Paleo diet - real or fantasy? From Scientic American

[OakLeaf]

I think a lot of it has to do with education and knowing what's available. A Big Mac Meal from McDonalds costs about $6.00. If you get 4 of those a week, you have paid for for the box of organic fruits and vegetables I get delivered. But, it also means you have to be willing to prep such things.

I was speaking more generally. I literally do not think there is enough arable land on the planet, to feed 7 billion people on a diet of meat and vegetables. The empty calories of grain, I think, are necessary to keep most people from starving. From an anthropological standpoint, it's grain that allowed the population to reach the already staggering numbers we had in modern pre-industrial times.



Still, I wonder how many calories are in that CSA box of yours. And how it compares to the calories in those four McD meals. I doubt there's more than a thousand calories in my $20 CSA basket, though it would be interesting to add it all up. Probably depends somewhat on the season, whether it's heavier in calorie-dense late-season root vegetables and fruits, or early-season leaves and stalks. Never mind how someone working three or four jobs and caring for small children would find time to prep those vegetables, when I know it takes me at least an hour and a half in the kitchen just to cook for DH and myself. It's certainly true a low-income family could do better than McD's with the time and money they have available. But not without grain and beans, I don't think. Not without a very large proportion of grain.

And I'm also betting that a lot of people who try to eat "Paleo" wind up overemphasizing meat just because meat is super easy to cook (when I started eating meat again, I was just dumbfounded at how much time I saved in the kitchen) - where veggies are just a lot of frickin' work.