component. He studied the kids intake of protein, well, how does he know it was specifically the protien component and not whether they ate chicken vs beef vs pork for example? What if upon further study he discovered kids who ate chicken where healthier than those who ate pork (hypothetical)? Scientists don't look at that stuff because it's inconvenient. It would require to study the habbits of the particular animals that those kids ate, etc.

For example, people in Italy/Crete eat WAY more pasta than Americans and are healthier and have less heart dieses EVEN THOUGH carbs are linked to heart disease. Well, because folks over there 1) excerise more and 2) go on fasts.

Point is, single nutrient "reductionist science" is so narrow minded it's not even worth following (yet).

Maybe in 50 years when they really figure it all out I'll listen to them, but right now it's all just one giant cluster f*k.

Eat real food, mostly veggies, exercise often, fast occasionally and I think you'll discover the 'secret' (not really a secret, just common sense) to true health. 

That's my story and i'm sticking to it! 

[dalebert]

I think probably the first thing to get overlooked in any kind of diet fad is moderation. Moderation in all things is key. I'm feeling healthier lately than I've felt in a long time even though I'm not going to the gym. I've lost weight recently despite that. I'm doing a lot of DDR for exercise. I think it's due in large part to just reducing how much I eat total. I eat what I want for the most part; just smaller portions. Once you get used to it, you lose the desire to keep eating after you've had enough. Over-eating is a habit that you can break yourself of, I think.

[John Edward Mercier]

I think most of the differences in countries are based on the ecomonics of food. I noticed being from two distinct cultural backgrounds (Quebecois/Irish) that the Quebecois eat a much larger amount of vegetable and poultry... while the Irish tended to be meat and potatoes with smaller deviation.

[Lex]

Watch the movie link I posted.  He says just the opposite.

Thanks Kat, I watched the video. I'm still very skeptical about this study. He seems to me like someone going from one extreme (mostly meat) to being anti-meat. I think healthy meat and meat fat is very good for the body.

"In Defense Of Food" he talks quite a bit about studies and how there are too many loop holes in most of these studies that makes them lose credibility, including the china study. He also goes through quite a bit of detail of different cultures and meat eating in general. It would appear to me that the main reason he recommends in the beginning of the book to eat mostly vegetables (less meat) is because vegetables in America are a little bit less toxic than meat. I think the point is not necessarily which specific foods to eat in abstract but which foods in your particular setting are the healthiest. If you are at the market buying food and there is one pile of cucumbers and you are pretty certain the labeling is correct in that it is organic and locally grown and then a pile of carrots from an industrial farm. Then the prudent thing to do would be to buy the cucumbers and not the carrots, at least on that particular trip to the market. I think it's sort of like the modern version of hunting/gathering :-) And it could very well be that you could walk into a grocery store and not really find any real food and so you may have to try other gathering grounds (store) until you find something that doesn't just resemble food but is in fact food. This book has really changed my perspective on shopping.

I recommend this book very much and I think it would be a better investment than The Omnivore's Dilemma since that one seems more like preaching to the choir, most of us already know that the industry is messed up. In this new book, In Defense of Food, he explains why it is messed up and what we can do to get around it and eat right. So I would say this book seems to be more practical and useful.

I have it on audio CD and listen to it during my drives.

[John Edward Mercier]

Not necessarily... organic is a government regulated term.
So the difference between a local farm listed as 'organic' and one that isn't may just be the farmer's refusal to jump through hoops on testing requirements and such.

[Lex]

Not necessarily... organic is a government regulated term.
So the difference between a local farm listed as 'organic' and one that isn't may just be the farmer's refusal to jump through hoops on testing requirements and such.

I didn't say certified organic, just organic. Just because the government got into the business doesn't invalidate the word which preexisted government involvement.

[Caleb]

I wish you well with your project!

I am also involved with a group which is building several such communities in various places. Ours are based on the law of attraction, which I know is not your cup of tea, but there is plenty of room for a variety of communities with different focuses.

Thanks. Believe me, the idea of joining an already established intentional community or a catholic worker house has crossed my mind. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

But my way of thinking is that maybe the reason that these ideas don't spread is because people who have them always tend to join something that's already established rather than direct their efforts toward expanding it. I think that the best way is for me to acquire land and liberate it. Next best is to join something already established. The whole idea for me is that part of the idea of liberating land is that you lose any "right" to exclude anyone, so anyone can wander onto a piece of liberated land and use it. What that means is that any piece of liberated land is really just a small part of the larger extended community. When you start to think that way, a piece of land doesn't have to be large to be liberated. I could liberate a tiny piece of land, because it can be used for something, and other needs can be on other pieces of land. That way, the land doesn't even need to be contiguous.

[Tom Sawyer]

Come on admit it Caleb... ya went to Cali. cuz ya wanted to start a cult.

They seem to get all the chicks. (I want to start one too, but Elizabeth ain't goin' for it)

[Kat Kanning]

You could call them Sawyer's Sycophants 

[Tom Sawyer]

 

Yeah baby.