Even if someone can establish that we aren’t really trapping more solar radiation by adding to the carbon cycle–the latter of which, by the way, I learned about in eighth grade and maybe that was a hoax too, but as I haven’t seen libertarians or conservatives bad-mouthing it, maybe not–can you explain to me how all the pollution and waste caused by coal and oil consumption are good things? Because I’m not seeing it. It’s interesting that in the 1300s, Edward I of England assigned the death penalty to anyone caught burning coal. If he only knew. The reasons he gave at the time sound quaint today but weren’t too far off from what coal was demonstrably doing to the landscape and to the population. About the best thing it did, besides keep people from freezing to death in winter, was save the bare remnants of Britain’s forests. But only just.

And we never should have used petroleum to power the internal combustion engine. We should have saved it for plastics, and then only for some applications. It has turned out to cause more trouble than it has solved. Even when you don’t consider global warming at all.

If you read personal finance writers, particularly the ones who aren’t selling anything but their books by way of their writing, you’ll see it emphasized over and over that ecology and economy go hand-in-hand; if it saves you money, it’s probably being a lot less damaging to the environment too. Now I’m no saint about this, I simply recognize it as a valid hypothesis, one with lots of evidence to back it up.

What’s wrong with spending money when you get it? Everything, if you’re in a money economy. You have to spend some, but an economy based on consumption is inherently unsustainable *even when you do not account for ecological issues.* Sooner or later you must save money as well, or you will have nothing when you cease to earn money.

I mean, y’all libertarians tell poor folks exactly this when they apply for welfare. Tsk, tsk, you say… why aren’t poor folks more economically responsible? Why, indeed. And if you’d quit spending money like it was going out of style and set yourself up for financial independence early, you could free up your job for someone else to come along who needs it more, and then maybe fewer people would need welfare and we wouldn’t need an expansionist economy either. Y’know. It’s one of those things.

Just throwing some ideas out there. It must be human nature or at least strongly encouraged in the dominant culture to hold fast to dogma til it screams. But it’s not doing us any favors, whether you’re talking about diet, health, money, or the economy.

I didn’t vote for Obama but as long as we insist upon perpetuating large nation-states for whatever reason I can’t fathom, sooner or later the government has to step in. It’s that or large corporations, and I’ve seen enough of what they do when given free enough rein to be willing to take another eight years of George W. Bush rather than live in an Avantis-run fiefdom. And that’s saying a lot, because I hate the b—–d, and I don’t hate many people.

http://www.whatgeekseat.com/wordpress/2007/07/26/cultured-butterenormous-flavor-and-no-fuss/

There are also a number of other links on the web to make sweet or sour local butter.

Next we must march on Joslin, the poor guy must be spinning in his grave at some of their current advice.

Like the ADA they appear to have reduced their recommended carbs from 60% to 40%, still toxic but less toxic for Type 2 (and IMNSHO many nondiabetics) but one of their endos reputedly told a patient that her A1c in the fives was “far too low” and demanded that she eat enough carbs to put it up to 7

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/general/view/2009_02_15_Former_astronaut_speaks_out_on_global_warming/srvc=home&position=recent

Let’s look at this GW thing in a different way.

During cold periods, crops often don’t ripen, the amount of viable cropland
diminishes, animals die, travel becomes difficult, glaciers grow, life gets a lot harder.
Think of everything you ever read or saw in films about the horrors and suffering
from the 1300s to the 19th centuries.

During warm periods, however, crops and animals flourish, glaciers retreat,
cropland increases, life gets easier and a lot more fun. OK, so maybe people
on the coasts will have to move to higher ground, but, that’s do-able.

So, if the globe IS warming, let’s EMBRACE IT. Put on your shorts and flip-flops,
pour some agreeable wine, and sit outdoors to watch the sunset (or stars or
the moon or whatever).

Enjoy it thoroughly. Because the COLD will return, eventually.

I was thinking the same thing as Monica about the bison. American bison are infinitely more adapted to the Great Plains of North America ecology than the cattle, or the wheat cropping beginning in the 19th century that started the Dustbowl storms of the 1930s.

But are bison really bigger than cows? I buy a half bison twice a year, but it comes cut and wrapped so I can’t say with certainty the original size of the animal in comparison. One half bison cut and wrapped fits a side-by-side freezer compartment. My rancher tells me that is half the space a half side of beef needs. But the final bison product is quite lean (too lean actually, so I often add home-rendered lard), so perhaps that accounts for some of the reduced yield.

Bison weigh between 1000 and 2200 lbs and the average steer weighs between 1000 and 1500 lbs. The shoulders of bison are enormous, but the hindquarters are about the same – maybe even a little smaller – than a steers.

Oh, and by the way, heights really bother me. REALLY bother me. I was a little on edge with the motorcycle vid.

Keep it up,

Brian

@Monica: The ability of a system to serve as a carbon sink is based more on the amount of biomass *below* the surface. Native prairie grass has a much deeper root system than corn or wheat, and it is a perennial instead of an annual (although some work is being done on developing perennial wheat). Corn has a very poor root system – perhaps the worst of the grain crops.

Also remember that biomass sinks are short-term. Microbial consumption of dead plant matter will release the carbon back into the atmosphere (I have a paper from Sweden, I think, on that around here somewhere). The long-term cycle involves the weathering of silica rock and plate tectonics, probably a bit to complex for a food blog

I saw this article a few months ago because my fiance gets Archaeology, and should have mentioned it to you. In any case, I find it very interesting, and possibly telling, that the gladiators were not only eating carbs but a specific type: grains and legumes. Which both have lectins that could potentially affect leptin resistance. What about other cultures that eat carbohydrate in very high amounts to the exclusion of almost everything else? Do they get fat?

We know sugar is bad, but this leads me to wonder whether all carbohydrate is really implicated in modern diseases. There is one group that might help us out but I don’t know enough about them. The Irish. We know that the Irish ate a heck of a lot of potatoes. It would be fascinating to know whether this population from 1600s to the mid 1800s was exempt from other western diseases of civilization that we believe are caused by carbohydrate. Until the potato famine, the Irish were almost completely dependent upon potatoes. It would be fascinating if there was some study of health at that time period. My guess is that they would have done poorly if they did not have any source of animal protein or fat, but I wonder if there is any evidence of diabetes, heart disease, etc. at that time. There probably is not, but anecdotal reports might be helpful.

Not only did the average Irish family of six consume 250 lbs. potatoes weekly, the population doubled from 1800 to 1845. Because the climate was so remarkable for growing potatoes, people were able to be fairly leisurely and abandon other food production — and married earlier, had larger families, and were able to nurse more newborns. That means an average of 6 lbs. potatoes per person per day. Of course, although potatoes are starchy they have a fair amount of complete protein, too, unlike other vegetables. That’s around 2500 calories, with 63 grams of protein if one just eats potatoes. !! That starts to make potatoes sound pretty good.

When corn was imported from America to aid in alleviating the famine, the Irish rejected it, even though they were starving. Apparently their digestive systems were very conditioned to potatoes. We know they relied on them heavily. In light of this, it would be fascinating to discover more about Irish health at that time. Were they fat? Did they get heart disease? What about diabetes?

(The book where I get this information is “Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds” by George Hudler. (It’s discussing the potato famine caused by the infamous Phytophthora infestans.) He cites his sources for this historical information in the back of the book.)

Potatoes lack some toxins found in grains and legumes. In light of this, it would be fascinating to know more about he body composition and health of the Irish just prior to the potato famine — especially since controlled dietary experiments are difficult to carry out as you’ve mentioned before. It might give us a basis for the types of experiments that Taubes calls for at the end of his book.

Believe it or not, I actually have the Hudler book, but I can’t find it. I can’t imagine eating 6 lbs of potatoes per day, especially if that’s the average across the population. It would mean that since children and smaller women ate less, that a normal sized male would eat 8-10 lbs per day, and I find that stretching it. The potatoes do contain some protein, but I can’t imagine them not being eaten along with at least (this being Ireland, after all) some butter, which would add a little more protein. But, having said all this, I really don’t know because I haven’t read anything at all on this era of Irish history, especially not on Irish nutritional history. I’ll have to amend that gap in my learning. Thanks for the inspiration.

The numbers would be interesting, but why we are worrying about agricultural practices and their effect on global warming, when it is what humans have done for millenia, is very disturbing to me. If people are really that worried about the effect of their food, etc. on global warming, the only true solution is to kill themselves. I fear that is where we are going to end up to “save the planet”: http://www.fa-rm.org/blog/2008/12/epa-tyranny-cow-fart-tax-coming-your.html

On a lighter note. All you people who are losing weight are just shedding that carbon into the environment where it will harm the Earth. You should instead be sequestering it in your bodies by eating more and more sugar and getting fat. Plus if you gain weight and die of diabetic-related complications, you’ll reduce the human footprint on the Earth.

Even that comes at a cost, I suppose. All that carbon in our bodies would be released through decomposition when we die. What, oh what, are the poor little environmentalists to do?