A Paleo Diet children's book - an experiment in group creativity

[StrangeCaptain]

Are there going to be references to what they do eat and not just what they don't?

A silly question... But I am trying to bring up as to whether or not the transformation from animal to food is brought up or will we just leave that in the background? On the one hand, it seems to me delicate how to broach killing an animal to a child, and on the other, spending time in the past would seem to lack something if hunting were not mentioned.

Maybe seeing the father go out to hunt and then a conversation with him when he comes back in?

It seems clear from extant cultures with hunting/gathering ancestors that reverence was given to the animal hunted and that the gravity of death was not removed from the process. Perhaps this sense of reverence/respect can be transmitted in the book as the father explains what he has to do to hunt. There are modern people who learn primitive survival skills who say that the process of stalking animals with use of nature-made bows and spears causes one to have to know the animal intimately in order to hunt it at least partly because of the reduced proximity to the animal when the kill is made, and this necessarily precludes the distancing from death that we have in our food production today.

Think about it... Imagine all of the cute animal moments that we see on youtube. Some of these get posted to this forum. And don't get me wrong, I like them, too. Now imagine the hunter who spends days stalking a herd of deer to understand their daily lives and to choose one of them to kill. The hunter is seeing these moments himself as they happen. After he sees the ways these animals can have traits that humans can identify with, he still has to bring supper home.

We could even extrapolate that hunters thinking about the widest ramifications of life would select the kill to augment the quality of the herd. This would only benefit all in the future. Modern people studying survival skills have noticed that gathering herbs in reasonable amounts actually causes the amount of an herb in its natural habitat to increase. The plants become hardier and more numerous through some culling. Ancient hunter/gatherers could not have failed to make the same observations.

Bottom line: If the transition from the animal to our plate is explained at all, then I think respect for life should be transmitted in the story. This could be done by some kind of question and answer session with the paleo-father after he has come back from hunting.

 

[Laura]

Polly's father could be an archaeologist writing a paper about his latest discovery of a paleolithic skeleton. He writes that the tribe were obviously not engaged in agriculture because they didn't have cavities or bone diseases. At this moment, Polly comes in with a report from the dentist that she needs to have fillings and her dad shows her a paleolithic tooth and what he just wrote and Polly, holding the tooth, says "I wish we could live back when people didn't need dentists" ... and the tooth transports her back in time...

 

[mkrnhr]

The story follows well the hero journey's archetype as synthesized by Joseph Campbell.
Maybe during here stay with her paleolithic friends, she may experience carb craving. Children will surely experience that and many would be discouraged. If she shows some heroic will to overcome (not suffering but going to play instead of thinking about sweets) that craving for her sake and in remembrance of her parents, it could be a good example for children.

 

[dugdeep]

Great idea New Orleans! I love what's done so far.

Just as a point of reference, here's a couple of existing Paleo kids books.

http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Like-Dinosaur-Guidebook-Gluten-free/dp/1936608871
http://www.amazon.com/Paleo-Pals-Jimmy-Carrot-Rocket/dp/193660888X
http://www.amazon.com/Million-Year-Meal-Ian-Lucas/dp/B007O0W2VO/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341170804&sr=1-12&keywords=paleo+kids

Quite frankly, your idea seems a lot better, N.O. :)

 

[Bo]

If the book is having chapters, how about putting a puzzle at the end of every chapter about the words that were discussed to check if the children still remember what was being talked about in that chapter.

puzzles like these for example

 

[bngenoh]

We could even extrapolate that hunters thinking about the widest ramifications of life would select the kill to augment the quality of the herd. This would only benefit all in the future. Modern people studying survival skills have noticed that gathering herbs in reasonable amounts actually causes the amount of an herb in its natural habitat to increase. The plants become hardier and more numerous through some culling. Ancient hunter/gatherers could not have failed to make the same observations.

Bottom line: If the transition from the animal to our plate is explained at all, then I think respect for life should be transmitted in the story. This could be done by some kind of question and answer session with the paleo-father after he has come back from hunting.

That would make the book really comprehensive, I dig very much Patience. Regarding your idea, the lion king way is a pretty simple and effective method. Something along the lines of "we eat animals who eat plants, and plants eat our bodies when we die, so you see life feeds on life to create more life. Because we must eat to fuel our bodies, the better our fuel, the better our bodies run and the less we feed on others."

Would we wanna address the parasitic side of life, ie that which continually takes without giving back anything back except maybe more parasites? If we do we can tie it into the big picture, ie that it is a critical part of life that strengthens it, it ties in with what you said Patience, the hunter ends up strengthening the hunted.

 

[The rabbit]

Polly's father could be an archaeologist writing a paper about his latest discovery of a paleolithic skeleton. He writes that the tribe were obviously not engaged in agriculture because they didn't have cavities or bone diseases. At this moment, Polly comes in with a report from the dentist that she needs to have fillings and her dad shows her a paleolithic tooth and what he just wrote and Polly, holding the tooth, says "I wish we could live back when people didn't need dentists" ... and the tooth transports her back in time...

Yes!
Ive been thinking on and off about this through out the day after seeing the post and i´m saying this girl must arrive back in time with problems from the present day- Autism , teeth decay , ADHD , a total false sense of reality all round. , so psychological , spiritual , metabolic problems and so on.

Exciting project.

 

[NewOrleans]

YES to everyone's suggestions. Thank you for the exciting ideas. We're getting there. One area I would appreciate contributions is something more than eat/don't eat lists. Part of it would be WHY something - like sugar or gluten - isn't so very healthy. But all from a point of view of how kids assimilate - simple and straightforward. Very complex subjects like the differences between old wheat harvested and modern wheat porodiuction are hard to figure out in this format. but we'll make something work. thanks.

 

[Kaigen]

Bottom line: If the transition from the animal to our plate is explained at all, then I think respect for life should be transmitted in the story. This could be done by some kind of question and answer session with the paleo-father after he has come back from hunting.

I think also about killing the animals, how to explain it to the children. Many children kill animals without purpose, just for fun rising legs of insects an so on. We should show them killing without purpose is not good, but for feeding reson.

 

[whitecoast]

Are there going to be references to what they do eat and not just what they don't?

A silly question... But I am trying to bring up as to whether or not the transformation from animal to food is brought up or will we just leave that in the background? On the one hand, it seems to me delicate how to broach killing an animal to a child, and on the other, spending time in the past would seem to lack something if hunting were not mentioned.

Maybe seeing the father go out to hunt and then a conversation with him when he comes back in?

It seems clear from extant cultures with hunting/gathering ancestors that reverence was given to the animal hunted and that the gravity of death was not removed from the process. Perhaps this sense of reverence/respect can be transmitted in the book as the father explains what he has to do to hunt. There are modern people who learn primitive survival skills who say that the process of stalking animals with use of nature-made bows and spears causes one to have to know the animal intimately in order to hunt it at least partly because of the reduced proximity to the animal when the kill is made, and this necessarily precludes the distancing from death that we have in our food production today.

Think about it... Imagine all of the cute animal moments that we see on youtube. Some of these get posted to this forum. And don't get me wrong, I like them, too. Now imagine the hunter who spends days stalking a herd of deer to understand their daily lives and to choose one of them to kill. The hunter is seeing these moments himself as they happen. After he sees the ways these animals can have traits that humans can identify with, he still has to bring supper home.

We could even extrapolate that hunters thinking about the widest ramifications of life would select the kill to augment the quality of the herd. This would only benefit all in the future. Modern people studying survival skills have noticed that gathering herbs in reasonable amounts actually causes the amount of an herb in its natural habitat to increase. The plants become hardier and more numerous through some culling. Ancient hunter/gatherers could not have failed to make the same observations.

Bottom line: If the transition from the animal to our plate is explained at all, then I think respect for life should be transmitted in the story. This could be done by some kind of question and answer session with the paleo-father after he has come back from hunting.

These are all great ideas, but I'm wondering if some of the material that's intended to be covered isn't more suited for a pre-teen or young adult comprehension level...

I like the notion of some of Polly's family having health problems at the start, and having them cured/feel better at the end, but I'm wondering how it would be best to get there.

One idea I thought of regarding how to structure the time travel:

Polly is working on a math problem in the back yard in the afternoon on Saturday (it takes her a couple of days to catch up on homework because she finds it hard to study). She gets bored after getting stuck on the same tough problem, as she takes another sip of her zero calorie grape juice. She decides to wander around a bit in her massive field backyard for a small break, and discovers a cave.

When she emerges on the other side of the cave she's back in time, where she meets Pippi among the tall grass. Pippi is excited and invites her to dinner, running and cheering the whole way through, and Polly is amazed at his energy level and endurance. She has dinner with the Paleo family, and after some camp fire tales about hunts, she goes back to modern times. She finds out that time barely passed since leaving, and that she finishes her hard math problem with no problems. She wonders if some of the steak that was good for her brain had something to do with it, but thinks nothing of it.

She tells her parents about her discovery and asks to invite Pippi over for breakfast or lunch on the next day. Pippi obliges, but feels really sick afterward, and he cannot keep up his strength and agility as long as before.

Basically the point of those scenes is to show that diet directly affects how well you feel in terms of your strength, intellect, and health. I'm not so sure it's a good idea to start the story of with "people in paleo times had less degenerative diseases, etc." because it's somewhat of a passive info-drop scene, where the reader isn't as engaged as they could be when the clues are given out like an adventure mystery.

Once Polly's family figures out that the Paloes have better health because of how they eat (they can arrive at this conclusion using the previous way or any other number of ways) they invite the Paleo family over to go grocery shopping with them. And oh my, what confounding things they found there! They go through every single aisle, saying how so much of the foodstuffs don't even resemble food to them. Pippi tries some of the vegetables in the fruit section, and spits them out. bngenoh's has full reign in the dairy section. Basically trying to show how so much food out there isn't really food.

They end up settling for some of the meat at the store, but it doesn't taste as good. Paleo parents start asking where the animals come from, and the family explains how animals are grown in factories instead of in fields. I guess if we were to include a lament for the condition we keep the earth's fellow creatures in, this would be the time.

On their way back to the cave, however, they discover a cattle farm, where they're all organically raised on grasses. The Paleos and Polly's family decide to ask the family next door about their beef, and they end up getting some, which tastes up to snuff. So at the start it's about the relation between the Paleolithic diet and the modern industrial diet, represented by the two families. But at the end we see the third option/family, which is modern people returning to a more traditional and healthful diet, with help from our neighbours (which also highlights the importance of networking!) Maybe at the very end Polly's family ends up growing their own food/cows/chickens or something too, to show the completed circle.

Use and dissect as much of this as you wish. I'm pleased to help :P

ps- one easter egg scene at the end could be them all dressed up with tribal iconography doing an exorcism on some tofu/fake meat to banish an evil spirit who disguises himself as food to make people sick, but I don't know if that would match the tone of the book.

 

[NewOrleans]

Good suggestions. I am wondering if some of the issues raised are more befitting teenagers. (killing animals for food, for a teen, becomes an emotional moral issue - almost steering them to vegetarianism, I would think. And the subject of death is almost another whole book, yes?)

So my question is: should this illustrated book be more geared to an older set with wider issues? And if so, then the text needs to be more mature and the graphics too. My initial thought was something for preteens, about healthy eating, leaving the complexities out. An introduction to Paleo diet. But I'm open to different viewpoints and exploring the possibilities.....

I consider this an experiment in group design, not just me, so hearing what could expand this is fun. Still, it would be good to get a fix on what age group first.

 

[bngenoh]

YES to everyone's suggestions. Thank you for the exciting ideas. We're getting there. One area I would appreciate contributions is something more than eat/don't eat lists. Part of it would be WHY something - like sugar or gluten - isn't so very healthy. But all from a point of view of how kids assimilate - simple and straightforward. Very complex subjects like the differences between old wheat harvested and modern wheat porodiuction are hard to figure out in this format. but we'll make something work. thanks.

Yep a simple way to explain gluten would be, "you wouldn't eat a glue stick would you? Wheat and other grains have gluten, which is what makes flour so sticky."

Good suggestions. I am wondering if some of the issues raised are more befitting teenagers. (killing animals for food, for a teen, becomes an emotional moral issue - almost steering them to vegetarianism, I would think. And the subject of death is almost another whole book, yes?)

So my question is: should this illustrated book be more geared to an older set with wider issues? And if so, then the text needs to be more mature and the graphics too. My initial thought was something for preteens, about healthy eating, leaving the complexities out. An introduction to Paleo diet. But I'm open to different viewpoints and exploring the possibilities.....

I consider this an experiment in group design, not just me, so hearing what could expand this is fun. Still, it would be good to get a fix on what age group first.

Yeah, it's looking like we might have multiple books if we don't set an age group. But that's what you get when you have a bunch of paleo fueled folks brainstorming. ;)

 

[The rabbit]

Good suggestions. I am wondering if some of the issues raised are more befitting teenagers. (killing animals for food, for a teen, becomes an emotional moral issue - almost steering them to vegetarianism, I would think. And the subject of death is almost another whole book, yes?)

So my question is: should this illustrated book be more geared to an older set with wider issues? And if so, then the text needs to be more mature and the graphics too. My initial thought was something for preteens, about healthy eating, leaving the complexities out. An introduction to Paleo diet. But I'm open to different viewpoints and exploring the possibilities.....

I consider this an experiment in group design, not just me, so hearing what could expand this is fun. Still, it would be good to get a fix on what age group first.

As its adults who choose the food for children , and not the other way round , my thoughts are that an older audience is what should be aimed at for educational purposes. A correct food for dummies as it where. This could also include vaccines and so on. It may be called irresponsible by some , but why not get it out there while it is not illegal to do so?

 

[Tigersoap]

As its adults who choose the food for children , and not the other way round , my thoughts are that an older audience is what should be aimed at for educational purposes.

It might be more practical at first to start with a simpler book, aimed at younger children so the story & the concepts don't need to be too complicated (and to illustrate as well) because if you can't explain the paleo diet to children how are you supposed to explain it to adults :)

It can be still subversive and helpful without going into the technical details imho.

 

[NewOrleans]

I agree with you, Tigersoap. Starting with a simple book for younger kids might be best. We can dedicate a page in the back of THIS book with links for adults to read more. And if a second book for adults is needed, we'd at least have practice.