Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
So, I’m trying a new body hack, starting this week. As many of you know, I’m a carnivore for health and weight reasons. I eat little processed grains or sugars. But I’ve come to believe that a restrictive low-carb lifestyle isn’t any more reasonable than a vegan lifestyle. Nor do I believe that just because our bodies are omnivorous, that we’re meant to eat balanced meals all the time. I don’t think that’s the way our bodies evolved over the years.
Here’s my hypothesis: During the development of our hominid bodies up to about 30,000 years ago, we ate what was available when it was available. There was little food storage. We ate fruits, grains, vegetables and nuts—augmented by meats and fish—in the summer and fall. We ate meats and fish—augmented by dried plants materials like berries and nuts—in the winter and spring. There was no calendar, so please understand I’m just writing broadly; the switch would come with the seasonal maturity of plants and fruit.
It’s my guess that a “balanced” diet tends to enhance fat storage. In prehistoric times, the only time that there were both plentiful plants and animals (a “balanced” diet) was the autumn. We put on fat to prepare for winter (and we still do).
I’ve seen two schools of thought on this: Forks over Knives promotes vegetarianism over a meat diet and Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes promotes a low-carb diet over a veggie-based diet. But both kind of say, “This way is the only way.” I’m going to try to see if the pendulum should swing between those extremes.
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Last week, I got a call from someone asking if they could offer their customers a discount or something to vote for them in our popularity contest. “Buy votes? I don’t see anything that forbids that in the rules. Just don’t try to cheat with technology.” To my mind, this whole thing is just a metaphor for our democracy anyway. Just go to www.newsreview.com/reno/ballot/BestOfReno12 .