Mediterranean and Peat-arian
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Greetings,
I was thinking of trying to get a comparative diet discussion going. Before, on the RP forum, there were lots of good food / cooking threads. Excluding maybe more serious conditions, I'm not convinced that supplements are necessary when there are many foods available to us now.Anyways, it seems to me that the so-called Mediterranean Diet is in theory and practice fairly close to the Peatarian "food pyramid," for lack of a better term. I'm viewing food closer to a food "cycle," as the seasons are four, and "seasonal" foods or seasonal eating therefore can and did cycle through the 4 (or 2 main seasons) in this way. So maybe that's another view that jives with Peat and goes away from a Platonic or Pythagorean "pyramid" / FDA paradigm.
Pasta is over-consumed in the American diet and Italian-American cooking. Not only over-consumed, but frequently bogged down with pufas / processed cheeses, oils, meats, etc. It's American food, and fairly new at that. The so-called "peasant" Italian cooking is a lot of soups, broths, breads, fish and meat. Basically, a lot of this aligns with the Peat thinking on food.
Olive oil, for example, gets some hate in the Peat-sphere, but is relatively un-processed and low in PUFA. Butter is more northern Italy / Europe, but is also very common, as with the "French paradox" of high saturated fats, cheeses, etc. So I would also add the rustic French cuisine to the general Mediterranean diet, too. A lot of traditional dishes in Armenia, Turkey, Greece, etc., feature different fatty beef, lamb, organ meat, a good bit of seafood, butter, etc.
The one thing I'm seeing less of when "traditional cuisine" is talked about is sugar. It's hard to even form this discussion because so many modern views and dogmas are blocking the view of older ways of life, whether they were good, bad, etc.
Usually contemporary wisdom is that all sugar is bad. A lot of people do not eat fruit. On the other hand, many people drink pop, juices, and energy drinks, few of which have real sugar. Then there's the diet drinks, stevia, etc. GMO fruit is a whole other thing, but generally, I believe a good amount of fresh or canned fruit is just fine, though pesticides / plastics are not to be ignored.
It might be an over-simplification to say everything was better before the mass-infiltration and normalization of seed oils, but I think that given the obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease statistics, the true cravings of people in say 1870 would have been for fats and sugars. Scurvy, ricketts, and other conditions of malnutrition were common because of imbalanced and carb and legume heavy diets. This in itself should tell us that natural fats, sugar, protein, etc., is necessary and good.
Only now do people intentionally reverse the corrupt western diet into selective monomanias like Keto, Carnivore, Atkins, low-carb, high-carb, no-fat, low-fat, fruitarian, vegan, vegetarian, Pescatarian, "Peatarian," etc. If the Peat-sphere does one thing, it is to help break down this all-or-nothing belief.
Anyways, just wondering if anyone sees parallels between Peat's "pantheon" of good foods and these or similar foods in other traditional or old cuisines?
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@Corngold A lot of things Peat says or does were also done by people long ago. In his coconut oil article he mentions a tribe of people who used coconut oil who had metabolisms 120% above their peers despite also living in a very hot place. He mentions a key moment that got him interested in coconut oil was a couple where the filipino woman looked young & ate coconut oil a lot. Old cultures often made efforts to preserve fruit jams through winters. I would say a lot of things Peat says alings with tradition.
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Agree, this has been my impression since reading and listening about/to Peat.
Funny you mention coconut oil - I haven't noticed too many good results eating it regularly - whether by the ice cream recipe, with fruit, in coffee, etc. I use butter much of the time for cooking. Mostly the coconut oil makes me queasy and/or seems to "shock" me a little bit. Actually reminds me of high pufa meals slightly, but I will feel fine after a few hours, whereas pufa always leaves you slow, tired, etc.
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@Corngold I think the 'best' way is probably just raw, but coconut oil was always a optimization hack imo.
