In all my posting on health the big idea underpinning all of this is one simple insight. If we work with nature and our nature, nature will work with us to help us.
If this sounds too weird - please watch this short video where this principle (the core of Permaculture) is applied to the most challenging place on earth
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We have evolved to be "active". What is encouraging about this video is that very established companies are trying it AND the folks who use them are loving it.
The problem? You will have to get a new wardrobe after you lose the weight!
And the Science behind this? Here is a link to Thesis #2 - Thesis #2 – Natural selection reliably produces high levels of biological fitness, and thus good health, only under the environmental conditions in which it has been acting for many generations
Sitting is appearing to be one of the worst things we can do and it is so new. Most people never sat much until the last century.
Now I am standing at my desk for most of the day but I suspect that while standing is much betetr than sitting - moving around a lot more is best.
Again the correct word is "Active" not exercise. In my mind now "Exercise" is something you do on top of an Inactive day. The key is to make our days more active generally. Is this also not true about "Diet". Is not how we see a Diet as a period of time when we eat differently and then return to how we eat all the time. No wonder we fail so often.
What I am trying to do is to live my life differently. Eat what I am designed to eat. Be active all day. Be in the natural world a lot - get up with the sun and go to bed early - work outside.
Fit my life as close as I can to what I am evolved to be most healthy.
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We have got confused about exercise versus activity. If you sit for 8 hours at work, for an hour for your commute, for 3 hours eating and in front of the TV - your hour of exercise at the gym means nothing.
Time to get active. Time to change you how you spend your day.
What is it like?
I have been using my standing desk now for over a month and have got quite used to it. At first my legs would get very tired after about 2 hours. Now I can go for 4. I also move around a lot.
When I am on the phone I walk around.
I did have a problem last week when I was editing video all week and hurt my wrist. I have adjusted the height of my mouse pad and I now seem set.
It is hard to do this in a regular office - so I hope that this kind of data may help you if that is your status.
But for us freelancers - I encourage you. My own solution cost nothing and was just jury rigged. Many of my friends have done the same. If you have the money there are now many good alternatives that you can buy.
In closing - it's all about evolution. Until maybe 150 years ago, chairs were for Kings. Work was mainly active. The item that struck me above is that we now spend more time sitting that sleeping. This is novel. A new environment that directly works against your health.
If I can change at 61 - surely you can too????
Thanks Gabe for the Tip
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The best 27 minutes you can spend - will change your life.
I keep thinking of what a closed loop grass system on PEI would be like. I think it would look like this:
I doubt that the early users of the plow could predict what their new approach to food production would bring. They were simply addressing a problem. How could they get more output of grain along the fertile banks of the Nile?
They were also building on all sorts of other connected innovation that had taken place before. Grass had been bred to have a higher yield. Oxen had been domesticated. Pot making had enabled more storage. The plow was a capstone element that brought all of this togeher and made it into a system.
It is likely that most of the parts of the new system exist today. They just need to be brought together. Maybe a crisis will do that? The crisis may be driven by an oil crisis.
With expensive oil, we will not longer have the inputs that drive our system such as fertiliser and pesticides. We will not have the equipment such as tractors. We will not be able to use concentration and corn fed confinement as the basis of meat production. We will have much reduced refrigeration. We will not have the fuel to transport food and goods so cheaply.
It may also be a health crisis. For we can no longer tolerate the costs of the illnesses that stem from our making grain and corn in particular the key component in all our food and in what our animals eat.
These are the problems that we will have to solve soon. So what can we see that is going this way.
Meat - New Old/Models - We have bred animals that are designed to be confined, live in barns and eat corn. We have "Poodleized" them and made them weak. But there have always been grazers that can tolerate being outside for most of the year.
The Buffalo herd was 60 million in 1800. We slaughtered them to kill off the plains Indians and the clear the land for cattle. In 1900 there were less than 1,000 left. But in the last 20 years there has been a renaissance. In 2005 the North American Herd was about 500,000 and in Canada 2000 ranchers have a herd of about 250,000. It is even larger today and the issue that confronts the folks in the buffalo world is how to expand the herd.
Why the success and what does this teach is as an element? It is that there are animals that "Fit" our environment. Buffalo are the natural herbivore in North America. They can cope with the worst weather. They build up the grassland. They certainly don't need a barn.
There are two reasons why the herd is booming and that more people are getting involved. Most importantly, there is demand for the meat. Meat from a true grass grazer is on the top of the health lists now for those that can afford it. On the rancher side, the costs of keeping buffalo are much less that for cattle.
They are not easy to keep. They are to cows as wolves are to dogs. They are a wild animal. So they cannot be confined. They need large areas and really strong fencing.
BUT they offer us a clue I think to the future of meat. Today we set up an entirely artificial environment for the animals that we depend on. What if instead we selected animals like the Highland cattle seen below that fit and thrived where we live instead?
I am NOT saying we have to all be buffalo ranchers - though out west this could be vast. I am saying that our new paradigm might be to favor animals that fit well with local conditions and so need very few inputs and capital to ensure that they thrive.
If we can breed a Holstein to have more milk than could be imagined, we could breed more adapted animals like this Highland Cow that can tolerate cold very well.
In the UK the Blackface Sheep is the Gold Standard meat sheep who can tolerate extreme cold and poor pasture. Their wool is also highly esteemed making it a multipurpose sheep.
The Berkshire pig does well outdoors even in Atlantic Canada.
There are breeds of all our basic domestic animals that can be rescued from history and offer us a low input low cost alternative to the "poodle" breeds we have now.
You do not have to wait years for Organic certification to beging this way of raising animals. You can start next year. There is also a large and fast growing market for this kind of meat now. Maybe not here on PEI yet but there is an export market that will enable us to get up to scale for when we all have to eat locally like this anyway.
If you start small with other your risk is low.
Grass - the opposite of the plow - The plow is all about getting rid of the existing natural system and replacing it with an artificial one. At Polyface Farm, the system is all about keeping and building on grass. Each animal has part of a rotation that uses different parts of the grass and that fits into a larger system.
Pigs have their job at the edge of the system.
Chickens come in after the larger animals. All add more back so over time the grass improves and so can carry more load. The opposite of our current system As the years go by the ROI on the farm goes up. the opposite of our current system.
As well as producing meat and eggs that rely on very few extra inputs, this system produces the very healthiest of product. Why? Because the animal fits its environment. Chickens and pigs were designed to live like this and to eat like this. If we go down this road we work WITH nature.
This can all be done locally.
Imagine if we made grass our focus? We have such ingenuity. Polyface Farm is to the future what the crudest early plow is to our modern system.
So what then about crops - what about veggies, fruits and nuts? How might we tie into a grass system a system for this?
I think that the answer is in Permaculture.
This is what Permaculture looks like. Looks chaotic but it is not. Again the principle is "Fit". We plant to mimic nature and to enhance nature. Most are perennials. As the system ages, it gets more productive. For the parts all reinforce each other as the animals do on a grass farm. Too many slugs = not enough ducks!
This is the DNA of the structure.
Ponds and woods are key to the design.
The Salatins at Polyface have discovered the importance of linking their woodland to the grass land. Both feed the other.
Both get stronger over time. Both end up needing almost no inputs. Both have an ever increasing ROI and offer the farmer more and more margin and so independence.
This is what working with nature looks like. It's early days now. But I think that these two related ideas have great potential. Could they not work for you? If they did what would happen to you?
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Many question whether giving up grains - key to the Paleo approach - will not work because then we will not be able to feed the 7 billion going on 8 billion people in the world.
This is the wrong question - because our increase in population from 2 billion in 1900 to nearly 7 billion today has taken place entirely because we have used the leverage of OIL to beat back nature as we grew more grains.
When the full effects of Peak Oil arrive - we will not be able to farm and have a food system that can feed anyone. For we only know today how to use the system that we have.
So let's look back and see what was possible before oil.
In 1800 - the peak of Muscle Agriculture, we could just feed 1 billion. But then of course we knew how to farm. Who knows how to farm today? A few know how to use our system and its tools but who knows how to grow a lot of food without them?
What about distribution? We have a distribution system today that relies entirely on cheap oil. We take it for granted that food travels thousands of miles. Food never travelled before except once. Rome! Can food travel without cheap oil?
We have been here before.
Rome in 300 AD had nearly a million people. It was not fed locally. North Africa was the Prairies of the Classic World. Grain was grown by armies of slaves and then shipped in the classic equivalent of "tankers" to Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber and then barged up the river to Rome.
So when the system failed after the sack in 410 - Rome could not feed itself from the hinterland - as it had done in 300 BC. The result? The population fell to 30,000 on 500AD. The result is that the Empire collapsed in local subsistence. People had no choice. Cities all over the empire were abandoned.
No city can have a population of more than about 30-40,000 in a muscle world. Transport is just too difficult.
London was the first city to breach this in about 1800 - the reason were canals and the agricultural revolution that brought in new forms of rotation and machinery. People really knew how to grow food then. Do you? Who do you know can grow food?
Feed 7 billion? We can't now. There are a billion who starve. That is as many people who were on the planet in 1800.
Last point. All agricultural systems todate have collapsed because of their success. Populations grow too large and the strain on the environment becames too great.
Where are the Gardens of Babylon now? Where is the farmland that supported the Mayans? Where indeed is the topsoil of North Africa? The answer to that is that it filled in the harbour at Ephesus 1,000 miles north east.
What will the gardens of California look like in 30 years? How will the plains grow wheat after the acquifer runs dry? All this is completely predictable. We too have hit the limits. The limits of the energy system that we rely on and more important, the limits on water and topsoil. Water is the final arbitier and most high population places are at the limit now. We are losing our topsoil and its health too. This cannot be replaced quickly or easily.
So for me, the real question is how are we going to feed anybody if we continue to use the existing model?
My second question is one about knowledge. Who knows how to grow food today? Less than 3% of the population. And those that do are using a Lego Kit. They only know how to farm using the recipe.
So when the shit hits the fan, are we ready enough?
Where is the seed to come from? From Monsanto? Where is the saved seed?
How will people deal with pests and weeds? Back to peasant farming?
I think that the opportunity that presents itself is to learn how to grow food in a new way - where we work with nature. Where the need for all that work is reduced. Where we use network principles to get scale. Where we start with the local system and then work out to the larger system.
I will offer up some ideas soon about that.
For I think we stand at the edge of a paradigm shift not a progression.
Here is my context - that we are back at the same place that we found ourselves when our success in hunting meant that we had outrun the resource. When we had to find a new way of getting our food or die.
The future cannot be about trying harder - the planet cannot take that.
Our population is directly linked to our use of oil to make the grain model work.
We have to find a network and natural way of working with nature. That will of course change everything as it did when we learned to dominate her.
More later:-
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In the old economy that still lingers you could buy “Attention”. A large advertising budget could force you into the minds of others. But we are becoming numb to this assault. Increasingly we only trust people that we know. “Attention” is shifting from the Institution with the budget to the “Person” with personal reputation or “Clout”.
This transition from the Institution to the Personal is surely one of the most paradigm shifting aspects of the time we live in?
Here is the “Godfather” of the idea of the Attention Economy – Michael Goldhaber back in 1997 explaining this shift from Attention that you could buy to Attention that you could only Earn!
“.. money now flows along with attention, or, to put this in more general terms, when there is a transition between economies, the old kind of wealth easily flows to the holders of the new. Thus, when the market-based, proto-industrial economy first began to replace the feudal system of Western Europe, in which the prime form of wealth was aristocratic lineage and inheritance of land, both the noble titles and the lands that went with them soon ended up disproportionately in the hands of those who were good at obtaining what was then the new kind of wealth, namely money.
With considerable ease, the rising merchant and industrialist class could buy old titles, induce governments to grant them brand new ones, or marry into the old impoverished gentry. The parallel today, again, is that possessors of today’s rising kind of wealth, which is attention, and whom we label stars of every sort, have an easy time getting money.
But now let me point out that the other way round doesn’t work nearly as easily. Contrary to what you are sometimes urged to believe, money cannot reliably buy attention. Suppose it did work that way. Then you could have been paid to sit here and listen closely even if I were to read you something as boring as the phone book or an unabridged dictionary. Presumably it wouldn’t even matter if I kept repeating the same few syllables over and over. If money could reliably buy attention, all I would have to do is pay you the required amount and you would keep listening carefully through all that, not falling asleep en masse, nor allowing your minds to wander. In truth, even if you had been paid a huge sum, this would be most difficult, and if you did it, it would be a testament more to your own deep sense of principle than to a general condition in which another roomful of similar people could be expected to do equally well.
Someone who wants your attention just can’t rely on paying you money to get it, but has to do more, has to be interesting, that is must offer you illusory attention, in just about the same amounts as they would if you had instead been paying money to listen to them — which by the way is closer to the case here. Money flows to attention, and much less well does attention flow to money.”
Attention that people will trust – about an idea, a product, a service, a politician, will come from “Trusted” people in your life and in your network.
Defining and measuring Personal Clout will therefore be very important in the future.
That is why I wanted to speak to the CEO of Klout, Joe Fernandez who very kindly spent time with me on the phone yesterday talking about “Attention” what it is now – how it builds from Robin Dunbar’s research. We also touched on how today’s kids may be having their brains rewired to be able to use a much larger network than was possible face to face.
Here are some of the ideas that we batted around:
This new world is literally unfolding before us. Joe thinks that Klout now is about where Google was in 1997 – the key algorithms are in their infancy but are already able to tell us interesting things. Much more will be possible over time – especially when there is more data to observe.
But 2 things are clear to me – understanding how Clout works is core to the new economy. And that measuring Clout as Klout is doing is going to be very important.
Your reputation is your capital. You and not the institution will have the power.
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A Local M.E.A.L. - Robert Paterson from nick battist on Vimeo.
This is one of several presentations given at lst week's LOCAL MEAL event in Charlottetown. All the speakers will be available here on the web site.
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What might it be like if we chose to get ready for the end of the industrial system? Where oil would be expensive and we would have to relocalize how we lived.
Imagine you are reading this on the web in 2025. Front page and then the pdf.
Would you like to be part of such a great work?
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My regular readers have had to endure months of my banging on about my "diet". I think I have not described what I am trying to do broadly enough for while what I eat is having a massive impact on me, I think that the larger context is more helpful.
What can we learn from our past that can help us make a better people - healthier, happer and more fulfilled?
I ask this question becuase it is clear that more of us now are none of these things.
My bet is that the more we fit who we really are the more we will indeed be healthier, happier and more fulfilled.
So my question to myself and so to you is - How far have I drifted away from a good fit with my innate Human Nature? After months of thinking about ths, I have come up with this simple model.
The best Fit with the food that we are evolved to eat. The best Fit with the social conditions that we are evolved to do best in. And the best Fit with the needs of our body and its place in the natural world.
The ideal would be a total Fit based on our evolution. So what to aim for? What do we know abut what this best fit should be?
We have a pretty good feel for this.
We are not "Instant" People. You and I are simply a Face applied to millions years of primate evolution and of course to 4 1/2 billion years of evolution. So let's look at
Food
There is an important shift in this progression. Did you notice it? It is about 2 million years ago when we lost our ape like massive chewing jaw and we lost much of our gut and so became more gracile. Some thing caused us to lose the ability to chew for hours and to digest plants. Whatever it was also gave us a jump in height as well. We also lost most of our body hair. Our brains also doubled in size.
What could have done that? Only more and easily accessed protein. Wranghm suggests that we probably tamed fire. This enabled us to eat more meat. That it turn made for larger brains. That in turn made for better hunting and so on. As we hunted more, we lost our hair.
The main ingredient for this breakthrough from primate to human must have been that we could get and also consume a lot more protein. Meat is the centre piece of such a breakthrough.
Cooking is the vector to this massive increase in the consumption of meat. Try this. Try and eat a 10 ounce steak 2 inches thick raw. You will be exhausted before you get half way through. Before cooking all we could eat was the easy stuff - eyeballs, the liver etc. We would have had to leave 90% of the carcass. What society would have invested in the risks and effort of hunting if this was the only reward?
Fire and hunting for meat also shaped our body and our social structure. With fire, we could lose most of our hair.
As a result, man in Africa had developed a brilliant hunting strategy. We can run in the sun. We are not fast, but like wolves in winter, we can run down anything. In the middle of the day, the largest animal can be reduced to a wreck.
This kind of hunting also changed our social setting. All primates, except for Bonobos DO NOT SHARE food. Wolves do. This suggests that we evoled like wolves into highly social and cooperative groups. We must have had very similar social conditions to a wolf pack. No wonder that Dogs became our closest ally! We evolved to share a similar culture. A Culture that evolved from how we got our food.
So here is the choice we have for what we eat. On the left is the "Official" line for the healthy diet for a Diabetic!!!!! On the right is what we are designed to eat.
Oh but you may say, we can evolve to eat anything?
No we cannot and don't. If you are a Swede, your skin colour is not going to evolve unless you breed into another race. If you are a whale, you are NEVER going to get your gills back. It would be more than great if they could but they can't.
Grains are a modern food. Highly processed foods are not even food at all.
Social
Of course everything is connected. There really are not any categories. It's just that I don't know how to discuss this without making neat categories. So bear with me.
How we got and ate our food made us human. We became highly cooperative. In sharing food around the fire we probably developed language. (Putnam)
Our ideal social structures have know boundaries and an optimal culture.
The ideal culture is tribal - that is that all in the group are bound up in the real issues of survival. Like a submarine crew (Tom!) There is a hierarchy but all share the same living conditions and all live or die togther. As Tom, my submariner friend will attest - this is a social world that is very high performance and where you feel great - no matter whether you are on the top or the bottom rung of the ladder.
Submarine crews are also small. Few would exceed the Maximum Dunbar number of 144. So all know all. Life is lived in public on a sub. You live with your ship mates. The same is true for firemen. This is why the issue of women in firehalls or on subs is so tricky. The real issue is not skill it is intimacy. Tribal life is intimate. You do not leave part of you ashore or at home. All of you is in the tribe.
In the ideal social setting there is no distinction therefore between work and home. They are the same. Those of us that Freelance have this life again.
Those of us that Freelance also are Hunter Gathgerers again too. We rely on the tribe and our knowledge of the hunting grounds to give us food. We make love to our partner ansd we raise children with them. We do not pretend to be robots.
How much trust do you have in your social world? Do you have a group of more than 8 who really care for you and you for them? If you don't, you will not be well. You not designed to be alone in the world.
World
You are also not designed to be removed from your body or the natural world around you.
Our ancestors did not take exercise. They were "active"! Active in the world. Every day involved carrying a two year old and firewood. Our running down an animal and carrying it back to the camp.
Being active does not mean these obvious things either.
I find it ironic that even the chair is very modern. 500 years ago in Europe only Kings sat in chairs. The rest of us sat on benches or stools. We mostly stood or squatted. Our bodies were moving all the time.
We also inhabited the natural world and our bodies made all sorts of exquisite adjustments to light. How do you sleep? Not well. Maybe too much light at the end of your day.
Simply being a part of the natural world is good for us.
So all these 3 aspects of our lives are part of the best fit that we can have.
This man is in his 60's. He is a chief. Compare yourself with him. Not just the abs! Can you feel his energy?
This is what we are designed to look like and to be like. If we live this life, we can expect to be fit, active, healthy happy and fulfilled.
So here is your homework. Think about each of these sections. How close are you to the Robot or to the Garden Of Eden?
If you are far away, what might you be able to do to get you closer to the best Fit?
Food is a good place to start. You have the most control here.
Again it is not as simple as buy the right food. Making food was itself a collective gift - eating it together the centre of human society. Food is not just energy but the social glue.
And Guys, the more you help in the kitchen, the more you listen and pay attention at the table, the more you will be rewarded in other ooms in the house. And parents, the more that happens at the family table, the more your kids learn to be humans and not monsters.
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