IT'S EVERWHERE.

[Wolf]

Seriously, why is grain in everything?  I think I might go mad..

I'm so hungry, oh so hungry.. and there's food, oh yes, plenty of food, plenty of frozen lasagna and frozen mac and cheese, frozen pizza, rice, cereal, chips, oatmeal, sliced bread, hotdog buns and other stupid grains.  Sure, there's also some hotdogs and peanut butter, and some pasteurized processed already-grated cheese bathed in potato starch. 
I hate being poor, or else i could go out and buy all my own food

the only raw foods in the house are a bit of pineapple, some bean sprouts(mung), and a bottle of raw wild natural honey I bought.  Even if I ate it all, I'd still be hungry, and then there'd also be nothing to eat tomorrow.. I have no idea how vegans, especially who also avoid grains, survive.  Fruitarians either.  I would die of starvation.  How do you do it?  How do you keep from starving and being hungry all day?

[raw-al]

That's why people started eating grains. It was the easy way out.

[King Salmon]

Welcome to civilization One of the reasons is ease of storage.After grains are farmed,they are usually stored for a long time.Especially when they are processed into whatever dried products like flour,corn meal...etc.Later,these products will become bread,cereal,pasta...Captain Crunch...Coco Puffs...blah blah blah.The other reason is high-profit margin.Corn and wheat are cheap to grow.However,if you turn them into "Tony the Tiger",then you just hit the jackpot!

[alphagruis]

Welcome to civilization .Corn and wheat are cheap to grow.

It takes typically many calories in the form of oil to produce one calorie of grain or grainfed beef. Ridiculous in terms of efficiency and just a very temporary  completely unsustainable foolish way of life of modern civilized man.
 
So there is actually no reason to bother about this. Corn and wheat are only temporarily cheap to grow. Once in the forthcoming century, the present cheap energy will no longer be available there will be very little corn, wheat or rice still produced, world population will drop drastically and a more paleo-like situation will be re-established again .

[Wolf]

why people gotta be so cheap and lazy.

and I doubt that once we run out of oil, that a drop in population and a paleo-like situation will arise, they'll just find alternative sources of energy like electric cars and stuff. 

[raw-al]

Corn and wheat are only temporarily cheap to grow. Once in the forthcoming century, the present cheap energy will no longer be available there will be very little corn, wheat or rice still produced, world population will drop drastically and a more paleo-like situation will be re-established again .

Actually corn is extremely subsidized by the government (in the US at least) It goes back to the Nixon days and apparently has to do with Nixon promising to keep the cost of food down. There was protests at the time by the citizenry. This translated into subsidies for farmers and it morphed into subsidies for corn

[Sitting Coyote]

Grains and legumes are cheap for two reasons.  First, most all developed countries, the United States included, subsidize their production.  Second, we conveniently ignore the many ecological costs of growing grains, such as soil erosion and degradation, loss of primary productivity, etc.

We can afford to subsidize them, as alphagruis suggests, because we have access to cheap fossil fuels and because we haven't completely exhausted topsoil yet.  When the cheap fossil fuels come to an end, or when we can't ignore soil depletion anymore, our dependence on grains and legumes will have to come to an end.  Then things get interesting...

[Sitting Coyote]

And to answer your question of how we eat well when surrounded by largely junk food, we buy (or gather) something else.  We learn to hunt.  We learn to identify and find wild edible plants.  We forge relationships with local farmers who can supply high quality foods, including high quality meats, for reasonable prices.  Once you make these adaptations, eating well is quite easy.  And there's really no reason to patronize grocery stores anymore.  The forests and fields become your market!

[Wolf]

but there's no forests around here, the fields are only full of dead grass and are surrounded by streets and houses, the most I'd be able to find in one is maybe a mouse or a rabbit which I could hardly hope to catch, especially with people driving by.. I haven't been able to find any local farms, and I can't keep meat at home anyways because my dad will freak out if he knew I was eating raw meat.

[miles]

Then let him freak out.

Those places you say are far don't sound that far to me.

You could try and get the freshest grain-finished meat you can. If there is a supermarket with its own butcher, that's good for quality and freshness.

Maybe you could befriend a financially comfortable looking old man on public transport, and convince him to support you. Or, you could find someone experienced who is going to live in the wild and wants people to join them(people post this on forums), or you could find someone who wants help around their estate/farm, is offering a room, and is in an area where you could go and catch your rabbits, or perhaps they will provide farm-food as well.

Or, you could break your Dad in gradually, occasionally slipping something in relating to paleo ways of eating, what you heard about grain being bad, how you heard raw food is healthier, etc.. Make it sound as if you just heard it and it was interesting, not as if you are doing/ are going to do it. Make out as if you heard it in the mainstream media, from your doctor, or someone in a respected position in society. These associations will make him feel more comfortable with each of these concepts. You have to sound to him, as if you are in the same position as him, that you are not sold on these concepts, but yet are mildly interested, as you might be if you heard for the first time, that thing about cats falling from buildings reaching their terminal velocity(etc..).. This will also allow you to probe him, to see his reactions. Gradually you can push him further with the things you mention, still acting as though you heard it in the mainstream...

Then, when the time is right, you will be eating raw meat and he will know about it.

Alternatively, you can't.

[MoonStalkeR]

Grains... a cheap, dirty, plentiful fuel that empires were built upon.

It's probably important stop keeping your raw feeding on the down-low, eventually. This is your health and body in question, a reaction from your dad will only be short term situation that will fade quickly. People have to get accustomed to the truth, and hopefully even follow it.

[wodgina]

Grains... a cheap, dirty, plentiful fuel that empires were built upon.

It's probably important stop keeping your raw feeding on the down-low, eventually. This is your health and body in question, a reaction from your dad will only be short term situation that will fade quickly. People have to get accustomed to the truth, and hopefully even follow it.

Your the 16 year dude right? Wise for a teenager...if your are actually telling the truth.

I would keep it secret also unless you have super cool folks. My mum eats raw meat everyday. About 500grams of fatty mince.

[Wolf]

My dad has known that I've wanted to eat raw meat for a long time, so that fact isn't exactly new to him, but he thinks eating raw meat will make you "sick" and believes all that parasite and bacteria paranoia.. I think he might even believe the nonsense that raw meat does not digest at all, and just sits in your stomach/digestive tract, which I have heard many times.. his ex-girlfriend used to spout that nonsense almost every time I ate a rare steak.  Even if I could convince him that raw meat is healthier for you, he still will think it needs to be cooked to kill the germs.  If he found me eating raw meat he would probably yell at me and possibly threaten to kick me out, or to send me to a psychiatrist or something though.

[alphagruis]

why people gotta be so cheap and lazy.

and I doubt that once we run out of oil, that a drop in population and a paleo-like situation will arise, they'll just find alternative sources of energy like electric cars and stuff.  

There are no alternative sources of energy that might replace fossil fuels. Electricity is also essentially obtained from fossil fuels namely oil, coal or gas. Only nuclear fusion might be an alternative at appropriate scale yet it is still highly uncertain whether we'll ever be capable to seriously control and safely take advantage of the relevant very violent processes some day in future.  

[Wolf]

There are no alternative sources of energy that might replace fossil fuels. Electricity is also essentially obtained from fossil fuels namely oil, coal or gas. Only nuclear fusion might be an alternative at appropriate scale yet it is still highly uncertain whether we'll ever be capable to seriously control and safely take advantage of the relevant very violent processes some day in future.  

well what about the guy who made a car that runs on water?

[alphagruis]

well what about the guy who made a car that runs on water?

Let's rather re-state it: "well what about the guy who claims to have made a car that runs on water?"

He is just a quack, no doubt about this, unfortunately.

[raw-al]

well what about the guy who made a car that runs on water?

Isn't that called a boat?   

Actually if you had some sort of means of separating the oxygen and hydrogen that is quite doable.
There was a guy in Mother Earth Magazine years and years ago when it was a back to the earth guy magazine : ) who ran his truck off a smouldering fireplace with wood and leaves etc. Apparently it works and he got the idea from the people in the Netherlands who did this before and during WWII out of necessity due to fuel shortages in the War. Where there's smoke there is carbon and carbon burns.

[pioneer]

It takes typically many calories in the form of oil to produce one calorie of grain or grainfed beef. Ridiculous in terms of efficiency and just a very temporary  completely unsustainable foolish way of life of modern civilized man.
 
So there is actually no reason to bother about this. Corn and wheat are only temporarily cheap to grow. Once in the forthcoming century, the present cheap energy will no longer be available there will be very little corn, wheat or rice still produced, world population will drop drastically and a more paleo-like situation will be re-established again .

People are just so stupid. they dont consider the economic repercussions that will affect them. It is so much more expensive to feed cattle grains than just let them graze in the field. Think about it, 70% of our antibiotics are fed to them, steroids, growth hormones, grain producing, grain transport, waste removal from the feedlots. All that shit is expensive as hell, so no one can say that it would be more expensive to just find a large bit of land a have them eat the grass which grows back on its own.

[alphagruis]

Actually if you had some sort of means of separating the oxygen and hydrogen that is quite doable.

That "sort of means" is called a source of energy such as.... fossil fuels, nuclear or solar energy

 And such a car would of course not run on water but on hydrogen.

Stating that such a car runs on water is as absurd as stating that an ordinary car runs on its exhaust gases rather than on gasoline.

[Wolf]

Let's rather re-state it: "well what about the guy who claims to have made a car that runs on water?"

He is just a quack, no doubt about this, unfortunately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb_rDkwGnU

[alphagruis]

Pure quackery, Wolf

There are several similar videos or web sites. Just bullshit.

Not everything that can be stumbled on in the net or broadcast by television networks is trustworthy or true, unfortunately.

 

[Paleo Donk]

We had a small thread on this a while back - http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/off-topic/water-as-a-fuel/

If water could be used as fuel(among many, many other disqualifications), there would be several more videos on youtube with as many hits but for now there is just one. Since I know virtually nothing I tend to never dismiss anything even something as preposterous sounding as water being used for fuel. But a little science and a little reasoning completely disprove this.

[alphagruis]

We had a small thread on this a while back - http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/off-topic/water-as-a-fuel/

If water could be used as fuel(among many, many other disqualifications), there would be several more videos on youtube with as many hits but for now there is just one. Since I know virtually nothing I tend to never dismiss anything even something as preposterous sounding as water being used for fuel. But a little science and a little reasoning completely disprove this.

Yes of course there is no useful energy left in water which is an end product of combustion. Unfortunately many people are willing to believe that such crap is true because this tells them what they want to hear namely that there is a simple way to save and prolong their present way of life and relevant cheap energy addiction.

[raw-al]

I used to work at a very large hydroelectric facility. There was a push in the company to expand into wind generation, however there were/are obstacles to that approach. The area in question, Labrador was chosen as it has the strongest most reliable wind profile of all the places in North America and it is largely unpopulated. Since I left they have expanded into wind generation.

The difficulty with wind power is that wind comes and goes so that the generators speed up then slow down. This is not OK for producing electricity because we need stable, constant, unchanging power. Anything else will ruin electronics, motors etc. So you need backup power to keep the grid stable. Backup power is actually not great because whether power is produced or not the generators need to operate. If they are not being used they still have to run which costs energy and the generators do not like to be operating at low power because they are designed to run at a specific speed, etc.

So one option that was looked at is to produce hydrogen fuel and oxygen from electrolysis powered by the wind generators and hydroelectricity as the electrolysis does not need to be constant. It was explained to me by one of the senior electrical engineers that the excess electricity could be used to produce hydrogen for cars etc. Apparently this was/is being looked into in Greenland / Iceland.
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nte54965.htm

This is not a conspiracy theory and I feel strongly that eventually this will fill a niche in the energy mosaic. It may be possible to do this, but to start running cars on hydrogen could be a technological leap that we aren't at yet. Usually this type of leap takes a combination of the right person/people and a motive - usually money. I have seen excellent inventions die on the vine due to the person selling it losing interest or drive or whatever or maybe the "large oil companies are crushing them" LOL.

Reality is that the large oil companies are into making money and if they have the sense they would invest in the upstarts doing this kind of stuff if there is really something to it.

Hydrogen has weird properties when it burns. It is not like gasoline etc.

[miles]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F54rqDh2mWA