Is Vegetarianism an Improvement on the SAD?

I really should be going to bed, as I want to be up early to go deer hunting (I will be posting some venison soon, Gods willing), but as often happens, somebody was arguing with me over the Internet (the gall!) and I feel the need to bring it up.

Paleo eaters love to pick on vegetarians.  This is an  interesting development, because it's perfectly possible to eat a vegetarian diet that is reasonably close to paleo principles, but we tend to single out vegetarianism because culturally we're really into meat.  It's a mutual thing, too... vegetarians, the evangelical kind anyway, loathe paleo diets because of the aforementioned meat-heaviness, even though we are more likely to buy meat from more ethical sources than non-paleo eaters.  Although honestly, I understand vegetarian hatred of paleo diets much more than paleo hatred of vegetarian diets.  At least vegetarians have a percieved moral basis for their ire.  We basically have butthurt... someone with absolutely no real power over us says meat is immoral, and we get indignant.  But that's a different story.

As often happens, somebody was making fun of percieved flaws in the vegetarian diet, and somebody pointed out that vegetarianism is better than the Standard American Diet (SAD), so we shouldn't be bashing vegetarians.

I agree on the one point... bashing vegetarians is stupid as fuck... but the idea that vegetarianism is better than the SAD actually really stings me.  And here's why:

There is nothing about vegetarianism that is inherently better--or worse--than the Standard American Diet.

Even if we're talking about veganism, the more extreme version of vegetarianism in which no animal products are intentionally consumed, there is a great deal of diet variability.  If you really emphasize whole vegetables and increase things like coconut oil and avocados to get some good fat sources, make sure you have adequate protein sources (even whole soy, although that's a paleo sin), watch your sugar intake, and supplement B-12 for Gods' sake, veganism doesn't have to be recklessly unhealthy.  On the other side of the coin, things like potato chips, soda, and everything on this list of foods I'll probably be forced to eat in hell, are all perfectly vegan, and yes, there are vegans that live almost 100% off of this shit.  And when you expand to ovo- and lacto-vegetarianism, you get even more variability.

And there is a huge push to get vegetarians to eat that junk, a push that is perpetuated by animal rights activists who are perfectly willing to potentially trash the health of a human if that human stops eating animals.  It's not really their fault, though... the mentality is more like this:  If people are going to be subsisting off of crap anyway, why not introduce them to vegan crap and at least save some animals?

A vegetarian diet can lead somebody away from a meat-heavy SAD if that's what they're after... it's just that there is nothing inherent to vegetarianism that will do that, and vegetarians are increasingly reaching for processed junk.  In addition, most vegetarians eat very grain-heavy diets even when they do try to eat healthy.  So vegetarians and vegans are gaining weight along with the rest of us, with all the lovely associated health problems.  I know that this is how I was when I was a vegan... I'd try eating whole foods, get really sick because whole wheat gives me cramps, and I'd make myself feel better by eating the giant vegan cookies at the convenience store that probably had eight-hundred grams of sugar each.  So weight gain and other problems among vegans is pretty common, and not the shock people think it is.

Me being every college vegan ever.

Keep in mind that I'm not damning vegetarianism, here.  This is common to every diet that isn't terribly specific.  Paleo eaters also have our own types of junk food... from homemade cookies, breads, pies, and cakes made with almond or coconut flour to Lärabars, there are even companies that make processed, packaged paleo bread, pasta, and other foods.  I still think this is an improvement on the SAD, but only for now.  I honestly feel that in the future people are going to be marketing shit like paleo soda (people already come up with recipes) and paleo God-knows-whatever-else.

The point here is that, yes, I agree that we shouldn't single out vegetarianism as somehow being worse than the SAD, because it isn't.  But we shouldn't give it a pass just because they aren't the SAD we all know and hate... they're prone to the exact same diet follies non-vegetarians on the SAD are.  Pretending otherwise just reinforces inaccurate beliefs about the healthfulness of vegetarianism.

In Which I Cook The Bird Of Peace

Mourning doves are kind of a controversial bird. In some states they're viewed as a songbird and as such are protected.  In Wisconsin, there is a season for them, and although I have neither the time (nor, honestly, the interest) to hunt most things myself, my brother does, and he also doesn't like doves, so he gifted me the four he shot on my property the other day.

To the right is the result... a few points, since Reddit and Facebook have already brought this up:

1. This is not chicken.  It does not need to be cooked well.
2. Actually, as it's a red meat bird, cooking it well will not do it justice.
3. My camera is actually kind of terrible, so it's not as raw as it looks.

Now that we've got that behind us, I have to make a confession here:  I don't think I've ever thought poultry was ever as delicious as this meal was.  It tasted a lot like steak.  I cannot wait until I get my  hands on some more of them.

This particular batch was just baked in a convection oven at about 400 degrees for a half an hour before being cut off the bone and presented (I added the rosemary because it was already pretty).  There was a dollop of coconut oil on the top, and it was seasoned with salt and pepper.

Next time I make it, I will be pan-frying the whole body first to caramelize it before baking it in the same manner.

I'm on the Blood Donation Boat

First off, my weigh-in today was 214 pounds.  Back to a total 55 pound weight loss.

I'm terribly sorry I don't have the link, but a while ago I recall reading an article about the Paleo movement in which somebody maintained we should all give blood because early man would have been regularly using it.

This has always seemed a silly hunter-warrior fantasy to me, the idea that men were constantly spraying blood everywhere and lived to tell the tale.  I don't know.  Never really bought it.

On the other hand, blood donation is a good thing to do both for your community and for your health.  Especially when you're like me and your body makes too much blood.  Which I found out a couple months ago when my routine hormone-related bloodwork came back and I was told I had secondary polycythemia.  This is the opposite of anemia... rather than having too few red blood cells, I have too many, which can eventually lead to a stroke or heart attack.

The treatment is frequent blood donations to lower the blood count, which I've been doing. 

So I guess I'm on that wagon after all.

Paleo Mayo and On Honey

Updates:  First off, I forgot this blog still existed.  But it does, so here I am.

Diet-related, I am giving up most dairy, at least for a while, to try it out.  My main exception is ghee, although I am a bit lax when it comes to butter.  I'm going to see how it makes me feel, since I stalled a bit weight-loss-wise.

I stopped tracking my food intake because it wasn't helping me.

I don't care very much about carb intake anymore, although I eat less fruit and more vegetables.

I weigh roughly 216 pounds now.  Which is good as I slipped up between now and the last post and gained some weight.  I'm fine now, though.

Next, the mayo.  And the honey.  I eat honey.  I don't eat like, buckets of it, but I eat it.  A lot of us do.  And the first response I got from posting this recipe was somebody telling me to omit the honey.

Uhhh, no.  You are not Paleo Czar and I will eat what I want.  Honey is a food that's found in the wild, has been eaten by humans for a long time, and gathering it is portrayed in cave paintings.  You can omit whatever you damned well please, but I like my mayo the way it is.

But yes, you can omit the honey, that's fine.

Paleo Mayo

First I should mention why I made this today.  At r/Paleo somebody posted a recipe with mayonnaise in it, and since most people associate mayonnaise with that soybean-oil-laden rancid crap in the supermarket, there were people questioning its involvement.

Maybe it was that supermarket crap.  OK, let's be honest, although it's not ideal, supermarket mayo is not the worst thing you can eat.  But if you have the time and elbow grease, a way better option is to make it on your own, switching the bad ingredients with good ones.  Because at its base, mayonnaise is literally nothing but egg and oil.

I used a recipe for this.  Kind of.  It's one by Alton Brown from the Food Network.  His recipe, of course, contains two problems:  Sugar and bad oils.  So if you follow this recipe exactly, switching out the oil for avocado or light olive oil and the sugar for honey--or omitting it entirely--you will have an ideal mayo.  If you are going to be eating it right away, you can even use hardening oils like coconut or bacon grease.

I made an additional substitution.  Since I had no dry mustard, I used some whole corn wet mustard--deliciousness in a jar--instead.  The result is s hown in the pictures, here:  A gorgeous-colored accompaniment to a naked BLT or an addition to some deviled eggs.