#1) HeartMath® emWave2

The first item on my list is this very cool device that I’ve heard Dave Asprey, aka “The Bulletproof Exec” talk about on his podcast.

emWave2 is an innovative biofeedback device that trains you to change your heart rhythm pattern to facilitate a state of coherence and enter “the zone.”

In english, this device supposedly trains you, through breathing and concentration, to reach meditative states quickly and without the actual meditation. One of the things I have yet to master is my stress level.  With much mindfulness I’ve been able to change my reaction to stressful events, but I still feel like I need to take my stress relief to the next level.

Why not just meditate? As much as I try to do it, I can never stick to it. Because of its portability, using the emWave2 is something that I can do whenever, wherever. I know there’s no such thing as a “quick fix” but from the reviews, this truly looks like an effective device.

#2) Square-foot Garden Supplies

For the past 2 years, since I’ve gone Paleo, I’ve wanted to start a garden. After reading the wonderful book, “All New Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew, I realized that there is a better way to garden than I had previously thought.  Square foot gardening allows you to grow efficiently, as much or as little as you want.  I meant to get one started this summer but didn’t get to it, excuses, excuses..I know.

You don’t need a lot to get started, some simple wood frames, the right soil composition, adequate sunlight and water, and some good seeds to grow.  Everyone should try to grow something in their yards, on their decks, on their apartment balconies, whatever!  As Monsanto and the other Big Food corporations, continue to take over our food supply, becoming more self-sufficient is vital.  What else could be better than growing your own food, spending more time in the sun, working with the soil and plants and then getting to eat the fruit of your labors?

If you’re interested, checkout Grow Food Not Lawns Facebook page. There are a number of photos of different gardening strategies that are quite ingenious.

#3) “The 4-Hour Chef” by Tim Ferris

While I don’t always agree with everything Tim Ferris writes, I am a huge fan of the way in which he tackles different subjects through self-experimentation. I enjoyed “The 4-Hour Body” and when I heard  Tim discuss his new book “The 4-Hour Chef” on both Joe Rogan’s and Robb Wolf’s podcasts, I knew that I’d be reading it before too long.

This is NOT just another cook-book, this is a book about learning. Tim tackles learning as applied to the field of cooking and with a focus on the Domestic, Wild, Scientist and Professional chefs.  How can you not geek out over this?

The “wild” section seems especially interesting as Tim describes going hunting for the first time.  I highly recommend you listen to the podcasts linked above, as he discusses this with great passion. So looking forward to reading this!

#4) “Mastery” by Robert Greene

I have not read anything by Robert Greene before, but hearing him interviewed on the London Real podcast, I was definitely intrigued. He’s written books like “The 48 Laws of Power”, “The Art of Seduction”, as well as writing a book with rapper 50 Cent called “The 50th Law”.  Certainly an interesting guy.

“Mastery” is another book about learning, but this one going further into the absolute “mastery” over a craft.  Discussing a number of true masters, like Mozart, Da Vinci, even Einstein, are expected, but what is more interesting is the inclusion of Freddie Roach, Glenn Gould, Frank Lloyd Wright and many more. I am currently reading “Imagine: How Creativity Works” by Jonah Lehrer, and some of the same themes come up, but I am absolutely fascinated with explorations of inspiration and creativity like these and can’t wait to read it.

#5) More Minimalist Footwear!

I love my Vibram Five Fingers TrekSports and am wearing them as I type this. Yes, I take a ton of crap from my family and people I work with, but they are amazingly comfortable and since I generally don’t give a shit what people think of me, I keep wearing them. But now its been a year or so and its time to branch out. Minimalist footwear is now “a thing” and we’re seeing all sorts of styles and brands appearing out of the ether.

Pictured above are the Vivobarefoot EVO III’s which look pretty cool and a bit more “shoe-like” then the Five Fingers. Also interesting are the ZEMGear Ninja’s with a split-toe design reminiscent of Ninja footwear.

For more on minimalist footwear, checkout this article.

Stocking Stuffer: Hyperwear Steelbells

OK, I snuck an extra one in there. You gotta checkout the video for these things now available on the Onnit.com site.  Similar to kettlebells but their flexibility gives them some very cool capability for gripping, throwing, slamming, etc.  I love my kettlebells, but these things look pretty rad.  There’s a 25 and 50 pound version. How about one of each?! What the heck, its Xmas!!

Hope you enjoyed this short Xmas list of things I’d love Santa to bring me this year.  Got some more suggestions, leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!

Happy Holidays!

Jon

As someone who is trying to get some offal in their diet, I’ve been meaning to create some pâté, but just haven’t gotten around to it.  I’ve made liver (and bacon) and onions (meh) and am a big fan of US Wellness Meat’s liverwurst (although it’s a bit pricey), but I wanted to try something new and had a pound of beef liver so here’s what happened.

After much googling, I found this recipe which looked pretty simple, tasty, included some bacon for good measure.  I modified the recipe slightly and used double the bacon and no mustard. Here’s the deets:

Approx. 3/4 pound beef liver, grass-fed & finished, rinsed and drained
2 shallots, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup butter (Kerrygold) or more to taste
4 slices uncured bacon
1 tsp fresh rosemary
1 tsp fresh thyme
1/2T lemon juice (more for soaking if desired)
Salt and pepper to taste

After rinsing my liver, I soaked it in lemon juice for a couple hours to try and mitigate the metallic “livery” taste. Seemed to make a small difference. When ready, I sliced the liver into smallish pieces for easier cooking and eventual blending.

Using a large skillet I cooked my bacon over medium heat to render out as much fat as possible.  Then I took the bacon out and chopped for later. I cooked the shallots, garlic and onions in the bacon fat until translucent, about 10 minutes.

I then threw the liver in and added about half the butter and the herbs. I cooked the liver until done, takes about 5 minutes or so, don’t need to over do.

When done, I took the whole shebang and threw it in my Ninja blender, added the rest of the butter and blended until smooth. This took a few minutes and I stopped once or twice to scape down the sides.

I put the pâté into 3 ramekins, covered with saran wrap, making sure to squeeze out as much air as possible and contacting the surface of the pâté with the plastic to prevent oxidation and put into the fridge to cool.

After about 30 minutes to an hour I couldn’t wait any longer and dug in with some sliced zucchini and baby carrots. Terrific! One ramekin’s worth disappeared in no-time.

I decided to freeze the other two. Defrosted one for a day and ate the second one today, delicious!

Enjoy!

I had a pretty disappointing foray into sauerkraut but always wanted to try fermentation again with something else. While sauerkraut has begun to grown on me, nobody else in my family partakes, which got me thinking, “Who doesn’t love pickles?”  Many podcasts and google searching later, I happened upon the simplest recipe yet and this is what I did.

Quick trip to the farmer’s market yielded the following ingredients:

• About 1 1/2 lbs of pickling cucumbers (small to medium size)
• Garlic
• Fresh Dill

Cukes, Dill, Garlic

Here’s the “recipe”:

• Get out a couple clean, wide mouth Mason jars and some Kosher or Sea salt.
• Gently rinse the cukes in cold water and put them into the jars.
• Break off a few fronds of dill and push down into the jars.
• Add 1 or 2 cloves of peeled / smashed garlic.
• Fill the jars with filtered (un-chlorinated) water.
• Add 1 Tbsp of salt to each jar.
• Seal the jars with the screw on lids.
• Wait…..
• According the the video, the fermentation process will take 2-4 days depending upon the temperature in the kitchen.
• I will also remove the lids to “burp” the jars once a day to prevent gas buildup.

That’s it! I will update this post over the next couple days to let you know how they come out. Seriously, the whole process took about 5 minutes and I’m pretty excited to try the result.

NOTE:  Some people swear by adding grape or cherry leaves to the brine which apparently (via tannins in the leaves) increases the crispiness of the pickles. Nobody likes mushy pickles. Might have to try this if mine don’t come out well.

Let the fermentation begin…

Thanks to everyone that entered! This giveaway is now closed!

The winner was Mitchelle! Congratulations Mitchelle and thanks to everyone who entered and your terrific challenges!

And not just any bacon, but US Wellness Meats’  Sugar-Free Pork Bacon!

That’s right, the winner of this giveaway will receive Two (2) 1.5lb packages of their Sugar-Free Hickory Smoked Pork Bacon.

Keep reading, it ain’t hard people!

For the past few days I’ve been using the SlimKicker fitness tracker website and iPhone application and so far I like what I see.  SlimKicker is a calorie counter and game that turns your diet and fitness goals into a level-up game with points, rewards and challenges. You level up by tracking healthy food choices and exercises, and completing challenges such as quitting soda for a week. They also have an iPhone app and are making an Android one as well.

Here’s how the giveaway will work:

• To enter, just leave a comment with your suggestion for a fun, creative fitness or diet challenge. You can see some of the great challenges on the SlimKicker site. Should just be 1-2 sentences.
• Think about your journey to good health and make your challenge something that will encourage other people following in your footsteps!
• We’ll leave the comments open for the next week and will close on Monday, July 16th.
• Once the winning challenge is selected, the winner will receive the aforementioned bacony goodness!
• LEGALESE: this is for US residents only!

You may recall from a few months ago ”Don’t Eat Like a Caveman” by Melody Cherny on FoodSafetyNews.com.  I responded in kind with this post.

Well another voice from the blog-o-sphere has chimed in with some thoughts on Paleo entitled “The Top 10 Reasons I’m Not Paleo“, by the Cheeseslave, Ann Marie.  As with many of the folks who criticize Paleo, there is a lot of things we agree on and the Cheeseslave is no different.  Ann Marie is a lover of whole/real foods like bacon, butter, fermented foods and raw dairy; most of which are also enjoyed by the Paleo / Primal community.

Now I don’t want you to think that I’m picking on Ann Marie, but bear with me, there is a great deal in this blog post that is incorrect and misleading and is worthy of a little “discussion”.

I appreciate that Ann Marie emphasizes that this is why SHE is not paleo and that if paleo is working for you “more power to you”. If there’s something that I’ve learned during my paleo journey its that:

1. Everyone is different (metabolically)
2. There’s no one way to “paleo”

Keep these 2 thoughts in mind as we go through her “10 reasons”.  Which start with:

1. I Really Like Cheese

Of course the “Cheese Slave” is going to love all things cheesy and I can’t blame her. I certainly love it as well, but have definitely cut WAY back on my dairy consumption since going paleo. Ann Marie asks a great question, “Do we really need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and throw out all dairy (and the foods of domesticated animals) and all grains? If so, why? Is there evidence for that?”

The answer is, for the most part, yes.

Lets start with dairy, we’ll get to the grains in reason #2. For a significant number of the population the casein and/or the lactose in dairy can be problematic. The fat in dairy is “the least problematic macro-nutrient in dairy” according to Mat Lalonde and Chris Kresser. Most people can tolerate butter (and especially ghee which is butter without the milk solids) and heavy cream because they’re mostly fat. If you’re sensitive to lactose, you may be able to tolerate dairy products with the exception of milk. Hard cheeses and fermented dairy have little lactose.  If you’re casein sensitive then you may be able to enjoy fermented dairy but perhaps not.

Some people may not eat them because of the “caveman” thing, but that misses the point. The reason not to eat dairy products is because of your likely sensitivity to the irritants contained within it. If you find that you are NOT sensitive to dairy and the fat is part of your “balanced paleo diet” then fine, enjoy.

Full Disclosure: As I seem to tolerate it well, I put Kerrygold or ghee in my morning coffee and occasionally cook with it. I never drink milk and I rarely eat cow-based cheese, but will throw some goat cheese on a salad once in a while. Goat cheese is type-2 casein which is better tolerated than most cow dairy which is usually type-1.

I hope that helped to shed a little light. Lets move on to reason #2.

2. I Really Like Bread

Ann Marie asks another great question:  “… is bread really that bad for you? How can it be, when humans around the world have been thriving on it as a staple in their diet for over 10,000 years (and possibly up to 50,000 years)?”

The root of the problem here is the misconception that we’ve been “thriving” on wheat based products.  While we have been surviving on a diet based on grains, I disagree that we are “thriving”.  Look around you. We are fatter and sicker then we’ve ever been in history, would you call that thriving?

The fact of the matter (and yes it is fact) is that grains like wheat contain proteins that are their natural defense mechanisms for predators and similarly, when consumed by humans cause inflammation and gut permeability which leads to a host of health issues and potentially autoimmune diseases. Now there is a spectrum of intolerance and sensitivity here, but there internet if filled with studies and anecdotes of people who were suffering with skin conditions (like excema and psoriasis) all the way up to full blown Crohn’s, Multiple Sclerosis and Lupus that have reversed their conditions by going gluten and grain free paleo.

• If you haven’t seen Dr. Terry Wahl’s video on how she reversed her MS with a paleo diet, you’re missing out.
• Here’s a great testimonial on a woman who reversed her Lupus
• Great article on Robb Wolf’s site about gluten and autoimmunity
• Check out this great infographic on Why (refined) Carbs Are Killing You

In addition,  eating wheat spikes your insulin like almost nothing else.  These insulin spikes lead to weight gain, insulin sensitivity and possibly type-2 diabetes. Check out this testimonial from a Type-1 Diabetic who tracked his glucose as he went gluten free. So, now do you want to eat those croissants? I sure don’t.

3. I Really Like Cookies. And Cake. And Pies.

Perhaps we can just title this one, “I like sugar.” Of course you do, we all do. We are genetically programmed to eat sweet things in abundance (when available in the summer) because they are rare in nature and cause us to gain weight (there’s that pesky insulin again), so we can last through the winter. I won’t go into too much depth here, but recommend the following when you have the time:

• Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Dr. Lustig (90 minute video)
• The Dish on Sugar & Sweeteners by Balanced Bites (highly recommend this article as it goes into depth on ALL sugars and sweeteners, natural and otherwise)
• Here’s a study that shows fructose actually triggers hunger as well, while glucose suppresses it.

I am not a big sweet eater in general, aside from the occasional  dark chocolate and piece of fruit. I never drink sweetened beverages as they are a vehicle for sugar (natural or otherwise). If you think you have a problem with sugar, I recommend going on the Balanced Bites 21 Day Sugar Detox.

So of course we “like” sweet foods, but there’s some pretty compelling reasons to severely limit their consumption.

 4. Paleo is Low Carb

Well this is indeed an interesting one because if we remember the two things that started off this post, its that “everyone is different and there’s no one way to paleo”.

The Cheese Slave herself wrote a terrific post on how she went low carb paleo and it threw her hormones out of whack, so when she upped her carbs she felt better.  This is great because it shows someone who is in tune with her body and listened when she knew something wasn’t right. This is ABSOLUTELY what the paleo lifestyle is all about.

Anyone embarking on this journey needs to realize that while some people may treat “going paleo” as a religion or may get angry if you aren’t doing exactly what they’re doing, that is not what paleo is about. To quote Andrew Badenoch (aka: @evolvify), “Paleo is a logical framework applied to modern humans, not a historical reenactment.”  Emphasis on the “logical” part of that.

Nobody should blindly dive into anything. You should understand the “why” behind what you’re doing before you start doing it so that if things don’t go as you expected or as your body changes, you can tweak based on your knowledge to optimize for your own particular needs and circumstances.

Chris Kresser wrote a great post on moving to a “Paleo Template“.

So back to the “low carb” question, there isn’t anything that says you MUST be low carb or you’re not paleo. For MOST people who have a lot of weight to loose or are type-2 diabetic or otherwise metabolically deranged, going low carb paleo would definitely be helpful, but again, if its not working for you , add in some carbs and see how you feel.  The use of “N=1″ experimentation is of vital importance.

My problem with Ann Marie’s approach is that she “ups her carbs” with muffins, bread, cookies and pies, while I would choose to up my carbs with some some fruit or sweet potatoes. See the difference? A carb is not a carb, in the same way that a calorie is not a calorie. Quality matters. Ingredients matter.

5. The Paleo Diet is Too Restrictive

On the surface, the Paleo diet can certainly seem very restrictive. “What? I can’t eat bread or pizza or pasta or cookies or cake or soda or ice cream or candy?!” Indeed that’s true, but when you begin to eat Real Food, you realize that you are nourishing your body in a way that it really wants and needs and that those foods you are restricting could NEVER hope to accomplish, not matter how good they taste.

As your palate begins to change, adapting to the flavors of unprocessed and healthful food, you will find that you no longer crave the “foods” you initially felt you couldn’t live without.

Ann Marie makes a good point about making “healthy” versions of the foods we restrict like pizza and chocolate chip cookies.  She makes some of these items using sprouted whole wheat flour which is certainly better than using refined white flour.

If you spend a few minutes Googling “paleo” and insert your restricted food of choice here (pizza, cookies, brownies, cake, etc) you will definitely find hundreds of versions of these items that are made with almond or coconut flour, coconut oil, organic chocolate, raw honey or coconut sugar, etc. If you are at the start of your paleo journey and having a “paleo” version of pizza helps you to stay paleo (or almost paleo) without falling completely off the wagon and calling Domino’s, so be it. The trick here is to keep in mind that some of these items really are “treats” and should be treated as such. With few exceptions these foods are not something you want to make into a habit.

When I started (over a year and a half ago) I would make almond flour cookies or crackers and similar things. Over time though I made them less and less because (as I stated earlier) I don’t need or even want them anymore. If you are eating a diet that has significant protein and fat with carbs from vegetables (and some fruit, nuts, seeds) your desire to snack is greatly diminished.

I eat better than almost anyone I know, with the exception of my fellow paleo compadres. I don’t feel like I’m restricted in the least. Everything I eat is nutritious, delicious and I know exactly where it came from.

6. Paleo is not Scalable

I’m sorry but the argument made here again misses the point completely.

Ann Marie starts off with “There’s a reason the hunters and gathers died out. Nothing against hunter-gatherers, but they were all almost completely wiped out by people who ate cheese and bread.”

What does this have to do with anything?

Quoting from the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” she mentions the “benefits to growing grains, which will store for very log periods of time. If you’ve got a silo of grain, and a cow that gives you milk every day, you no longer have to spend your days hunting and foraging and scheming how you’re going to get your next meal, you have more time to do things like invent new kinds of technology. Like steel weapons, guns — and iPads.”

On the surface this seems like a compelling argument, but this is EXACTLY the short-sighted thinking that got us into the “cheap food” mindset we’ve been in for the past 40 years.  It was Secretary of Agriculture, under Nixon, Earl Butz who believed if we just had an abundance of cheap food, the American consumer would be better off because they could then spend the rest of their money on other stuff. Mr. Butz encouraged farmers to plant “fencerow to fencerow” and to “get big or get out”. This caused the explosion of corn, wheat and soybean farmers to grow as much of these commodity crops as possible. This has also caused those same farmers to be beholden to the folks at Monsanto for their seeds and the processors for their pay. Many of these farmers couldn’t make a living wage and went bankrupt. Most of the “farms” growing these commodity crops are run by AgriBusiness giants.

These commodity crops also fuel the processed food producers. Look on any bag or box of anything you buy at the store (cereal, cookies, bread, whatever) and it will contain one if not all three of those ingredients (wheat, corn, soy). These foods do not give our bodies what they need to be healthy and in fact cause us to be overweight, insulin resistant and autoimmune. “Cheap food”, indeed.

Still think we’re better, or know more, than our hunter gatherer ancestors? There has been NO modern diet that has been shown to be more nutritious than an ancestral diet.

Please checkout not only what I’ve written on the scalability of the Paleo diet but what these other folks have as well.

• My post on the future of food.
• A book review of Joel Salatin’s “Folks, this ain’t normal.”
• Joel’s rebuttal to NY Times article on “The Myth of Sustainable Meat“.
• Please see the great documentary “King Corn“

7. Paleo is Based on Fantasy

Here again Ann Marie jumps to the conclusion that people going paleo are doing so as a reenactment of our hunter gatherer ancestors. That we are all running around with sharp sticks and loin cloths and only eating what we can kill with our bare hands or pick off of a tree. She mentions, again from “Guns, Germs and Steel”, that cannibalism may have come about due to the lack of protein available. Does that mean that ALL hunter gatherers were cannibals because there wasn’t any protein around? I don’t think so.

If you look at the various hunter gatherer tribes spread throughout the world, they each had a diet that was based on animal fat and protein (cow, pig, fish or fowl) in addition to fruit, nuts, starchy tubers (like cassava, taro, yams, etc) and even in some cases dairy (the Masai consume a significant amount of dairy from Type-2 Casein cows).  So is it so unreasonable to think that we should do anything differently?

We are fortunate that all we have to do is go to our local Farmer’s Market, Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods to “hunt and gather” the food we need to live. This doesn’t make me any less “paleo”.  I am not literally trying to imitate the life of a “caveman”, and frankly I don’t know anyone who is, but I AM going to do my best to eat like one, because it is the optimum diet for health and longevity.

8. Paleo is Impractical

Sorry Ann Marie, but these same “I don’t want to forage for my breakfast” arguments are getting tiresome and just plain silly.  You already said you have a freezer full of meat and if you’d rather buy frozen vegetables for your family than always having to buy fresh, go for it.  Again, stop with the dogma already. Please remember this:

There’s a lot of people who are doing just fine being Paleo but don’t shop at Whole Foods and certainly don’t ambush their own breakfast.  There are a vast number of sites that have suggestions for feeding everyone from college students to big families on paleo. Clearly you haven’t bothered to look and again are just making assumptions.

• Checkout Everyday Paleo for great tips and recipes from a Paleo mom
• Paleo on a Budget is a great site for finding deals
• For college students – Primal University

If you wanna eat Costco hamburger instead of grassfed beef, fine. If you want to eat frozen instead of fresh vegetables, find.  Cans of sardines, fine. It’s not the absolute best, but its much better you do that, than corn dogs, cookies and soda as the alternative.

9. Paleo is Expensive

First of all, see the references from #8. Paleo doesn’t have to be expensive.

Ann Marie mentions that she can make a 1lb loaf of wheat bread for 50 cents to $1 but 1lb of ground beef is $4-12/lb. Indeed the bread is “cheaper” but the meat is going to have higher nutritional content.  Take a look at this comparison of 2 slices of whole wheat bread vs. 1/4 lb of cooked ground beef:

2 Slices of Whole Wheat Bread

1/4 lb Ground Beef

The ground beef has 31g of protein while the bread only has 3g!

Which one is going to spike insulin? Which one is going to make you hungrier sooner? Which one is less nutrient dense? That’s right, the bread.

Also, with regard to stretching a dollar, its the same argument as the last few. If you really want to eat rice and beans, fine. Rice is one of the more benign starches you could eat. Beans, as long as you soak and cook them properly, while not a great source of nutrients are perfectly fine as long as you tolerate them well.  If you can work in those good fats and organ meats, even better.

10. The Paleo Diet is a Waste of Time and Energy

The Cheese Slave’s main complaint here seems to be that some folks in the paleo-sphere discuss things like whether or not honey or other foods are “paleo” and that this is a waste of time and we should be focusing on other things like “alternative energy and a cure for cancer.”  Hmmmmmmm.

While there are people who definitely get into the minutiae (and yes even the dogma), I would say for the most part that they do so because this stuff is incredibly interesting. I can say personally that I have learned a great deal over the past year or two on nutrition and I, like many other folks who have been duped for the past 40 years over what we should be eating, enjoy learning about food and the effect it can have on our health and our quality of life.

There are a great number of people who have dramatically changed their lives by changing what they put in their mouths (see aforementioned testimonials).  With the current state of the world’s obesity epidemic and health care crisis, I can’t think of anything more important than that.  If helping people to loose weight, reverse their autoimmune conditions and generally feel like a healthy, vibrant human again is a waste of time, so be it.  I’ll keep wasting my time.

What about you?

Over the past 2 nights I watched the 4 part series from HBO, “The Weight of the Nation”.  For the most part, I thought this was a pretty good look at the obesity epidemic and recommend people watch it. That said, there were definitely a number of things that I didn’t agree with and hope that rather than take everything said at face value, viewers take the opportunity to learn more about health and what they can do about it.

BTW – did anyone else catch that the logo is a bunch of wheat? Was that intentional? Surprised they didn’t interview Dr. Davis of Wheat Belly. Oh the irony…..

A Historical Perspective

Gary Taubes (not interviewed in the program) pointed out in his response to the program that it lacked a historical perspective.  Taubes recalls obesity research in the 1930′s that discovered obesity was not necessarily from over eating (clearly during the depression, very few people over-ate), but from the consumption of refined carbohydrates in the form of white flour and sugar.

Indeed there was very little time spent looking to our past, merely just to point out that most of the diseases that are killing us are fairly recent developments. There WAS however a small amount of time spent on the human physiology and how our bodies may crave foods that are fat and sweet because our ancestors needed to stockpile these foods because thousands (if not millions) of years ago, food was scarce.  One of the main problems we’re facing as a consumer culture is that, not only is there NOT a food shortage here in the US, there is an OVER ABUNDANCE.  Sadly, the vast majority of that food is unhealthy and actively killing us.

If we’re going to look back on history, and I think its vital that we do, we should look further back to our hunter gatherer ancestors. If you have not seen the documentary “In Search of the Perfect Human Diet” I highly recommend it. As humans, we need to understand where we came from so that we can return our bodies to good health.

A Calorie is a Calorie?

One of the moments in Weight of the Nation that got my blood boiling was in Part 2, in a chapter titled (appropriately enough) “Energy Balance”, when Dr. Rudolph Leibel says “One of the myths out there is that if you eat a calorie of fat, that its different than if you eat a calorie of lettuce or a calorie of candy or a calorie of pumpkin pie. For all intents and purposes, a calorie is a calorie.”

Another voice comes on to tell us, “There are only three macronutrients, and that’s fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Diets are generally based on eliminating one of those three food groups. But if we just cut back on all of them and ate less, that would work.”  Would it really?  Says who?!

Dr. Leibel then comes back to teach us about physics and the ol’ “energy in = energy out” crap, stating this as a fact that everybody knows.

This oversimplification is part of what has confused the American people for the past 30 years and its just plain wrong. Do you really think that your body responds to a calorie of grass-fed steak in the same way it responds to a calorie of soda? Spoiler alert: It Doesn’t!  By focusing on calories people no longer need to know (or care) what’s in their food, they just need to know how many calories it has.  Quality doesn’t matter.  Nutrition doesn’t matter.  Its just calories.

Speaking of calories – if you haven’t read “Fuck Calories” by Krista Scott-Dixon, its is an absolute must.

Its Not About Weight, Its about Health!

For the love of god, people, food is not math! Very few things in this world affect our overall health than what we put in our mouths.  In the same way that we want an expert mechanic to work on our cars, WE need to be the expert on our own bodies. WE need to know what the right fuel is for our individual needs.  WE need to know where our food comes from and what’s in it.  WE need to realize that food is not just a certain number of calories or protein or fat.

Real food has the ability to return our bodies to their optimum states and heal our bodies from many of the diseases plaguing us today.  If you don’t believe me, watch this amazing TED talk from a doctor who cured her own Multiple Sclerosis by going on a Paleo diet.  You can also simply Google “Paleo Diet” and almost any malady (especially modern day autoimmune diseases like Type 2 diabetes, Crohn’s and IBD, MS, Lupus, etc.) and find anecdotes of people curing them through diet.

Don’t get me wrong, if you’re overweight you should loose weight, but the important thing to remember is “You don’t get healthy by losing weight, you lose weight by getting healthy.”  Start here.

Food Addiction

In a (literally) gut wrenching part of the program, a morbidly obese Vivia says “My relationship with food has very different dimensions. Food can be my best friend. Food can be my boyfriend at the moment. Food can be a vacation to the beach that I can’t afford to go.” She then goes on to say all of the wonderful things she would do if she were not obese.  Like traveling, sky diving and, perhaps, dating.  How does this happen? Clearly somewhere along the way food became no longer food, but an emotional support system.

Unfortunately, the program doesn’t go into this subject any deeper. Thankfully, Sean Croxton just had Dr. Vera Tarman on his podcast to speak about food addiction. It was a great episode and quite timely.

In a nutshell, the highly processed foods we eat are filled with ingredients (like wheat flour, High Fructose Corn Syrup, MSG and other food additives) that are targeted to illicit an addictive response. They are engineered to be addictive, for if we become addicted we’ll keep buying them. Ka-Ching!

Part of this addiction is also “mindless eating”. Snacking while sitting in front of the TV or constantly “grazing” at work sets our body up for craving a constant stream of food.  Meals should be planned and of significant nutrient density and quality so that your body is satiated and won’t need further snacking between meals.

Sugar

When one of the obese interviewees asks “When it comes to obesity what is the single best thing I can do for me and my family?”  The answer?  Stop drinking sugar-sweetened beverages.  Calling Dr. Lustig!

If the viewers of this program take ONE thing away from this, it may be to stop drinking sugary drinks. Dr. Lustig calls out fruit juice as no different than soda. “The juice is nature’s way of getting you to eat your fiber.”  My only issue with they way the program handles sugar, is the focus on sugar as a source of calories.  Perhaps they haven’t seen “Sugar: The Bitter Truth“.  There’s more going on there with fructose than just calories. Indeed a calorie is not a calorie.

Childhood Obesity

One of the best segments of “Weight of the Nation” is the one on Childhood Obesity.  They show at length the social impact on obese children. Kids who are bullied, teased and who have such low self-esteem that they don’t feel they can take part in any of the normal activities that make up a happy childhood.

They also go in depth on the food marketing to children which Kelly Brownell calls “powerful, pernicious and predatory.” As a parent I see the heinous advertising displayed to my kids on TV. Its awful. Not sure how much can be done to regulate this sort of advertising, but the only way to get away from it may be to turn off the TV permanently.

The program does go into the governments feeble attempt to limit food advertising as well as make improvements to the quality of the foods (especially cereals) that are marketed to children, but it seems that no progress is being made here.

In addition, they show many overweight children (many who are borderline Type 2 diabetics) who begin doing some exercise and seeing some good results in their BMI, which is great. They don’t really spend much time on what they’re actually eating (besides cutting back on their sugar).

School lunch is also brought to the forefront as it can be a large part of the food consumed by children every day. They talk about the “pizza as a vegetable” scandal that came up this past year and general lack of funding for school lunch programs.  Why, as a nation, are we shortchanging our children in this way?  Our government seems to be getting pushed around by food lobbyists and letting them dictate what our children eat. This is reprehensible.

It has been shown that children who eat higher amounts of protein and lower amounts of sugar and carbs do better on tests and generally behave better.  Watch this TED talk by Ann Cooper on Reinventing the School Lunch.

They also talk about PhysEd and the positive impact that activity has on kids. I agree this needs to be increased and, like corporate wellness programs, will provide dividends in the future by giving children a love of exercise and play. I know it difficult to get kids off the couch and away from the TV or XBOX. We’ve got to try.

So What Do We Do?

The last segment is called Challenges and lays out some of the issues we face in try to change the direction we’re going in. Part of it is definitely on the government. The fact that we are subsidizing the production of the least healthy foods (corn, wheat, soy, CAFO beef/chicken/pork) rather than the most healthy (organic fruits and vegetables, pastured/humanely raised beef/pork/chicken) is decidedly part of the problem.

Some time is spent on what some companies and a few local and state governments are doing to make their environments more conducive to good health. These are some of the most inspirational.  Adding additional parks and bike paths is a great way to get a community off their butts and moving.

If our federal government is not going to set the example, or even be a source of funding, then clearly its going to come down to us to make the changes required to make a difference.  This is not going to be a top-down solution but a bottom-up one. As individuals and small groups we need to wake up and see the situation for what it is and begin to “fix” what we can, starting with ourselves.

To quote Angelo Coppola, from Latest in Paleo, “Humans are not broken by default”.  We need to remember that instead of looking for “magic bullets” from the Pharmaceutical companies or “short cuts” via surgery or even legislation/regulation from the government.  The “fix” is to give our bodies the whole foods it really wants and opt-out of the vicious cycle of cheap food and ill health we’re in.

We can go to the farmers market and buy fresh food. We can stop buying the processed foods that are making us fat and sick.  We can educate ourselves on the right foods to eat and exercise to do for our individual needs. We need to take responsibility for our own health and wellbeing and stop expecting someone else (government, health care system) to do it for us.  The last 30 years of that mindset has failed. Its up to us.

WAKE UP!

For this evening’s entertainment, I watched the 2008 documentary, “The Age of Stupid“.  While the topic of this film is Global Climate Change and that humankind could have prevented the ensuing disaster in the coming decades, its clear that the age we’re in is “stupid” for a whole lot of reasons.

That’s right, I’m talking about diet. We’re at a point in our history that is similar to where we were in 2006 when Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” explained in no uncertain terms the reality of climate change and that we needed to wake up from our complacent slumber to address the problem. With the explosion of books, blogs and documentaries about Ancestral Health, the obesity epidemic, food sensitivities, Monstanto and GMOs, we are at a point where we can no longer deny the situation we’re in or how we got here. Similar to climate change, what to do about is where we’ll get wrapped around the axel.

There is one clip in “The Age of Stupid” that sums it up nicely. There is a woman who was overjoyed by the defeat of an effort to put a wind turbine farm in her town, essentially because it “ruins the view”. However when asked if she’s concerned about global warming, she acts as if its the silliest question she’s ever heard and says “Of COURSE! We all have to do our bit.”  Exactly which bit are you doing by preventing a wind farm that will provide clean energy to your town? I actually believe the irony was completely lost on her.

I think we’re at the same point with our health. We are learning so much about what causes disease and how eating clean, removing toxins from our lives, reducing our stress, getting some sun, exercise and sleep all help to prevent illness and ultimately prolong our lives. Yet asking people to change their diet is close to asking them to change their religion. It also doesn’t help that we are continually bombarded with messages that promote the status quo.

Advertisements about pharmaceuticals to “cure” the growing list of health issues that could just as easily be prevented by changing your lifestyle (and without the heinous side effects). These drugs don’t do anything to cure anything, they merely address the symptoms…FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! Ka-Ching!  Are we REALLY that stupid? Apparently we are or BigPharma wouldn’t keep trotting these drugs out with relentless regularity. Why change your diet or lifestyle when you can just take a pill…that might make you bleed out of your eyes!

With regard to food, its all about calories right?! All our snacks are partitioned up into 100 calories packets and our “food” clearly labeled with how few calories it might contain. Because everything in moderation and calories in/calories out, right? To quote Krista Scott-Dixon, FUCK Calories!  Again, are we really that stupid? Indeed we are. Do we think that our ancestors gave a crap about calories? Did Grok nudge his partner and say, “Sweetie, you’d better lay off the antelope. You know how many calories are in that?”  I don’t think so. We know what we need to do, its up to us to do it.

There’s nothing BigPharma can cook up for us to help, there’s nothing BigAg has that we want. Frankly, there’s nothing our government can do either except to acknowledge that they’ve screwed up a couple generations of Americans with their dietary advice. Oh yeah and to get the hell out of the way. Nothing should get in between us and our right to choose the food we want to purchase for our families. If you want to partake of raw milk, go for it. You want to buy half a grassfed cow from your local farmer every year, bon appetit! You have the gumption to grow some of your own fruits and vegetables on your property or raise some backyard chickens, fan-freaking-tastic!

Instead of looking back in 50 years and saying, yep, that sure was the “Age of Stupid!”, why don’t we make it “The Age of Enlightenment” instead?  The time to act is now.

As so often these serendipitous things happen, last week I watched the 1973 film “Soylent Green” and this week finished the 2012 book by Josh Schonwald, “The Taste of Tomorrow“, both views of our impending food future.

For those who haven’t seen Soylent Green (and even if you have, I highly recommend a re-watch). Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

“In 2022, the population has grown to forty million people in New York City alone. Housing is dilapidated and overcrowded; homeless people fill the streets and line fire escapes and stairways. Food is scarce; most of the population survives on rations produced by the Soylent Corporation, whose newest product is Soylent Green, a small green wafer advertised to contain “high-energy plankton”. It is more nutritious and palatable than the other varieties, Red and Yellow, but is in short supply, which leads to food riots.”

In a nutshell, we’ve destroyed the planet to the extent that only the very very wealthy can afford small amounts of actual produce and on the rare occasion, meat. Everyone else eats wafers of soy-based food wafers created by a single corporate entity. Sound familiar?

The protagonist of Soylent Green, Robert Thorn (played by Charlton Heston) is a cop who becomes caught up in trying to solve a murder of a wealthy Soylent executive, which gets him involved in a conspiracy/coverup by the corporation, which eventually reveals the following ….”Soylent Green is made of…..SPOILER ALERT!!“.

So how does this 40 year old, science fiction film relate to a current day book about our food future? Far too well.

Eat Your Greens

The premise of The Taste of Tomorrow is the author’s search for the foods that we’ll be eating in 2035. His journey takes him all over the world and he speaks with a number of farmers (animal and vegetable), scientists and food futurists along the way. Much of the book’s storytelling was interesting and indeed there was some time devoted to the benefits of eating local and organic (ubiquitous nod to Alice Waters). However great these benefits are, this was usually followed with a line like “…this is great for foodies but you can’t feed the world this way.” Argh.

Schonwald spends many chapters looking for the next revolution/revelation in salad. The history of bagged lettuce and spring mix was interesting. Cruising around the Salinas valley (not that far from my home of San Jose), he talks with some of the people behind the giant monoculture lettuce farms that bring the iceberg, romaine and raddichio to a hermetically sealed bag at a Safeway near you. Finding the next breakthrough salad green is certainly big business. Let’s just say I appreciate the farmers at my local farmers market a bit more after reading this and will be on the lookout for Treviso Radicchio to grill. Wink wink.

GMOs are Good?

This led into a section devoted to GMOs and why they are going to help end worldwide starvation and save the environment. The author reasons that GMOs create higher yields, reduce pesticide use which should clean up rivers and other “dead zones”. He continues to say that because products like “golden rice”, a GMO version of rice that contains high levels of Vitamin A, could possibly cure blindness in third world countries, and GMO papayas saved farmers in Hawaii, clearly GMO foods are amazing innovations and we are “reckless, irresponsible and inhumane” to reject them categorically. Is that so?

The author does not spend one iota of time actually verifying that the aforementioned “promises” of GMOs are actually true. You might recall some of the stories this year regarding our friends at Monsanto. Let’s recap shall we?

Mystery Meat?

Schonwald does more globetrotting to hunt for the future of meat production.  His basis for this section comes from the notion that methane from raising cattle contributes to global warming (based on a 2006 United Nations report), cattle consume 10% of the world’s fresh water and 80% of the world’s farmland is devoted to meat production. Interesting that there are NO footnotes or citations in this book. None. So I guess we’re supposed to take these statistics at face value. Sorry, but I call bullshit. These statistics are usually based on CAFO farming practices, not grassfed farming.  Rather than recapitulate these arguments here, please read this fine article by Joel Salatin on raising cattle sustainably. Its a rebuttal to James McWilliams’ NY Times piece on “The Myth of Sustainable Meat.”  I also highly recommend reading Mr. Salatin’s book “Folks, this ain’t normal.” It is one of the best books I’ve read on permaculture and where we’ve gone wrong as a nation.

So rather than solve the problem by changing the way we raise cattle from CAFO-centric to pasture-centric, what if we address the symptom and get rid of the cow completely?   Meat alternatives made from various and sundry processed foodstuffs like wheat and soy may be fine for vegetarians and vegans who want a simulacrum of meat, but aren’t that interested in the nutritional profile of what they’re putting into their bodies.

For those who still want some sort of meat product, there’s ”in vitro” meat. Meat grown in a lab using some DNA from a cow, some cell growth nutrient formula and exercised to develop some sort of texture? Blech! Why would ANYONE think this is a good idea? Nature has evolved a perfect way of turning sunshine, water and plant matter into a nutrient dense (and delicious) food for humans. Its called herbivores! Amazing!  The audacity that scientists could produce a more nutritious food in a test tube than what humanely raised animals can provide is ludicrous. We don’t need scientists to solve this problem for us, Mother Nature already did it, we just fucked it up like we always do.

Take a moment to look at the “New Harvest” site by Jason Matheny, one of the proponents of in vitro meat and someone interviewed extensively for the book. If it doesn’t make you spitting mad, I’m not sure what will. The whole premise is based on the same CAFO-centric logic as above as well as the misguided “meat is unhealthy” line of crap. If it hurts when you do that, don’t do that. If CAFO is the problem then maybe we should STOP doing that!

Here Fishy, Fishy Fish.

The last section of the book was devoted to fish farming. While there may be great potential here, the same issues apply as with other factory farming. The potential for rampant disease, abuse, stress on the animals, inappropriate diet, enormous amounts of waste and tremendous amounts of energy required to run the farms. Unfortunately the state of our oceans may necessitate a move like this until we can repair the damage that’s been done and allow the fish to repopulate to adequate levels to support fishing.

Our Future is Made of….?!

The author of Taste of Tomorrow recommends that we “Go to Farmer’s Markets. Eat GMO Papayas. Buy Fish from Indoor Recirculating Systems.” Hmmmmm.

I’m with him on the Farmer’s Markets. The GMO papayas and the fish farms? Not so much.

He DOES, mention on the last page of the book, that we should “…keep a wary eye on new technologies, especially those with panacea-like claims from multinational corporations with monopolistic aims and a history of DDT and Agent Orange production.” I wonder who he’s talking about?! To slide this in at the end of the book after spending so much time on the virtues of GMOs is a bit disingenuous.

I’m sure there are some really smart people who are working on the future of food, but IMHO the closer they get to a “solution”, the closer we are to a Soylent Green future. The idea that you can mass produce nutrition is what got us into this mess in the first place.

First we went from hunter gatherers who only took from nature what they needed and wasted nothing. Then the advent of agriculture and the mass growth of grains brought substandard nutrition to masses of people. It may have helped to fuel giant civilizations, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. The resulting people were less healthy than their ancestors. More recently (during the World Wars) the focus on stock piling cheap food (wheat, corn, soybeans, etc) has led us to our current state of affairs. An overabundance of cheap, garbage food that is processed and combined with sugar to make thousands of different food like substances that are making us fat, sick and stupid.

Not to mention right before our eyes our food rights are being stripped away from us every day.

• Want to drink raw milk? Tough, its 2% for you.
• Want to raise a heritage breed of pigs? Too bad, kill ‘em all.
• Want to have backyard chickens? Sorry, call the chicken police!

If we continue on in this direction of mass consumption, over population and blatant disregard for the planet, our food and each other we are all done. We don’t need more technology, we need less. We need to stop trying to fix things that were fine until we broke them. Its time to undo the damage we’ve done, not go deeper down the rabbit hole. If you want to eat Soylent Green people-enriched food product, help yourself. Its what you deserve.

Not me.

</rant>

So far this has worked pretty well. Clearly over the past year, the Paleo movement has taken off in a way I have hoped for, but could not truly have imagined. At work and for my family and friends, I’m less of an oddity and now the guy people know they can ask random food/health related questions.

However, there are still a great many people who really don’t understand what “going Paleo” means or why they should pay any attention to this “new, weird, fad diet”. I am constantly amazed at the articles that continue to pop up in various media outlets and blogs that still get much of the core tenants wrong.

To that end, I have been eagerly anticipating a well crafted documentary that clearly defines what it means to be Paleo. A film that anyone from a reasonably intelligent middle-schooler to someone’s parent, grandparent or, god forbid, someone in the media, could understand and “connect the dots”.

 Enter CJ Hunt, broadcast journalist, producer and host of “In Search of the Perfect Human Diet“. Like so many who come to Paleo, CJ’s story is a journey from serious illness to good health by way of a quest for the “truth” about human health. And what a quest it is. “Search” goes back through the paleolithic record as CJ meets with scientists and experts of all flavors to determine who our ancestors were and what they were likely eating millennia ago and how that diet effected our evolution and development into the people we are today.

The journey is a fascinating one. Even though I knew the basics around much of what is covered by the film, I still learned a great deal and found the telling quite enjoyable. The conversations with the experts are informative and accessible.

Besides the paleolithic record, time is spent discussing more modern scientific forays into understanding Why We Get Fat. Gary Taubes weighs in here (pun intended) to introduce us to some of the heroes and information from his book of the same name.

Certain studies and narratives are nicely illustrated and very effectively help to share the history in a fun way.

Loren Cordain shows us (with the help of a football field) the relative time we have been eating neolithic foods (wheat, grains, etc) compared to the time we have eaten in a  paleolithic fashion. Quite a powerful visual.

Dr. Lane Sebring even takes CJ to a local supermarket in order to clarify what foods are / are not Paleo.  For the folks who are just learning what it means to be Paleo, this could be very helpful as trips to the market can be daunting because of the sheer amount of crap and temptation in every aisle.

Other folks you may have heard of like Mike Eades, David Getoff and (however briefly) Robb Wolf also make appearances in the film.

While the subject matter is vast, I feel the filmmakers did a good job of covering many of the important facets of a complex picture. Once you’ve begun you’re own exploration into Paleo, there are many more avenues of study and ways of tweaking for your specific individual needs (unique snowflake). That said, anyone who is currently Paleo or would like to help introduce friends and family to the concept of going Paleo can certainly start with a viewing of this film to get the conversation started.

I won’t go into too much detail on the story, but here’s the gist: after a bloody revolution where 12 districts rose up against the Capital and were defeated, there was a “peace” formed with the creation of The Hunger Games. Every year, from each district a boy and girl are chosen (the Reaping) to compete against the other district “tributes” in a televised battle to the death for the Capital’s amusement. Twenty four enter the arena and only one leaves. This is their punishment and a reminder that the Capital is in control. Each district provides something the Capital needs (wheat, coal, fish, etc) but has very little for themselves as everything is guarded closely by “Peace Keepers” and sent on the Capital. The people of the districts live hand to mouth and its all they can do not to starve.

While I do not know if the author, Suzanne Collins, had any of this in mind, I believe there are a few parallels to our present day situation that are just as insidious.

Hunger.

According to FeedingAmerica.org: in 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children. This is 14.5% of households where people don’t know where their next meal might be coming from. We consider ourselves the wealthiest nation on earth, the greatest place in the world to live, the American Dream exists for everyone, etc. and yet 1 in 6 Americans are going hungry. WTF!?

This might not be so maddening if, as I mentioned in a previous post, we weren’t wasting an inordinate amount of our food at the same time. According to the film “Dive“, 50% of the food produced for consumption is thrown away. So we have a high rate of hunger and waste occurring simultaneously. Thankfully many have discovered this absurd situation and are working with grocery stores to collect their edible food waste (watch the film, you’ll be shocked at the amount and reasoning behind all that waste) and deliver it to local food banks. Thank God for people like this, who are not only reducing the amount of edible food headed for our landfills, but giving it new life to feed people who would otherwise go hungry.

Something our government did right (under President Bill Clinton) was to enact the Food Donation Good Samaritan law which encourages companies to donate food, but protects them from liability except in cases of gross negligence. Thanks, Bill!

Nutrition.

I appreciate the fact that I live in a country where we have so many freedoms. But do we really?

You would think that our ability to choose nutritious foods for our families to eat would be the most basic of all the freedoms available, right? In fact, because our very health and well being (not to mention productivity, prosperity and security) depends on eating the freshest, highest quality (organic, grass fed, etc) meat, vegetables and fruit available, you’d think our nation would be focused on making this a priority of the first order. Right?!

Wrong.

Rather than focus on the creation of high quality, nutrient dense foods for our nation’s people, the collaboration (or collusion) between our government and big business is more focused on creating the cheapest possible “food”, from the least nutritious ingredients at the expense of our health for the benefit of their shareholders and the politician’s campaign funds. I realize this sounds all “conspiracy theory” and such, but if the shoe fits…..

Walk into any supermarket and take a look around. The vast majority of the food there is processed garbage. The produce is largely NOT organic, the meat and dairy products are largely CAFO sourced, the bread, cereals, chips, sodas, etc. are not worth eating even a little bit. So what happened to the freedom of choice? Where’s the choice? Much of the processed, inedibly “food” you see at the store is subsidized by our government (corn, wheat, soy, etc). But what about the high quality food? Why isn’t that subsidized? Shouldn’t we promote the growth of food that is the best it can possibly be? Shouldn’t we, as a nation, strive for the most nutritious, tasty, free of pesticides, better for the environment food? Shouldn’t we?

Why aren’t we?

Why are we raiding farms that sell raw dairy to those who desire it? Why are our laws and regulations focused on making the lives of CAFO providers easier and the lives of smaller, pastured providers, harder? Why are we subsidizing the least nutritious foods and declaring them a part of a nutritious diet? Why are we allowing Monsanto to create dangerous GMOs that poison the environment, the people and animals that consume them and which bankrupt the farmers that put their faith in their “technology” as well as the ones who don’t and are merely caught in the path of errant seeds? Why indeed.

For some reason we encourage corporations which take plant and animal products and turn them into commodities that are grown, harvested and processed with cruel efficiency and zero regard for either the animal, crop, environment or even the consumer who will be eating the end result. We do this to the detriment of our health as a people. Our actions clearly playing out in an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, rampant autoimmune disease and skyrocketing health care costs. But keep eating those “heart healthy” grains folks, they’re part of a nutritious breakfast! Bullshit.

Winning.

The only choice we have is to “opt-out”. Like our clever protagonist in the aforementioned Hunger Games, we need to stop playing the game. The only way we win, is by going directly to the farmers that care about the food they produce and give us the most nutritious and high quality product available. Just because it says organic at the supermarket doesn’t mean it is. Get to know your local farmer, heck go and see their farm. We need to vote with our wallets and our guts. We need to do what’s right and support our local farmers who are fighting an uphill battle. We need to go back to the future by way of our food supply. Its the only way we can win. Money talks.

There are a number of sites created to help connect farmers and consumers.
If you haven’t checked out EatWild.com, start there. The site needs some updating, but its a good resource.
A new project called RealTimeFarms.com is attempting to track product from farm to table and can use your help to do so. Very cool use of data.
You can even use Yelp.com to find local farmer’s markets. There’s one in Campbell that is year round and I’m going to swing by today to see what I can find.

Its up to us, people. If we want to send a message to the powers that be, we need to do it in a language they understand. Our hard earned cash. Choose wisely and “may the odds be ever in your favor.”

Peace.