Diet

I am currently revisiting the whole sphere of diet - what with me continuing to look into what I grow in my backyard. Been reading a lot about Vegans and the war they seem to be having with Permaculturalists and - possibly inevitably - discovered the whole Paleo Diet debate. Does anyone here belong to either side

Paleo Diet? you mean Biffo food?

I personally love things that areconsidered "healthy", like pulses, muesli, fruit & veg, wholemeal bread, pumpkin seed bread etc, the list is long & varied. But, I still say a "little of what you like doesnt hurt". I love real butter, not margarine, I drink full fat milk, I LOVE honey till it pours out of my ears, yohurts etc. But I do steer away from fizzy drinks,crisps, sweets, (NOT chocolate !) I eat Quorn products, & not a lot of cheese, tho I do enjoy cheese. I only fry eggs, I dont eat chips. I prefer savoury to sweet, I hardly eat pastry or biscuits or cakeys, I dont drink booze. Sounds a boring diet ? NO! theres so many scrummy things you can buy & make. I do like fish,especially Tuna & dark fish like Mackeral & herring. I think that if you dont PIG out on junk food, hit the bakery,McDonalds & fry-ups, eat little & often & keep as active as possible, you should be ok ?

The one point of agreement between the disputants is that processed foods (including, of course, MacDonalds and the like) is bad for health.

The Vegan/Vegetarian side say that straight-from-the-animal products are not healthy but Paleos say we need meat to stay healthy.

Oh yes, both sides agree milk products don't do you any good. The Paleos are low to no carb, the Vegan/Vegetarian is high carb all the way (apparently).

Azriel - I think we're on the same diet.

Mrs Figg - Biffo is a meat eater and extremely strong and virile (apparently). I wonder if I can use him as an example to build an argument?

Btw I've come across several Youtube clips depicting sexy healthy young women who fully support meat-exclusion eating habits, and just as sexy healthy girls who support their meat-included eating. Go figure!

Meet? Yoom yoom yoom...

I lost 20kg in 10 weeks on this stuff. Had one in the morning one in the evening and salad n steak, fish, chicken for lunch.

https://www.itvsn.com.au/include/oecgi2.php/product?product=201389&site_id=ITVSN

Isn't whey a milk by-product, Chris? No carbs? Or does whey have carbs?

I like Soya milk, but its a bit expensive here & Im the only one that likes it. Porridge is great with honey !! yum You & I,Orwell, should be fine,fit healthy specimens that the whole human race should be jealous off !!

Orwell wrote:Isn't whey a milk by-product, Chris? No carbs? Or does whey have carbs?

Add milk then bananas nuts berries

Low fat milk

I am with Nigella on this one, apart from the smoking

I guess I eat a lot of bad things pasta, meat, chockie bikkies (not industrial made), coffee, chips, potatos, but I only eat one meal a day, so my overall calories count is low. I also eat good stuff to counteract the bad like cauliflower broccoli, pumpkin, brown bread, garlick, fish oil, tomato and loads of water, and a multi vitamin. I eat because I get hungry but I find it a chore, cant be bothered with it, I think its a waste of time and energy, if i could survive on a space age pill and some coffee I would be happy.

going by the pics of the 2 women above, you could say some sort of genetics play a part ? some people are blessed with great skin or never seem to look older, no matter WHAT they do, where as some look old from the day their born !

yes its definately genetics, but Gillian McKeith doesnt exactly inspire me with confidence in what she is preaching. I once went on a super health kick, I ate beans and lentils and Quinoi and sesame seeds. I ate fruit and raw veggies, I kept this up for a couple of months and felt very smug about it. My stomach blew up like a balloon When I recovered I went back to chocolate and chips, I felt wonderful.

I'm always skeptical of anyone who advocates colon cleansing. Seems to be the wrong end for a dietician to focus on.

I dont agree with putting anything into the body that isnt meant to go there ! I think it disturbs the body's natural rhythm & interferes with natural hormones & the like. Maybe you DO feel better after an irrigation but it aint natural ! anything your body doesnt want, a good S**t will sort that out. I dont even like putting cotton buds in my ears unless its absolutely nesessary.

I've always found extreme diets a bit silly. Although I respect the ideals behind some of them, they often seem to be more about the sense of controlling things than about actual health or sustainability.

Having said that, I really like to know what my food used to be before I eat it. If it was a potato or a soy bean, it ought to look like and taste like that. If it was part of an animal, it ought to look or taste like that. I really mistrust vegetable products that try to pretend they're meat, cereals that try to taste like fruits, fake fruit juices that include animal protein and claim that it's someway "healthy". To all Frankenfoods I say, "ICK!!!"

If I'm eating meat, I'd much rather see the cut of meat and get it from a butcher I know and trust than to eat generic ground beef or sausage from a supermarket of fast food place. I know what they can legally put in there if their only goal is to keep costs as low as possible, and the chemicals they can add to make it seem fresh. It takes the pleasure out of eating it for me.

By the same theory, fresh butter from a local dairy is better food than margarine. (Especially in the USA where anything with corn, soy or sugar beet is almost certainly from genetically modified varieties for which I don't think the health testing has been adequate.)

For me there is nothing tastes half as good as simple, fresh, fully-ripened fruits and vegetables that came out of the garden/field/orchard the same day, and maybe a piece of fish that was caught earlier that morning. No amount of added salt/sugar/fat/seasonings can ever equal that! [edit: oh, let's add some fresh-baked bread, still warm from the oven with a bit of butter and local honey melted into it for dessert. It just doesn't get any better. Damn! Now I'm hungry!]

Mrs Figg wrote: When I recovered I went back to chocolate and chips, I felt wonderful.

You pour the chocolate over the chips???? For me that's like two good friends that have no business dating each other.

The Paleo Diet seems to be high meat and fish, high fruit and vegetables, but fairly low carbs (cereal and taters, I guess). Apparently Hunter Gatherers (pre-Agriculture) had healthy diets and their bones were unmarked by modern (?) diseases like cancer and diabetes. Cereal was a starvation food - though how paleologists can know that, I'm not sure.

The stuff about genetics seems apt, Ladies. George Burns is a testament that smoking cigars will give you a long life, but I think I'd prefer to take samples from a much larger demographic than his demographic of one. I mean, George might have been the exception that proves the rule.

The picture of Nigella, who is 51, looks like it was taken when she was twenty five, but your point is well made nonetheless, Mrs Figg.

A good cross section of food, and no gluttony, would seem the best bet, and Dave's diet sounds very sound, and pretty much what I'm looking at (and doing currently) --- so long as meat can be thrown in, of course.

I admit I'm fond of a certain Permaculture idea (I'm assuming it is a Permaculture idea!), and that is:

If you go and clear the land of native vegetation (and all other biology) and then fertilize with petro-chemicals, as well as burning petroleum for your tractors etc., and having your soil eroded away (or turned into a Dustbowl), then your long term economics are quite a bit stuffed. You grow two cows on an acre or two. But if you leave everything as it was, with perhaps some helpful land design if necesary (a few carefully chosen species of pasture flora and some water holding landworks if necessary), and allow two cows to roam the same two acres eating a variety of foods (as browsers do), then you've paid less (in all ways) but got the same result (with perhaps heathier cows to boot!) What think you, Dave? I'm no expert, just read a lot. Books are useful, but not always as useful as experience. Please supply reality check if you don't mind, Dave.

Oh yes, apparently milk is not good in a Paleo Diet, though butter is okay - fine, in fact.

Oh yes - and what about raw foods?

Sorry Dave! What I meant really by two acres is: growing enough corn on two acres to feed two cows in a feed lot as opposed to leaving things largely as they were and letting things occur more naturally.

It's a good way, but it's a lot more work wisdom stewardship and luck than most people realize. When I was growing up we had a good milk cow on about 5 acres, two of which was well established pasture and the rest was brush and timber. We'd breed her almost every year, and to her natural calf we'd add a second calf the we purchased. That provided all our meat and milk, plus enough to trade and give to friends. But there's a lot of management. We'd still have to buy feed to supplement their diet at certain times, water the pasture, shift them on and off so they didn't overgraze, and milk daily at exactly the same time.

No acreage is exactly like any other, so you need to learn how to farm it as pasture. It makes a huge difference on how much stock it can support. You'll see numbers of anywhere from 1 to 50 acres per cow/calf pair depending on water, soil, degree days and grass type. If you're seriously thinking about going this route, you should start getting to know others in your area and picking their brains for wisdom. There's nothing beats local knowledge.

Corn on the other hand can be done by recipe book with modern petro-chem fertilizers. Just bulldoze, plow, sow, fertilize and water like hell, and harvest. You can feed a lot more cattle off the same acreage by this formula as long as you have the water, and the profits are much greater, but it's not sustainable because of all the fertilizer used. Unfortunately this model has recently been destroying much of the best farmland because it's so easy, profitable and adaptable to large agribusiness (as opposed to real farmers).

Real corn farmers, and I still know a couple, only grow corn for about two years out of 5 in a crop rotation with alfalfa or beans and tillable cover crops which return airborn NO2 to the soil to let the land recharge. That's sustainable. But the synthetic fertilizers make that step unnecessary.

I probably have more answers if you've got more questions. Just take em for what they're worth....

Also I'd like to say that there's no comparison between homogenized milk and raw milk. Both for health and taste.

I'm probably looking more at the conceptual than the practical at moment. That is: I'm not planning on buying a cow, just brought it up as a discussion point.

At the moment with me it's a small aquaponics system (three weeks old), and about ten reasonable sized vegie/herb/fruit beds (two to begin with, then two and two and two over the past few years). I've recently begun a small meal worm farm and a small red wriggler farm - for fish and chook food supplements. Oh yes, I have a few chooks, and chook straw, and eggs. Just beginning to expand my backyard farm at moment, you see.

Btw I've got about twelve fair sized fish (Silver Perch - Ozzie Native) which were donated by a neighbour who was emptying his dam so he could clean it out. These are now in my Aquaponics tank. Cool hey! And growbed is going okay - though my lettuce and parsley are bitter. Ph too high in the growbed, I wonder?

As to milk - apparently only babies need it - and not from other species, if you want to be healthy that is. Wonderful thing watching countless Youtube vids with all their conflicting and contentious information. For about thirty five years I've been relying (mainly) on books for info on Green Consciousness!

Anyhow, thanks for the valuable insights, Dave. Knew you'd come up with the goods!

{{{Farmers are useful for something, it seems. Go figure! }}}