Elf Sternberg

Mark Bittman latest article is Is Junk Food Really Cheaper? in which he writes about the commonplace canard that "Junk food is cheaper than real food." He writes:

A typical order for a family of four – for example, two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, six chicken McNuggets, two medium and two small fries, and two medium and two small sodas – costs, at the McDonald's a hundred steps from where I write, about $28. ... Despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home. You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people.

Jamie Zawinski has a famous quote: "Linux is only free if your time is worthless." His point is simple: it takes time to install and master Linux. Compared to the idiotproofing of a Mac, Linux has a learning curve. Making Linux work isn't free, but knowing it is a skill worth having, both personally and financially. It was for me.

I've been on a quasi-paleo diet, eating paleo meals much more often. Last night I subjected my family to shredded roasted brussel sprouts and pork chops, and I liked it, but the shredded sprouts were visually unappealing. I'm hesitant to use the shredded "cauliflower as rice substitute" because I worry we'll get the same effect. But here's the thing:

My value system includes the idea that cooking is pleasure. I enjoy cooking. I enjoy turning raw vegetables and meats into food. So much so that I'm willing to dedicated between one and two hours of my day doing that, every day.

(I disdain the raw food diet for the simple reason that, if the Paleos are correct, our guts are evolutionarily post-cooking: paleobiological data indicate that, after the discovery of fire, our intestines got shorter because fire prepares food for digestion and releases nutrients. It was a rapid and profound evolutionary change, but it was a change that happened pre-H. sap. We're animals that cook.)

Bittman's comment that "real food is cheaper..." only applies if you think your time is worthless. The fact is you have to calculate the value of real food, and the time and effort and experience of cooking, into your equation. I've made that choice. You may find that your long-term health (Hell, your short-term health; paleo effects are pronounced even after only 8 weeks) and your personal eating pleasure are worth the time it takes to learn how to cook, and to cook for yourself every day, and to learn how to optimize the periphery of the grocery store. I recommend it, but I won't force it on ya.

I've been a long time fan of George Dvorsky and Sentient Developments. I don't agree with everything Dvorsky writes: he's way into the "Transhumanism is an appropriate expression of socialism." He's long been an advocate of uplift just for the sake of uplift without sufficient underpinnings explaining why the arbitrary process known as evolution should necessarily lead to uplift as a moral imperative.

George recently revealed in a no-comments post, replete with completely predictable pre-emptive push-backs, that he had gone onto the Paleo diet, that his health required the intake of animal protein, and that his audience should rest assured that he is a "conscious carnivore" and still an animal rights proponent.

Curious about this Paleo diet, I went and picked up the original book by Loren Cordain, publish in 2003.

The book is a long list of statements that should all end with ^{[citation needed]}.

In order to distinguish his work from competing diet, Cordain spends an inordinate amount of time in the early chapters dumping on the Atkins diet, but he does so in a way that skews the research. He complains that the Atkins diet does away with fruits and vegetables, "Cancer-fighting fruits and vegetables!^{[citation needed]}" A lot of the book is like that. He goes deep into anti-salt and anti-fat, which I supposed looked good in 2003. Recent studies show that low-salt diets do nothing to prevent progression to hypertension, and low-fat diets do little to moderate or control cholesterol and atherosclerosis. My own physician pointed me to recent articles in JAMA indicting starches.

But what irks me most is that the Paleo diet, like the Slow Carb diet and every other diet on the market, is that to justify it to the masses it must delve deep, deep into nutritionalism.

Food is not a set of nutrients. It's not just a vehicle for the transmission of components, for Omega 3 and polyunsaturated fat and calcium chloride and so forth. Food is what we eat to sustain ourselves, it's pleasure and socializing and ritual and experimentation. Boiling food down to a Power Bar and a glass of water isn't breakfast, any more than porn is sex.

But somehow, to sell the product to the masses, The Paleo Diet, just like Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body, must describe in excrutiating detail the trade-offs at the micro level.

I guess the basic message has been heard so often it no longer registers: all that sugar, simple starch, and readily digestible calories is what's making America fatter than ever, so stop eating those. Just like "exercise more" no longer registers.

Hell, I can shorten the modern guidelines to one sentence: Eat food you cooked yourself.

Killer 'graf:

Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet. ... Male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

[Emphasis mine]

Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain.