« Tyrone says it is easy to stop global warming | Main | Behavioral microeconomics bleg »
Diet and politics
A loyal MR reader wants to hear about:
'08 elections. where Kurzweil and company are most right and most wrong. veganism/vegetarianism/cave man diet/pescatarianism/organic.
1. Yes it does matter who wins but my gut reaction is to compare candidates to soap commercials. At the end of the day there is a soap bar in your hand, but interest in the topic is driven mostly by our irrational side, programmed to respond emotionally to human faces and characters. Candidate blogging usually bores me. If you are figuring out who to vote for, try to predict a politician's ruling coalition. The current political question is whether the bad tendencies of Bush 43 are one-time or represent a shift in the political equilibrium and what it takes to govern; I think it is about 50-50 in each direction.
2. Here is my earlier post on the singularity, try to spot the facetious sentence.
3. I have nothing against eating animals per se, even live ones, but I think it is immoral to eat animals raised under awful conditions, such as factory farming. Personally, I often try to be good but I often fail as well. I never feel bad eating meat in Europe, and animal welfare is the best argument for European farm subsidies. I will pay more for humanely-raised food, but I won't drive through ten minutes of extra traffic to get it.
4. For a diet I recommend fish, nuts, fruit, green vegetables, and lots of braised pork belly. At least that's what tastes good. Few processed foods are worth buying; I come close to the caveman diet view without being dogmatic. A good bread is not to be rejected and come on, can rice really be that bad for you? Just avoid all junk foods.
#26 in a series of 50.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 15, 2007 at 06:32 AM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
Tyler,
Good word on the diet. I recommend meat (which includes seafood and eggs), vegetables, nuts, healthful oils (olive, coconu, and palm), fruit, sweet potatoes, and squashes. It should be a goal, but I don't think giving up all legumes, dairy, and grains is absolutely necessary for proper health. Cause I do love a nice crusty bread with a soft middle and occasionally a nice cheese makes its way into my nutrition plan as well. Rice is just boring anyway, so I can do without it. It's all tweaking once you get past the removal of sugar, trans fats, and highly processed grains.
Scott Kustes
Modern Forager
Posted by: Scott Kustes at Mar 15, 2007 8:07:15 AM
I want to hear more about this eating of live animals. I'm guessing it means there are particular animals there is nothing wrong per se in eating live, e.g., worms. I've never seen someone try to eat a live horse, but it could be quite noisy.
Come to think of it, one could anaesthetise the horse first. Still, to me it seems wrong because it is disrespectful.
Posted by: chris at Mar 15, 2007 8:22:02 AM
chris wants to hear about eating live animals. If you don't want to read about this then you might want to skip the comment.
He suggests animals such as worms, which might have been eaten alive on a show like Fear Factor. If not worms then certainly other types of insects were eaten alive on the show.
A Chinese friend of mine has told me about Chinese "delicacies" involving live animals. I have no empirical evidence as to whether or not these are true. One is "live monkey brain". As you might imagine, the monkey is strapped down. A second is "live fish". Somehow the middle portion (i.e. the meat) of the fish is fried while the head and tail are not and the fried portion is eaten. A third had a name that he said translated into "3 screams" and involved eating mice. Again, I don't know whether or not these are true but I asked another Chinese friend (who didn't know the first Chinesed friend) about thte "3 screams" and she had heard of it.
Of course, many non-human carnivores eat "live" animals all the time. At least they start out that way - recall Tyler's post of the video of the tiger, or think about how a shark obtains food, or an owl.
Posted by: AZ at Mar 15, 2007 8:54:07 AM
singularity? What about the omega point?
[btw, I think the existence of Dick Cheney somehow disproves the OP theory]
Posted by: theCoach at Mar 15, 2007 9:08:59 AM
I hear that in China the live food is generally squid or something like it. They say you can feel the tentacles squirming in your belly.
Tyler, how do you reconcile eating at restaurants and trying not to eat animals raised under awful conditions? Do you inquire where they get their meat at every restaurant?
Posted by: eriks at Mar 15, 2007 9:43:13 AM
"I've never seen someone try to eat a live horse, but it could be quite noisy"
Actually, IIRC
There was an old woman who swallowed a horse.
She died, of course.
Posted by: knackeredhack at Mar 15, 2007 9:56:52 AM
"I never feel bad eating meat in Europe, and animal welfare is the best argument for European farm subsidies."
Oy, do you know what a "Belgian Blue" is?
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at Mar 15, 2007 10:58:45 AM
The "Three Screams" that AZ mentions (called "San zhi" in Chinese) is absolutely real, but it's not something that's eaten today. It was a rare delicacy back in imperial times, though. I wouldn't read on if you've just had lunch.
San zhi is a plate of live baby mice. You pick it up with your chopsticks (zhi number one), put it in your mouth (zhi number two), and swallow it (zhi number three is going down the throat). Gah!
Posted by: cure at Mar 15, 2007 11:02:17 AM
ick. I probably should have skipped the other comments. I just wanted to put in my two cents which is that I do think that different metabolisms and genetic predispositions require different nutrition to some extent.
There is no "one right diet" that works for everyone. For example,some people would have to eat hourly in order not to burn vegetarian proteins too fast, while other people have difficulty breaking down meat and dairy proteins at all and do quite well as vegans. Some people require more iron than others, etc. I thought that I was healthy as a vegetarian for a long time, recently I began to eat meat against and suddenly have fuller and stronger hair - so much so that it seems as if I might have been unknowingly undernourishing myself for years. Some of it is finding the right nutrients - eating a lot of fish and nuts and so on, but it isn't all about that.
Imagine a big boned 200 pound football player type eating a traditional Japanese dit, and you'll understand what I mean.
Posted by: liberty at Mar 15, 2007 11:23:15 AM
I am Chinese, and had lived in Guangzhou, the old Canton, for 5 years. The Cantonese prefers everything fresh. So the Cantonese restaurants are usually filled with all sorts of live animals, i.e., fish, birds, snakes, shell fish, you name it (come to think of it, you really should not think too hard about naming the animals, and definitely should not give them names like Pingpong, Jack, etc. because that would put them into the pet category and deem them instantly not eatable.) While ordering your dishes, you would also pick the animal(s) to be used in the dish, especially if it is a fish, a lobster or a special kind of bird. People rarely pick their own snakes. The restaurant does the job for them. When the dishes are on the table, all the animals would be already dead so there should be no reason to expect seeing rolling eyeballs or hearing screaming sounds. The process is quick and the dishes are very tasty. The “cruelty” is nothing but illusion because of the much shorter supply chain from the butcher shop to the dinning table.
Posted by: Yan Li at Mar 15, 2007 11:52:04 AM
"I will pay more for humanely-raised food"
Whereas I prefer Exploitation Meat, in which the animals are treated especially poorly.
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/12/who_benefits_fr.html
Posted by: Rich at Mar 15, 2007 11:57:20 AM
I think this blog has opened up a can of worms literally. Our American diet is bad and we could learn a thing or two from other cultures. Not saying that I want to eat bugs, but we do have to be more aware of our diets. I don't think stoping the U.S. from eating meat that lived in harsh conditions. That is insane.
Posted by: Marcus Nelums at Mar 15, 2007 12:14:23 PM
"3. I have nothing against eating animals per se, even live ones, but I think it is immoral to eat animals raised under awful conditions, such as factory farming. Personally, I often try to be good but I often fail as well. I never feel bad eating meat in Europe, and animal welfare is the best argument for European farm subsidies. I will pay more for humanely-raised food, but I won't drive through ten minutes of extra traffic to get it."
While this blog can certainly be a 'Great Blog' at times. Tyler's affected elitist, subtle anti-Americanism sneaks out every once in a while and ruins it for me. (e.g. see his Russian wife posts)
I am European, and not fooled by the occasional cute EU cow munching contentedly by the side of the strada.
Each EU cow is subsidized to the tune of (roughly) 700 euros/year. Even as a libertarian, in principle, against all subsidies --- I can think of a 1,000 more humanistics things to do with that money - and not subsidize Tyler's implicit anti-Americanism.
Posted by: Varangy at Mar 15, 2007 12:51:06 PM
Surely it's laws, not subsidies, that make for better animal welfare in the EU. Most European meat is produced in a manner towards the nasty end of what the law will allow (if not in violation of it - the inspection regimes are not strong). Am I missing something?
Posted by: chris at Mar 15, 2007 2:27:09 PM
The facetious sentence:
"More generally, Kurzweil has thirty-four good arguments why his scenario will happen, but only one of those has to fail."
Kurzweil talks about multiple paths to superhuman intelligence. If a theory of AI is beyond unaided human ability, then biotechnology can be used to increase maximum human ability, or brute-force brain simulation might be used, etc.
Posted by: Carl Shulman at Mar 15, 2007 3:39:05 PM
"Still, Ray Kurzweil must be the most important thinker today, if only in expected value terms, putting the complexities of Pascal's Wager aside. It is no longer intellectually acceptable not to know his major arguments."
I'd say the first sentence is facetious, even with the EU qualification. However, I'd also say the second sentence is facetious, but not as clearly so.
Posted by: J. at Mar 15, 2007 4:07:17 PM
Also, especially humane treatment is nice, but a kg of ground chuck in the UK costs 2.90 pounds or about $5.60, which is $12.32 per pound!!
As a comparison, you can get ground chuck in the states for about $3.50 pound.
If you are already overtaxed and unpaid, I think you might prefer to eat American cows, many of whom graze happily in big southwest fields for most of their lives.
Posted by: liberty at Mar 15, 2007 4:13:10 PM
oops, did I get my kg to pound backwards? Nevermind, maybe its not that expensive. Sure seems expensive when you're there though.
Posted by: liberty at Mar 15, 2007 4:14:28 PM
Look, the animal is going to die for our satisfaction regardless of where it is raised. As long as it is a healthy animal, it doesn't seem to matter to me. I think that the price of some meats is getting a little pricey, if the animal is raised on all organics, then you know it will cost more for the meat.
Posted by: Derek at Mar 15, 2007 8:03:24 PM
Tyler, Any good caveman anecdotes about your former colleague Art De Vany?
Posted by: Surabaya Johnny at Mar 16, 2007 3:31:29 AM
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." says Michael Pollan (author of Omnivore's Dilemma) in a 10,000 word essay. Good summary if you don't want to read his book.
His site is hacked. Here's a link to a PDF on my website: http://www.kysq.org/pollan.pdf
Posted by: David Zetland at Mar 16, 2007 12:23:27 PM
I want to hear more about this eating of live animals.
I'm not so big on eating dead, raw oysters. (or at least ones that died very long _before_ I get to eat them). Shuck and suck!
Posted by: brianS at Mar 16, 2007 8:06:59 PM
US Real Estate
UK Real Estate Online
Real Estate Las Vegas
Michigan Real Estate
Posted by: Realestate at Mar 21, 2007 7:19:12 AM
Australian Real Estate Deals
Summerline Real state
Real Estate Agents Find best real estate agent near you to assist in finding best real estate deals.
Florida Real Estate
Posted by: Realestate at Mar 21, 2007 7:19:48 AM
Real Estate Listings
Real Estate South Carolina
Real Estate Loan Insurance Deals
Flights To Delhi
Posted by: Realestate at Mar 21, 2007 7:20:15 AM
