What do you eat?

[-RC-]

Organic, locally sourced produce. Biodynamic if possible.

Red meat maybe twice a month, juices every morning (usually celery, beetroot, carrot, kale, ginger, sweet potato, orange, pineapple, lemon rind, pinch of black pepper, but it varies seasonally) and chicken twice a week on average.

Probably about 80% veg/fruit, 10% dairy and 10% meat I guess

Try to get as much raw foods in as I can (nuts, cacao, coconut products) and a shitload of water, but occasionally I get into the pies and stuff.

I do notice if I eat too much dairy though, a bit intolerant there I guess, but I also eat a shitload of garlic too. Love it.

[Sallubrious]

Sally is a female. And she is shredded. She has ALOT of stamina, much more than me that's for sure

I'm half man half woman. I used to work for the circus in one of the freakshow tents but I got sick of the fucking midgets looking up my dress.

[Sallubrious]

Sometimes I don't know if I'm Arthur or Martha

[teonanacatl]

I believe in animal rights- that is that I have the same rights as other animals. I eat anything and everything- here its eat or be eaten.

I live reasonably self sustainably and Ill tell you if you're hungry you will eat anything! Also you'd be crazy to watch you whole garden destroyed by bugs when its all the food you have- Ive yet to see an organic solution to the pest numbers I get here in the wet.

That said Im certainly not a pure carnivore, I eat a balanced diet of fruit, veges, staple carbs, fish and seafood. I hunt or raise all my other meat. Killing an animal is easy with a gun, point the thing at its head, turn off your emotions for a second, and pull the trigger. Its a bit more confronting for people to kill them with a knife but its the same in principle. You just need to do what has to be done. I dont think that makes me a bad person. I think death is as natural as life and I think there are a lot of lessons to be learnt in death, to see the blood of an animal drain out and its life disappear from its eyes is truly an incredible and moving experience. I also believe people these days are not exposed to a lot of death.

Factory farming is producing the quantities of meat that we need, just as monoculture crops produce all the fruit and veg we need. Killing an animal aside I see no difference between the two. People can get angry about modern agriculture but the truth is it has gotten us where we are today, look at the positives, we are incredibly good at producing meat and crops with limited time, inputs and space- where to from here, who knows?. I also think its fantastic that people are now comfortable enough in their lives to care how their food was raised.

Everyone that is participating in society is contributing whether you buy organic, are a vegan or not. If you follow those lines of thought the only really ethical choice is to drop out completely or die.

The problem with people these days is they dont have enough real problems to worry about.

[Sallubrious]

this is what 10% on a female looks like, are you SURE your 10%? http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/danalinnbailey/

10% on a female is completely shredded, lower abdominal veins, not a bit of fat except keeping organs happy.

I just checked the % again with several methods & this time I got several different readings based on different methods ranging between 11 and 13 % rounded off to the nearest whole number. So that's up about 2% give or take from when I checked on Thursday. That was based on a mugs analysis with calipers, not a dexa scan so it's really just an approximation.

I've had a binge this weekend, pissed up and pigged out but I don't think it's physically possible to gain 2 % body fat in 3 days, so I'd have to say I fucked up the first test.

Also I can assure you that I do indeed have testicles. My Mrs created this account and we both post here under the same name. I couldn't see the point of starting another account.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Sally

[nothinghead]

I am well jealous of teo, responsible choice, c_t, and waterboy's diets, all sound amazing.

Everyone that is participating in society is contributing whether you buy organic, are a vegan or not. If you follow those lines of thought the only really ethical choice is to drop out completely or die.

This is a great point. It's precisely why 'protesting' or trying to improve our eating habits and the impact they have by buying or not buying certain foods is a pretty limited means to achieving that goal. Making 'green' consumer choices in many cases doesn't shift power away from the irresponsible corporations that dominate the market and structure the food industry. We're taught to think that personal choices are our way of changing the world, 'be the change you want to see' and all that. What some people omit when they pull that one out is that Ghandi's organised collective political resistance was far more effective in bringing about social change than his personal habits ever could have been. It's also why dropping out is a bit of a cop out in the sense that it leaves the system you abhor in tact and removes a dissenting voice from the system. Of course, this is mostly pretty idealistic, real life is always much more of a compromise unless you're tough as nails.

[Auxin]

I'm a herbivore... now.

My diet used to be shit, based solely on meat and junk food it was so bad that I had heart disease and arthritis by 18 but was just too perpetually stoned to care.

I sobered up in time to be caregiver for my father as he died at 66 after years of excruciating pain from abusing his body the same way I was- drug abuse and a suicidal diet pattern.

The rest of the family just shrugged, said lifes cruel, and jumped into the nearest pile of cheeseburgers and donuts.

I'm not entirely sure who snapped, me or them, perhaps that depends on perspective, but now I eat no animal products, nothing from factories, nothing from glass or plastic containers, I dont drink anything sweet, and I dont eat anything sweet unless its alive, and my garden has grown to be as large as some peoples whole property.

Cardiovascular disease is gone and I can run for miles, gut problems are gone, no more arthritis flareups, and I'm living to see other family members cheeseburger themselves to death... and be inexplicably angry at me for not following the family tradition of doing so

The total avoidance of animal products was originally only intended for the active reversal of CVD, a small bit in my diet would probably be safe now, but since I'm a buddhist and now entirely used to never eating animal bits I'll most likely just stay this way.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Auxin

[Sallubrious]

What's the issue with food in glass containers Auxin, is it just a preference for fresh food ?

I avoid plastics wherever I can too.

It's intruiging how people get offended by other peoples food choices, somehow they take it as a personal insult if you think outside their box

[teonanacatl]

It's intruiging how people get offended by other peoples food choices, somehow they take it as a personal insult if you think outside their box

Thats true about most things. Im a big fan of the saying "There is more then one way to skin a cat" but would add to it "but if you want me to try it your way, show me how its done and explain yourself". If I had a $ for every time someone said "To remove the hair from a pig the water must be 78.35482 degrees celsius" yet for some reason Im the only one there when the hair is coming out! Im sure you get what I mean.

[Auxin]

What's the issue with food in glass containers Auxin, is it just a preference for fresh food ?

Keep in mind I'm an american. I dont know how oz is but virtually all food here thats sealed in glass jars is packed full of dyes, preservatives, car antifreeze, etc. and some known carcinogens can be added without even being mentioned in the ingredients list.

For a time I would read the labels until I found a 'safe' food and the only food I found without that junk was one brand of green olives so it was my exception, then a year later I just happened to see its ingredient label again and son of a bitch, at some point they started putting carcinogenic fungicide in without changing the front label. After the urge to go into an apoplectic fit passed I just decided I should avoid glass to save myself the bother. Now when I walk my dog on recycle day I pick up any big jars, take them home, and just make my own damned pickles. Mine taste better anyway

And here even fresh vegetables in plastic containers are liable to have chemicals spayed on to prevent wilting or browning, chemicals which have never been tested for human toxicity.

[Sallubrious]

Fair enough, food in jars is going that way in Australia too. I don't eat any preserved stuff these days either.

A lot of the stuff I've seen in jars lately that was once preserved in vinegar is now preserved in acetic acid solution, chemically it's the same preserving agent but it doesn't taste the same (to me) as it did a few years ago when vinegar was used. Maybe vinegar has some aromatic compounds that acetic acid solutions don't, a chemist could tell me if I'm just letting my imagination run away with me there. Even one brand touting a "traditional recipe" has recently changed to using acetic acid solution.

We've had a lot of our local produce taken off the shelves in the last few years and replaced with cheap Chinese crap, fuck knows whats in some of those jars or what was in the soil they grew the produce on.

As far as I understand our food could have all the poisons you mention and more because they don't have to list ingredients that constitute less than 5% of the total product because of a labeling loophole. I was a bit shocked by that figure, I just looked to verify the percentage thinking it was 1% and it's 5 fucking percent

Here's the most recent information on labeling policy in Australia I could find dated May 2011 pertaining to a review of food labeling requirements, if anyone knows if it has changed feel free to chime in.

http://fedup.com.au/information/fin-campaigns/what-you-can-do-to-help/pdf

Edited December 17, 2013 by Sally

[-RC-]

Just to qualify my last post, I drink rain water and that's it. Avoid chlorine as much as possible and absolutely exclude any fluoridated water.

Perhaps worth mentioning that I eat absolutely no Japanese produce now, and avoid Canadian/U.S. and Chinese produced foods as well.

Fukushima ain't no fucking joke man.

[teonanacatl]

Sally I dare say nothing has changed in the products, rather the labelling requirements now require them to call it acetic acid rather then vinegar.

[teonanacatl]

Spoke with my gf, she said vegans almost always need to take a B12 supplement- there are no non animal sources. They are also likely iron and calcium deficient.

Vegetarians are most likely iron and calcium deficient. Apparently most have trouble with iron- especially women.

Something that she said I found very interesting; The protein requirement for the body is really a requirement for amino acids so its important to get the right amino acids. Now people who are omnivorous dont have any problem with protein variety, in fact meat provides a complete source for protein requirements. Vegetarians (and more so vegans) have a much harder job as plant foods are not complete sources, so they must have a diversity of protein sources. Now amino acid deficiency has some very general effects on the body including nervousness, exhaustion and dizziness.

Really all that matters is you eat a balanced diet- balanced vegetarian, vegan or omnivorous it doesnt matter as long as you get what you need.

[LokStok]

Spoke with my gf, she said vegans almost always need to take a B12 supplement- there are no non animal sources.

Actually there are. Angelica keiskei (Ashitaba)

"Most plants are devoid of vitamin B12, which is normally only obtainable through meat, fish and eggs. However, Ashitaba is a good source of this nutrient, making it an ideal supplement for strict vegetarians and vegans, who omit these foods from their diets and are at risk of suffering from a deficiency."

http://ashitaba.webs.com/toptensuperfood.htm

[teonanacatl]

Cool! It would be interesting to know if its still bacterially derived as its only known to be produced by bacteria.

Thought the only website I could find rated japanese ashitaba at 0.04ug/100g and DRI is 2.4ug/day so thats 6kg of dried leaf!

Apparently the american ashitaba is 17.18ug/100g, so approx 15g/day of dried leaf which is much more manageable.

Though at ~$80/100g two glasses of milk/day doesnt sound that bad?

[Auxin]

Actually there are. Angelica keiskei (Ashitaba)...

Many plants take up B12 by their roots and translocate it to different tissues. If barley is fed manure barley grain will contain B12. If certain vegetables are fed lots of manure they will contain B12 in their leaves. This is a well established phenomena.

The assay that showed (an almost trivial quantity of) B12 in ashitaba was almost certainly done on material from well manured ground. You can not expect ashitaba farms to be manuring so well. You can manure your own garden well and get B12 into veggies that dont cost you a pocket full of money

Spoke with my gf, she said vegans almost always need to take a B12 supplement- there are no non animal sources. They are also likely iron and calcium deficient....

its important to get the right amino acids... Vegetarians (and more so vegans) have a much harder job as plant foods are not complete sources, so they must have a diversity of protein sources.

There are non-animal sources of B12, its made by bacteria after all. As said above, small amounts get into veggies from compost and manure, larger amounts can enter the diet from fermented veggies. The latter isnt heavily researched, supplementing is still a good idea and is easy to do. Piss-cheap way is to get strong pills, the cheap kind so they'll be chalky and less coated, powder them, and recompound it into some spice or powder you can add to your daily food.

Iron deficiency in vegans is a greatly overstated threat and is easily corrected by adding fresh fruit and/or alliums to the diet to improve non-heme iron assimilation.

Calcium deficiency in vegans is a myth, and in 'vegetarians' is an absurd myth given the huge quantity of dairy they tend to consume ('vegetarians' consume 2/3 as much animal protein as regular omnis, but almost all of it as dairy)

All plant proteins have all essential amino acids. No joke. The only food protein known lacking an essential amino acid comes from an animal.

The relative proportions of certain essential amino acids differs from that of animal sources, yes, but if a persons food calories come from actual plants rather than refined fats and sugars protein intake is high enough that even the relatively 'deficient' essential amino acid in a plant food is usually supplied in sufficient quantity.

Exceptions exist, but are rare. Trying to live exclusively on african yams or tapioca roots, and in quantities just sufficient to supply adequate calories, account for nearly all occurrences of veganism-induced protein deficiency.

You can live on nothing but potatoes and cabbage, for instance, and there will be no issue whatsoever with protein. Diversity in the diet is good for many reasons, and its not really something you have to tell people to do... who the hell would want to live on nothing but potatoes and cabbage, or rice and bok choi, after all So people making a big deal about it in regards to plant based diet should be suspect.

amino acid deficiency has some very general effects on the body including nervousness, exhaustion and dizziness.

When people (even the junk-food vegans) shift to a whole food plant based diet they tend to underestimate how much lower the caloric density is and thereby consume far too few calories, I see this all the time. Its the usual cause of exhaustion and dizziness in new veg*ns and it happened to me at first too. Also, never forget that those are signature symptoms of sodium deficiency. People in warm places like my little desert or Oz can easily become sodium deficient in the summer heat when they try to be healthy and keep sodium intake low as recommended by wise physicians who practice in ice pits like massachusetts or england.

Really all that matters is you eat a balanced diet- balanced vegetarian, vegan or omnivorous it doesnt matter as long as you get what you need.

Right on.

[C_T]

great post Auxin! vegans can get b12 from fermented goods like beer

my only contribution atm is a photo of the kale i bought on way home. for this i bake in the oven at 375f, 8 mins vein up then 4 mins leafs up.

it was under 4$, soooo much kale

Edited December 18, 2013 by C_T

[incognito]

Coming up to Christmas I like to eat a variety of animals a day. Soon the gorging will begin my sister bought two of those turkeys stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken

My favourite animal would have to be the pig. I can never have enough bacon or ham.

[-RC-]

TURKEY!!!!!

Really there is no other fowl like it.

What's the chemical in it that makes you sleepy again??

[gtarman]

I believe in animal rights- that is that I have the same rights as other animals. I eat anything and everything- here its eat or be eaten.

I live reasonably self sustainably and Ill tell you if you're hungry you will eat anything! Also you'd be crazy to watch you whole garden destroyed by bugs when its all the food you have- Ive yet to see an organic solution to the pest numbers I get here in the wet.

That said Im certainly not a pure carnivore, I eat a balanced diet of fruit, veges, staple carbs, fish and seafood. I hunt or raise all my other meat. Killing an animal is easy with a gun, point the thing at its head, turn off your emotions for a second, and pull the trigger. Its a bit more confronting for people to kill them with a knife but its the same in principle. You just need to do what has to be done. I dont think that makes me a bad person. I think death is as natural as life and I think there are a lot of lessons to be learnt in death, to see the blood of an animal drain out and its life disappear from its eyes is truly an incredible and moving experience. I also believe people these days are not exposed to a lot of death.

Factory farming is producing the quantities of meat that we need, just as monoculture crops produce all the fruit and veg we need. Killing an animal aside I see no difference between the two. People can get angry about modern agriculture but the truth is it has gotten us where we are today, look at the positives, we are incredibly good at producing meat and crops with limited time, inputs and space- where to from here, who knows?. I also think its fantastic that people are now comfortable enough in their lives to care how their food was raised.

Everyone that is participating in society is contributing whether you buy organic, are a vegan or not. If you follow those lines of thought the only really ethical choice is to drop out completely or die.

The problem with people these days is they dont have enough real problems to worry about.

I completely and utterly agree with everything but the last sentence lol. Most of us might not be starving to death or working in sweatshops, but I'd say we're a far cry from not having enough real and salient problems (personally or as a society).

In a way it's kind of ironic really...even as part of the working (lower) class of a developed nation like Australia I'm technically in a position that materially, most of the world's population would envy. But the ironic bit is that they don't realize that it really isn't the promised land at all. I'll grant that if they haven't yet met their basic needs for food, shelter, safety etc then it would be an improvement and it would make them happier.

But beyond that they'd only realize it's like anything after the rose-tinted glasses come off - you're just dealing with a new set of problems, and on a different scale than before. When you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, developed nations tend to excel at the first two levels, of fulfilling physiological needs and our psychological security and safety-based needs. But the next three levels of "Love/Belonging", "Esteem" and "Self-Actualization" tend to be completely absent from our sterile, disconnected and alienating modern industrial/post-industrial societies.

And at the end of the day unless you're born into the upper, upper-class or the aristocracy then you're never really likely to experience a great degree of freedom from the systems of control and oppression that keep you working 40 hours a week for the term of your natural life, paying off one debt or another just to keep your head above the water.

Not to mention all the serious environmental and social justice problems that everyone in the world is facing, including us.

Edited December 19, 2013 by gtarman

[teonanacatl]

Re essential amino acids- I may have fallen for a pet hate of mine, that being never believe what you hear and question everything! I did a quick search and cannot find anything more then popular media to support either claim that vegetables are complete or incomplete. Sorry for providing potentially misleading information.

And at the end of the day unless you're born into the upper, upper-class or the aristocracy then you're never really likely to experience a great degree of freedom from the systems of control and oppression that keep you working 40 hours a week for the term of your natural life, paying off one debt or another just to keep your head above the water.

There are other ways, it just takes balls to leave it/some of it behind. There are plenty of stations and areas around Australia where there are spare shacks or where people can build shacks and live with less dependance on society, however the more one becomes free from society the more one is bound by nature- so its not all greener on the other side.

My view is that being born into the country we dont have a right to any land- this is not the case in a lot of subsistence and third world countries. If we want security then we do need to work 40hr weeks our whole life to buy that security, in other countries just being born there grants you land and you dont have to worry about where you will live.

[Auxin]

SELFNutritionData is a fun searchable front end for the USDA database of average food nutrient content data. Basically if there is info listed its an average of something like at least 5 tests by the USDA. Many foods include data for all standard proteinogenic amino acids- essential and non-essential. You are not likely to find a plant listed in there lacking any essential amino acid, tho some may lack test results.

The 'protein quality' score thing is handy, its a proteins percent compliance with the USDAs theoretical 'ideal' protein that they use for giving protein intake recommendations. Like in oats its 81 (oats is a bit short on lysine relative to fried human leg meat) so if you ate nothing but oats, and ate 2,000 Calories, the 87 grams of oat protein therein would correspond to 70.5 grams of the theoretical 'ideal food protein' with the left over 16.5 grams of protein, presumably, being burned off as calories.

So oats is sure a good protein source!

You can do the math for any vegetable or grain, for instance I remember doing the math out and determining that you could eat nothing but carrots and if you supplemented with vitamin B12 your only problem would be finding a way to eat 5 kilos of carrots every day, well that and the possibility of your skin turning orange from carotenodermia And I also remember being a bit creeped out by millet, as it might rank down there with african yams and cassava roots as things you wouldnt want to live on.

Leafies tend to have a quite 'high quality' protein, like with kales protein score of 92, they just dont often have tons. Somewhere I have scientific papers from a project to teach africans to grow and eat cowpea greens as a protein supplement to their grain based diet punctuated by occasional famine. Turns out the greens contain more protein than the peas, and harvesting a bit of greens during growing encourages higher eventual yield of peas!

Plants are good.

[teonanacatl]

Thats and awesome database! Thanks for sharing!

Plants are great ;)

[gtarman]

Re essential amino acids- I may have fallen for a pet hate of mine, that being never believe what you hear and question everything! I did a quick search and cannot find anything more then popular media to support either claim that vegetables are complete or incomplete. Sorry for providing potentially misleading information.

There are other ways, it just takes balls to leave it/some of it behind. There are plenty of stations and areas around Australia where there are spare shacks or where people can build shacks and live with less dependance on society, however the more one becomes free from society the more one is bound by nature- so its not all greener on the other side.

My view is that being born into the country we dont have a right to any land- this is not the case in a lot of subsistence and third world countries. If we want security then we do need to work 40hr weeks our whole life to buy that security, in other countries just being born there grants you land and you dont have to worry about where you will live.

Sorry to all for sidetracking thread lol, but yes, I agree. It's sad that we're essentially born indentured in servitude, that we're raised to believe we have no basic right to a place on the earth, that we owe our lives to somebody else. It seems absurd to me that we are accorded less of a right to place than a bird or an ant or a possum. Fish don't pay rent on the rivers, and I've yet to hear of rates payments being demanded of kangaroos.

A great deal of our problems and inhumanities stem from the idea that we are not of the natural world, that we're separate from it and that the laws that apply to nature don't apply to us.

I'd love to find out more about these stations and spare shacks though sometime