"Life Without Bread"

[Don Diego]

Yes, as others said, your words were very moving Atreides, though I don't catch all the subtleties of your humour and way of saying things,what I've read this morning and Laura's comment resonated in my mind all day long.
The List is a very strong concept as it appears that It contains only One item so we could define It as a NonList.
Thanks a lot for your great speech

 

[beetlemaniac]

Thanks Atriedes. I have noticed that even though high fat/ketosis way of eating tends to reduce cravings for unnecessary/non-foods, the sheer strength of emotional programming in food can still get the best of us at times. I noticed that constantly reading news articles about gluten, sugar and the rest tends to go against those programmed tendencies.

The List makes for a powerful and rigidly structured attack on the rubbish programming and emotional attachments we have towards poison foods. I've had the idea that believing in "lies" or fantasy can never be good for you, but looking at it objectively, this seems to be the most efficient way of producing the changes we need in our lives diet-wise. Even dogmatism has it's proper applications provided we are conscious about it.

 

[mcb]

I have been eating a lot of pork myself, and I have been wondering why it is so lean. I came across this today in my reading:

...American breeders have started selecting for much leaner pigs, because Americans want to eat leaner cuts of meat. So far the leaner pigs are healthy, but their personalities are completely different. They’re super-nervous and high-strung. No one knows why this happens, although it might have to do with myelin, which is the fatty sheath surrounding the nerve cell axons that helps signals pass from one brain cell to another. Myelin is made of pure fat, so it’s possible that when you breed a pig to have less fat you interfere with myelin production in some way. Lower myelin levels could produce jumpy animals because inhibitory signals—the chemical signals that tell other neurons not to fire—don’t get through from one neuron to another. The animal can’t calm itself down. That’s one theory, anyway...

Grandin, Temple; Johnson, Catherine (2009-07-23). Animals in Translation (pp. 100-101). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

This book contains a LOT of information, some of which relates to food and some of which relates to pathological behavior. She makes the point that breeding for a specific trait often affects other things besides the target trait. Here is another example:

RAPIST ROOSTERS

We’ve been doing some strange things to animals’ emotional makeup in our breeding programs. When I was just starting my work with chickens a few years ago, I visited a chicken farm. Inside the barn where all the chickens lived I found a dead hen lying there on the floor. She was all cut up, and her body was fresh. I was horrified.

I went back to the farmer and I said, “What was that?”

He told me the rooster did it: the rooster killed the hen. He acted like that was a perfectly normal thing for a rooster to do. He wasn’t happy that his roosters were killing his hens; he just thought that’s the way it was.

I knew that couldn’t be right. If roosters killed hens in nature, there wouldn’t be any chickens. But people raising animals in captivity tend to forget this basic fact of life. A lady who raises llamas told me recently that one of her males had tried to bite the testicles off another male. I told her that’s definitely not normal. If llamas bit off each other’s testicles in the wild there wouldn’t be any llamas.

The chicken farmer told me that half of his roosters were rapist-murderers. I was stunned when I heard that. There is no species alive in nature where half the males kill reproductive-age females. There had to be something seriously wrong with those birds.

So when I got home I immediately talked to one of my students whose family were backyard breeders. They had a small side business raising and breeding chickens in the backyard. She’d never even heard of a rooster killing a hen. Then I called my good friend Tina Widowski, who was a specialist in chickens, and she said absolutely not: normal roosters do not kill hens.

Tina knew about the killer roosters, and she told me what the deal was. Ian Duncan from the University of Guelph in Canada had studied the roosters and had found that the rooster courtship program had gotten accidentally deleted in about half of the birds. A normal rooster does a little courtship dance before trying to mate with a hen. The dance is hardwired into the rooster’s brain; it is instinctual behavior, or what animal ethologists call a fixed action pattern. All normal roosters do it.

The dance triggers a fixed action pattern in the hen’s brain, and she crouches down into a sexually receptive position so the rooster can mount her. She doesn’t crouch down unless she sees the dance. That’s the way her brain is wired.

But half of the roosters had stopped doing the dance, which meant that the hens had stopped crouching down for them. So the roosters had become rapists. They jumped on the hens and tried to mate them by force, and when the hen tried to get away, the rooster would attack her with his spurs or his toes and slash her to death.

Grandin, Temple; Johnson, Catherine (2009-07-23). Animals in Translation (pp. 69-70). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

She goes on to explain that the chickens were being bred for fast growth and more meat, and this problem was an unintended consequence.

We know that there are issues such as fruit being bred for greater sugar content, lowering its nutritional value, and animals being fattened under horrific conditions in CAFOs, but the problem is much more extensive. Where I live I am not sure it is possible to find pork with a decent amount of fat on it. All the meat is unusually lean, no matter what the animal. It doesn't matter how "natural" it is, because unhealthy breeding practices do not disqualify it from being labeled "natural" or "organic." After all, they are "protecting" you from eating too much fat. And organ meats are largely unavailable because "people don't buy those any more."

Now that I have some idea of what a healthy diet would include, I am at a loss to find that kind of food. For now I have increased my supplements and I am starting to look for other sources of meat besides grocery stores selling organic products. I'm not really sure what to do. I thought that I would simply need to make better food choices at the store, but the problems run far more deeply than I realized. Of course I live in a city in the US, and that is a lot of the problem, but it is a big problem for me.

 

[TOTEM36]

Great post Artriedes.
Stellar mentioned earlier about struggling with giving up coffee, and the solution of hot water was suggested. I can vouch for that -although i never tried hot water with salt. Good idea.

 

[Alana]

She goes on to explain that the chickens were being bred for fast growth and more meat, and this problem was an unintended consequence.

It's just criminal to interfere with the ways of nature for any reason, especially for monetary profit. They are probably thinking, "it's just a pig/chicken", and though no one has the right to abuse any animal, they miss the point that by feeding their children these franken-animals, they are creating generations of franken-humans. The more I read about how diet influences our genes and all our behaviors, or how our food-producing techniques have ravaged this planet and all it's inhabitant species, the more I want to have everyone I know read the books I've read on the subject of diet, more than anything else.

We know that there are issues such as fruit being bred for greater sugar content, lowering its nutritional value, and animals being fattened under horrific conditions in CAFOs, but the problem is much more extensive. Where I live I am not sure it is possible to find pork with a decent amount of fat on it. All the meat is unusually lean, no matter what the animal. It doesn't matter how "natural" it is, because unhealthy breeding practices do not disqualify it from being labeled "natural" or "organic." After all, they are "protecting" you from eating too much fat. And organ meats are largely unavailable because "people don't buy those any more."

Now that I have some idea of what a healthy diet would include, I am at a loss to find that kind of food. For now I have increased my supplements and I am starting to look for other sources of meat besides grocery stores selling organic products. I'm not really sure what to do. I thought that I would simply need to make better food choices at the store, but the problems run far more deeply than I realized. Of course I live in a city in the US, and that is a lot of the problem, but it is a big problem for me.

I am sure most of us are facing the same problem. We don't live in a big city, but still, we have to buy our fat to make our own lard from another city 5 hours away from us. Most of the meat we find at the supermarket is lean even if organic, like you say, and the butchers in our city don't care to carry organic, grass-fed animals. And even last year when we ordered a whole cow from an organic farm outside the city, we didn't get all the fat, or the bones of our animal, because apparently the butcher does not give those away. So we've been searching for a while, and today, me and my roommates drove about an hour outside the city to a local, family farm, and spend some time talking to the owners (a man and his wife) and we bought some meat from them. Unfortunately we were late and they are already sold out of their pigs, but there's a chance for some beef as we want it, and they were happy to hear that we want all the fat on it, because that's how they eat too. They are actually members of the Weston A. Price foundation, and gave us the contact info of other farmers with grass-fed, organic pigs and chickens in the area. We felt so relieved. That's all you need to know, you know, a few farmers around where you can get the foods you eat in their natural state. I'd rather be giving my money to these small farmers anyway, than to the big chain supermarkets.

So for starters, you might want to find if there are any Weston A. Price Foundation members in your area, and contact them. Even if they are not farmers themselves, I am sure they will know where to send you. Also, keep talking to people you know in your city, your work, tell them what you are looking for, and they might know someone who knows someone, who knows a farm, etc. Good luck!

 

[dugdeep]

We know that there are issues such as fruit being bred for greater sugar content, lowering its nutritional value, and animals being fattened under horrific conditions in CAFOs, but the problem is much more extensive. Where I live I am not sure it is possible to find pork with a decent amount of fat on it. All the meat is unusually lean, no matter what the animal. It doesn't matter how "natural" it is, because unhealthy breeding practices do not disqualify it from being labeled "natural" or "organic." After all, they are "protecting" you from eating too much fat. And organ meats are largely unavailable because "people don't buy those any more."

Now that I have some idea of what a healthy diet would include, I am at a loss to find that kind of food. For now I have increased my supplements and I am starting to look for other sources of meat besides grocery stores selling organic products. I'm not really sure what to do. I thought that I would simply need to make better food choices at the store, but the problems run far more deeply than I realized. Of course I live in a city in the US, and that is a lot of the problem, but it is a big problem for me.

All the paleo people on the internets talk about ordering from "US Wellness Meats". Apparently they will deliver anywhere in the US and are paleo-friendly. I don't have any experience with them myself, not living in the US, but the American paleo community seems happy with them overall, from what I've read on blogs and such. It might be worth a try if you've exhausted all possibilities locally.

 

[LQB]

All the paleo people on the internets talk about ordering from "US Wellness Meats". Apparently they will deliver anywhere in the US and are paleo-friendly. I don't have any experience with them myself, not living in the US, but the American paleo community seems happy with them overall, from what I've read on blogs and such. It might be worth a try if you've exhausted all possibilities locally.

They have lots of good stuff - pastured/grass-fed. Soup bones, oxtail, tallow, butter, beef/chicken/pork and BACON.

 

[Nicholas]

We know that there are issues such as fruit being bred for greater sugar content, lowering its nutritional value, and animals being fattened under horrific conditions in CAFOs, but the problem is much more extensive. Where I live I am not sure it is possible to find pork with a decent amount of fat on it. All the meat is unusually lean, no matter what the animal. It doesn't matter how "natural" it is, because unhealthy breeding practices do not disqualify it from being labeled "natural" or "organic." After all, they are "protecting" you from eating too much fat. And organ meats are largely unavailable because "people don't buy those any more."

Now that I have some idea of what a healthy diet would include, I am at a loss to find that kind of food. For now I have increased my supplements and I am starting to look for other sources of meat besides grocery stores selling organic products. I'm not really sure what to do. I thought that I would simply need to make better food choices at the store, but the problems run far more deeply than I realized. Of course I live in a city in the US, and that is a lot of the problem, but it is a big problem for me.

All the paleo people on the internets talk about ordering from "US Wellness Meats". Apparently they will deliver anywhere in the US and are paleo-friendly. I don't have any experience with them myself, not living in the US, but the American paleo community seems happy with them overall, from what I've read on blogs and such. It might be worth a try if you've exhausted all possibilities locally.

I have ordered meat from US Wellness and have been very happy so far. It arrives well frozen and ready for your freezer. I mainly purchase the 75% lean ground beef, ground pork, bacon, beef tallow, and beef broth. I just got some liverwurst but haven't tried it yet. My small freezer is stuffed!

 

[mcb]

It's just criminal to interfere with the ways of nature for any reason, especially for monetary profit. They are probably thinking, "it's just a pig/chicken", and though no one has the right to abuse any animal, they miss the point that by feeding their children these franken-animals, they are creating generations of franken-humans. The more I read about how diet influences our genes and all our behaviors, or how our food-producing techniques have ravaged this planet and all it's inhabitant species, the more I want to have everyone I know read the books I've read on the subject of diet, more than anything else.

It's monstrous, what has been happening. Humanity is caught in a trap that has already closed. And we just naively walked into it and watched it close. Everything I have learned in 61 years (until now) about nutrition has been wrong, so it has been closing for at least that long. There may be ways through this for people who see. I hope so.

...So for starters, you might want to find if there are any Weston A. Price Foundation members in your area, and contact them. Even if they are not farmers themselves, I am sure they will know where to send you. Also, keep talking to people you know in your city, your work, tell them what you are looking for, and they might know someone who knows someone, who knows a farm, etc. Good luck!

I will do that. We were already starting to search for food sources for our cats. It seems that we are in the same boat with them. I actually realized this several weeks ago when I looked over the entire meat counter at Whole Foods Market and saw lots of organic meat but almost no fat or bones. This book (Animals in Translation) has helped me to see more clearly what is really happening.

 

[SeekinTruth]

We're really fortunate here in Armenia because there's absolutely no factory farming. The only way you can buy products from industrial scale farming is imported and sold at supermarkets which are unfortunately popping up like mushrooms in the last few years.

The pork and lamb are VERY fatty here. But the beef is EXTREMELY lean, not only because they eat only grass, the graze on mountainous landscape and tend to be quite muscular. That's really the reason that industrial farming never took root in Armenia -- because of the landscape, and also the tiny population that doesn't support that economy of scale. During Soviet times most of the other republics had the Soviet version of large scale agriculture, but it just was not feasible in Armenia and to this day, raising animals and crops is done as it's been done for many centuries.

It's probably one of the few places on the planet the remains that way and the quality of the food is obvious because of it.

 

[forge]

Anybody experienced more loose tendons/joints, more relaxed ligaments, can you stretch more since on this diet?

On the EE video at 09:16 the three girls are folding their hands behind their back, then bend forward then down, while their folded hands go up. I couldn't do it at the beginning of this high-fat diet. Now i can, discovered a week ago, but my memory was wrong. I tried the old method.
20 years ago we did this at karate: fold hands behind your back(palms facing the sky), turn your palms 180° so they face ground and bend forward then down, hands going up to top: requires young, loosened tendons/joints, because it involves turning of joints in shoulders/collarbone area.

Very possibly i'm just having osteomalacia - softening of the bones they began to bend like rubber tubes?

I don't have the symptoms described here:
_http://www.arthritisresearchuk.org/Files/2058-Osteomalacia.pdf

Some numbness and tingling-stinging sensations deep inside muscles i do have described here:
_http://www.healthsupplementsnutritionalguide.com/mineral-deficiency-symptoms.html

Calcium Mineral Deficiency Symptoms:
[..]spasmodic contractions of skeletal muscles, symptomized by tingling fingers, toes or lips, numbness in arms or legs, and muscle pain or severe muscular cramps or spasms.

Got aware of thrombosis' dangers a month ago, since then drink more water, mix in potassium, take Mag/Calc citrate+D vit., but i walk less than i used to. This means less sunlight exposure. Wish i could do a light jogging everyday in clean, country air to pump clothed/quickly clotting blood out of deep varicose veins. There is a danger of spending 12 hours slouched on the couch like this young man:

_http://thesun.mobi/sol/homepage/news/3723107/Lad-of-20-is-killed-by-blood-clot-caused-by-playing-his-Xbox-for-up-to-12-hours-at-a-time.html?mob=1

Instead of playing i sculpt, or exercise in graphics (targeting a better paying job) often forgetting time, so must find ways to do more exercise!

I found that no amount of "in your room"-fitness exercises equal to a good long walk or jog.

 

[seek10]

We know that there are issues such as fruit being bred for greater sugar content, lowering its nutritional value, and animals being fattened under horrific conditions in CAFOs, but the problem is much more extensive. Where I live I am not sure it is possible to find pork with a decent amount of fat on it. All the meat is unusually lean, no matter what the animal. It doesn't matter how "natural" it is, because unhealthy breeding practices do not disqualify it from being labeled "natural" or "organic." After all, they are "protecting" you from eating too much fat. And organ meats are largely unavailable because "people don't buy those any more."

Now that I have some idea of what a healthy diet would include, I am at a loss to find that kind of food. For now I have increased my supplements and I am starting to look for other sources of meat besides grocery stores selling organic products. I'm not really sure what to do. I thought that I would simply need to make better food choices at the store, but the problems run far more deeply than I realized. Of course I live in a city in the US, and that is a lot of the problem, but it is a big problem for me.

All the paleo people on the internets talk about ordering from "US Wellness Meats". Apparently they will deliver anywhere in the US and are paleo-friendly. I don't have any experience with them myself, not living in the US, but the American paleo community seems happy with them overall, from what I've read on blogs and such. It might be worth a try if you've exhausted all possibilities locally.

Recently I got some items from them, pretty satisfied. Comes in a box asking us to freeze immediately- which is normal. Recently I ordered butter from US wellness Meats, as some people referred butter here , I bought some. It didn't mention specifically it contains milk, I thought it is just from cream. After I got it It says contains milk. Except that they are great and needs minimum purchase weight to ship- 7lbs or so.

 

[Chu]

In the end, the whole point of The List is about changing how you think about food, in a fun and kooky way, it's a kind of misdirection for the mind. It's about making a conscious choice to think a specific way, something I think very few people ever do. It's about taking complete control of your mind and convincing it to do what you need it to do to accomplish your goals. Instead of berating yourself, or hating yourself, you simply give your mind a reason, totally illogical, to counteract the already illogical and unreasonable ideas in your head.

Even though Atriedes has made the above tongue-in-cheek remarks about The List, those of you who read his essay carefully - and more than once - may notice the extraordinary rationality of this attitude toward food. As he pointed out: food should not really be about pleasure - what is pleasurable in taking the life of another being? - but about spare functionality. The way you eat, what you eat or don't eat, will not make you pure or holy; but there is a rational, objective reason for optimal diet practice, and that is service to others. To be able to be of service with the minimum of suffering imposed on the planet and its living system in the process.

And this all gives the Cs session from August 20th a much richer meaning, I think. In particular this:

Okay. Now, you made a remark about the diet that is normal for the human being. And I know {name redacted} and a lot of people - not just {name redacted}, but a lot of people - have a problem with a diet that requires you to consume the flesh of other creatures. And I know that we've read what Lierre Keith has written about it, and it's a very moving statement about life and earth and so on and so forth. But I'd like to know if there's something a little more esoteric that we could understand about this? I mean, I don't understand why and how a person can achieve spiritual growth, which is what you seem to be implying throughout all of this stuff that we've been learning, from eating meat. How many other groups have taken a vegetarian pathway and said that this is... I mean, aside from the fact that we now know that agriculture and vegetables and the owning of the land is pure STS destruction... What about fruit? Well of course they didn't have fruit then. Like everybody, I'm having a little problem with this. So can you help me out here?

A: You know the saying: Only through the shedding of blood is there remission of sins?

Q: (L) Yes.

A: And what about: Take eat, this is my body?

Q: (L) Yes.

A: And: Take, drink, this is my blood?

Q: (L) Yes. (Burma) So it sounds like they're saying that there's a hidden thing in the whole resurrection or salvation by the blood thing. That agriculture is evil and we could return by going on an animal-based diet?

A: No not exactly. When humankind "fell" into gross matter, a way was needed to return. This way simply is a manifestation of the natural laws. Consciousness must "eat" also. This is a natural function of the life giving nature of the environment in balance. The Earth is the Great Mother who gives her body, literally, in the form of creatures with a certain level of consciousness for the sustenance of her children of the cosmos. This is the original meaning of those sayings.

Q: (L) So, eating flesh also means eating consciousness which accumulates, I'm assuming is what is being implied here, or what feeds our consciousness so that it grows in step with our bodies? Is that close?

A: Close enough.

Q: (Ailen) And when you eat veggies you're basically eating a much lower level of consciousness. (L) Not only that, but in a sense you're rejecting the gift and you're not feeding consciousness. And that means that all eating of meat should be a sacrament.

A: Yes

Q: (Burma) With agriculture, you're not only rejecting the gift, you're turning around and beating up the Mother. (L) Well that sure puts a whole different light on the whole Cain and Abel thing! {Interesting that the original “vegetarian” was the first murderer, too.}

Atreides has been a great example for us all to follow. One could think it's a miracle, the way he has changed both physically and emotionally, as he described. However, one can see that it takes a lot of will power and "stalking the Predator" (pun intended). Years ago, we didn't know how the diet aspect was so closely related to the famous "Life is Religion", and The Work in the way that it taught in this forum. But it is!! How can we expect to have any control whatsoever on ourselves if we aren't even capable of controlling what we put in our mouths? How can we claim to be more STO if we use food as comfort, not caring how many living beings die to satisfy us? Vegetarian "fundies" won't like this, but if we think about The List, and compare it to the vegetarian diet, it is easy to see what causes more unnecessary predation on the planet.

 

[Don Genaro]

Indeed your post has been most inspiring Atreides. I have recently been failing miserably at the diet. I started eating dark chocolate and ended up starting a vicious cycle. In other aspects I've been doing okay with the diet- mostly pork, supplemented with some beef, lettuce, mushrooms, eggs, fish and organ meat, all fried in home made tallow. I was doing fine and then one day I had the chocolate and some more the next day and it quickly became everyday. To that I added coffee last week. Knowing what I've learned this was starting to depress me because even though they are "minor things" it was wrong from my perspective. Your post has been very timely as a reminder and reinforcer of some things that I have been coming to realize about food. Thank you for sharing.

My self esteem has been quite low recently. I've been getting tired of hearing comments on my weight at work from lots of people who are worried and think I need to eat more. I should know better than to pay attention to them but I've been hearing on average, three comments a day at work recently since I went from 59 kilo average to 55 since starting with carb restriction. Anyway, I knew I have to snap out of this self- indulgent phase and I was watching the video today of Nora Gedgaudas at the Ancestral Health Symposium in which (by coincidence?) she makes a reference to chocolate cravings as meaning a possible magnesium deficiency. If I understand it correctly (because I shouldn't have had magnesium deficiency since I supplement 600 mg per day and drink two cups of bone broth also daily) I'm guessing that the chocolate, although supplying magnesium, by virtue of the high sugar and carb content (I ended up trying sweeter forms of dark chocolate- a sure sign that I was out of balance and getting hooked) was causing more deficiency through the increased insulin surges creating a vicious cycle. Since I'm off work today I had already been contemplating heading into the shopping centre for a fix of dark chocolate and coffee. After hearing Gedgaudas talk about magnesium deficiency I decided instead to take 600 mg now (and another 600 tonight) and go cold turkey. The cravings have eased somewhat already. It's amazing how indeed the "little voice" of the predator can become so strong.
So, maybe it's time for me to think about the list a bit more. I'll be eliminating eggs for a time now (something I've been putting off for some time as I have three laying hens which has made it that much easier to postpone!)

 

[forge]

Good job Atreides! The List has got smaller for me last month, lemons jumping out of the airplane. Sunflower seeds and homemade chocolate remain and are eyeballed for drawing straws. Amazing, how near death experiences change the old ordering of thoughts in people! How ridiculous fears and worries disappeared in my case. I can finally cry on the fates and suffering of people.