Sexual Paradox
I’m still on a ‘reading about and comparing non-agricultural and
agricultural cultures’ kick. During a google search,
I came across this page, which
seems to be the text only version of a chapter from a book called
“Sexual Paradox: Complementarity, Reproductive Conflict and Human
Emergence”. As usual, I don’t know how accurate the factual information on cultural practices
is, and the caveat emptor goes doubly for the conceptual and theoretical conclusions, since tthe authors are *definitely* more than a tad ‘out there’ but it makes for some interesting reading.
posted at: 21:58 |
path: /living |
link
A dietary case study
Interestingly, dietitians spend their whole careers working out
healthy, balanced, food preference consistent diets for people. I’ve often
considered getting advice from one, and I think it’s an excellent idea for
anyone who may be making changes in their diet (nudge nudge, wink, wink).
However, I myself do like to consider the
occasional hypothetical scenario in my own nutrition research, merely for
entertainment purposes, of course.
With that in mind, let’s consider a hypothetical case study of an ovo-lacto vegetarian who… oh… I don’t know, doesn’t like beans or potatoes. Is it possible for this person to meet the minimum requirements for each of the three macronutrients? Let’s see. Suppose the person is going for the bare minimum of protein that they need- 15%- and suppose that they only need 1700 calories a day (which is the very very minumum they would probably need, so they would probably have to bump up the calories in some way in addition). Based on the Very Rough and Approximate Values I created for my spreadsheet programs, what would happen if the person had the following sort of daily diet?:
Well- according to the
numbers in my spreadsheet, this would provide roughly 15% protein, 35%
carbs and 50% fat (with 23% of the fat saturated and 77% non-saturated).
So that’s interesting. Of course, this does not address the VERY
IMPORTANT issue of micronutrients. For example, I think a person eating
this sort of diet would
not get enough iron, but I don’t actually know. And, like I said, a person would probalby need more calories than this diet provided. And so on. I expect a
registered
dietitian would be very helpful in this regard.
posted at: 12:47 |
path: /living |
link
Many different diets
It’s proving to be a bit hard to get uncontested information on the diets
of people who are currently classified as non-agriculturalists. This is
certainly an area where people have their own agendas and are looking for
evidence to fit their agendas. This appears to be the case with both
academic and non-academic sources. However, trying to read between the
lines and extract the statements that are somewhat agreed upon, it seems
to be the case that humans can survive with widely varying proportions of
macro-nutrients, as long as both the total calorie requirements are being
met (and not exceeded), and also that a certain base-line amount of each
type of macro-nutrients are obtained. But what is this baseline?
Looking at some rather extreme diets (resulting from some rather extreme environmental conditions), it seems like it’s not a good idea to go below 15-20% calories from carbs or 15% calories from protein (see, for example the diet of the !Kung, as presented here). It also seems like it’s a bad idea to go below certain levels of fat in the diet, especially when these fat calories are only replaced by protein, since this can result in a strange phenomenon referred to in Canada as rabbit starvation. Basically, even though technically your body is getting enough calories from the protein it is ingesting, you still starve. In terms of how low is too low, even most ‘low fat’ North American diets don’t recommend dropping your percent of calories from fat below 30%. Diets termed ‘very low fat’ recommend 15% of calories from fat, and it appears that there is research data on groups of people (e.g. some groups of Japanese people) whose diets have 15% of their calories come from fat.
So- this all suggests that humans can survive on a pretty wide range of macronutrient relative percentages, although there’s a baseline of (roughly) 15%, 15% and 15%. So that leaves 55% percent of calories up in the air. In terms of upper bounds, I have yet to come across a group that had a protein intake higher than 35%.
So, if we put protein intake at 25%, That’s 45% that can come from either carbs or fat.
I’m tempted to now launch into an
extended repeat of all of my discussions of different types of fat, and
the importance of balancing omega-3 and omega-6 ratios, and avoiding
transfats and corn fed saturated fat but… I won’t rehash that whole
issue again at this time.
posted at: 11:05 |
path: /living |
link
Food, Egalitarianism
I was looking for the names of some groups of people who still exist today
and who are classified by anthropologists as ‘hunter-gatherers’. While
searching, I came across
this
somewhat bizarre essay, that seems to indulge in idealization in quite an
extreme way. However, I am also prone to idealization of hunter-gatherer
groups, so I found it quite interesting. Although, I should point out that
many of the references and ideas that the author presents as ‘fact’ are
contradicted by other researchers, so be forwarned.
posted at: 15:01 |
path: /living |
link
Traditional Cree Food
As I’ve said before, The cuisine of the First Nations of the Americas is
another interesting
topic to read about from a culinary perspective, although, in the case of
many of these groups of people, they were agriculture based societies. Here’s a page about
Cree cuisine with an interesting chart that talks about the types of
plants that can be made into flour (again- author unknown so biases
similarly unknown)
posted at: 14:31 |
path: /living |
link
Non-Agricultural Diets
A few remarks in Keltie’s
blog have inspired me to do some more food research. As you can
probably tell from many of my earlier food entries, I’m particularly
intrigued by the food practices of groups of people who do not rely as
heavily on agriculture as European and Asian cultures do. Sometimes it is
quite difficult to find out much about the diets of these other cultures
since they tend to be either marginalized or idealized in the writings of
Anglos, and since I mainly speak English and am mainly aware of Anglo
research sources, I’m mostly stuck with that sort of writing. With all of
that in mind, here’s
a write up (biased in the idealized direction I would say) on the diet of
Australian Aboriginal groups of people.
posted at: 14:16 |
path: /living |
link
Rotating a point
Here’s
a page with an algorithm for rotating a point through space. I may need to
implement this algorithm in my breve model. And
here’s the
Wolfram math page on how to calculate direction cosines. I’ll need to do
that to get the angles for the rotation algorithm.
posted at: 15:17 |
path: /school |
link
Positive Deviance
I like to collect ideas that could be thought of as new heuristics for
analysing problems. Or perhaps I might say, ideas that point out new
patterns or ways of perceiving a problem that are important and useful.
For example, a while ago I linked to an essay that discussed how some
situations do not follow the bell curve, and how this affects the way we
think about the homeless issue and also the police violence issue.
Following a link from the last site I made a blog entry about, I’ve just
come across another one of these ‘new way of looking at situations’ ideas-
a concept called ‘positive deviance’. The idea is that you can problem
solve a problematic situation that needs changing by looking for examples
within the situation of people who have already solved the problem, within
the context of the situation, by behaving in an atypical manner. I think
this is a very powerful idea. Here’s the
page that discusses it, along with providing an example of how it worked
to address the problem of malnutrition among children in some parts of
Vietnam.
posted at: 19:13 |
path: /living |
link
Communicating and being a human being
I just came across this interesting
essay, which I actually found quite moving, about the ways in which
learning how to communicate relates to being, or becoming, a fully
developed human being. The essay is called “Reflections on Interpersonal
Communication and the Journey of Becoming a Person”. Here’s a quote, or
two:
“[T]ranslated into adverbs (and grouped into related clusters), we can say that at every stage along life’s way we are challenged to act (and converse with one another)…
… more awarely (of self, other and context)
… more skillfully, competently and wisely
… more honestly, sincerely, genuinely, congruently (inner matches outer)
… more caringly, compassionately, acceptingly, respectfully, warmly, forgivingly
… more creatively and “exploratorily” (with more creative openness to new experience)
… more courageously, hopefully and faithfully
… more generously and nurturingly, delighting in the happiness of others
… more meaningfully and expressively, organizing and expressing our experiences in coherent patterns of words, music, movement and imagery
… more gratefully and appreciatively, open to delight
… more engagingly, energetically and responsively
… more gracefully and beautifully (in the Navajo sense of beauty as cosmic harmony)
It is interesting to note that, along with overlapping and interweaving, all these qualities of action are open-ended. There is no limit to any of them. Now matter how much we had achieved on any of them, creativity, for example, we would want to go on and develop more.”
And…
“[B]eing wounded by life and learning to heal are central, inescapable parts of becoming a mature person. And, it is through many heartfelt conversations that we engage in this healing process, that we bring these painful experiences into focus and create a meaningful life story out of a seemingly random sequence of sorrows and disappointments. Sometimes these conversations are called, “psychotherapy,” but even more often we call them “deep friendship” and “parenting.” In all these contexts, according to Carl Rogers, healing conversations have the same qualities. The helping partners in these dialogues communicate honestly, caringly, respectfully, understandingly, expressively, and in a way that is open to new experience. In the company of such supportive conversation partners we reconcile ourselves to the sorrows and losses in life, and find the strength to start over, to meet life anew. ”
posted at: 18:58 |
path: /living |
link
Knitting Theory
Check out how knitting and crocheting help mathematicians
understand hyperbolic theory.
posted at: 18:39 |
path: /living |
link
All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.