Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Long Term

     Much ado has been made by the anti-meat crowd that the keto/carnivore way of eating is not sustainable long term.  Their reasoning, if it can be called that, essentially boils down to the assertion that no diet can succeed long term without plants, specifically grains, vegetables, and fruit.  The embarrassing problem comes when they are asked to specifically name which particular carbohydrates are absolutely necessary for good health.  Much hemming and hawing ensues, sometimes ending up in near brain lockup when no such carb can be named.  (I have actually witnessed this phenom.)

     They lock up because they are reflexively inclined (brainwashed) to honor the dubious concept of the "balanced" diet.  Why a diet should be balanced is never considered, only the blind belief that it should be.  It just must be true.  It has to be right.  Because if it isn't then their entire plant based mental edifice comes crumbling down.  Eat all the colors I hear them cry.  Colors are, somehow, good.  Why?  Phytonutrients, they say reverently.  You will die of a heart attack if you don't eat a balanced diet, they confidently state.  High cholesterol will clog your arteries, they adamantly insist.  Climate change, meat is murder, blah blah blah.

     Not one word of any of that is true.  Not.  One.  Word.  The reasons for that are many and varied, but too numerous to go into here.  I have been on the carnivore way of eating for five years, and have been researching every conceivable aspect of it for just as long, so my personal experience is that not only is it sustainable in the long run, it is essential if by the long run you mean the rest of your life, which is very likely to be much longer, and much healthier, in every respect, than it otherwise would be.

     What prompted this post is an interview I saw with an eighty-two year-old woman Canadian rancher.  She has been carnivore for sixty-five years.  She looks to be about sixty, at the most.  And she is as healthy as the horses and cattle she regeneratively raises.  No heart disease, no arthritis, no GI problems, no cognitive decline, etc. etc.  She wears no glasses, has a full head of hair, and even her voice is that of a woman far younger than her calendar years.  She is a walking riding, and probably roping, highly active senior who sneers at the concept of dotage.

     There are now hundreds of thousands of people on this and other continents whos are experiencing the near miraculous healing power of ultra low-carb eating.  Anecdotes are flooding into social media of success with this way of eating.  To be sure they are "only" anecdotes, but pile enough anecdotes up and they morph into data.  Extremely encouraging data.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

Expertise

     I am an "expert" in very few things, although I am quite knowledgeable in a number of areas  There is however one very tiny, microscopic really, niche of art in which I can claim the provisional title of expert.  That is the world of the comic strips 9 Chickweed Lane and Pibgorn, both created by artist Brooke McEldowney.  In the overall scheme of things my knowledge of these two enterprises is entirely inconsequential, except to those who love the brilliant art and word play of the two strips.

     I have a near encyclopedic knowledge of the fifteen thousand or so strips that make up the two works of Mr. McEldowney.  Which serves me well as an administrator of the the three Facebook pages devoted to his work.  However, I make no claims of authority as to matters of interpretation, only those of plain fact.   Both "strips" are unique in their delightful combination of erudition and visual sensuality.  It's not fair to call Pibgorn a comic "strip" at all.  It solely inhabits the often seedy and grotesque world of the web comic and was never published in any newspaper.  

     9 Chickweed Lane still runs in some newspapers, although that is rapidly dwindling along with the dwindling of newspapers in general.  At some point Chickweed will become a web only strip unless Mr. Mac decides to close out the strip before that becomes necessary.  But the work will remain archived on the web, for my lifetime at least, I hope.  I also hope that the relative anonymity of both strips will mean that it won't catch the baleful eye of the bowdlerizers who infest literature these days.  Chickweed has already suffered from such interference, but to date Pibgorn has not, although it has encountered one or two censorious issues concerning prurience.  Oh well.  Sic transit gloria mundi and like that there.