thriving in the modern world

this blog is a collaboration and consummation of the past decade of thoughts and experiences surrounding food and healthy living in the modern world. robert heinlein's seminal treatise on culture, Stranger in a Strange Land, chronicles the life of a human raised off world by an alien race and is brought back to earth to learn his race's ways. culture is like the air we breathe, and we seldom recognize it unless it is taken away, or in the case of culture stripped away by writers, artists and philosophers who rise above the fray. my decade long experience of trying to dust off the culture of modern society, the histories we've learned or assimilated, to think with clarity about what gives value to me and leads to happiness is the hope of this blog. food and the intent to nourish others, give meaning to my life and my intent is to distill my deep research into what nourishes us into something that can help people do the same. when trying to recognize the culture we consume, it's important note it's construction into the deepest limits of our imagination. there was around twenty percent more oxygen in the atmosphere during the age of dinosaurs, it allowed and supported them in their prodigious size. they couldn't recognize the difference but it was built into the structure of the world at that time. our culture is very similar and ill try to give an example, hunter gatherer children are remarkable in that they seldom cry, they are carried, slept with and held by multiple caregivers and fed when they're hungry. our society today values the forced independence of solo sleep, structured eating and bucket strollers. anthropologists think that we create a long lasting psychosis in children by denying the love they so clearly crave and they express it in crying out to the world. 

my journey to food and cooking was a reluctant one, and its role in reshaping my reality was ultimately transformative. it had the ability to bridge the gap between thought and action and had a meditative quality akin to deliberative practice or flow state. the deliberative practice has allowed me to combine ingredients in novel ways and to make them with care with skill and speed. my philosophy with ingredients is primarily based upon a paleo approach, as we've spent 99% of our time as homo sapiens as hunter gatherers, I've incorporated many of the lifestyle approaches as well as I've reasoned that there were many elements to that lifestyle that were wildly advantageous. it allowed our species to populate every habitable part of the globe and to thrive in inhospitable locales. 

altruism and egalitarian thinking is a key component to a paleo lifestyle, and to that end, i co-founded a non-profit dedicated to teaching about food, fitness and nutrition to a whole new generation of children. we now teach around two thousand kids a week through in-class, hands on cooking akin to the home economics classrooms of the fifties. our program is vegetarian because its the lowest percentage of the american diet and its stated goal is to change the food and fitness philosophy of the school as american public school kids get around forty percent of their meals from school food. we've made great progress with our program in proving that flavorful fruits and vegetables prepared with love will be eaten if the environment of the classroom is conducive to bringing kids into caring about what goes into their mouth.