Real cavemen eat bone broth

[rachelmanija]

For reasons that really don't bear rehashing, I spent the last two years getting told to go on diets. Every kind of diet. No "nightshades." No acid. No gluten. No dairy. Low-FODMAP (bans dairy, gluten, soy, legumes, and half of all fruits and vegetables.) Low-fat. "Eat nothing but bone broth that you made yourself, and if you don't simmer it for six hours, it's no good." "Microwaving food destroys its nutrients." At one point I had successive doctors tell me to go on a low-fiber diet and a high-fiber diet.

Every single diet-pusher, whether doctor or rando, said or implied (usually explicitly said), "If you don't do this, you'll never get better. Don't you want to get better?"

This was especially infuriating given that I was so underweight that I had symptoms of malnutrition. And also that in two years of dieting, there had never once been any indication whatsoever that my illness was caused by diet or that changing my diet was helpful. I eventually came to the conclusion that Americans are fucking insane about food and that a primary manifestation of sexism is controlling women by controlling what they eat.

Anyway, I am not dieting now. But now that I am slightly less likely to hit NEON RAGE APOCALYPSE at the word "diet," I clicked on a link and fell into an internet rabbit hole of diet advice. Like the evolved forager that I am, I bring you my findings for amusement, analysis, and mockery:

- A comparison of wild fruits and vegetables with cultivated ones, concluding that eating fruits and vegetables is unhealthy because they are unnatural and not what the cavemen ate.

By that reasoning there is literally nothing we can eat unless we get air-dropped into some untouched stretch of rainforest to forage for wild bananas.

- Eating fruit makes you fat.

- Humans did not evolve to eat fruit.

We're PRIMATES. Monkeys love bananas.

- Corn causes Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

- Corn causes ADHD.

- Corn causes autism.

- Corn causes cancer.

- Broccoli causes cancer.

- Hot water causes cancer.

The last one, from a study saying that drinking hot beverages can cause cancer, had the best response: David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Britain's University of Cambridge, said: "In the case of very hot drinks, the IARC concludes they are probably hazardous, but can't say how big the risk might be," according to the Australian Financial Review. "This may be interesting science, but makes it difficult to construct a sensible response."

- A Breatharian – as defined in the book A Year Without Food – is a person who chooses to live mostly, or completely, from Pranic nourishment. Israeli author Ray Maor claims that once Breatharians have trained their body to absorb this energy from the air and sunlight, they are no longer dependent on food. Many of them continue to taste food for enjoyment, but do not need it for survival, he says.

Umm.

- Brian J. Ford has suggested that ketosis, possibly caused by alcoholism or low-carb dieting, produces acetone, which is highly flammable and could therefore lead to apparently spontaneous combustion.

The Atkins diet will make you burst into flame!

- Our ancestors NEVER ate a carb. They ate meat and fat and that was it. On that diet, they grew, improved their lot, invented the wheel, survived in caves and hinted in groups.

Bad history aside (even in the Arctic, people ate seaweed and lichen), anyone who's ever lived in a small town or attended school knows that a major human activity is indeed hinting in groups.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

The blame aspect especially gets to me. It's basically a horrific marriage of junk science, just world theory, sexism, and outright cruelty which enables people to always blame anyone who's sick. Especially if they're female.

I looked up monomeals (what us ancients used to call "snacks") and found SO MUCH stupidity:

Eating a Monomeal is Refusing to Alimentarily Multitask. We know that multitasking overtaxes the brain and sets us up for mistakes. [...] If we eat a cheese & veggie omelet , bacon, toast with jelly and butter with a side of cut mixed fruit and also juice and coffee…wow, what a multi-enzymatic task cut out for our bodies!

Wow, indeed.

Think About How Our Primitive Ancestors Ate

Living in the wild, foraging for food, when a tree of ripe fruit was discovered, primitive humans ate the ripe fruit until they were satiated. They didn’t look to combine the fruit with another food for a more interesting presentation.

How do you know? Were you there?

Primitive man, in his pristine life in the forest, probably ate one food at a time, depending upon the availability of the food.

1. Since when are all natural food sources completely isolated from each other, so it's impossible to eat berries and also some insects and maybe fallen nuts and mushrooms?

2. So, we're talking so early in the timeline that there was no such thing as foraging for food which was then brought somewhere else. That is so early that you might as well say, "We must all eat like our cousins, the gorillas."

3. Why no advocacy of eating bugs? I will go out on a limb and say that before we had containers, we definitely ate some bugs.

Starchy foods require an alkaline digestive medium. Protein-rich foods require an acid medium. When acids and bases (alkalines) meet in any situation, they neutralize each other. This also happens in the stomach. With no acids breaking down our food, they quickly start to ferment and rot in the humid, dark interiors of our bodies.

...no. No, that is not how it works.

Humans are the only creatures on the earth that mix hard-to-digest conglomerations of unhealthy food into meals containing dozens of ingredients, and even our species has only been at this peculiar habit for a few thousand years.

1. CITE PLEASE.

2. You've never actually watched wild omnivores, have you?

3. Or read a history book.

4. Our species has only been at these peculiar habits of reading, writing, living indoors, and wearing clothing for a few thousand years. We must cease this abnormal behavior!

Your options for raw food combining fall into 11 categories based not on culinary classifications, but on the actual composition of the food. If you're eating well, though, there are only really eight categories you'll be eating from with any regularity.

It might seem complex, but once you get the hang of it you won't even need to think about it anymore. For me, it's pretty much instinct.

[Completely batshit food table explaining that you can eat bananas at the same meal as blueberries but not with apples follows.]

...this is actually the five-year-old who won't eat blue foods with red foods because he doesn't like the color purple all grown up, right?

[ironed_orchid]

It's not like people who are alive now don't eat insects on purpose.

More stuff about things Indigenous Australians ate, this time it's Ngunnawal people:

In summer, people visited the high country where the Bogong moth, in millions or billions, could be found hiding in rocky crevices to survive the warmer weather. The moths were rich in stored fats and oils and were enthusiastically eaten (some say the taste resembles peanut butter). The moths were shaken and teased out from under rocky overhangs into nets and then roasted on a fire. Some were smoked and stored as cakes for use in more difficult times.

[rachelmanija]

Oh, absolutely. But the monomeal and other caveman diet advocates never seem to suggest it...

[ironed_orchid]

Of course not. I bet deep fried tarantula with satay sauce would meet most paleo standards (unless they have restrictions on deep frying).

[muccamukk]

I don't think you're supposed to cook anything. But lightly fried grasshoppers were a popular seasonal treat when I worked in Uganda, often just spitted over an open fire, even. No takers? Anyone?

[rachelmanija]

You can cook with paleo! Paleo actually isn't all that restrictive compared to a lot of the diets I was told to go on. It bans grain, dairy, and processed foods. As opposed to low FODMAP, which bans or restricts virtually everything.

Did you try the grasshoppers?

Also - I didn't know you worked in Uganda! What was it like? Were you in a rural area.

[conuly]

Most paleo eaters also seem to ban potatoes (or at least only eat them in small quantities) and refined sugars, with a serious side-eye given to molasses, honey, or maple syrup.

[muccamukk]

Oh, I though it was like Food of our Ancestors, but that's the Raw Food people probably. I can never keep them straight.

I didn't. I was just leaving as they were coming into season, and the one night they were on the menu I'd skipped dinner for some reason (I may have been in a different area?). I was offered cold left-over fried grasshoppers for breakfast the next day, but that was not very appealing. Likewise little bags sold by roadside vendors.

I was way too inexperienced to have gone, and had untreated depression which didn't combine well with malaria meds/malaria, the grinding poverty of nearly everyone in the rural area the project was in, and being deep in the closet. I don't think I did any harm, but I did very little good, on the whole.

[rydra_wong]

Ooh, me please.

*crunches happily*

[rydra_wong]

*polite cough*

Actually, some of the more sensible paleo/primal/ancestral health crowd are very into eating insects. Eco-friendly sustainable large-scale source of high-quality animal protein, as definitely eaten by our ancestors (and plenty of our contemporaries in many countries)! Feed the world, eat crunchy crickets!

Which is why cricket flour is suddenly a lot more expensive.

*continues crunching*

[rachelmanija]

I clearly never met the sensible ones. Which went for a whole lot of things these last two years. (This is a bit ironic as I normally eat in a manner vaguely resembling paleo when left to my own devices.)

What does cricket flour taste like? I mean, what does stuff made with it taste like?

[rydra_wong]

This is a bit ironic as I normally eat in a manner vaguely resembling paleo when left to my own devices.

Likewise. I lean gently in that direction as that seems to be what my individual body is happiest with -- not that I don't eat paleo-forbidden foods, just that my body seems to run best when my meals are built primarily on meat/fish/veg/fruit.

What does cricket flour taste like? I mean, what does stuff made with it taste like?

See:

https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/422302.html
https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/422592.html

[rachelmanija]

my body seems to run best when my meals are built primarily on meat/fish/veg/fruit.

Mine too. I feel way better, in an overall fitness way, now that I've gotten back to eating the way I was before the Two Year Hell. At this point unless some actual solid evidence presents itself that what I'm eating is making me sick, I am not going on any supposedly healthy diets. Imposed by others, I mean. I am doing some protein shakes and similar eat-for-strength things.

Did you ever experiment more with cricket flour? It seems like with the prawny taste it would be good for savory dishes. A crust for fish pie, maybe.

[ironed_orchid]

Ooh, or even a bulking/binding agent for things like fish cakes and patties.

[rydra_wong]

I need to get hold of another bag and do some more experiments! That was how I discovered that it's abruptly harder to get hold of and more expensive now people are making protein bars with (a usually fairly small percentage of) cricket flour in them.

Thinking about it now, the slight savouriness might go well with honey, and maybe tahini -- a quasi-halva thing could be worth a go ...

[monanotlisa]

And they're tasty, too. Had crickets in Mexico, which boasts 500 or so edible insects -- historically consumed with gusto.

[conuly]

With no acids breaking down our food, they quickly start to ferment and rot in the humid, dark interiors of our bodies.

...exactly what does he imagine the difference is between food "breaking down" and "rotting"? I mean, I wouldn't normally describe digestion as a controlled, useful rot, but....

[devon]

We know what gets digested first by seeing what is in vomit. There's rarely meat, but there are often raw or medium-cooked vegetables.

Everyone mentions corn, of course, and it's true - it's a starchy vegetable that just takes longer to break down. You won't see any meat unless it's an insta-purge caused by dramatic food poisoning.

(I've given myself plenty of food poisoning bc of poor food hygeine at home. Leaving stuff out too long, mainly - not actually contaminating it.)

[monanotlisa]

Yeah -- tomatoes are clearly Trouble for our digestive systems, for example. And bless their hearts, but folks like me with IBS and other conditions are not going to go for any of that raw bullshit; vegetables work best for me when they're nicely cooked (though I puree my salads, which also helps greatly).

[devon]

I'm the same re: raw veggies. My doctor said to make sure I cook my broccoli properly. I'm not into this restaurant trend where it's only been warmed up. >.<

I've never heard of pureed salads. I guess it'd be like a spinach smoothie with some bonus ingredients? I run a little anemic from a medication I have to take, so maybe that would do me good and also be easy on my digestion.

Thanks for the idea!