Of Empty Carbs And Empty Coffers

 I have been trying to "eat along" with The Ravishing Mrs. TB as she is embarking on her dietary adventure (modified keto).   On the whole, this means a great many vegetables and proteins and not much else.  For me, more protein for training (trying to keep at that 1 g/ 1 lb ratio), but otherwise I am trying adhere in principle to what she is trying to accomplish.  And it is certainly no great sacrifice: we still get plenty of protein through meat or eggs (and steak. We are eating more beef. This makes me happy.) and the vegetable servings are rather large, prepared in different ways, and (sometimes) surprisingly delicious.

As we have gone through this process, I have been shocked to realize a great many things about my own food choices.

I liked to think I was (overall) fairly thoughtful and measured in my food choices, that I overall ate healthy.  Yes, I had a few issues - I do like my desserts! - but I thought I was doing pretty well.

Guess what?  Not quite so much.  To paraphrase a relatively "modern" pop song (at least for me), "I like empty carbs and I cannot lie".

By thinking more actively about what I am eating, I find that I am also thinking a lot more when I do not eat about what I would be eating.  And generally - outside of regularly meals - my input looks a great deal like carbs - generally empty, and a lot of them.

I am a food texture sort of fellow.  I like things that crunch in my mouth, and I like salt - so anything that looks like a pretzel, cracker, or that it might be remotely crunchy is something that is in danger of being eaten.  Which is okay of course - in moderation, anything can be fine.  Unfortunately, moderation is not a thing I am always particularly good at.  

And so, I try to find better alternatives for crunch or not eat them at all.

It is certainly not like I am suffering - there are more than enough other things I can (and do) eat and eat with gusto (if a word like "gusto" can be applied to something like celery).  And it has made me more conscious overall of how I am eating, never a bad thing when diabetes lurks in the background of one's genetics like a minor theme in a bad horror movie, always ready to leap out with a cheap scare.

Eating well, as they say, is no more difficult than eating poorly:  one just has to make conscious choices and pay attention.  What is fascinating to me - and depressing at the same time - is how hard commercialism and society works to ensure that making such choices is difficult.

One of the keys, as it turns out, to this process is simply that eating this way looks a lot like simple cooking.  The recipes made are not terribly elaborate:   a protein, perhaps a sauce, and a vegetable suitably roasted/broiled/slightly seared.  But they take time - all of The Ravishing Mrs. TB's meal prep now takes more time, chopping and slicing and packaging up.  Convenience as it comes in a box or bag or prepared by someone is much quicker.  

Along with simplicity in recipes, our grocery list has gotten a great deal simpler:  protein, vegetables, fruit (for me, not her right now), and some dairy.  That is largely it.  I eat protein bars and whey for training, but not much more processed food than that. 

So it becomes - from a commercial point of view - a losing proposition for everyone except the grocery stores:  much less products purchased and minimal processed foods purchased, and virtually no restaurants or delivery services engaged.

(Yes, I know many of live like this normally and have for years.  Please be patient with me, I am slow in any number of ways).

So the paradox is that a diet that is better for us is not necessarily "better" for modern society - to those that decry modern agriculture and modern food processing in terms of a "better world", all sorts of financial implications from this occur:  less employment in these industries, less taxes collected from these industries, less people employed packaging and transporting and cooking and serving and delivering food with the implications that their unemployment, purchasing, and tax collection brings.

All this from simply eating better and different.  It makes me wonder - for the thousandth time, perhaps - that we have not trained ourselves in critical thought in the way we should.

Would more natural eating be better for any number of reasons?  Of course; obesity is a growing trend in the US and modern agricultural practices (my mind says practiced by corporate agriculture, but it could be by anyone) can be destructive and wreak long term impacts on the land we need to grow the food.  Yet all these implications - financial capital, human capital - flow from it.  Those are never addressed at all.

Which, to be frank with you, is probably a lot more than I need to be thinking about the subject.  I am just working to be more thoughtful about my food and when and why I eat.  

And, of course, working  hard to make the peanut butter fit elegantly into curve of my celery to make it more palatable than struggling to smear it just on the side.

De Re Rustica: Quotes

 Below are some quotes De Re Rustica by Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella. 

"For there are to this day schools for rhetoricians and, as I have said, for mathematicians and musicians, or, what is more to be wondered at, training-schools for the most contemptible vices - the seasoning of food to promote gluttony and the more extravagant serving of courses, and dresses of the head and hair - I have not only heard but have even seen with my own eyes; but of agriculture I know neither self-professed teachers nor pupils.  For even if the state were destitute of professors of the aforementioned arts, still the commonwealth could prosper just as in the time of the ancients - for without the theatrical profession and case-pleaders cities were once happy enough, and will again be so; let without tillers of the soil it is obvious that mankind can neither subsist nor be fed."

"For one who would profess to be a master of this science (agriculture - TB) must have a shrewd insight into the works of nature."

"Nevertheless, as Marcus Tullis (Cicero - TB) has very properly sad in his Orator, it is right that those who have an earnest desire to investigate subjects of the greatest utility for the human race, and to transmit to posterity their carefully weighed findings, should try everything.  And if the force of an outstanding genius or the equipment of celebrated arts is wanting, we should not immediately relapse into idleness and sloth, but rather that which we have wisely hoped for we should steadfastly pursue.  For if only we aim at the topmost peak, it will be honour enough for us to be seen even on the second summit."

"For agriculture can be conducted without the greatest mental acuteness, but not on the other hand, "by the fat-witted""

"One who devotes himself to agriculture should understand that he must call to his assistance these most fundamental resources:  knowledge of the subject, means for defraying the expenses, and the will to do the work.  For in the end, as Tremelius (Gnaues Tremellisu Scrofa - TB) remarks, he will have the best-tilled lands who has the knowledge, the wherewithal, and the will to cultivate them."

De Re Rustica

 You are reminded (yet again) that you have married the right girl when, for Valentine's Day, she gets you what you really want:

These are the first two books in the Loeb Classical Library of the three set volume of Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella's works, De Re Rustica (On Agricultural Affairs).  Along with Marcus Porcius Cato The Elder's book De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture) and Marcus Terrentius Varro's book Rerum Rusiticum Libri III (Agricultural Topics in three books), it forms the bulk of what we know about Roman agricultural practices in the late Roman Republic and Early Imperial Periods.  

Of Columella himself, we know very little and it is all from his writings.  We know he was from Baetica Hispania (Modern Spain) and probably born in Gades (modern Cadiz).  We have evidence he was a tribune in the Roman army from a monument in Tarentum (modern Taranto, Italy), possibly having served in Syria.  We can guess, based on other references, that he was born sometimes in the latter reign of Augustus Caesar (~ 4 B.C.) and probably died sometime in the latter part of Nero's reign or in the Year of Four Emperors (~ 68 to 70 A.D.). He had an uncle, Marcus Columella, whom he praises as a good farmer and who, it is a likely guess, he spent some amount time with.  We know he owned farms in Caresoli, Ardea, Albunum, and Caere.  

And we know from his works he was a keen student of agriculture.

His work is divided into 12 books:  Preface, Selection of land and management of farm staff, Soil enrichment/ploughing/crops, Cultivation/pruning/grafting of vines, Cultivation/pruning/grafting of fruit trees and olives, Animal husbandry and care (cattle/horses/mules), Animal husbandry and care (sheep, goats, swine, dogs), Poultry and fish ponds, Apiculture, Gardening, Duties of the farm overseer, and Duties of the farm overseer's wife (including recipes for pickling, preserving, and making wine) - in other words, everything one should know to run a successful farm in the 1st Century A.D.

The work is one of those sorts of historical miracles: known and quoted by Pliny the Elder, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of Seville, it somehow got lost in history only as fragments until copies were found in monastery libraries in the early 15th Century (proving again, by the by, why the idea of creating small communities to preserve knowledge really matters and things like The Benedict Option really matter in the modern world).

I know what you are thinking:  Why such interest?  This is written for a system and way of life that disappeared (literally) centuries ago.  What could it possibly teach us, other than some obscure Latin phrases and give Latin practice.

The first reason, of course, is I simply love a good book, and from what I have read so far (I have completed Volume 1 and am in Volume 2, Book V), Columella is a careful writer.  He knows exactly what he is writing about in great detail and although, for example, I only understand a bit from his chapters of viticulture, I am willing to bet that an actual practitioner would recognize many of the techniques mentioned from his description 2,000 years later.

The second reason is simply that I am interested in low input agriculture.  While the Romans had some technology (including concrete we still cannot replicate), they also were working with very basic conditions:  they were largely dependent on weather as it occurred;  Inputs to the fields were only those they could grow or gather themselves:  green manure, animal manure, even human manure and urine.  There were some exotic plants, but at the same time no farmer was going to "bet the farm" (literally) on an unproven technology or crop.

The third reason is that to me, it reads like a travel log.  Columella writes of grapes that we know nothing of, other than potentially the region they were originally from:  Massic, Surrentine, Alban, Caecuban, Bituric, Aminean, Basilic.  These names, their descriptions, what they imply - to me, they excite me as much as the name of foreign civilizations long dead, that we only know through their architecture and writing.  It becomes an agricultural journey in the Ancient World.

Not all the information is useful, of course.  All authors - Columella, Cato, and Verres - presume the use of slaves to complete the work instead of small independent yeoman farmers (which would eventually become the large Latifundia farms of Italy), so there is also a less savory side to the writings - but quite reflective, given the times.  And it makes some of their advice not applicable at all in current times, as most people (like myself) that are reading such things and even trying to do such things would not have such a labor force available.

Does that make this work (or these works) less useful?  I do not think so.  In modern times, we keep trying to find ways to farm more productively and less destructively.  It turns out - be in in Rome or China or Japan - people had actually been doing this for thousands of years, where maintaining the fertility of the land was a paramount need as one needed the land to produce.  

We need only look back to look ahead.