Paleo/Primal Diets -- the uncanny and the macabre parrallel universe of raw meat eaters

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Permalink Reply by B on February 13, 2010 at 1:26am

Thanks Bee, that explains much about our friend Ms. Keith :)

And many vegans have health problems, which they may blame on avoiding animal products, when in fact the source of their troubles is the very vegan grains they are eating.
yeah and like you indicated not enough fruits and vegetables which would go a long way to mitigate the acidifying effects of cooked grains on the body. I often wonder if there's any limit to how far people will go to rationalize their addiction to 'the flesh'; entire schools of philosophy, wars even?

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Permalink Reply by anne loves summer on February 13, 2010 at 4:20am

Thanks for putting this together. I think it is really important to understand the "opposition's" argument, especially when aspects of it overlap with our own. Keith's book is filled with errors... she is right to criticise our dependence on grains, but her ideas on nutrition... completely erroneous. I met her. She told me that no one could survive on a fruit-based diet for more than 2 months! It was pretty ridiculous.

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Permalink Reply by B on February 15, 2010 at 12:00am

So you've read the book Anne? If you want to post any of your critique of it here that'd be great. I'll have to pick up a copy at some point.

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Permalink Reply by anne loves summer on February 17, 2010 at 1:47am

I've only read chunks of it, but I just borrowed a copy so I'll try to get through it.

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Permalink Reply by anne loves summer on February 22, 2010 at 9:26am

Okay, I don't know if you really wanted this length of critique (and I am no where near done) but since technically you asked....

I have only read two chapters so far, but I thought I would give a review/update at this point. Obviously, my writing is mostly note form, so feel free to ask questions since I know I have sacrificed some coherency for space and time.

In Chapter 1 Why This Book? Keith talks about her personal journey... she became a vegan as a teenager, now eats meat. To her eating meat is about growing up and facing the reality that beings must die. She claims that humans can't digest cellulose and therefore you are either able to eat grasses or meat. Keith suffered from these diseases: Degenerative Disc Disease, depression, hypoglecima, amennohrea, dry skin, gastrpaesis and claims there are "no good sources of tryptophan." p10

Chapter 2 Moral vegetarians: The main point of this chapter is that vegetarians like to take the moral high ground by claiming that their diet is "death-free", when in reality it is anything but and then goes on to explain in what ways. Keith claims that killing is a part of every diet. Vegans kill plants and even fruitarians 'steal' the fruit because they don't plant the seeds of the fruit they eat, thereby not upholding their part of the bargain of give and take... they are killing the fruit's babies. (I am not making this up!) Keith states that "If killing is the problem, the life of one grass-fed cow will feed me for an entire year. But a single meal of plant babies - rice grains, almonds, soybeans - ground up or boiled alive, will involve hundreds of deaths. Why don't they matter?" (p15) But even fruitarians who plant the seeds of the fruit they eat don't count because humans can't live on fruit. (She states this again later.)

Keith talks at length about her gardening experiences. She states that planting /gardening, even organically, involves the death of millions of microbes and that microbes are not less important than cows. Soils need nutrients which can only come from animals or from the petrochemical industry (eg nitrogen, phorphorus, potassium).

Wanting to do things organically she opts for taking care of chickens... or as she puts it "chickens have gotten humans to "take care" of them by bringing them food" (to fatten them up presumably!). She calls this a partnership. She then goes on to confuse co-evolution and symbiotic relationships with domestication.

Then she explains the evils of agriculture. It kills topsoil. It is based on annuals (corn, wheat, rice) which are irredemaable. She states that it is necessary to till/destroy the land for these annuals. She describes how irrigation is necessary in agriculture, yet it is causes desertification and over-salinization. It has destroyed ancient civilizations and the land in what is now the Middle East. She claims that two-thirds of land cannot be used for agriculture.

She talks about her issue with having a garden and not wanting to hurt slugs (she used to collect the slugs and 'liberate' them in a nearby forest). But her problems with the moral dilemma range on the whiny. "Copper barriers repel slugs but i couldn't affford any." p59 Her solution to the slug issue is to get ducks who eat slugs, but she compares this to Adolf Eichmann's not having killed Jews directly but arranging their transport to the death camps and is therefore just as cupable as the ducks and as Eichmann himself.

Again she mentions exploring fruitarianism and breatharianism. Her example of a fruitarian that she met isn't one, and then talks mostly about the failed breatharians or ones that cheat by eating big macs and cokes.

Then she talks again about having chickens to enrich the soil, but claims that it is "animal abuse" to introduce too many male roosters into a flock (given that they will fight over the hens) and so you either have to kill roosters (which is more humane) or watch them kill each other and torment the female hens.

She visits a permaculture place in Canada which is apparently vegan (but isn't really). They lived on salad and bread and were emaciated.

She claims that animal rights philosophy is an extension of humanism (meaning essentially it doesn't take into consideration the whole of life or planetary health.) She talks about "the diet that ARs aspire to" p76 as if everyone interested in animal rights had the same diet.

She states that the "vegetarian ethic will fail to produce sustainable culture" p84 presumably because it is based on removal from and in ignorance of the natural world.

Again, vegetarians, while ethical and well-meaning are in complete denial that in order for something to live something else has to die. She spends the rest of the chapter talking about the sentience of plants and refers to "hacked off chucks of their bodies and stole their babies" when talking about plants.

My thoughts are this: I agree that agriculture (esp modern, industrialized) is a HUGE problem. It ruins the earth and natural habitats just as she describes. I agree that just because you buy a head of lettuce doesn't mean that no animal died anywhere for it to get to your plate. But she basically treats moral vegetarians as idiots. She talks about how this one guy wanted to build a huge fence down the Seregeti plain dividing carnivorous animals from the plant eaters. Most vegans I know find this idea ridiculous and have no wish to physically prevent lions eating gazelles. She also thinks that moral vegetarians are naive and really need to face adult facts. Her ageism really put me off and she says things like "Adults don't just absorb, they learn" unlike children. It seems like it went like this.... Keith wanted to live a life without death. As her knowledge of what is involved in food production grew she tried to go further down that road even giving serious consideration to breatharianism. Realizing that went too far down the road, she gave up, saying, well, you can't live without death entirely, so what's the point? Might as well start eating hamburgers.

Anyway, I know that this thread isn't about moral vegetarianism (Keith talks about the nutritional problems of veganism... can't wait for that), but just thought it would be easier to explore her book chapter by chapter. More later!

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Permalink Reply by B on February 22, 2010 at 10:15am

this is great anne, this gives us a much clearer picture of what the nouveaux paleo folk are getting all googly eyed over (i.e. keith's book). all the typical gambits are here.. vegans are like naive children in denial about the reality of death (so let's eat grass fed sloppy joes for lunch coz we're so wise and mature), 'plants have feelings too' (boggles my mind that it's still debated whether insects feel pain yet it is an established 'fact' that plants do), veganism isn't 'natural' (the appeal to nature fallacy). In fact these are the same three you keep hearing over and over again at you know where (hey how ya doing Asiris!), but i digress.

i'm a little disapointed really in this book so far, i was hoping this well-known meat eater's playbook would be a little bit more substantive in terms of its arguments. maybe she's saving the really compelling stuff for the later chapters, i hope so for the sake of her cause.

again great work anne, most appreciated. looking forward to the nutritional problems of veganism too (love the tryptophan thing, she ever heard of bananas?)

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Permalink Reply by pradtf on February 22, 2010 at 11:01am

thx for this anne - i must say you must have developed considerable survival skills to get through even the 1st two chapters. :D :D
i've seen better arguments from diehard meat eaters than what i see keith trying to put together - a mix of pseudo-science, intra-anthropocentrism and plain foo-foo. no wonder B calls it the macabre parallel universe.

he and i got into the grain thing with a couple of paleos some months ago (we can show you the link if you want it). the primary reason grain is a huge problem is because 80% goes to feeding the victims of the corpse industries. the paleo people don't seem to want to acknowledge this.

in friendship,
prad

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Permalink Reply by anne loves summer on March 19, 2010 at 11:21pm

I finished reading Lierre's book and it was the worst book I ever read. I actually found it really abusive. She claims vegans have mental disorders, eating disorders, are immature and well, just plain stupid. I don't recommend reading it. I was going to transcribe the rest of my notes, but I have seen many critiques of her book, so I think posting them will be sufficient. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/12/18601536.php

http://permavegan.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Vegetarian%20Myth

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/03/15/18641159.php

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/10/22/18626335.php

Incidentally, Lierre was pied when she spoke at the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair this past weekend. Regardless of what you think of pieing, her response is ridiculous... blaming the lack of tryptophan in vegan diets. Here's a news item about it.

http://cbs5.com/video/?id=63173@kpix.dayport.com

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Permalink Reply by B on March 20, 2010 at 6:04am

hey anne thanks for slogging through the book, I feel bad now for encouraging you to do so given its apparently unbelievably low quality.
: /

those are very thorough and substantive critiques btw, everything we could ask for here, so thx for posting 'em. It seems Keith certainly wasn't able to come up with any compelling arguments against going veg, but to her (very limited) credit, it may be because there are none.


Regardless of what you think of pieing, her response is ridiculous... blaming the lack of tryptophan in vegan diets.

yes well if those were (possibly vegan) banana cream pies then she would've been getting a healthy plant-based dose of tryptophan to the face ;D ;D ;D

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Permalink Reply by pradtf on March 20, 2010 at 1:13pm

anne,

thank you very much for suffering through lierre's book. i'm sure we'll all be lierrey of reading it after your effort. some people will do anything to sell their wares and tabloid writing does seem to be her way.

it's amusing that B and i were involved with a couple of lierre's fans in this discussion the link to which you can find in the first reply:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/forum/topics/pollard-do-we-really-want-to

i think B and i handled things reasonably well, but it would have been wonderful to have had you there with us (had you been on 30bad back then). the 30badigos group formed right after our little excursion.

in friendship,
prad

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Permalink Reply by B on February 15, 2010 at 12:39am

Zero Carb Lifestyle website

http://zeroinginonhealth.com/

To summarize here's the "7 Simple Rules of the Human Carnivore" (I'll give anyone a nickel who can read through this entire list without bursting out laughing):

1) Eat only from the animal world (eggs, fish, redmeat and fowl and some dairy are all animal sourced foods, i.e.: meat).

2) Eat nothing from the vegetable world whatsoever. (Very small amounts of flavourings such as garlic/chillies/spices/herbs which may be added, are not ‘food’).

3) On diary: avoid milk and yoghurt (heavy carbs- lactose), use only pure (not ‘thickened’- heavy) cream (read the label), cheese and unsalted butter.

4) Don’t cook your meat very much- just a little bit on the outside- for flavour- blood-rare or bleu. For this reason I advise against eating pork.

5) Eat liver and brains only very infrequently- they are full of carbs.

6) Be sure to have plenty of fat of animal origin at each meal and eat mostly of the fat until you feel you have had enough- you can eat more lean at this point if you like- calories are not important, nor is the number of meals/day. Vegetable oils are not good food.

7) You do not need any supplements of any kind. Drink a lot of water and do not add salt to anything.

This is not a joke, this is a website in earnest with it's own blog, forum, and online store with "real girls eat beef" and "meatitarian" t-shirts for sale.

The fact that they make the observation that brains are full of carbs yet avoid them like the plague is very telling.

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Permalink Reply by B on February 15, 2010 at 12:49am

This article from the website is interesting, it summarizes the Paleo 2.0 version of human physiology quite well. Anyone's comments/critiques are welcome. I'll add my own at some point.

http://zeroinginonhealth.com/cholesterol.html

Here's an excerpt:

What Really Causes High Cholesterol

Pete Ahrens of Rockefellar University was considered by many investigators to be the single best scientist in the field of lipid metabolism. He observed how the triglyceride levels of some patients go up on low-fat diets and they fall on high fat diets. Ahrens called this carbohydrate-induced lipemia (an excessive concentration of fat in the blood). He gave lectures where he showed two photos of blood serum obtained in a test tube from the same patient. One photo was taken during the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, and the other was taken during the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. One test tube was perfectly clear and the other was milky white, indicating the lipemia. The surprise was that the lipemia occurred during the high-carbohydrate diet and the clear liquid happened during the high-fat diet. Elliott Joslin reported this phenomenon in diabetics thirty years earlier.

Over the course of two decades, Ahrens only saw two patients whose blood serum became cloudy with triglycerides after eating high-fat meals. He had thirteen in whom carbohydrates caused the lipemia. Since Very Low Density Lipoproteins(VLDL) particles carry triglycerides and carry cholesterol they contribute to the total cholesterol. This means that when a person has high triglycerides their cholesterol will be elevated as well. This prompted Ahrens to believe that high cholesterol was an exaggerated form of the normal biochemical process which occurs in all people on high-carbohydrate diets.” He acknowledged that it was also possible that a genetic disorder might explain the observations.

Either way, the lipemia would clear up on a low-calorie diet. This would explain why the carbohydrate-induced increase in triglycerides was absent in Asian populations living primarily on rice. The majority of Asian populations ate at a bare subsistence level. They ate low-calorie diets compared with their level of physical activity, and this combination would counteract the triglyceride rising effect of the carbohydrates, according to Ahrens. The critical question was whether prolonged exposure to abnormally high triglyceride levels increased the risk of atherosclerosis. In other words, does eating too many carbohydrates lead to high triglycerides, which leads to heart disease?

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