No More Meatalomania

on January 26, 2012

I haven’t written about the paleo diet in a while, and I think we’re due for another refresh. Paleo is all the buzz in Austin since PaleoFX is coming to the Stark Center in mid-March. I’m not sure how much I can say beyond what you can find out for yourself on the website since I’m on the volunteer team and signed an NDA, but basically, I will just tell you to get your incredibly lean, toned, and probably acne-free paleo ass (literally) down to Austin to get cozy with AHS’s Texan cousin. Yeah, I went there.

But as the title suggests, this is not a particularly rah-rah-rah paleo post. In fact, I’ve made quite a significant departure recently from the kind of paleo I had been doing for most of last year; specifically, I’ve really laid off the meat recently (from pounds a day to ounces a day), because I’m starting to have some doubts about whether consuming monstrous amounts of protein is actually good in the long term.

Now, there is no way this can be a short post if I’m going to try to persuade you fully, and since I’ve committed to not writing monster posts this year, I’m going to state a few points in a particularly indefensible and terse way. If you want to rain scientific studies and abstracts on my ass, post on Gary Taubes’ or Stephan Guyenet’s blogs instead. That way, you might actually succeed at upsetting someone. *ZING. No, wait—PALEO ZING.* Oh yeah!

So what am I doing now? Nothing too different, really:

• I still refuse to eat at restaurants in protest of the industrial food system (lasting a full year was hard, but I basically succeeded);
• I still only ever eat meat whose origins I can verify personally to have been raised ethically and sustainably;
• I still don’t eat grains because of ethical and sustainability reasons relating to grain agriculture;
• I’m still not convinced that all grains are all bad for all people at all times;
• I still avoid dairy like the plague because of AI stuff;
• I still get owned by legumes and avoid those (darn you, lentils!);
• I still eat nose-to-tail as I usually do (although I had a really hard time downing boiled pig skin earlier this month—the texture gave me goosebumps via transitive property or something);
• I still eat a beastly amount of sweet potatoes (mostly of the japanese variety shipped straight from a farm in NC); but,
• what has changed is that I eat a lot more greens now, to the point where I might start calling myself the kale monster. Or maybe the kale whale. No, wait a minute…

I’ve also stopped eating those meats (read: proteins) that cause serious itching and inflammation for me, like lamb. For what is probably an uncomfortable reason, I’m really digging the pork these days. Why is that uncomfortable? Well, I’m wondering if the body’s natural tolerance for pork protein isn’t because it is so similar to our own. Are you about to rain some science on my ass for that claim? Actually, please do—I really want to know if that’s a myth.

I should also admit that I’ve watched a rather unreasonable amount of vegan propaganda in past months, but what I ultimately take from all of it is that old-school paleo logic doesn’t fare well when scrutinized. Some of the “intuitions” we were sold in the beginning are not very true when you apply the same scrutiny that paleos apply to vegan arguments. That’s not to say though that vegans are right. What, you thought I was going to say that vegans were right all along? Yeah… no. I will continue these thoughts in a later post, but first, you need to wash your mouth out with some (ethically raised and sustainably sourced) lard for even suggesting such a thing.