Convincing a silly vegetarian to go paleo

Regenerative Culture Health, Healing & Movement
#1

i just came back from a 4 day fast/solitary thing in the desert. it was actually a heck of a lot harder than i had expected but i feel pretty great now that it’s over. anywho, i’ve been a vegetarian ( :-[ ) for about four years now and have been thinking that now would be a great time for me to transition into the paleo diet. the only reason why i’m sort of holding back is because i’m still squeamish about consuming farmed meat, even if it’s free range. i mean i’m fine with eating something wild that i or someone else have hunted and have had a respectful relationship with but you just don’t get that with anything free range and organic that’s store bought. i’m definitely not saying that vegetarianism is a better alternative health wise or ethically, i’m just confused about the ethics of the paleo diet.

so does anyone feel up to convincing a silly vegetarian to go paleo :)?

#2

Try searching out local, privately owned farms. If they’re truly free range and aren’t grain-fed, they’ll be nutritionally very similar to their wild counterparts. Loren Cordain recommends grass fed beef highly. There are also places from which you can buy buffalo and elk, but that’s usually a bit costly.

I’ve had a lot of success lately buying whatever wild caught fish is on sale every week.

#3

Paleo isn’t about ethics. Vegetarianism is about ethics. Paleo is about your health.

Wild game is best.

Locally farmed without nastiness is next.

Then free range organic.

Then organic.

Then natural.

Then regular.

Then McDonalds. (Warning: Skip meat altogether before reaching this level.)

Chicken is cheap and ironically enough are pretty much the only factory farmed animal that evolved to eat grain anyway.

Truly paleo food is hunted, but sometimes close enough has to be close enough. We’ll get the rest of the way soon. For now we do the best we can.

Have you tried foraging up some of your dinner? Spring is here, bringing in the easy foraging season. Dandelions, burdock, wood sorrel, garlic mustard, onion grass…hmm hmm. Just some of my favorites. And they’re easy to identify, with few lookalikes, none of which are lethal.

It was funny going to the grocery store after foraging last year and finding out the wild onions I foraged were going for $1.29 a pound.

  • Benjamin Shender
#4

[quote=“Hypnopompia, post:3, topic:845”]Have you tried foraging up some of your dinner? Spring is here, bringing in the easy foraging season. Dandelions, burdock, wood sorrel, garlic mustard, onion grass…hmm hmm. Just some of my favorites. And they’re easy to identify, with few lookalikes, none of which are lethal.

It was funny going to the grocery store after foraging last year and finding out the wild onions I foraged were going for $1.29 a pound.

  • Benjamin Shender[/quote]

yeah, recently i’ve done a few things with dandelions and i’ve been eating some chickweed as well. i tried some fern frons (sp?) a couple days ago and was pleasantly surprised to find them tasting an awful lot like walnuts. “sour grass” or yellow wood sorrel has been a favorite since i was small . i’ve just started learning how to identify plants using a field guide, but i’m getting better.

#5

so, in terms of where to go for information regarding paleo dieting… do folks recommend Loren Cordain’s “The Paleo Diet”? I’ve also heard some reference Donna Gates’ “The Body Ecology Diet.” And then I have friends swear by (though I don’t know it’s relation to Paleo dieting) Sally Fallon’s “Nourishing Traditions.” thoughts from anyone?

#6

though it’s not a book, this site seems to be a pretty good resource.

http://paleodiet.com/

#7

Yeah, be careful with the field guides they can be tricky. I’ve noticed I’ll go through a half dozen field guides (not even my whole collection) and still be unsure if the plant I found really is chickory. But someone pointed out spiceweed once and I’ve never missed it since. I guess I’m just hardwired to absorb plant identification that way.

  • Benjamin Shender
#8

The easiest wild meat to find available to buy is fish. Be sure not to get farmed fish. For salmon, look for pink, sockeye, coho or chinook/spring.
On the west coast, Atlantic salmon in a store is likely to be a farmed fish. That’s the kind they farm in the west.
Halibut, ling cod and other salt water fish should all be wild fish.

Pink salmon is a good deal, at least up here in BC. We can buy them for $5 - $7 a fish. A fish is enough for four people to have a good meal. I smoke pinks a lot, I wait till the price goes down to about $3 - $4 then get enough to fill the smoking racks.
We get our sockeye from some Secwepmc guys that fish in the N. Thompson every year. That’s our special occasion and feasting fish.
We can a bunch of fish head soup in quarts when the sockeye show up. mm mm mm.

#9

I completely agree w/ Ben on the field guide ID’s. I’ve mostly been learning from field guides and it might take me 2-4 different field guides and a couple internet searchs over the course of a year before I ID a plant 100%. But then, once I’ve seen it in person, I can recognize it right off after that.

#10

Does anybody have any idea which fish available in the UK are farmed/wild? Or other animal foods for that matter. I’ve been vegan for years since I didn’t believe life would be worth living after the crash, whatever form it might take, and therefore decided my physical health wasn’t worth all that much to me as I could play my video games just as easily with poor health as with a robustly healthy body. Now that I’m planning on surviving, I figure I’d best start building myself up physically again, although I’m loathe to resume funding factory farms, or indeed any farms at all. Tricky position for someone living in pre-crash civilisation, I know…

#11

Karen-

While it is a harder, you can get into shape as a vegan. If you want to work your way back on to meat, go slowly. Your body will need to readjust. A lot of places in the US label whether the fish is farmed or wild, there may be places like that in the UK as well. If you go to “specialty” or “organic” food stores you will probably have more ethically-neutral options. You probably have them in the UK, although I’m not sure if they’re called that there… Hmmm. If you can’t find a store that seems to care enough about their food to know where it comes from (scary thought), chickens are at least fed what they would naturally eat (grains), even though they are treated as poorly as any other factory-farmed animal. Cows salmon and other species are forced to eat things they never evolved to eat.

I don’t know what the standards are in the UK or the rest of the EU regarding labeling foods. In the US “organic” and “natural” labeling are mostly tricks unfortunately. Neither means what we think it should, and they are both simply marketing ploys. I would be pleasantly surprised if it was different over there. Here “natural” means no nasty unpleasant chemicals invented after the 1930s. Nasty, unpleasant chemicals invented before the 1930s are just fine. “Organic” only guarantees no antibiotics, hormone treatments, and other such things. The treatment of the animals is rarely much different. They get a little more room, and technical access to the outside. For instance, chickens are kept locked in with barely much more room than they would have had otherwise, and during the last week of their lives a door opens in their cage to an outside yard just large enough for one of them at a time. Its rare any of them even realize its there. Your best bet is to research farms and find one you like. Something like the now famous Polyface (sp) farm here in the US.

I guess I’m kind of lucky. I’m around the Appalachian Mountain region, which means there are a lot of deer up here and someone’s shooting them almost every week. Hunting Season enforcement around here applies mostly to outsiders in practice. And there is a law over in West Virginia saying if a deer is eating your crops you can shoot it out of season anyway. Some people I know plant a row of corn just for the deer meat. This sounds really bad, but with the bear and wolf population so depleted there really does need to be a predator around here.

  • Benjamin Shender
#12

[quote=“Hypnopompia, post:11, topic:845”]Karen-[/quote]actually, ‘karl n’ but nvm :slight_smile:

While it is a harder, you can get into shape as a vegan.
Yeah I know of many vegans who are in fine shape, but I seem to be quite ill-adapted to the diet. I've always been very thin and fatigued even before I was vegan, and things are getting worse (and yeah I've read all the usual dietary advice and know pretty well what I'm doing with a vegan diet, but I just don't seem to suit it). Should start adding animal fats & proteins back in soon I think.
If you go to "specialty" or "organic" food stores you will probably have more ethically-neutral options. You probably have them in the UK, although I'm not sure if they're called that there.... Hmmm.
We have wholefood stores but those are mostly vegetarian in my experience. Will keep looking.
If you can't find a store that seems to care enough about their food to know where it comes from (scary thought)
Depressingly common here, most non-wholefood stores will look at you very strangely if you ask things like that. Or dither and say 'um, I'll go ask someone' and ask a few people and nobody will know. Sometimes one of them makes a transparent attempt to tell you what you obviously want to hear.
In the US "organic" and "natural" labeling are mostly tricks unfortunately.
'Organic' standards are very weak here. Similar to yours by the sound of things. We also have a 'free range' standard for livestock, which can apparently be met by structures not much better than your average battery farm. I'll be disappointed (but not surprised) if those are the best I can do before the map starts opening up again.
They get a little more room, and technical access to the outside. For instance, chickens are kept locked in with barely much more room than they would have had otherwise
That's the sort of thing yes.
I'm around the Appalachian Mountain region, which means there are a lot of deer up here and someone's shooting them almost every week.
Here in Yorkshire I don't think I've ever seen a wild animal bigger than a fox. I think I have to work on the assumption that I'll be after fish, rabbits and birds mostly when the government goes away and lets me.
#13

karln,
Like Dan said earlier in this thread, the best option in your situation is to look for small scale, local producers of meat and poultry. While it may not be totally organic, it’ll be a lot better than supermarket meat and it will be supporting your “neighbors” and building connections with people in your area that know how to do some useful things like skinning and butchering.

#14

To add to that, if you go to a local farm with chickens, look for one sign of quality: the chickens will be pecking around, eating various grasses, seeds, and bugs. This makes their meat fantastic for you, and way more flavorful than the poor excuse for chicken you find in supermarkets. It basically goes for most other animals as well.

#15

second (or third…?) that. we’ve been buying the bulk of our domesticated meat from a local farm, and while we don’t enjoy it as much as wild game, it’s far and away better tasting than that supermarket crap…