Becoming More Mainstream - Alicia Silverstone

[majormark]

I recently learned that Alicia Silverstone is vegan for 9 or 10 years... and she looks "ok": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dFp5LxA3dI&feature=player_embedded

Now if there was someone like her to promote RAF, who do you think it could be? Should we send her an email with our thoughts?

I can't imagine this diet being popular without more famous people promoting it.

I feel that "veganism" is perceived as more socially acceptable and if RAF would have at least half the popularity it should become more easy to get quality foods.

[lex_rooker]

I feel that "veganism" is perceived as more socially acceptable and if RAF would have at least half the popularity it should become more easy to get quality foods.

My guess is that if a paleo meat based diet were perceived as more socially acceptable and were popular, there wouldn't be enough quality food to go around.  The reason the world can support the population that it does is due solely to the consumption of carbohydrates as our society's primary food.  Be happy that most shun our way of eating thereby leaving sufficient quality food for those of us that know better.

Lex

[Michael]

I agree Lex!  I realised long ago that if this diet were to catch on we'd be in big trouble with regard to obtaining the foods we need!  Let's keep it for people who know better and leave the junk for the overpopulated masses!   

[RawZi]

    I think sarma melngailis and carol alt eat raw meat.

[majormark]

^ Interesting. Carol Alt seems to declare that she only eats meat sometimes.

I believe that the overpopulated masses can dictate what's available. Eventually, if demand increases, there will be more farms adjusting to the new situation.

Think about it, the numbers can only go up. If people find a way to be healthy they tend to stick with it and also tell their friends about it.

[PaleoPhil]

I agree Lex!  I realised long ago that if this diet were to catch on we'd be in big trouble with regard to obtaining the foods we need!

I agree also and have tried to puzzle out how the world might ameliorate this problem, but didn't come up with any real solutions. The best I saw was Ray Audette's idea of developing insect agriculture and eating--especially nutritious termites. Unfortunately, I don't think that would come close to solving the problem, though. There is just no way for most of the world's population to eat really healthfully, so the best we could do is use nutrition education and truth in advertising to try to turn the clock back 50 years or so with more organic agriculture, fewer chemical additives, less high fructose corn syrup, etc.

So I hope this diet doesn't become so popular in my lifetime that I can no longer afford it. It would be nice if it got just a little more acceptable so that social eating would be easier, but not so popular that the prices skyrocket (and my meat prices have been rising significantly nearly every year as it is).

[TylerDurden]

Couple of things:- first of all, there are actually a number of celebrities openly eating raw meat and raw veg  diets. Uma Thurman is one, I heard a vague mention from a raw chef that she was feeding Val Kilmer Primal-Diet meals, then there's Mel Gibson who follows the "Tiger Diet"(raw meat and raw olive oil, mainly), and of course Carol Alt. Sally Fallon doesn't count as, though she sometimes recommends raw meats , she always insists on them being prefrozen beforehand and has spoken out against all-raw diets.Perhaps people could send fan-mail encouraging them to speak out?

Secondly, I wildly disagree with the notion that this diet would be difficult to follow if more people adopted it. For one thing, farmers nowadays routinely throw away vast amounts of foods we eat such as raw suet, raw brains and raw marrow because there's no market for it, really. If, say, 10% of the population went rawpalaeo, therefore, there'd still be plenty of food to go around. Another point is that commercial agriculture is actually very expensive, given use of pesticides and the profit-margin is very low which is why so many farmers in the 3rd world have turned to organic farming, so there's great potential there. Farming insects is also an option if entire populations converted to rawpalaeo.

[aariel]

I thought Alicia was the one who wrote the diet book about not eating anything with a face?

In "The Omnivore's Dilemma" Pollan makes the point very clearly that the current system of agriculture we have is a dead end.

Each acre of corn and soybeans requires about a barrel of oil to produce (and I bushel of topsoil). And this doesn't count the natural gas needed to make fertilizer.

Once we hit peak oil (permanent, protracted price rises) grain based food prices will go through the roof. When this happens, there will have to be a complete overhaul of our agricultural system. My guess is that meat production will go back on pasture as the grain will have to be diverted entirely to feed people. Meat may end up cheaper than grain!

Natural gas will be diverted to fuel use which would mean that fixing nitrogen will have to go back to bacteria and away from natural gas. But this will reduce the total amount of nitrogen that can be fixed by a wide margin.

I personally believe that we have always lived with a perpetual meat shortage. I believe a major reason we invented agriculture was to increase our meat supply. During the first half of the 19th century, there was a protracted meat shortage in the US that really never abated until after WWII.

Even today we still live with a sever meat shortage in the context that if everyone tried to eat nothing but meat, we wouldn't even come close to having enough.

Biology 101 is that an animal's population will rise to meet the available food supply. So the more food we produce to "feed the world", the bigger the world gets. The ethical thing is to use family planning to try and have people voluntarily reduce/control population, but so far that hasn't been working out. High food prices may end up being more effective.

[livingthelife]

I believe a major reason we invented agriculture was to increase our meat supply.

I've noticed that grain foods seem to be a substitute for meat. They have the same "mouth-feel," the same satiation (though short-lived), they are even dressed the same (with fat and salt).

Weren't the first agrarians primarily grain farmers? I remember that one of the oldest agrarian archaeological sites ever discovered contained a granary (9500BC, in Jordan).

I've always thought primitive grain farming must have been incredibly labor-intensive. I've always wondered why that took hold and spawned a cultural (and biological) revolution. It seems to me that it would have been much easier and nourishing (rewarding) to "specialize" in animals when the time came to settle down.

[aariel]

I've noticed that grain foods seem to be a substitute for meat. They have the same "mouth-feel," the same satiation (though short-lived), they are even dressed the same (with fat and salt).

Weren't the first agrarians primarily grain farmers? I remember that one of the oldest agrarian archaeological sites ever discovered contained a granary (9500BC, in Jordan).

I've always thought primitive grain farming must have been incredibly labor-intensive. I've always wondered why that took hold and spawned a cultural (and biological) revolution. It seems to me that it would have been much easier and nourishing (rewarding) to "specialize" in animals when the time came to settle down.

In the UK, they've found evidence of fencing for animal herding that dates back 30,000 years. I suspect that animal agriculture occurred before grain agriculture did. This makes sense to me because the practice of following wild herds as they migrate was probably the first activity we did as hunters. Driving animals during the hunt is another pre-herding behavior. Eventually someone figured out that if you build a simple fencing system and herd animals into it, that they are thus captive and then it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

[majormark]

How about ocean fish farming?

I think that could solve part of the problem with feeding the world. We do have big oceans.

[RawZi]

In the UK, they've found evidence of fencing for animal herding that dates back 30,000 years. I suspect that animal agriculture occurred before grain agriculture did. This makes sense to me because the practice of following wild herds as they migrate was probably the first activity we did as hunters. Driving animals during the hunt is another pre-herding behavior. Eventually someone figured out that if you build a simple fencing system and herd animals into it, that they are thus captive and then it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

It makes sense.  Having so many animals herded up, we probably started farming (grain/cereal grasses) just to feed the herd of captive animals.  After a while, for one reason or another we probably started copying those animals by eating grain too.  The men may have still gone out and hunted, but women staying home with children probably ate more grain.  The little girls may have matured extra early by ingesting grain, which could have helped populations grow, which may have been seen as an advantage to get the group who did this more populous faster than the neighbors' bands. Plausible in my book.

UK, huh?  Earlier than other continents?  This may lead to a path to many other things.