Fast Food

Ok so this one is really out there. I have been on the Full Monty Carnivore Diet for over 9 months now, thats what they call zero carb or no plants.

Now I used to grow my own veggies, have a worm farm and make my own compost and teas. I tried just eating from plant kingdom and then only eating duck eggs with home grown herbs and vegetables. So it is pretty odd that I went from a raw juicer to a guy who eats animals only.

Especially as I love biology and seeing loads of wild animals in my gardens. I studies Permaculture and took it pretty seriously, it still forms the basis of my thinking in many ways.

As a bit of a minimalist I came to realise that Nature appears to be a perfect regenerative system. Possibly even a single flowing event with no seperate parts. Out of this incredible unfolding web, complex "self" aware organisms could be seen as the current apex of this great Big Bang.

Wether it was by accident or design leaves some in heated debate.
I wonder why not both, for to me, a design does not have to have a designer if the entirety of the event is all inclusive. That is to say, the nature of nature is to unfold diversity and grow ever more inter-related.

Now there are scientists who say that all energy is actually trying to cancel out and return to a state of zero polarities, and I think that is what the second law of thermodynamics is describing.

I am no physicist and even basic math eludes me. I do wonder though, where is life in our chemistry and our economics?
Does life not have enough history to observe that there is a direction to it?
Even it is a totally random set of freak genetic mutations that enable all the complex relationships that populated the planet up till about 70,000 years ago. Does that not describe a pattern and a direction?

Life wants to live, it seeks energy, it procreates and it adapts to every available niche.
It divides in a fractal manner, for each shade or shape of leaf, a new variety in the middle can be expressed.
For each jump in the food chain, a new middle-man can intervene.

In this way nature expands in what can only be described as what Nassim Taleb would call "anti-fragile".
That is to say that shocks to the system are not just survivable, they bring fresh opportunity and adaptability that makes it even more diverse inter-related and stable. Not just sustainable, but regenerative and sophisticated in ways that make our technology a poor mimic at best.

Well now, I have wondered far of track today....

My body is an organisation of cells tissues and organs that needs fuel, spare parts and electrolytes all in ratios that do not produce undue oxidation or inflammation. Now I love to read, draw, write and ponder, lately I only want to move enough to maintain muscle tone and rid myself of non functional tensions.

I dont like to go shopping, prepare meals or clean up more than I have to, but I am still keen to have all the benefits of a perfect diet to feed my nervous system and the organs that support it.

I have found the perfect food to be grass and weeds.
More than 20% of the dry land surface of the Earth was grasslands.
These flood plains required no human input whatsoever to produce rich lush vegetation, the weeds even healed the soil by correcting mineral imbalances and starting root networks.
Over hundreds of millions of years of competition and cooperation herbivores emerged as a vital part of these grasslands.
In some parts of North America the top soil was 20 feet deep. That is lot of Carbon all tied up in the bodies of soil bacteria and vast fungal networks. The enzymes produced by these micro-organisms prepare the building blocks of life for more complex organisms.

Before Humans got organised into hunting parties that were able to employ clever traps, there were gigantic herbivores - The Mega Fauna - some weighting several tonnes. These ancient creatures, much like todays ruminants had powerful jaws and multiple stomaches that acted like fermentation vats. Teaming with bacteria, the digestive systems of these creatures were able to do something I can not.

They could break down cellulose, plant matter and convert it into the most precious substances on this planet - not gold, but the biological equivalent of super conductors - Fatty Acids and fat soluble vitamins. Vastly more precious than mere proteins, these fats from the animal kingdom enabled primates to form insulated nerves, connective tissues and the most powerful neural networks in the known universe.

So while it is entirely possible to go for years without eating these substances, after a time the body will run out of places to steal them from and begin to break down. Cognitive function first, as this is the most demanding of our organ systems.

So back to the photo. As I said, grass and weeds are the most widely available low energy input replaceable food on the planet, but they do need to be processed by animals that have the organ systems to handle them. We are what we eat and last time I checked I was made of meat, fat and cartilage so that is what I eat. That and pretty much nothing else.

Grass fed meat is not cheap however, and cooking it represents some problems. It tends to spit grease in the kitchen, and the moment you heat it up, much of that precious fat drops out of it.

So I have started cooking it in the pressure cooker, then I used an immersion blender to turn the whole lot into soup. I now lose barely a drop of the fat and can prepare 4 or 5 days worth of food using a minimal amount of fuel. I can even add Ghee to it if I want to increase the fat to protein ratio. After 8 months of trial I can verify for myself that plants and carbohydrates are not just unnecessary, I prefer not to have them. It is far easier for my biology to do what it does without the plant compounds, many of which are either undigestible or mildly toxic.

If I had a bigger freezer, I would only need to shop once a month, and I don't really need a fridge at all.

Now, of course I could be, and am in fact bound to be mistaken about many things, but so far I am deeply grateful to be in a position to make choices like this and share my experiences.

Psychobiology - the craziest part is that what nature is doing is often completely opposite to how we are conditioned to behave.

Life is indeed far more strange than all our fictions, but damned if it does not work =8-P