Comments on: Can A Paleo/Primal Lifestyle Be Sustainable? – New Series

By: Paleo/Primal Sustainability

Paleo/Primal Sustainability — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:02:50 +0000

[...] is a great perspective on the sustainability of a paleo/primal lifestyle. This author brings up some very valid points on whether or not we could change the world back to [...]

By: Vitamin Water - New Craze For Fitness | Buy Vitamin Water

Vitamin Water - New Craze For Fitness | Buy Vitamin Water — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:59:15 +0000

[...] Can A Paleo/Primal Lifestyle Be Sustainable? [...]

By: mc

mc — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:18:51 +0000

@Eve:Developing countries don’t necessarily have dirty water…and water that is dirty by our standards isn’t necessarily dirty by human immunological standards.Marketing things at the developing world is a good thing. Currently, most products produced are marketed at the richest 14% of the world – more trade traffic with the developing world means they’re closer to joining the *developed* world, assuming responsible governance and a certain amount of economic freedom.

By: mc

mc — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:15:28 +0000

@alchemyguy:I tend to think it’s completely unrealistic to expect the number of jobs in the agricultural sector to grow relative to the rest of the economy, and use less technology. It reminds me of my dismissal of the anarcho-primitivist movement – if people really went “back to basics” and eschewed technology, eventually someone will say, “Hey, Steve is dying, does anyone remember how to make pennicilin?” and things would begin again.Society naturally tends towards building up rather than breaking down. This isn’t always a good thing. Maybe people going back to agrarian life would be a good thing…but it’s not the direction I see the world moving in.

By: Eve

Eve — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:37:49 +0000

Grant – your local poster of smiling families eating breakfast; maybe it was defaced by young people who don’t know what a smiling family is. I’d say half the people I know from my home and work life are living in broken families and, thinking about it now, I’d say the majority of these are from the lower half of the social pecking order. And, most of the smiling families I do know, don’t walk past posters because they drive everywhere in their ‘people carriers’.But that’s a whole different issue, I just wanted to offer a reason for the defacement.

By: Eve

Eve — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:28:48 +0000

I don’t hate Amercians, but I bet you invented most of these unsustainable practices Re flogging baby formula to the third world – I agree that’s wrong if the underlying motive was profit (as I suspect it was), but was there an alternative? As for the dirty water, how many years have Oxfam been teaching the third world to build clean water systems, but the people keep messing them up. Surely there comes a point at which some countries’ leaders should take more ownership of their health issues, where possible of course. Poor education, poor hygeine, and lack of hope, not to mention power-hungry war lords, all contribute to the problems in the third world – there’s only so much help the West can offer. But we cannot allow people to starve. Mistakes are often made on the road to learning. Most of what the West has done for the third world has been positive and good, eg smallpox vaccines etc. If these situations were ignored then Americans and the rest of us would get blasted for that also. It’s a ‘no win’.One of the current health drives in England is trying to educate people on good nutrition. Admittedly it’s based on the usual food pyramid, five a day fruit/veg, seven a day grains, but it seems that people just do not know how to cook anymore – and this lack of knowledge is being passed down to their children. Although it’s still grain heavy by Primal standards, the emphasis is on one-quarter plate protein, one-quarter plate grain/carb (inc potato), and one-half plate veg. It’s a step in the right direction. However, you can still buy a dozen doughnuts for £1. In fact, we have the new craze over here of Pound Shops. You go in one of these and you can buy all sorts of cr*p for £1 – cakes, biscuits, sweets, chocolate, crisps, etc etc – total rubbish – but the shops are luring in those people who are short of money and just exacerbating the problems. A lot of primary schools have banned sweets and fatty snacks from the lunch boxes but it’s still going to take time to sort out our problems.I don’t know about the Amercan tax system, but here we all pay Council Tax – if you are in employment. The average 3 bed house in London suburbs pays around £150 a month. Maybe they should reimburse people who can demonstrate sustainability/green living, eg growing your own veg, having a compost heap, growing veg for your neighbours, even?! In fact, maybe all communities should have a communal veg/fruit plot, that we are all obliged to work on each week. But there are no incentives – none! Why is this? What influence do the supermarkets etc have on policy in this respect? They advertise good food, and do demos on TV on how to cook it, but they still lure you into buying the dozen doughnuts.

By: Grant

Grant — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:46:27 +0000

@Dana: You don’t think the rest of the world would hate America regardless of whether or not we left them alone? I don’t know… In the neighborhood I live in, there is a new apartment building going up and, surrounding the construction site is a fence, and on that fence is some promotional material featuring smiling families doing things like eating breakfast together in their new apartment home, playing in the nearby park, etc…It’s a beautiful ad, really. A strange thing has happened though: because it’s at street level, a number of passersby have defaced it – drawing moustaches on the women, darkening out their front teeth to make them look silly, things like that. I just can’t understand why someone would look at something so beautiful and feel, not admiration, but hatred and contempt.I guess that’s my Eurocentrism speaking…

By: Dana

Dana — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:28:40 +0000

“The third world, and it’s apologists the political/cultural/philosophical left, do not dislike the US (or any other Western nation) because of any one of it’s particular policies, but because of it’s very existence. An existence which is a reproach to theirs. A reminder of their failure to live up to their nature as humans and flourish.”Oh geez.I know a full-on political discussion is verboten here so let me just pose this as a philosophical question, one for you to consider *for yourself.* Why in the world would an arbitrary political entity with arbitrary national borders on an arbitrary spot on the planet be hated merely for existing? An existence in and of itself cannot be a reproach. Only behavior of some kind or a verbal admonition can do that. So could it be that someone or other in a developing country, or someone helping that person in the developing country, is angry at the United States for something we did or said? I think possibly. Therefore the anger WOULD be directed at policy, and not at existence.Really, I promise you, people in other countries exist for their own purposes and to their own ends. Even in “the third world”, they worry a tad bit more about survival than about whether America thinks electric cars are a good idea this week. They’re not stupid.I’m not sure what to say to your remark about failing to live up to our nature as humans and flourish other than to comment that I have seen plenty of such failures here in the U.S., and not all of them are in the lower classes.And that’s about all I can say without being mean about it. It occurs to me that some people avoid making lifestyle changes such as advocated in this blog not because they’re lazy or afraid but because they don’t like to associate with mean people. Nobody likes being told they’re a failure all the time, especially when their life circumstances derive directly from a history of their people being subjugated and harmed by the very country, ethnic group, religious group or philosophical group insulting them today.Not asking for kid gloves. But losing the boxing gloves would be nice.Hm. Going back to my previous comment about grains for the poor, and tying it in with developing countries: It would take just a little bit of the right education for them to figure out that by way of our grain assistance we have been responsible for countless epidemics of nutritional deficiency diseases in various “third-world” countries. Mainly because we send them foods their bodies are not accustomed to, and which they are not accustomed to preparing, and then we don’t tell them how to prepare those foods for greatest benefit. I’m reminded of the pellagra epidemic that broke out in Europe after the introduction of maize. Considering that we began sending food to, say for instance, Africa, well after we understood the right ways and wrong ways of preparing such foods, there was no excuse.Or how about our habit of getting mothers in developing countries hooked on baby formula, dooming infants under one year of age to drink dirty water.You know… stuff like that. If it were me I’d be angry too. And that’s not even getting into the complex political and economic stuff–my interest lies more in the concrete and the everyday.

By: Dana

Dana — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:14:30 +0000

I’m sorry, my jaw’s dropping about the very first comment here. “Nothing wrong with the poor eating grains”??? What is that, a rustic version of “Let them eat cake”? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, it kills people. I was poor as dirt while pregnant with my younger child and was eating mostly grain foods and not only did I screw myself up, I’m pretty well convinced I did things to her developmentally too. She was diagnosed with urinary reflux at four months old and when they scanned her kidneys, one was like a third the size of the other. Then her upper front baby teeth started rotting before she’d even had them six months. That’s not genetic and it is no accident. I had an inflammatory episode while pregnant with her, then I got swollen ankles early that were ameliorated with B vitamins and animal protein, then I ballooned out after she was born, and in the last three years I have suffered from reproductive health problems that turned out to be connected to my vitamin A (not beta carotene) intake. All of that could have been headed off at the pass had I been eating primally. I had never even heard of primal eating at that point. (My daughter was born in late 2004.) Now we’ve both been messed up by this and if I deserved it in some way, she certainly didn’t.”Let them eat grains…” I’m sure. Then when all the poor people get fat and diabetic it’ll be “I’m not letting them use my tax money to pay for their poor dietary choices.” After Medicaid kills them they’ll be lucky to get a spot in potter’s field–does any city even still do that anymore?ARGH. I HATE it when people talk about me like I’m not there and like what happens to me is no big deal anyway since it’s not *them.* I know the commenter didn’t mean me specifically, but then again, he did too, without knowing it.That said, I’m realistic. Most human beings living today will not adopt anything resembling a primal diet. Most of them, if they live long enough, will wind up with chronic disease. If we had had more time to switch over to sustainable and *localized* animal husbandry I might be more optimistic. I suppose it is just as well the government and medical establishment and mainstream media are lulling most people to sleep, regardless of their economic status, with lies about what’s “healthy.” I want to run out and yell at everyone that we’re all killing ourselves but it’s like opening an umbrella in the direction of a hurricane.

By: Grant

Grant — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:17:26 +0000

@Alchemyguy: Thank you for finally being halfway decent and actually addressing (part of) what I originally wrote. In an ironic twist, it seems that I was the one who forced you to question your own paradigm – and in doing so I got you to go from a viceral, knee-jerk need to go out of your way to call me, to use the best word I can, presumptuous (as if I would go out of my way to leave a comment here if I didn’t know what I was talking about) to actually addressing what I said. It’s obvious you have your own opinions about the “assumptions” I made; it would have been much more productive to rebut them with “yours” right off the bat.As for the substance of your lastest comment, before I can address it, I have to clean up the mess you made of what I originally said. Yes, I certainly did say that part of the reason why the world can’t go primal is because of food aid, but that’s not all I said. I also said mentioned environmental restrictions – and explained how they derive from the same moral paradigm. I could have listed a few other instances of how this moral paradigm prevents world-wide paleo, but it’s a rule of good writing to not say too much.Taxation for welfare – a epitomic instance of altruism – would have worked just as well. It’s self-sacrificial morality that created the welfare state, but it’s grain subsidies for agribusiness so they can produce food for both the poor and the overworked, short on time middle-class alike that does a huge part to sustain it. Economically, it’s insanity, but morality trumps economics every time.Or perhaps I could have cited our bloated military – and thus it’s contribution to digestion based upon USDA recommendations. It’s only the size it is because altruism tells Americans that they have a responsibility to spread democracy to the oppressed people’s of the world. Or the prison system, or the public schools…Any one of these would have sufficed – but I chose food aid and environmentalism since they were the most obviously relevant to the topic at hand.Moving along, you may not have claimed that altruism is not the only capacity people possess, but you certainly did claim that it was the first. The default, if you will. I reject the entire notion that men are predisposed to any sort of behavior. Left free from the effects of conceptual knowledge – either their own or their parents – infants don’t do much but die. An instinct is precisely what a human being does not possess. If a human being wishes to live, sooner or later he makes the choice to think. To look to the world for information, and to translate that information into broad principles of behavior. In other words: into a code of morality.I don’t consider morality inborn, but nor do I consider it imposed from outside. I am an atheist. Morality is simply another way of describing the proper use of one’s mind, coupled with the resultant action. Action in the natural environment – and thus my reason for saying that “the Earth exists for human exploitation.” The rise of conceptual beings is a phenomenon like any other. If a meteor strikes Texas and it’s effects are felt around the globe, no one decries it for acting how it’s nature commands; but if a man with a brain evolves on the planet – and he uses that power to do what his nature requires – he is cautioned that he may be setting off a “disasterous” ecological chain-reaction.Disasterous to whom? While some might have a foggy idea that they should ask this question, and sometimes environmentalists will grudingly manufacture and answer, ultimately altruism lets them off of the hook. When the dust finally settles, it’s about the Earth as such. Or: sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. In that respect, it’s no different than any medieval religion.