Health
Habits
Food
Weight 
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A caveman and a vegan walk into a bar…
Photo by Andrew Feinberg
Caveman Bob: Wow I’m starving, wanna grab some grub?
Vegan Kate: Sounds great, I wonder if this place has quinoa…
Caveman Bob: What the hell is keen-wah? We don’t have that where I’m from.
Vegan Kate: No way! It’s so awesome, plus it’s a complete protein so if you can’t find beans it’s no problem.
Caveman Bob: Beans? Complete protein? Stop talking crazy. If you want protein why don’t you just eat some delicious cow? Cow is delicious. And it’s chock full of lysine. Beans-shmeans.
Vegan Kate: Oh no, no no no. I could never eat an animal or animal product. Not only is it cruel, it’s unhealthy. Animal fat causes heart disease and animal protein causes cancer. Everyone knows that.
Caveman Bob: That’s silly. I don’t have heart disease or cancer and I eat animals for a living. You should see my blood work, it’s pristine.
Besides, I haven’t even evolved to eat those weird cereals and beans you speak of. I’ve been told they’re the reason people have all these crazy diseases of civilization. Thanks, but I’ll pass.
Vegan Kate: What do you mean you haven’t evolved to eat them? We’re physiologically the same and I eat them all the time. I don’t have any of those diseases either, and my blood is also impeccable.
I’m certain it’s because I don’t eat animals.
Caveman Bob: Well I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.
Vegan Kate: And I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.
Caveman Bob: Hmm. Sounds like at least one of us is wrong. Can I get you a drink?
What don’t you eat?
Very good conversation.
I call ’em diet camps and no matter where people fall in the diet spectrum, they don’t want to budge. It’s worse than partisan politics.
However … it’s what they don’t eat that keep’s ’em healthy. And they do agree on this. To stay out of the Circle of Disease, they …
Omit this:
Fast Food
Junk Food
Candy
Soda
Highly Processed Food
add this:
Exercise
Ah, they agree on many things.
Exactly! I personally feel better when I do not eat animal products- but I know many pp feel better when they do! Our bodies evolved to eat MANY diets- carnivore, omnivore, and herbivore! What we did NOT evolve to eat was chemically reconstituted crap that once resembled food! commercially processed food is what our bodies cannot cope with. Eat real food (not too much)+move your money maker (more is almost always better)= healthy+happy.
Congratulations! You get a gold star for today’s thinking assignment 🙂
Maybe the caveman eats grass-fed meat?
For the first time ever, I wish that rumored sit-com starring the cavemen were real, so they could do this bit.
Dude, it was real. Lol.
cavemen sitcom
Holy crap. I never even saw a commercial for it.
ken’s right, I hate to always see the paleos and vegans thinking that the eat completely opposite- they don’t. they’re similar in what they don’t eat. I think that’s why so many vegans feel better when they start, but I think they’d be even better off if they ate some meat and eggs. So you know what “diet camp” I’m in.
I think its safe to say, we should all find the diet camp that works for us and stick with it. Ken, you’re brilliant to point out how Caveman Bob and Vegan Kate were in agreement.
For me, in addition to exercise, I would add wild caught fish and organic eggs to Vegan Kate’s diet. Of course, agreeing to Bob and Kate’s shunning of fast food, junk food, candy, soda, and processed food. And since my diet camp would be labeled cancer-fighting, add no desserts except made with alkalizing sugars, e.g., maple syrup or rice syrup. Oh, and… hold the drink. No alcohol.
Love it. 🙂
I’m 100% vegetarian 80% of the time. My boyfriend is vegetarian, so we eat vegetarian at home (with a smattering of seafood). I pretty much only eat meat when we eat away from home, and even then, not every time.
At the moment, I’m on phase 1 of South Beach, which has finally broken through and gotten my PCOS to STFU and let me lose weight. I’m almost done week 1 and I REALLY MISS FRUIT. While I love me some pasta and potatoes, what I really lust over is fruit. I cannot wait until the 23rd when I can eat fruit again.
Bodies are weird. On the one hand, there’s documented proof that we can get addicted to things like sugar, salt, and fat (The End of Overeating book is awesome for folks who haven’t read it), but on the other hand, my body also craves healthy things when I haven’t had them in a while. I was chaperoning a European tour with about 150 high school students (srsly), and our meals for the first 6 days or so of the tour were very carb/meat heavy. Our first night in Switzerland, the place had a salad bar and all the kids RUSHED for it and piled on giant plates of vegetables. It was pretty hilarious. 🙂
This sounds just like the Paleo diet. My thoughts are to mix it with a good amount of exercise (at least 3 days a week) and you should be able to at least maintain / drop some pant sizes. The gym I attend had a 30 day Paleo challenge where a participant lost 6.2 pounds and 5.5% body fat.
I think more people should stick to this type of diet while also eating in moderation. Also, before anyone commits to this type of diet, I think they should be educated on what to look for when buying foods. Too many times I’ve seen people think “I need to eat more turkey, so I bought this brand of turkey” when in actuality they’ve bought a processed turkey that contains high amounts of sodium.
I agree that humans are probably able to obtain optimum health while eating extremely diverse (mostly unprocessed, low added sugar) diets. However, I question the feasibility of truly sustainable, affordable, and humane meat (including fish), egg, and dairy production for the entire population. Grass fed, local, organic beef is certainly not in my budget, and I want to contribute as little as possible to the HORRORS of industrial meat, egg, and dairy. When I keep this in mind, it is much easier for me to resist “treating” my self to some cheap, mysterious take out after a really stressful week, and opt for baked falafel and a big plate of home grown summer squash with cashew cheese. I really don’t see veganism as being that extreme. I feel fantastic, and want everyone to be able to as well.
Local fresh eggs are fairly easy to find and not much more expensive than the organic/freerange/whatever eggs in the grocery store. Maybe a quarter more a dozen. We try to get our eggs from the farm whenever we can.
As far as meat, I only eat it when I go out, so I feel like if it’s not grass-fed, it’s not a huge deal since I eat it so rarely.
(Our local farm does sell broiler chicken, turkey, pork, and chevron. But we don’t eat meat at home, so I’ve never compared prices.)
Well my girlfriend cant eat gluten, therefor I eat bread in front of her every chance I have! J/k. I cook at home and its always gfree. I only eat gluten when we go out. Cooking gfree is not as hard as one would think, I do it all the time w/o even thinking too much about it.
i love meat.
Don’t eat gluten, dairy, high fat or high sugar.
Don’t eat eggs by themselvescos the smell like egss 😉
They’re both idiots, or atleast self-important first-worlders. Only wealthy westerners can afford to choose either diet and still be healthy. Everyone else in the world eats what’s available and don’t have the resources to join these self-righteous “diet camps.”
Overall, I think adopting a Darya-like philosophy- eat real food- is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I grew up vegetarian, with hippie parents, and this was great when health food stores were a rarity and veggie burgers were made by mixing up rice and lentils and spcies into patties. things got not so great when processed soy-based fake meat filled supermarkets, and I spent my teenage and college years eating processed soy hot dogs and chicken nuggets. When I was 25 I stopped eating unfermented soy at the recommendation of my endocrinologist and my health and weight drastically improved. I started eating meat again (first fish, then chicken, and in the past 2 years lamb and pork- I still hold on to the no-beef thing because I feel like it’s the closest thing I have to a cultural heritage with veggie parents). Thankfully in Seattle I have easy access to humanely-raised, pastured meat sources.
My biggest fumble comes when I think about what is “healthy” too much- I go to a Crossfit gym, so now I stress when I do occasionally want some gluten-y treat, or circle round and round about whether or not I should be eating legumes, dairy (i so love yogurt and good cheese), saturated fat, etc. I wish I could know that being really good 80% of the time was enough and then not stress about wanting some amazing noodles once a month.
ONCE a month? Geeze. I usually have an eat-anything day once a week. Don’t get me wrong, I love eating healthy and attend crossfit a few times a week as well but I feel like you’ve gotta enjoy the deliciousness of any food too. Life’s too short to not enjoy it.
i was just saying pasta as a once a month example. there are lots of non-pasta foods that i save for treats as well. variety is a must!
The only time i would stay away from gluten is if im sharing with or cooking for my girlfriend (she has celiac). But it seems a lot you u guys see gluten as a bad thing. Is that right?
A lot of people think gluten causes gut inflammation, sounds like a good show topic.
I’d love to see you tackle this subject, Darya. I follow your sensible blog and recommend it to patients frequently at the functional medicine wellness center where I work as health coach/patient cheerleader. We recommend GF for anyone under the auto-immune umbrella, for reasons springing out of our docs’ constant research. I look forward to your treatment of the research.
What I don’t eat…. That’s my problem, I eat everything… Probably not hard candy…. Bitter melon….ripe bananas…I would describe myself as an omnivore with a paleo bias… Not strict at anything…. ( when I should be )