< Tom Bri ([log in to unmask]) wrote > Population does not worry me much
any more either. So many countries are now nearing negative numbers for
population; all of Europe, Russia, Japan, are going to be losing
population in the coming decades. Even most of the middle-income countries
are nearing stable populations. Besides, we are nowhere near producing as
much food as we could if population were to continue to grow. Food is
cheap and getting cheaper all the time, even if much of it is low-quality
grain. This aspect of the future is looking more optimistic every year.
After we get most of the world eating the basics we can worry about
maximal quality diets.
You apparently misunderstand me. I was talking about the biggest problem
facing the Paleo diet, not the problem of feeding the world by any means
necessary. I'm not saying there is not enough food to feed the world's
population, I'm saying there are not enough Paleo foods for the world's
population to eat anywhere near a Paleo diet. There's not even enough for
the people suffering significantly from the diseases of civilization. Even
with today's situation, where most people are eating mostly modern foods,
some of the Paleo foods are disappearing as various wild animals and
plants go extinct. Some scientists say that even at a population around 10
million, before the advent of agriculture, humanity was already
outstripping its place in nature by hunting large animals like the mammoth
to extinction (something Cordain discussed in the PaleoDiet forum).
Already some scientists are saying that the world's fish stocks are facing
exhaustion within 30 years due to overfishing--and that's without
widespread adoption of Paleo diet principles. The most generous estimates
say the planet can only support up to 100 million people eating a near-
pure Paleo (hunter gatherer) diet (which would probably have to include
some non-Paleo foods that many of today's hunter gatherers tend to eat,
such as starchy roots like yams). I can only speculate on how many people
the planet could support on a less pure Paleo diet like Cordain's least
restrictive diet, but I know it's nowhere near the current world
population of 6.5+ billion.
All food is not cheap--it's mainly the modern foods (the worst foods) that
are cheap (depending on one's definition of cheap--by cheap I mean cheap
enough to be a staple food of the whole world). Many of the Paleo foods
are already too expensive for much of the world's population outside of
the industrialized nations, and this problem will only get worse as these
foods become more scarce, even if the Paleo diet doesn't take off.
The Paleo Diet and Ishmael helped me to see what the real problem with
overpopulation is. It's not that there's not enough food to go around
(though many are starving--but the reasons for that are debated), it's
that there are too many people for them all to live anywhere near the way
they are biologically designed to live (in small groups and tribes, doing
work outdoors that provides plenty of exercise, and eating the foods they
were designed to eat--the Paleo foods) and to live without negatively
impacting the planet. A small elite may be able to live approximately this
way, but not the whole human race. As Quinn explains, "Put plainly, in
order to maintain the biomass that is tied up in the six billion of us, we
have to gobble up 200 species a day--in addition to all the food we
produce in the ordinary way. We need the biomass of those 200 species to
maintain this biomass, the biomass that is in us. And when we've gobbled
up those species, they're gone. Extinct. Vanished forever." I don't want
to get into a debate about overpopulation in general. I'm merely
discussing here how overpopulation relates to the Paleo diet and
lifestyle, and the problem that overpopulation poses to trying to live
life the way the book The Paleo Diet (as well as Ishmael and others)
suggests. That's why I entitled the subject "Paleo Diet's Biggest Problem"
instead of "World Overpopulated."
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