I have two friends who have gone Keto, one almost a year ago and one this past January. Since these are friends that I occasionally cook for, I’ve looked into the diet and worked on some recipes. Keto doesn’t appear to be much different from its low/no carb predecessors; you eat a lot of high fat, high protein and basically no carbs (fruit, grains, sugars). Inuits and Masai have been doing it forever. But both of my friends swear by this diet and the friend who has been doing this for over a year has lost a lot of weight and says he has a ton more energy.
So while I have been investigating Keto, I haven’t seriously considered trying it out. I haven’t had much luck in adopting diets where whole swaths of food have been eliminated. Most folks say that once you make it through the first couple of hard months, deprivation gets easier, but I’ve never found that to be the case.
Yesterday as I was coming out of the hardware store, the strong aroma of garlic bread wafted out of the restaurant next door. It made my eyes tear up and my mouth water;y very first thought was “I can never do Keto.”
You are stuck on a deserted island with just two foods, what are they?
Average life expectancy for a Masai man is 42, for a woman, 44.
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I’m not advocating keto or any diet whatsoever.
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That was clear from your post. I’m just pointing out the absurdity of appropriating a diet from a culture where middle age is 22.
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Last year when my friend begin to talk about keto, I did say it’s not exactly what our ancestors ate. From what I understand, in addition hunting there was a LOT of gathering.
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I’m wondering about your use of the word “appropriating” here, Bill. It seems to be a term that is tossed about a lot nowadays, and usually in a negative sense. I don’t personally know enough about the Keto diet to have formed an opinion about it’s merits, except that I know it’s more restrictive than I care for my personal diet to be. That said, considering the vastly different lifestyles of the Masai and most westerners, I suspect lots of factors, other than diet, need to be factored in in order to account for the discrepancy in lifespan.
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As you discerned, my use of “appropriate” was deliberate and a reflection of my disdain for fad diets, which I suspect are more indicative of neuroses than informed health decisions.
Surely the lifespan of cultures like the Masai is attributable to factors besides diet but when lives are so relatively short a lot of the long-term effects of diet and lifestyle don’t get a chance to show up.
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Skyr and peaches.
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I wonder how healthful any restrictive diet can be. It seems to me that a balance of all foods is the healthiest, except for snack foods and chips, of course.
I am still as sick as three dogs with the head cold of the decade. I plan to take myself to the walk in clinic later this morning. I keep hoping I will be better, and every morning I wake up worse.
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So sorry, Renee. Head colds are no fun, especially at this time of the year. Do you have allergies as well?
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No, that is husband with the allergies. I just went to the walk in clinic and left soon after I realized that everyone in the waiting room was coughing and much more ill than I am, and that I was number 15 just to get registered, with lord knows how many in front of me waiting to be seen. I decided I would get more ill breathing in everyone’s germs so I went home.
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Oh, I wish you feel better, Renee!
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Hello
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Hi. Welcome to the Trail!
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Yes, Welcome, Benny.
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peanut butter and beans
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I suppose my question to be two food items and a beverage. Because with beans and peanut butter I think you’re going to need something to wash that all down.
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tim would no doubt have desalination gizmo.
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earl gray
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Just two foods? I hope I’m not stuck on that island for very long. I’ll go for rice and vegetables (ha!), and I’ll go fishing.
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I love the vibrant colors in the top photo, vs. Is it a photo you have taken?
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Actually it’s a photo from one of the photo sharing sites that Renee and I use a lot for the blog. I do have photos for my time in Africa and a couple of individual shots of Masai but somehow didn’t feel quite right about putting them up on the blog without their permission.
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Raspberries and homemade bread. And butter for the bread.
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Note: homemade bread can give me a lot of variety. Besides the usual healthy, whole grain options, there is such a thing as chocolate bread which should help with the all-important food group of chocolate.
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potato and onion were my first inclinations but i decided i would get tired after a year or two
peanut butter and beans (and earl gray)
would be good forever
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A chicken and a milk cow. That way I would have milk, eggs, and cheese as well as companions
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Good thinking
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Actually, you would need a chicken, a rooster, a milk cow and a bull to keep that going for long.😉
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Very true.
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As a city girl, I didn’t even think about that!!!
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That island’s getting a bit crowded. 😉
C in O
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yeah, that was my thought: “Depends how long we’re stuck there”.
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I don’t know about you guys, but my island doesn’t have any of you on it. It would be nice, though, if we were all part of an archipelago so we could supplement each other’s “pantry” with needed items.
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I’d go with my homemade spaghetti (assuming noodles + sauce = 1 food) and chocolate chip cookies. Reasoning–if I’m stuck on a deserted island, I probably won’t survive too long, so I’m going to indulge my ass off as the sun slowly fries me to a crisp . . . which gets me hungry for fried chicken . . .
Chris in Owatonna
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Spam would be good; lasts forever and can be fixed a variety of ways.
I would hope there was an apple tree growing on the island.
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Dang, two is really limited, isn’t it? Either apples and peanut butter, or my usual breakfast – pears and cottage cheese .
And red wine.
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I’ve never been stranded on a deserted island, but I have gone backpacking in a wilderness area, perhaps that’s why I struggle with an assignment like this. My mind tends to be wayyyy too practical. How much does it weigh? How long will it keep without refrigeration? Will I have access to the prerequisites – like water – to prepare this?
Most of us city dwellers take so many things for granted. Even a 24 hour disruption of our supply of electricity is cause for major concerns.
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I think tomato soup and potatoes would be the things I’d want most. For beverages, it would be nice to have coffee and wine. But if I could only have one, I think I’d go with coffee.
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Ooh, I forgot about caffeine – I’ll have headaches for three days if I go cold turkey.
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Three days? Are you nuts? I went cold turkey on coffee while working for the law firm. I had a headache for three weeks before I figured out why.
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Guess I won’t risk it.
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Of course, it’s hard to predict what reality would be like on this hypothetical desert island. If it got to be about 90 degrees, I might have my potatoes and tomato soup and wine and coffee, and be thinking, “Man, I’d kill for a cold beer.”
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two foods would be Gatorade and chicken…
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My keto friendly root beer float and steak!
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Lol. Burgers and fries.
I feel like you do. Can’t see myself doing Keto. But I’ve considered it.
I blogged about Keto on ‘Better Health and Weight Loss.’
Thanks for sharing your take on Keto.
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Chicken and avocado 🥑I can get my fish from the sea 🤣🤣
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