Reduction Is Not Starving

Affluenza Has a Cure

“We are all going to starve because of Iran!” This is the rubbish meme currently rising to the top of social media. And of course, it fits into the rubbish propaganda promulgated at an ever-accelerating pace by US and other Western governments. (Can propaganda have a 3rd derivative too? You betcha! Hyperpropaganda is the term here.)

It goes like this. The US and Israel attack Iran in an unprovoked attack for no legitimate reason. Iran reacts by decimating US military bases in the region, bombing Israel and closing the Strait of Hormuz. Iran quickly pivots to a toll both system and many nations just accept this as the new normal - the price of doing business. Israel just continues to implement genocide in Gaza and then accelerates their land grab in Lebanon. The US pivots to a blockade in the Arabian Sea, well outside the range of Iran’s missiles in order to stay safe. This is mostly a threatening posture, as many ships can still get through the blockade. But then the US threatens ships transiting the Strait of Malacca, which is another choke point for global trade. They attack ships that are in global waters and even seize 2 container ships. Building on the US seizures pursuant to the Venezuela conflict in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic, the US has now earned the moniker of “Pirate Nation.”

The biggest effect of this illegal, immoral and insidious US strategy of sowing chaos is not just economic, it is physical. Without certain commodities like fertilizer and sulfur, the ability of farmers around the world to produce food has been compromised. I warned of this early on in a previous post. Different countries will adapt in different ways. In the US, farmers are already shifting to producing different crops and/or just taking a year off. In France where I live, the agricultural base is diversified enough that the fossil fuel and fertilizer shortfall does not aggravate production as much. Prices are rising in the store and at the gas pump, but it is not especially onerous for most of the population. I see less driving but that is a good thing. The social safety net in France provides more of a cushion, just like it did during the Covid crisis.

The adaptive paradigm shift for the individual is pretty simple. Reduce your inputs. In the food context, this means shifting what you eat and simply eating less. This also applies to wine and coffee. I have been on my reduced alcohol/caffeine diet for over three weeks now and there is no downside. It was not hard for me to do this as I have been taking a couple of months off each year for the last four years. In 2023 I spent five months off alcohol, if I remember correctly.

Coffee is an expensive item, just like wine, so getting off both saves money. Compared to the US, wine in France is cheap, but a good bottle in the store has risen from 2-3 euros in 2018 to 5-7 euros now. And this is local Languedoc wine. Languedoc simply means langue d’oc, the language of the pays d’oc, the Occitan country. It is the southern third of France. The actual name of the language is Occitan but often referred to as langue d’oc. Occitan and its subset Provençal, are older languages than French.

Now, having a glass of wine or a cup of coffee is just part of the good life in the western world. But it can lead to excess, so getting off them for a couple of months a year does no harm. Back when I was off alcohol for 2 1/2 years in my twenties, I was often surprised how aggressive people would be if you didn’t accept a drink. This was back in the USA. Here in France, it is not an issue. Many people don’t drink at all or only on special occasions. If you were a smoker and quit, keep in mind that quitting smoking is about the hardest addiction to break. Some of the people of my age group who came back from Vietnam hooked on heroin reported it was easier to quit heroin than tobacco. Even though I quit tobacco decades ago, it took several tries.

Other items for reduction are meat, milk and eggs. Meat is expensive - no doubt about that. But if you only have a piece of meat once a week or once a month, it frees up a tremendous amount of your daily budget which you can then put towards other items. The same can be said for fish. I have no problem buying fresh or frozen salmon and cod, even though it is expensive. This is because it is a treat, not a daily staple.

Milk is becoming troublesome for me. I am of solid Scandinavian stock so I have always been able to drink milk without problem. But lately that seems to have shifted. After my latest bout of sickness, I just don’t like fluid milk as much. I have taken to putting soy milk on my muesli in the morning. The soy milk is not as expensive here as in the US, where I used to make my own. I still grow soybeans in case I want to start making soy milk again, as well as for edamame. Yogurt is still tasty, as well as cheese, so I am consuming them, just not as much. (Sidebar: We had a cheese course last night for dinner and my partner kept emphasizing, “You just can’t get this in the US.” She is absolutely correct.)

Eggs are not a problem. We buy them for 2.40 euros for six eggs at the local market and even in the store the bio (organic) eggs are 3.40 for six eggs. This is very cheap protein and supports local growers. (The supermarkets in France still buy from local suppliers when they can.) I don’t like chickens and we are more than happy to buy from local producers at whatever price they want. This provides them with cashflow too. There is a whole lesson around chickens and egg production vis-a-vis small-scale sustainability, by the way. People think economies of scale only apply to getting bigger. Chicken and egg production is an example of why this is not so. Utilizing “waste” products, cleaning gardens in off season, ease of management compared to larger animals, minimal fencing compared to larger animals, human scale management versus industrial scale management, etc., all provide a different basis than “bigger is better.” I used to candle eggs as my part-time job in high school, so I have seen some of the facets of the egg industry. I don’t want chickens myself, but I will gladly pay the chicken farmers for eggs and occasionally a roasting chicken.

Beyond the refinement of one’s diet to reduce the more expensive animal-based inputs, a person can always just eat less. We all have subconscious triggers that determine what we eat and how much we eat. Salt is a good example. It doesn’t take much willpower to reduce salt intake and after a couple of weeks, you will find that your palate has adjusted to a lower salt intake. Whether this is good or bad for you is your call of course, but the mechanics of reduction are easy to implement - in this case.

Reducing food intake that is based on emotional triggers is something else again. Many people eat for psychological comfort. This is not a problem unless it is taken to extremes, just like alcohol and caffeine. The trick here is to focus on saving money in order to short-circuit the psychological cravings. Processed food is EXPENSIVE. [Sidenote: Back in 1969, one of my brothers dropped me off at my apartment, which was a couple doors down from a McDonald’s. He said, “I suppose you eat there all the time.” My rejoinder was, “Are you kidding? I can’t afford it.” That was almost sixty years ago. Fast foods are even MORE expensive in relation to real food now.] Soon enough, if you do a little cost accounting on just how expensive fast/processed food really is, you should be able to get back to the physiological realm again, where “comfort food” is a phenomenon and not a problem. When you consider how much energy is put into making a real food into a complex processed food with all kinds of additives and passing through many stages and many hands, it makes sense that it costs more than the raw food it is based on. Cutting out the middleman is bound to save you money. Restaurants are a different story, as you are engaging in cultural behavior. But if you reduce your food bill dramatically, you can afford a meal out on the town once in awhile.

When we were in Budapest a couple of years ago, we were pleased at how much Hungarian food can be classed as “comfort food.” Tasty gravies and sauces, lots of potatoes and peppers, sides of pickles served with each meal, plenty of good bread, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay there. Whenever I am traveling, I look for local food trucks and take out establishments. I am rarely disappointed, while I am disappointed in restaurants - even in France! - most of the time.

As we look forward and envision multiple future scenarios, it would seem that food supply will become dicier each year - unless you are growing your own. And even if you are a retired market gardener with a 400 year background in agriculture “in your DNA” like me, you will still not be able to grow 100% of your food. This means trade with other growers who have what you don’t, as well as trade in general. In the future this may be some form of barter, or trade in whatever the currency is at the time, or work trades. My bet is on silver, which is why I have been buying silver coins; currently French 5-franc silver coins from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Spanish 5-peseta silver coins from the same era are good too, as I live in southern France and the Spanish coins were ubiquitous back when they were Spain’s currency and likely will be again. If you live in the US, you can buy 1 ounce silver eagles and Canadian maple leafs, but you can also buy pre-1965 dimes that are 90% silver. They are often labeled as “junk silver” and can be bought for “spot,” which means the spot bullion price. These old dimes may come in handy in the future. I wish I would have bought a bagful before I came to France.

A way to envision the future is to just get tougher and I favor this approach. Can you make full meals with just a few simple ingredients? Can you live on brown rice with just a varying pantry of condiments to add variety and spice to the rice? Can you eat beans every day? Can you get full on weeds and leeks? Can you live on roadkill if you had to? In this context of getting by on less, I notice that as I stop quaffing a beer or a glass of wine with my meals, I naturally eat more of my meals without liquids. This is a health tip that many wellness influencers and even clinicians emphasize. Drinking liquids with solid meals dilutes the hydrochloric acid in your stomach and disturbs digestion. I notice that drinking liquids before my meals fills me up and I am not as hungry when it is meal time.

This reminds me of one of Knut Hamsun’s novels, Hunger (1890). When Hamsun wrote this book, he was literally starving on the streets of Oslo (called Christiania or Kristiania back then) and he was having manic episodes because he was starving. He filled himself up with water when he could not stand it any more. He was also trying to write a novel about his sufferings - a book about writing the book, as it were. He finally got an advance from his publisher to take a trip to America and write a book about it. He gave lectures on Norwegian art and culture to the Norwegian-American community in Minneapolis and Iowa. Then he went back to Norway and finished Hunger. His impressions of this trip to the New Land eventually became The Cultural Life of Modern America, which was actually published in 1889 before Hunger. Hamsun later disparaged The Cultural Life of Modern America, calling it “childish.” When I originally read it, I loved it. I still have a copy and should probably read it again for its radical, cynical perspective. The reason I bring up Hunger is the idea of filling up with water. Many wellness professionals advocate eight full glasses of water a day and this is another trick that could reduce a person’s level of eating and make it habitual.

To add yet another perspective to the idea of simply eating less, here is an article by Helen Nearing from the Context Institute in 1990.
https://www.context.org/iclib/ic26/nearing/

Helen’s husband Scott “ . . . lived to a hale and hearty 100 and died when he decided to – by fasting for a month and a half at the very end.” I have been thinking about this as a good strategy for several years. I have a history of fasting dating back to my twenties, but never for more than 4 days. A regular program of fasting has shown to be good for a person’s health and it would certainly cut down on expenses. If you fast an average of 1 day per week, you could cut 14% off your food expenses. Probably even more because of the ancillary effects of light eating for the 2-3 days after your fast. A basic rule for fasting is to take 2 recovery days for every day of fasting. These are complete fasts of course. No food and only water for liquids.

Helen and Scott Nearing were old-time radicals who dropped out in the 1930s when Scott was fired for being too radical for his teaching job. Helen had some financial resources so they went off to Vermont and later Maine to live simply on the land. Their most important book is Living the Good Life (1954), which I read in 1973. I found it to be a seminal book and refer to some of its insights often. I should re-read that book too. The thread between the Nearings and Hamsun is radicalism and that is a core concept with me. Sometimes things are so bad you have to make a radical move.

The idea of reducing your energy footprint voluntarily has been valid AT LEAST since the first Earth Day in 1970. As we face more and more starvation because of the Iran War and the contretemps over the Strait of Hormuz, reducing our energy use through limiting our own individual behaviors becomes more and more important and timely. One of the avenues we can explore is reducing our food intake. If we are flush with money or are producing a lot more food than we can eat, we can always feed the poor.