[Shaved Monkey]

My parent where subsistence farmers before they came to Australia
No power, no machines,virtually no money.
They grew their own beans and lentils and veg and corn(most of the corn was used to fatten the pig some was for bread) and rye and made their own wine and spirits.
They had chickens for eggs and occasional meat, sheep on common ground for milk, cheese, butter and occasional meat an ox only for ploughing and manure(that was allowed to die of old age) and raised one pig a year for pork(salted, no fridge) and cooking fat for the whole family for a year.
They had about 15 or 20 acres for between 5 to 10 adults
Their diet was mainly vegetarian.
They chose to come to Australia for a better life.
Dads description of Australia is every day is Xmas,we feast every day we never go hungry.
They still eat lots of beans and lentils(so do I) because they like the taste but they dont grow any in the big backyard veggie garden because its so cheap to buy and takes up a lot of valuable room that he grows other more expensive veggies in.

[dohboi]

Thanks for the anecdote, SM.

"Their diet was mainly vegetarian."

I think this is the realistic goal for most people. To me, at least, 'purity' isn't the point.

{By the way, yes, everything on your list except avocados grows around here. Avocados are nice, but not essential for vegans. In any case, I am no more a purist about locavorism (locavoricity??) than I am about veganism. There have always (well, for millennia, at least) been a few luxury items that were traded over longish distances. It's when your average meal has traveled thousands of miles that you start getting in trouble.)

But speaking of Australia and farming, I just saw this:

Heavy toll as Australian farmers struggle through drought
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')“We had droughts 2001-08, then we had three years off and then we are back in it again,” said Bill Murray, whose family has farmed a large tract of land about an hour’s drive west of Walgett for 150 years. “And that’s hard.”

Adding to their despair, an Australian study last year forecast climate change would lead to less rainfall in the nation’s south—and more severe droughts.

[dohboi]

Meat boom propels China's ecosystems into total collapse

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_r ... lapse.html

[Shaved Monkey]

Killing animals for kindness
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/killi ... 3v25p.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')onservation scientists have urged the state government not to be swayed by the media attention surrounding the killing of almost 700 koalas in Cape Otway.

Researchers believe that killing the animals was the most humane thing to do.

Deakin University wildlife and conservation biologist Desley Whisson, who has studied the Otway koala population, said the animals, which were euthanised in 2013 and 2014, were starving and had been selected because of their irreversibly poor condition.
"For every one of those euthanised, there would have been one or two which died of starvation," Dr Whisson said.

Koala over-population in the Otways, 230 kilometres south-west of Melbourne, has long been a problem for authorities who have struggled to manage the manna gum forest which the koalas strip of foliage, creating food shortages and killing the trees.

[dohboi]

Relevance to glycemic index?? Or to veganism?

Is koala meat particularly high on the gi or something (or are they just high in their eucalyptus trees?? )?

[Shaved Monkey]

I dont even think the Aboriginals would eat them
Im assuming very low GI

Just thought it was a little ironic
Not all killing of animals is about food some of it is for compassion
Food is just a good little extra sometimes

[GoghGoner]

I have thought that:

Religious fasting developed organically from times when it was hard to make it through the last couple of months before food became plentiful again. It became necessary to incorporate this into the community rules (religion) so it would be fair to all members of the community. Abstaining from meat is the most common fast that I have experienced (Orthodox throughout the whole season and Catholics on Friday). Why?

Any type of suffering will make most humans closer to God, atheists/agnostics on this board notwithstanding until they suffer enough...

Purging is also healthy and folks of the past were more in touch with their bodies since they didn't have the wheel to do everything.

[GoghGoner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GoghGoner', ' ')Abstaining from meat is the most common fast that I have experienced (Orthodox throughout the whole season and Catholics on Friday). Why?

[dohboi]

Many good point, GG. Except I don't find abstaining from meat to involve any suffering, really.

[Shaved Monkey]

....except when its discussed on forums

[dohboi]

[Tanada]

Something that those following a Vegan eating plan might want to keep in mind. I am a firm believer is free choice, but I am also a believer in well informed decision making. Vegan does not have to be hyper low fat like the Ornish diet and a lot of evidence is piling up that a moderate to high fat diet is actually much healthier, and the bonus is you can eat a lot less mass and still get all your calorie needs met.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') hesitated to even write this post. I do not want to capitalize on the death of a visionary man like Steve Jobs, but I do want to let it help as many people as it can. Last week in New York, I met with an old friend and entrepreneur who just signed his company’s first billion-dollar deal. He explained why Steve Job’s death seems personal to so many of us.

He explained, “Steve Jobs was only 56. As a tech ‘superhero’ with all the money in the world, he couldn’t beat the cancer. It makes me feel more mortal. How much more time do I have? I need to do more to make a difference.” But is it really true that Steve “couldn’t” beat the cancer? Or did Steve make some well-intentioned lifestyle choices that made it really hard to cure his cancer?

Most media reports state that Jobs used a “special diet” for almost a year before going for Western medicine approaches, but it’s almost impossible to figure out what that diet was. After a couple hours of research, it appears that Steve Jobs was using the Dr. Dean Ornish Cancer Diet, which is almost the complete opposite of the Bulletproof Diet. In case you haven’t heard of him, Dean Ornish, MD, author of “Eat More, Weigh Less,” is one of the leaders of a small group of radical physicians who tout incredibly low fat diets with strict avoidance of (healthy) saturated fats as the path to health, despite years of research showing how misguided that is (see Gary Taubes epic work “Good Calories Bad Calories” or any competent body building coach for more info…)

As a biohacker and tech entrepreneur who studies techniques for manifesting creativity and performance, I took note of Jobs’ early trips to an ashram in India. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and he experimented with psychedelics , calling his LSD experiences “one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life.” I’m not kidding – that’s from Wikipedia. He also became a vegetarian from those experiences.

But back to the Ornish diet that Steve Jobs almost certainly pursued when he found he had cancer. Let’s look at this radical and dangerous diet and get a feel for what it can do to you, and why. Livestrong.org has an overview of the Ornish diet.

The Ornish Diet Starves You of Vital Fat Based Nutrients

On a low fat diet, your body is tricked into believing you are experiencing a famine, even if you use bizarre tricks (like eating sawdust or other fiber supplements) to make your stomach feel full. Your stress hormones will rise in response and even your genes will respond. For short periods of time, this can even be healthy, but after longer periods, your hormones will run out of raw materials (saturated fat and cholesterol) to function optimally, and your nerve sheath (70% fat) and brain will suffer. Basic nutritional research and examination of native diets shows that the human body performs best on quite a lot of fat, and even high-carb diets work better with significant saturated fat (see the Kitavans who eat 70% carbs but mostly saturated fat, smoke like chimneys, don’t exercise, and look like body builders.) On a low fat Ornish Diet you may not receive the nutrition you need. There is good research that eating fat with your vegetables lets you absorb the nutrients in them better.

My own experience on a low fat, low calorie diet was disastrous – it helped me reach 300 lbs. I can’t imagine what a powerful man like Steve Jobs would have accomplished if he’d given his brain and hormones what they need to function optimally. If he’d received better nutritional guidance in India, perhaps we’d be on the iPhone 12 by now.

The Ornish Diet Relies on Vegetarian Dogma

The Ornish diet basically encourages you to avoid even lean meat because there might be some (healthy) saturated fat in it, creating a recommendation for low-fat vegetarianism. Sadly, vegetarians have a higher mortality rate than people who eat only grass-fed (mycotoxin free) meat. No amount of statistical wiggling is going to disprove this basic fact of human existence. I don’t like it – I’d prefer to thrive on sunshine and smiles to be honest – but careful experiments and the preponderance of data says we do better on lower carb, higher saturated fat diets devoid of fat-soluble endocrine disrupting toxins. Vegetables taste good, but they are not proper food by themselves, even soaked in grass fed butter.

It is true that a vegetarian diet lower in toxins will cause less cancer than a processed food diet containing low quality meat. However, a meat-based diet with high quality meat and fat will outperform a vegetarian diet every time. And entrepreneurs who include grass-fed meat in their diets will find they have more energy and even more passion for what they do.

[Newfie]

Back around the end of WWI there was a (then) very well know gentleman by the name of Vilhjalmur Stefansson?

He advocated a meat diet for health. He himself found he could life in the high arctic year round living off the land, although he killed an enormous amount of game in the process. Quite an amazing guy, if not more than a little walked in some areas.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'B')ack around the end of WWI there was a (then) very well know gentleman by the name of Vilhjalmur Stefansson?

He advocated a meat diet for health. He himself found he could life in the high arctic year round living off the land, although he killed an enormous amount of game in the process. Quite an amazing guy, if not more than a little walked in some areas.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson

[Newfie]

When I was a kid we went through some pretty lean times. I can remember Mom making rice for dinner. Just cook up some white rice, melt butter on it. Some salt, sugar and milk. I loved it, thought of it as a treat. I was pretty porky at that time.

Actually, given Moms culinary skills, it was probably her best dish. That's how I learned to cook. Cook or eat her stuff!

[Newfie]

From wiki

Stefansson is also a figure of considerable interest in dietary circles, especially those with an interest in very low-carbohydrate diets. Stefansson documented the fact that the Inuit diet consisted of about 90% meat and fish; Inuit would often go 6 to 9 months a year eating nothing but meat and fish—what was perceived to have been a no-carbohydrate diet. He found that he and his fellow explorers of European descent were also perfectly healthy on such a diet. While there was considerable skepticism when he reported these findings, they have been borne out in later studies and analyses.[15] In multiple studies, it was shown that the Inuit diet was not a ketogenic diet and that roughly 15-20% of its calories are derived from carbohydrates, largely from the glycogen found in the raw meats.[16][17][18] When medical authorities questioned him on his findings, he and a fellow explorer agreed to undertake a study under the auspices of the Journal of the American Medical Association to demonstrate that they could eat a 100% meat diet in a closely observed laboratory setting for the first several weeks, with paid observers for the rest of an entire year. Stefansson was compensated for his efforts by the American Meat Institute.[19] The results were published in the Journal, and K. Andersen had developed glycosuria during this time, which is normally associated with untreated diabetes. But unlike the pathology of diabetes, in this particular study, glucosuria was present in K. A. for 4 days and coincided with the giving of a 100 gm of glucose for a tolerance test and with the first 3 days of his pneumonia, where he received fluids and a diet rich in carbohydrate.[20]

[Newfie]

I think it point to the fact that humans are really omnivorous. We can and will eat damn near anything, and thrive (ish.) Kinda like rats and opossums.