Looking at health prescriptions nowadays, I constantly see lists of action items we’re supposed to follow:

- Eat more (or some specific quantity of) vegetables,
- Exercise daily (for x amount of time),
- Stop smoking and drinking alcohol,
- Reduce stress,

Some publications or pundits are more or less specific, focusing on only one of the variables.  But then there’s a list underneath that special category.

- Eat more vegetables…and…

- Especially (some quantity of) green leafy ones…
- And some quantity of red ones,
- And another quantity of orange ones,
- And avoid white ones (or some other variety).
- * And make sure they’re all organic.
- ** And make sure you cook them a particular way.
- *** And when cooking them, don’t forget to use a certain type of oil, or water, or cooker, or cooking process.
- **** And while you’re at it, go read Dr. Jabba-The-Hut’s book about stress reduction and follow his guidelines (but for god’s sake don’t follow his dietary advice!!!).

A Personal Interlude
I had a unique experience growing up.  For various reasons, from the time I was 5 until I was 12 I changed schools every year.

New school, new teacher, new environment, new friends, new teaching styles.  Everything new.

I learned to look at “things” differently from my peers.  I didn’t realize it until much much later, but having that early experience kept me from learning a lot of categorical knowledge.

Categorical knowledge is the way a culture ascribes meaning to differences between things.  How that culture creates “categories.”

The classical test in our culture of categorical knowledge is in analogical reasoning:

“A is to B as B is to __.” Or, “A is to B as C is to __ .”

I did poorly at those tests.  The possibilities seemed endless to me.  “A is to B as C is to __ ?”  Which quality of A, B, and C?

And whenever I’d see the answer, I’d think to myself – “What about everything else?!”  I still do.

Cultural Conditioning
I missed some of that cultural training – “Focus on these things, not those things.”  “This is what is important here, and this is what is not important.”  “These things “automatically” go together, and these others do not.”

I still struggle with this, obviously.  But it gets worse!

My childhood also lacked good role models for the “specialist” mindset.  I wasn’t subjected to adults who engaged in isolationist approaches to…well, anything.  Problem upon problem!

It wasn’t until very recently that I learned that what I’d missed was cultural knowledge, and not “inherent truth” (which also explains why I was so good at mathematics – numbers are straightforward in analogical regard…until you get to advanced mathematics, 1 always equals 1).

What about everything else?!
Seems like a valid question to me.  But, of course, I’m biased.  It’s one of the reasons the Exuberant Animal Mandala appeals to me so strongly.  The Mandala is inclusive.  Should we consider Mind without Body and Spirit?  We can, but should we?

And what about Land, Tribe, and Ancestor?  What is gained by considering our habitat, and our evolutionary (personal and species-wide) history when we approach problems in life?  What is lost when we do not consider those things?

Our cultural stance is toward atomism, reductionism, and specialization.  We seek “the best way” to do things, based on recompiled statistical averages and time-bound analyses of minute aspects of multi-factorial behaviors.

Since that is our cultural value of things, it is also the way we teach, the way we grade, the way we appraise one another’s “intelligence,” or the value of an argument.

So don’t get me wrong when I complain about endless lists of “qualities” that we’re “supposed to” follow (completely against the thrust of environment, culture, media, and our school-based learning experiences).

I don’t know what I’m talking about.

A recent New York Times article “Cancer’s Secrets Come Into Sharper Focus” highlights recent genetic research in the search for The Cause of cancer(s).  Or, rather, it highlights the search for the cause of cancerous (unmitigated growth) behaviors of bodily cells.  The article talks about ancestral genomics – inherited genes and traits that lead to our immediate genetic makeup.

But that’s not what stood out to me at all.  Embedded like a parasite within the genome-cancer-talk was this statement:

As they look beyond the genome, cancer researchers are also awakening to the fact that some 90 percent of the protein-encoding cells in our body are microbes. We evolved with them in a symbiotic relationship, which raises the question of just who is occupying whom.

One researcher cited speaks of the body’s “circuits,” and of the search for the causes of cancerous behavior as the search for the master “wiring diagram.”

But is such a search really meaningful?  The author points out that:

People in different geographical locales can harbor different microbial ecosystems. Last year scientists reported evidence that the Japanese microbiome has acquired a gene for a seaweed-digesting enzyme from a marine bacterium. The gene, not found in the guts of North Americans, may aid in the digestion of sushi wrappers. The idea that people in different regions of the world have co-evolved with different microbial ecosystems may be a factor — along with diet, lifestyle and other environmental agents — in explaining why they are often subject to different cancers.

Yes, this is “paleo” biochemistry.  Local, embedded within habitat, and subject to the vagaries not just of that environment, but of the genetic history of ones individual ancestors, and of the “epigenetic” adaptations a person undergoes in their own lifetime.

The author concludes that:

The enemy inside us is every bit as formidable as imagined invaders from beyond. Learning to outwit it is leading science deep into the universe of the living cell.

Circuits?  Enemies?  Outwitting the wisdom of the body?  RNA “transcription” as the basis of all “evil?”

The dialogue is so heavily imbued with modern Western prejudices about the state of the human animal and its place in Reality that it’s hard to see outside of the box this type of thinking wants to shut you into.

So here’s a window.

The Ultimate Fitness Formula involves everything in the Universe.  It encompasses all time and space.  It is embodied in the Planet You, in this very moment.

You are a parasite within your own External Organ – the Earth.  And, much like the microbes within your gut, you can either be beneficial or harmful to that body.

The unique difference between you and the microbes in your gut may be that you have the ability to consciously decide which one you are – friend or foe.

I continue to attempt to speak my truth about what it means to be Paleo.  I’ve written several posts on my own blog, and thank Frank Forencich for offering to let me share a summary of those ideas here.

So what is the ideal “paleo” diet?  Or the ideal “paleo” movement practice?

What is the “ideal” human diet, generally speaking?

What are the optimal levels of carbs, protein, and fats?  What about vitamins and minerals?  What time of day is best to consume different nutrients?  Before physical movement, during, or after?  What is best?!

A Specific Type of “Ideal”

I begin the journey here because this is the place of modern Western culture.  Our inquiries are embedded in a scientific (knowledge) framework that seeks to reduce things to their individual “parts.”  It seeks to isolate these in order to determine ways to extract the “best” performance or qualities from them.  This perspective is focused on efficiency and effectiveness from an atomistic perspective.  That is our “ideal.”

An alternative perspective is one our paleolithic ancestors may have had.  This perspective regards all things as critical in understanding our place and the place of our tribe in our environments.  It seeks signs in the weather and wilderness around us, in the rhythms of our own bodies and of the natural world, and in the lessons handed down to us by tradition.  Things may be isolated, but only in order to refer them back to the larger context, to provide greater understanding.  That is their “ideal.”

Both methods of inquiry offer insight, but modern Western culture prefers the former.  And, in preferring the former, it must downplay the latter…to its own detriment, I believe.  For any “paleo” human, diet is embedded in habitat, as well as in culture, a fact that Western atomism has difficulty accepting, embracing, expressing, or embodying itself.

(The philosophy of reductionist “idealism” also tends to destroy the validity of individual experience…but that’s the topic of another post!)

The “Ideal” Human Diet

Many paleo and other diet advocates assert the dangers of wheat consumption for human animals.  People get sick eating wheat, they say.  Wheat causes inflammation and auto-immune disorders.  They say this about other things – dairy and legumes, for instance.

Within this particular “scientific” framework that considers the average of the mean-averages of a population sample (not of the entire population mind you), generalities are the “ideal” of the day.  So the above information is said to be true for all human animals.

But is it true?

Most scientific studies that I’ve seen actually say that it is not true.  And many more moderate “paleo” nutrition advocates say that it is almost certainly only an exception to the rule of human-wheat interaction if the wheat is of a wild (i.e., non petro-chemical farmed, non-genetically modified) variety.  And even more so when those varieties have been soaked or sprouted prior to consumption.

Many modern paleo advocates promote diets of specific macro- and even micro-nutrient amounts, which are to come from very specific foods (cookbooks and dietary lists abound).

The foods themselves run the gamut – from meat from land animals, birds, fish, to tubers, vegetables, eggs, berries, and nuts.  The foods on these lists are often from any and every habitat one could imagine.  And then there are the supplements…

While there’s something to be said for offering choice, none of the authors I’ve read have mentioned bio-regional specificity as an important quality in considering food choice.  What does “bio-regional specificity” mean?  Hang with me a bit longer, and I’ll explain.

Ancestor Worship

The deification of the paleolithic period of human evolution has a long history, both generally and specifically.  Human beings in every culture tend to worship the past “Golden Age” of their people.  This is a useful practice, providing reverence for tradition and a story-line explaining the current state of things.  The Golden Age gives human beings something to strive for.  Whether or not such stories (called “mythologies”) are “objectively true” is unimportant.  These stories guide behavior, and give meaning to human existence and action.  On the specific side, it seems that some group of people every hundred years or so advocates for the ways of Ye Olde Noble Savage, and a return to our “primitive” roots.

But this deification can come at a cost.  At times, it results in disgust for the modern age.  Modern people are “worthless and weak” compared to their ancestors.  They aren’t fit or smart enough.  They’ve devolved, and will continue to do so unless something is done about it!

It’s not always untrue!  But it is interesting that many people within the modern Paleo community only see the negative side of the formation of civilizations, including agriculture and technology.  It’s interesting, because it’s only half of the picture.

The consumption of large quantities of carbohydrate, especially in the form of cultivated grains, directly coincides with the explosion of human technological innovation that also started around 10,000-30,000 years ago.  Coincidence?  I think not!  The brain has been said to be the single-largest consumer of glucose in the non-exercising body.  At rest, the brain can demand up to 10% of the body’s blood-glucose.  Glucose is the fuel for thought.  Its ideal source is carbohydrate.

The “Ideal” Carbohydrate

Are all carbohydrates created equal?  It seems ridiculous to say so, though many reductionist “authorities” assert to the ends of the earth that the body treats all carbohydrate compounds the same.  All are transformed into “glucose.”

Without going into the science, let’s examine this sort of statement from another perspective.  Are all products made from coca leaves the same?  Some South American peoples use coca leaves to produce different effects.  The use is usually embedded in a cultural tradition – to visit the Spirit World, as medicine,  to endure long travels for ritual events, or even the occasional “recreational” use.

As the coca leaf is harvested and refined to extract one of its elements – cocaine – things are lost.  Among them, chemical buffers that keep the drug from having excessive negative effects on the chewer.

But a more important missing element might be the cultural element.  The meaning of chewing coca is lost as the plant is ground to dust and “purified.”  The element cocaine is isolated, and the individual is isolated – removed from cultural context or meaning in their behavior.

The more refined the cocaine becomes (to make “the best” or “ideal” cocaine), the more removed from its biological and cultural context, the more dangerous it is to the human being.

The wheat produced from a field sprayed with chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides, that is genetically-modified, farmed with machines that emit petroleum-exhaust, processed with heat and a litany of chemical softeners, additives and “purifiers,” packaged in plastics that slowly leech into their contents, shipped long distances in containers not always heat-controlled (and so lending to the leeching and spoiling process), that then sit on shelves for indefinite lengths of time before being consumed…

…well, let’s just say that “wheat” is, by the definition above, different from a wild wheat, cultivated from a non-chemically manipulated field by hand, minimally processed, and consumed shortly after harvesting.

The Quest for Immortality

It all boils down to…something…doesn’t it?  Feeling good is one thing, but searching for the “perfect” diet with an obsessive-compulsive fervor?  That usually leads me to believe that we’re after something else.  I’ve seen it before in the history of humanity – the search for greatness, the quest for immortality.  That quest itself may be the only thing immortal about human life.  It has led Chinese emperors to eat mercury, the spiritual adept to climb mountains and forge through dangerous jungles…

And it doesn’t exist.  (for another take, read this article).

Immortality is a nice thought, and common among most human cultures.  In each it has a slightly different path.  I tend to like the path to immortality described by some indigenous cultures – the ancestral path.

Some cultures saw the individual “immortal soul” as a product of the culture itself.  How long would you last in the after-life?  Only as long as you were remembered by your tribe.  Or, only as long as someone prayed for you on a certain date.  Or, perhaps, forever, if a certain landmark was named after you, or a god in the pantheon, or a story fashioned around one of your deeds (or misdeeds) as a lesson for future generations in the tribe.

Bio-Regional Specificity – The Closest Things

My personal “project” in life is an exploration of “the closest things” – of my own physiology, community, and habitat.  It’s what fascinates me more than anything else.  It is the foundation for my own concept of what is “ideal.”  And it’s from this perspective that I offer a different view of Paleo.

Having a list of foods that are “appropriate” to eat might help someone new to the concept learn what’s okay.  But I feel it’s simpler to offer some general principles.  Here they are:

1. “Ideal” foods are bio-regionally specific.
That is, they are foods that come from your immediate geographical area. Any “paleo” or other culture before long-distance trade lived by this rule.  Of course, such foods are also in season, by definition.

2. Make food intake activity-level specific.
The “paleo” eater is not counting calories, but is eating whatever natural foods are available locally to satiate themselves. The amount they eat will depend on how hungry they are – not on a “recommended daily intake,” or to satiate unmet physical or emotional needs.

3. Foods are as unprocessed as possible.
That means unprocessed from the point of view of planting, growing (and pest-control), harvesting, shipment, storage, and preparation for eating.  Foods are cooked, but not boiled to death.

This outlook embeds the human animal within its local environment.  It reduces the need for and side-effects of petrochemical use.  It entrains the human animal to the natural rhythms of the land in which it lives.  To me, it is a very paleolithic perspective on diet.

The Culture Club

No, this isn’t an ode to Boy George’s (horrible) band from the 1980′s.  It’s my “dietary supplement” to the above principles.  Culture is regionally-specific.  It revolves around and grows within a geographical climate.  The culture of the American Pacific Northwest (where I now live) is vastly different from the culture of the Mid-Atlantic (where I grew up), and a lot of that has to do with the shape of the land itself.  And, of course, culture is tied to dietary practices.  Ask anyone who grew up in an Italian-American family what a “normal” dinner is, then ask someone from an Asian-American family.  Culture rules.

The diets of indigenous peoples throughout history reflect the three principles I’ve laid out above.  The Masai tribes herd cattle and live on a diet of blood, milk, meat, and tubers.  The Inuit live eating seal, whale, bear, and other meats, and seaweeds and other available vegetables.  Bedouin nomads eat camel and other meats, drink milk, and eat available vegetables and tubers.  Islanders from French Polynesia eat seafood, vegetables, and plenty of delicious fruits available in their habitat.  None of them live on “paleo bars,” or three dozen eggs per week.  Unless those happen to naturally occur within their habitat, that is.  In many of those places, cultural (and religious, as a function of culture) mores and laws are shaped over time to help to keep the human population of the tribe from overstepping its bounds, keeping it in synch with the natural rhythm of its habitat.

Those dietary practices are embedded within their culture.  As are ours.

The Western dietary practice for many years has been about counting calories, RDA’s, RDI’s, percentages, supplements, and prescriptions.  This way of thinking about diet reflects our culture’s perception of its place in the world.  We are Homo Reductionus.  Homo Hypochondriacus.  We are “Man the Obsessive Compulsive.”  We count, we divide, we reduce.

Various modern-Paleo communities have their own cultural behaviors.  But these are almost always situated within our larger cultural framework – the Western Culture Club – and within primate behavior, generally.  The Western Culture Club is the club of the Outlier – where individuals are built-to-follow-and-obey.  Don’t think you were somehow exempt from this conditioning.  We have to be aware of this in order to do anything other than merely reflect and refract that larger culture.

Our modern habitat does offer many things.  We need to be careful about why we’re choosing them.

How To

A lot of people have responded to my posts and conversations by saying “Yes Josh, that’s nice, but unrealistic for most people in our modern world.  And at least it’s introducing people to a new way of eating that is healthier than what they have now.”

I’ll concede that.  But I’m not a huge fan of “at leasts.”  I think we can and should do better.

The very approach of boiling down “paleo” or indigenous dietary habits into “general rules” in itself is not indigenous-thinking.

It fails at creating a locally sustainable diet.  It fails at holding individuals accountable for their actions within a sustainable local community.  It fails at creating community.

And diet is not all that is common among “pre-civilized” cultures, nor is it the only factor influencing their health.  Community, lifestyle, connection with environment, these things matter. It isn’t the “general rule” that makes indigenous peoples healthy, it is their very specific and individual adaptation within their unique habitats.

Putting “paleo” on top of a medicalized and reductionist generalized dietary practice doesn’t change anything about Western behavior.  It IS Western behavior. The cycle of mass-production and destruction, the “oil economy,” the unresolved stress and strain of modern living, the pollution of environments through corporate, governmental, and individual negligence – all of these things lead up to the modern state of the human animal.  Without a local approach, you sustain all of the things that create dysfunction, regardless of how healthy your diet.

Altering the course of modern civilization toward regional-specificity is more important than diet in terms of health. I know many people who have developed cancers who eat healthier diets and live healthier lifestyles than any others I’ve met.  The problem for them was an accumulated level of toxins in the general environment, caused by industrial farming practices, corporate, government, and individual negligence and abuse of resources, and a general reliance on petrochemical manufacturing practices in terms of pharmaceuticals, “durable goods,” etc.

So my challenge to you is to find a way to make it work. Which might involve shifting priorities a bit.

For one thing, excuses are out.

The modern worker bee can easily implement my principles by 1. shopping at local farmers markets, or joining their local CSA, 2. eating in accordance with their actual level of hunger, rather than in accordance with “caloric recommendations” or to appease some repressed physical or emotional need, 3. eating unprocessed foods (see #1) in as minimally-processed (i.e., not fried, etc.) a form as possible, and 4. doing all of this within your local community, in a loving environment.

If these options aren’t available to you, if you simply cannot play within your environment and cultural conditioning to attempt to achieve the four principles, if there is no community to which you can reach, which you can join in your efforts, I have one word of advice for you.

Get the hell out of wherever you are, because you’re in deep trouble, and you’re making it worse for the rest of us.

If you can play, if you are looking for that community, you might find your tribe in Exuberant Animal.  Check out the upcoming jams, and attend one.

Join me on my quest for the closest things at my own blog – joshleeger.com

“The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.”

Eric Hoffer
(1902 – 1983)

The “friking amazing” persistence hunt video is going around and you’ve really got to see it. It gives us the flavor of an authentic persistence hunt and is obviously useful in giving us a sense of primal human experience. But don’t get lulled into believing that this is the ultimate look at our ancestral heritage. These are true !Kung bushmen, but they are moderns and this is a re-creation of a historical event. Please note the shoes, the plastic water bottle and the metal spear. Not only that, we have to remember that this is only one hunt by one tribe in one bioregion, in one moment in time. Any conclusions that we might draw from this movie should be tentative.

Obvious flaws aside, this video gives us some good ideas for speculation. Most obviously, note the high level of environmental awareness. These hunters make every movement decision on environmental grounds. There are no highway cones, no white stripes painted on the concrete, no volunteers with stopwatches. Every single physical action is tied to terrain, plants, animals and weather. There are no arbitrary physical movements. Everything is in context. Everything is a judgment call. Walk? Run? Sit in the shade? All of these movement decisions are intimately tied to natural conditions. This is something we can take to heart. Instead of charging off down the road like a machine, we might do better to look around first.

“As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body.”

• Lewis Thomas, in The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

“Nothing is more fatal to health than an overcare of it.”

• Benjamin Franklin

Another sign of transformation. See this editorial in the July 2007 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

The medical community is starting to come around to the idea that exercise doesn’t have to be lumped into a single high-intensity bout. Rather, it can be distributed over the course of the day; a lifestyle which parallels our history as hunter-gatherers. Our paleo ancestors certainly had their moments of intense physicality, but the defining quality of their lives was their consistent locomotion throughout the day. In other words, lots of walking!

If you’ve been following the study of human prehistory for awhile, you may have been struck by the sheer weight of complexity and controversy. No one can split hairs like a paleoscientist and no discipline seems so murky and incomprehensible. But every now and then someone comes up with an idea that brings clarity to our ancient past.

This is precisely what we find in Richard Wrangham’s new book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Once you read it, you’ll be struck by the tremendous power of his explanation. For Wrangham, the pivotal movement in human history came when our ancestors first began to heat food by the fire. Suddenly, our food became far more nutritious and gave us a tremendous survival edge. Not only were cooking tribes more likely to survive, but they now had to put less energy into digestion. This allowed for bigger brains and in turn, a positive feedback loop of better food gathering, better hunting and better cooking. Over thousands of generations, cooking allowed us to evolve from modest scavengers and gatherers into the intellectual super-predators that we are today.

This book is fascinating.

This game is both fun and burly: Sink down in your stance and start working your partner with tugs, releases and heckles. Keep stepping and moving. The object is not to “win” but to keep the action in play. The key lies in setting up the right relationship; the primary objective is to make sure that the other person has a good experience. Keep adjusting the intensity and the direction. This game can be fast or slow and meditative.

This is a good example of what you can do with low-tech toys such as ropes. For more ideas on natural training, or to become an Exuberant Animal trainer, visit www. exuberantanimal.com