The Low Down

The human body is a metabolic marvel comprised of dozens of little systems connecting to create one complex system. Food is the fuel, the input, for the systems. Our metabolic machinery evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to function optimally on select fuels. These fuels were the original, Primal foods of the human organism. Over these hundreds of thousands of years our Big Game Hunting, small prey capturing, scavenging, foraging, gathering, opportunistic ancestors accumulated experience and wisdom about nourishing themselves. The learned to preserve and predigest foods to maximize the quality of their metabolic fuel. Eventually they learned to cook foods without destroying the important nourishing properties of the food, and then they learned to heal the human body with food. Only recently in the human evolutionary experience, have we abandoned all these hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated epicurean genius. Now we fuel our marvelous, complex metabolic machinery with crap invented to create profits for agribusiness. We have become dumb eaters. As we regain our eating intelligence it doesn't make sense to move back to the savannah and put out our fires or climb into our cave and pretend there is a glacier next door. It makes sense to fuel our bodies with all the primal human foodstuffs, prepared and preserved with accumulated ancestral wisdom and served up for the undeniable desires of the human taste buds. Primal, paleolithic food choices, handled according to ancient food ways resulting in outrageously good food.
PRIMAL. SMART. DELECTABLE.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Horse Boy, and reindeer herders



Showing right now at The Loft is a movie called The Horse Boy. It is a fascinating story of one family's attempt to address their young son's autism. They decide to take a trip to inner Mongolia to take advantage of their son's connection with horses and to ask the shamans of Mongolia to help them. It is a cool movie, not sappy or melodramatic at all.
Personally, I love any movie that shows indigenous people eating their own food. Wow. There was a scene in this movie which makes me sort of glad I'm not visiting inner Mongolia, although at the same time I am drawn to it like crazy. First of all, I love all things arctic and subarctic. The peoples impress me, the wilderness compels me. I dream of northern lights, heavy felt coats and giant furry dogs. Yes, I know. Tucson is a strange place for a girl whose most desired place to travel to next is Iceland.
Back to the movie. In one scene the father of the family is invited into the yurt and offered food. The food is one communal dish of meat. There is no muscle meat. And it sure doesn't look like it was roasted over an open fire. It looks boiled. And it is all organs including the lungs. What can we learn about food from these amazing reindeer herders? First of all humans and reindeer have an unusual relationship. Reindeer were one of the last animals domesticated because they are practically domestic by nature. One researcher hypothesizes:
"Why reindeer were domesticated so late is speculation, but some scholars believe that it may relate to the docile nature of reindeer. As wild adults reindeer are willing to be milked and stay close to human settlements, but at the same time they are also extremely independent, and don't need to be fed or housed by humans."
Perhaps reindeer were one of the first animals to make our non-herding, Big Game Hunting ancestors scratch their heads and wonder about adding some milk to their diet. Who knows.
Boiled organ meats as dinner would be a tough sell in my house (including to me), but they are packed full of nutrients, enough to sustain a person in an arctic desert where spinach and avocados are scarce.
Go and see The Horse Boy. Think about eating boiled lung.

2 comments:

  1. I gotta take Bruce to this movie! He spent 6 months in Mongolia in '06 and he also has experience in instructor training for autism. Hopefully we can make it before its run ends at the Loft.

    I also don't have much experience with organ meat, but my parents definitely do. They grew up in NM reservations (Laguna Pueblo and Jemez Pueblo) and hunting was part of their lifestyle. After attending your nutrition lecture two weeks ago my mom was telling me about eating many blood tamales, organs, and how the aunts of the hunter must eat the head (including brain) of the deer when it's prepared. Bruce experienced his first taste of venison a few weeks ago, to his surprise. I didn't tell him what it was because I didn't want him to cry over Bambi!

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  2. Summer, how about your Mom comes in and gives a talk! It is a cool movie, what hasn't Bruce done?

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