Sunday, March 2, 2014

News You Can't Use: The Benefits of Eating Bugs

What happens when you combine fad diets, lying scientists and our good friend the insect? Well, you get today's article obviously, I don't know what you expected to happen here. Yup, it's all the fun of "gross" foods, evolutionary biology and her patented "It might have been like this, maybe, use your imagination" just-so explanations and maybe the occasional dig at feckless modern humanity. Let's solve all our problems by shoving handfuls of mealworms into our catcher's glove faces.

You've probably heard of the Stone Age diet craze known as the Paleolithic Diet, made popular most recently by Dr. Loren Cordain's best-seller The Paleo Diet.

Everyday is a battle against the urge to give myself a phony doctorate and promptly vomit out a book full of junk science that would kill you if you actually followed it to the letter. Luckily, knowing who reads those sort of books, there shouldn't be too many causalities to this outrageous fraud I've committed in my own mind many, many times.

It's the one time, it seems, that being like a caveman is a good thing. 

I mean you wouldn't want to emulate the self-reliance, independence or unapologetic masculinity. We need you in that cubicle, after all. Eat bugs, sure.

The theory goes (and archaeological evidence corroborates) that early hunter-gatherers, while they may not have lived as long, still had some major health advantages on most of us modern humans.

Much healthier than you, but dead by twenty from a wasting disease. Do you see the inherent contradiction here?

Higher levels of physical activity also played a vital role in cave people's vitality, and so did their high levels of wild food consumption: wild game meat, gathered greens and fruits, and healthy fats such as nuts.

This massive speculation is science.

Cordain suggests that prior to the agricultural revolution, early humans ate this Paleo Diet for 2.5 million years.

Long, long ago, in a magical kingdom far, far away...

"From the time mammals first appeared until 50 million years ago — a total of 150 million years, three quarters of the entire time mammals have existed — our ancestors were primarily insectivorous," write S. Boyd Eaton and Dorothy A. Nelson in their paper "Calcium in Evolutionary Perspective."

Take at seat and get comfortable kids, S. Boyd Eaton and Dorthy Nelson are going to tell you a fairy story about our lemur-like forebears and their calcium consumption during the time of the Thunder Lizards.

It's easy to observe this early pre-human diet in the wild today, since versions of this prehistoric bug-guzzler still exist in the form of bush babies, tree shrews, and similar small mammals.

And let's be honest here, you're basically a glorified shrew or bush baby.

It turns out that for a certain size of primate, bugs are one of the best things on the planetary menu. If we were still that size, that's pretty much all we'd eat, too.

But this is America and we've got curves and only dogs dig on bones and you can't even handle all of this I bet.

But for whatever reason, we grew, in both body and brain size.

Then something happened for no discernible reason and the bush babies of the Jurassic are now walking upright, using glory holes and writing erotic stories about the living dead.

The problem was not with the bugs themselves, but just that we couldn't find enough of them.

The problem isn't you, termite mound. The problem is me. We drifted apart. I've grown in brain and body size. It was fun, but it was over. Please, just be glad it happened instead of angry it ended.

This is one of the miracles and geniuses of being a primate: our innate adaptability to different diets, also known as omnivory ("omni" = everything, "vory" = eating). We adapted so that we could eat everything and anything and still survive.

We even adapted special motor scooters and wet rags on poles to support this "everything and anything" lifestyle.

The main reason for this is that insects are a much higher quality food compared to things like leaves, fruits, flowers, and even nuts.

Yeah, that fad diet scam is really starting to take shape in my mind. "Eat all the flowers you want!" maybe? "Leave the fat with leaves?" Still needs some work.

Nutrition is sort of like money: If leaves represent dollar bills, fruits are fives, nuts are tens, and insects and other forms of animal flesh are crisp fifty-dollar bills.

A somewhat decent pizza would be equivalent to winning the lottery.

When you think of the hallmarks of evolution, what image pops up?

Fraudsters attaching human jaws to monkey skulls.

But like a dog that stares at the pointing finger instead of the ball

We missed out on all the ball-related GLORY.


In fact, as it turns out, the skill of collecting termites is easier observed than done.

Here at Career Institute University Employment College we'll teach you real job skills like fixing submarine engines and termite collection.

"Termites are a valuable source of protein, fat, and essential amino acids, in the diets of both primates and modern humans," wrote Backwell.

Lift balls to the walls + eat the termites from said walls = massive gains.

Let's imagine you are an evolving proto-human, and you have this excellent source of protein

It's sort of like in Altered Beast, except it's horrific vermin making you bigger instead of flying blue orbs.

As the author of the blog PaleoVeganology quips, "It's as though someone took a big can of Raid to the authors'

See, this is why no one ever says things like "Man, that scientist party was awfully crazy."

So steeped are they in their Western food bias and paleofantasies that the possibility of Paleolithic man fulfilling his nutrient requirements with a diet of creepy-crawlies never occurred to them.

Stop using your so-called life experience and eat these grubs I found under a rock.

Oh, how times have changed: When an early female hominid saw a bug and shrieked, it was in excitement, because hey, lunch.

We know everyone stopped reading this article about ten paragraphs ago during that whole "150 million years ago!" mess so we might as well sneak in some casual sexism.

Full Article.

Komment Korner

ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS CAN'T BE PASSED ON

I have given successful lectures (with question and answer period afterward) before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges/universities.

This gives me butterflies in my stomach.

I wonder how much PETA contributed to this article. I don't know where they find the time, I'm sure there's still some puppies and kitten that need to be killed in the back of a van somewhere

The way Lucifer Jr. is printing money & driving us into am imminent financial collapse, we will all be forced to eat grub, worms, & dirt.


Shill Section

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read a free excerpt here.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

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