017 – Food Matters, Cancer, Local Organic Nutrition, Toilets, Water

What this episode covers

Paul and Jocelyn start out by talking about the documentary “ Food Matters ” Jocelyn fell asleep while watching it, Paul says “I watched the whole thing!” But first, they plan to also talk about water conservation. Also, Paul is setting up an email thing-a-ma-jigger and you should sign up (Ed: the dailyish email list, highly recommended). He got the idea from Jack Spirko, of “The Survival Podcast,” and since Jack is sort of the reason Paul started doing podcasts, it must be a good idea. So, Food Matters. Yes, it does. Overall, Paul thought the movie was. . . . O.K. He wasn’t wowed, but it’s worth watching. Jocelyn liked how it pointed out how doctors don’t get taught about food, they get taught to diagnose things and prescribe medicine . (Ed: this is true. Most medical schools don’t even have a required course in nutrition.) Paul thought it echoed a lot of the things in Michael Pollan’s work. He was a little concerned that not everybody was rock solid in their statements, it didn’t seem like things were researched/verified thoroughly enough. He wanted people’s statements to be fully qualified. It seemed to be more on the level of one of his thrown together videos, not a full-blown movie. However, he thinks that people with cancer need to see this video and he liked it when the guy said that American medicine is top notch at patching you up after, say, a car accident, but it’s really lame at managing a bunch of diseases. Jocelyn noted that they didn’t have anybody in the movie that she’d heard of (like Andrew Weil or Michael Pollan). On the topic of raw food , a person in the movie claimed that you must eat over 50% of your diet raw, or else your body will attack the food as foreign. This seems unlikely. They describe a couple in the movie who went all raw and loved the way it affected them health wise. However they noted that socially, it can be difficult because your friends want to share a meal with you. When they ate cooked food, the next day they were just wiped out, for a day or more. They felt like they were almost super human when on a fully raw diet, with better thought processes, more energy, etc. However, it was a whole lot of work to prepare the food and they gave it up after a couple of years. Jocelyn mentions a guy in the movie that says that most food in the grocery store comes from 1500 miles away, and is a week old. Paul needs to point out that a lot of food that comes from far away actually uses less fossil fuel per pound of food, because boats are pretty efficient, and semi trucks are also pretty efficient and often carry full loads “both ways.” On the other hand, food brought to a farmer’s market often uses much more fuel per pound of food, because it was brought in by the farmer’s pickup truck, or cargo truck. He still thinks you should buy local, but not for the carbon footprint. Local is better for you. Paul liked the older lady who was obviously really healthy from eating well, but took issue with the simplistic way she criticized farmers, saying they only cared about N-P-K (and calling them “minerals”). He also liked the story of the depressed woman who got better with high dose niacin,

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