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.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Are these roots poisonous?





This is an example of me feeding lunch to my sons: Oldest: "It looks like you are feeding me roots. Are these roots? How do you know they aren't poisonous roots? What if they poison me?" Youngest: "Did someone serve these as a dessert at your dance?" Me: "My guess is if Sleeping Frog Farm is selling poisonous roots at the Farmer's Market they will go out of business soon. I'm pretty sure those are multicolored organic carrots. What kind of terrible human being would serve carrots as a dessert?" Both sons: "You would." Crack up laughing. But now they are crunching away happily.

The one tactic I resort to on a regular basis to get my sons to eat the good stuff is prioritization. I set down the meat first and/or the vegetable or whatever I know will meet with the greatest resistance and I have decided is most valuable in their bellies. I save the sweet potato fries, the fruit etc... until they get some of the less popular food into them. When I was first transitioning Silas to a Paleo-type existence I did it with baby steps, but very little conversation. I will confess to beginning his meat intake with bacon, sausage covered in maple syrup and chicken nuggets. Pick your battle. I wanted protein and fat in him at the start of the day and no grains. Yup, chicken nuggets had breading-they were a baby step. He didn't have to eat it. Like I said he never HAS to eat. But the next time he was hungry the same thing was presented. He threw astronomical tantrums. He went about 24rs without eating. We stayed at home. I knew that I had made a mistake in the way that I had begun to nourish my son and it was a mistake that his future health and behavior depended on me repairing. Giving in to a little boy's nonsense was not an option. This process took about 3 months as I recall. I tried to be as respectful as I could by not expecting him to eat mixtures of things, or soups or cooked vegetables. I stuck with the proteins, fruits and vegetables he accepted most readily. When we went out or to a friend's house I did not worry about what he ate.
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