Greediness, extremism, wars, and nutritional communities

One of the few things that differentiate us from other animals is definitely our tool-making capacity. While monkeys, chimps and other animals can create tools that are adapted to their needs, humans create tools fancier and more complicated than necessary. One example of this is money. We could all barter like we have been doing for thousands of years, but instead, we created a money system. And to make it easy to deal with other countries, some little guy decides how much the money of a given society is worth on the international scene. While every society has their own set of highly valuable tools (such as arts, books, etc.), money is almost universally valued in every society. I should say in every modern and industrialized society.

Basically, our capacity to make fancy tools has made us greedy [keep this in mind for later]. In hunter gatherer societies, equality was somewhat enforced by the nature of society itself. Food storage was nonexistent for the most part, so this could not lead to societal separation. In other words, there could not have been poor and rich people, because no one really had more than anyone else (no centralized economical system). You had to hunt and gather your foods, which meant nobody could wait to be fed. Although generosity was highly present in those societies (as it has been shown in aborigines societies), about everybody had to work for their dinner and it was done collectively.

Enter agriculture. Agriculture led to the rise of the state (or, political and economical centralization). The domestic society – also known as the hunter gatherer society – became a political society. A large percent of society was growing food, while a small percentage was fed by food taxes. This led to the rise of experts (politicians, army, scribes, and people who were paid to create fancy tools) too.

Food storage was now possible and it indirectly created poor and rich. This is due to apparition of the private property concept, which was enforced by the forced monogamy of the woman (or, in other words, enforced by religion). This is probably the first form of societal separation humans have collectively faced (although, Engels argued that the first societal separation is a man-woman one due to religion) . It is also the first form of population control they have faced (again, enforced by politicians and religion). Ultimately, this led to the creation of writing, money, and the modernization of art.

Knowing all this, we can understand that for the last 10 000 years or so, greediness has been excessively present in human behaviours. In Nietzsche’s terms, our will to power (in this case, our will to dominate) has grown because we try to accumulate resources and call them ours. This is why the laptop I am writing this post on is ”MY” laptop. This is why I am currently in ”MY” apartment and this is why this post is influenced by the knowledge I acquired from ”MY” books. Now, I am not criticizing this mentality (I will leave that to the experts that are paid with our taxes… Ok, bad joke) nor am I promoting anarchy to go back to where we came from.

What I am saying is that all our of societal problems are linked to greediness of some kind, and most could not have been possible if it wasn’t for agriculture and the societal changes it brought. While I am passionate about sociology (I studied it quite a bit), I am not trying to analyze the whole society here. What interests me – and I am sure it interests you too (or you would not be reading my blog) – is micro-societies. In other words, I am interested about small communities who are part of a bigger one and how they debate – or fight – with each other.

No matter what kind of greediness someone -or a society- has, the best way to get the power needed to make everyone agree with you (or, in other words, get social power to change the world according to your vision) is by starting an imaginary (or not) war with someone or something. Once you promote it (which was done by religion before and is now done by medias), people rally to your cause. This is why USA has a war on terror going on (and why the Vietnam war failed once the media stopped supporting it) and this is why Quebec’s separatists have a war going on with the English part of Canada. The more extreme you are, the more TV time you get (echoed by the Koran-burning Christian lately), the more people want to know more. Ok, what does this have to do with anything, you may ask?

Enter nutritional micro-societies. Don’t be fooled, the nutritional world is filled with greediness, too (it’s a human trait after all). Not everyone is greedy and you don’t necessarily need to be greedy to fight (some really do it out of integrity and honesty), though. However, those who are the most greedy are often those who are fighting harder : they really want to prove that their views on nutrition are the best and they market their ideas extensively (with publicity, testimonials, TV time, etc.). Some do it for fame, some do it for social power, and some do it for money. And they all have an imaginary -or not- nutritional war going on.

Take the paleo community for instance. Most fight governmental diet recommendations (high carbs in the form of grains and low fat). Most paleos think that a low carb, high meat, and natural diet (no processed foods) is the best way to go about. Science supports most of what the paleo community says (low carbing for everyone is not one of them).

Now, let’s take a look at the vegans. Vegans have an imaginary -or not- war going on with animal consumers. Most of them are also pro-low fat. They mostly fight due to beliefs and ethics. Vegans are not really in the right spot at the moment, since science does not really agree with their beliefs at all.

Another popular nutritional society is the bodybuilding one. They fight for the acceptation of high protein, high carbs and low fat diets. A ton of them fight for supplement and steroid use, too. They mostly fight against non-training people because they think they are healthier than them. Science supports the whole high protein thing (although, 300g of whey protein a day is not supported by any science other than bro-logic science) but it does not support the rest.

Raw foodists have a problem with cooked foods so they fight against other diets who advocate them. Cooking is proven to be beneficial in some cases.

Those are only a few examples, but it is much more complex than this. The point is that there is probably good and bad in every one of them, and finding the optimal one is the wrong way to approach diet.

Conclusion : What does this teach us?

It teaches us that these imaginary -or not- wars in the nutritional world are confusing people who are looking to do the right thing. The moment you become exclusive to only one school of thought, you are no better than the government that recommends a one size fit all diet (and, just like them, it’s probably based on greed too). In other words, maybe we are not being objective when we subscribe to only one school of thought. Maybe there is no such thing as universal truth.

Really, when you have no understanding of how the body works and nutrition, it is very confusing to know what to do. There are so many experts and all of them contradict each other. In their search of healthiness, these people end up going for the most popular one (and it does not mean it is the optimal way either) . Here, popularity is being defined by the number of comments a website has or how many followers the author has on Twitter : ”So many people do it, it must be right!”.

Now, as always, even if it takes up a lot of my time to write for primal journal (English is not my first language and my best friend has to correct everything I write), there is a reason I do it. I like to be part of this nutritional chaos and promote a non-extremist approach to diet. This kind of approach is what I think is needed, if we really want to help people become healthier. This is why you have been reading quite a lot about the need to personalize your diet. And, yes, in some cases, you may have to do non-paleo things to achieve your goals.

At first, I was unsure about posting more opinionated posts because I cared too much about my reputation in this community. But a man can only fool his integrity so much before he realizes what he really needs and wants to do. This is why I took some time off blogging last week. I wanted to really think about where I want to bring this website to.

So here is the low down : I will be posting a lot more thought-provoking articles. You have to expect a few articles that will challenge the paleo diet at times, too. It does not mean I am anti-paleo, all it means is that I care as much about the limitations (not that many) and the benefits (outweigh the possible limitations) of such an approach. I refuse to live under any dietary dictatorship and this is why I don’t subscribe to any diet. I subscribe to evolutionary eating because of its flexibility.

In this war for fame, power and money, as always, I will still be one of the few advocating the need for personalization of the diet, and I will not let any kind of greediness cloud my judgment. Moderation, instead of extremes, is always a better way to proceed.