by Jared Stone
But atop one of the cases is a small rotating turntable. Inside: razors. Safety razors—old ones, though they look brand new. Light glinting off polished chrome. I ask the gentleman behind the counter if he’d mind opening the case.
An hour later, I have both an impossibly sharp chef’s knife and a safety razor with circa 1930s technology. The razor wasn’t exactly cheap, but the replacement blades are a nickel. After spending ten dollars on blades, I have enough to pass on to whichever grandson inherits the device in the middle of the next century.
I also decide to retire the neon-hued shaving cream that smells like a low-rent frat house. Aerosol shaving cream first appeared in 1949, just after the war. Aerosol-propelled creams, called “brushless creams” because one didn’t need a shaving brush to use them, competed on speed (no need to spend that ten seconds lathering!) rather than the quality of shave they gave. Like much of the instant and ready-made food of the time, they harnessed the power of an invented ticking clock to move product.
While I’m out, I pick up a brush and a tub of Geo. F. Trumper shaving cream. Trumper was a barber in London who developed the cream in the late 1800s, and his shop is still operational today. The cream is a little hard to find, but worth it—it features a faint aroma of violet, but without being reminiscent of either chemicals or the fairer sex. It smells the way I imagine Ferdinand the Bull did when he left the bullfight to sit in a field among flowers.
I head home, shower, and lather up. Being a rather scruffy gentleman, I set my razor setting to more than a little aggressive; my beard is a robust and dangerous beast. I’m excited and curious, but also preoccupied. I have a lot to do today. Still thoughtful, I lay the razor on my cheek.
I almost slice my face off.
Startled, I shove some tissue onto the gash on my cheek. I hadn’t even started shaving yet—just inadvertently slid the razor laterally across my cheek, out of absentminded idiocy more than anything else. The tissue blooms crimson as I run through my gamut of swear words.
The pain brings me back to the present. This is no joke. This isn’t something I can do absentmindedly. This is a skill. And if done improperly, it hurts like hell.
Bleeding stifled, I refocus, exhale, and replace the blade on my cheek. Ever so gently, I slip it down my face toward my jawline. It slides through my scruffy beard like a katana through silk.
This is badass.
It is the best, closest, least-irritating shave I’ve ever had. Yes, done poorly or absentmindedly it can shear your face from your skull. But done carefully and consciously, it is a beautiful thing.
My wife pokes her head in. “Jared?” she asks. “How much did it cost to get your knife sharpened? I was checking our balance and that purchase looks too high.”
Evasive action. “I was thinking—how about I take the munchkin out for an hour tomorrow? Give you time to practice?”
Her eyes narrow. “Jared…”
“Two hours?”
She considers. Then sniffs. “Wow, you smell nice.”
One Step Back, they were definitely doing something right.
* * *
It’s a Tuesday. I’m back in the office, and I’m absolutely slammed. The phone is ringing off the hook. I’m keeping two projects locked down in edit while simultaneously writing a third. It’s a pretty standard thousand-miles-a-minute morning for me. But shortly after noon, my day veers sharply from what I’ve come to call normal. I snatch my bag, heavier than usual, off the couch in my office and head for the door.
I set out on foot for a nearby park. I packed a lunch today—leftover pot roast—so I don’t have to track one down. Instead, I can take that time for myself. And I’m going to take it outdoors. The world looks a lot better when viewed out from under fluorescent lights.
I commandeer a picnic table, then pull out the other reason I’m out here and the real reason my bag is so heavy: a massive cookbook. I feel bad reading a book in the office; it broadcasts that I’m not doing something to benefit the company. Out here, however, my time is once more my own. I crack the book, eating yesterday’s dinner, and look into the best way to create tomorrow’s. I find it calming to sift through my beef options—the different cuts, preparations, and presentations—and quietly consider how I should proceed with putting some small slice of my life in order. It’s my little island of calm amid the tempest, sitting outside in the omnipresent California sunshine.
When looking into grass-fed beef in particular, I’ve found that information frequently comes from a number of very specific vectors. First, there are ranchers and farmers, many of them organic or organic-adjacent—perhaps ranchers like Chaffin, who hew to organic principles but lack the certification—and passionate about the products they produce. Their enthusiasm is blatant and infectious—and their agricultural expertise readily apparent, though their culinary skills vary tremendously. But I admire the passion behind the recipes these ranchers offer. Lord knows there are easier ways to make a living.
Slow Food aficionados also have plenty to say about grass-fed beef. The Slow Food movement was technically formed in Rome in 1986, as a protest against the proposed opening of a McDonald’s at the Spanish Steps. Instead of picketing the restaurant site, journalist Carlo Petrini and like-minded supporters appeared at the Steps with bowls of pasta and other homemade regional dishes and picnicked to celebrate the virtues of slow food in pointed contrast with the proposed fast food franchise. Though the restaurant still opened, the Slow Food movement was one whose time had come. Today, through chapters around the world, Slow Food International seeks to preserve and promote the social, gastronomic, and ecological virtues of traditional and ethnic cuisine. Understandably, grass-fed beef occupies a prominent place in the Slow Food universe.
Finally, I glean an enormous amount of information on grass-fed beef from the Weston A. Price community. They’re passionate about grass-fed beef primarily from a health standpoint, as opposed to a purely culinary or ecological stance. But I must admit—they know their stuff. The recipes I’ve tried have been solid, and I feel better than I have in months. Of course, nobody ever became less healthy by eschewing Wonder Bread and Cheetos in favor of less processed alternatives, but I feel undeniably good. The proof is in the free-range, organic pudding.
However, on Web sites of people loosely affiliated with the Weston A. Price outlook, I keep finding recipe variations for people eating Paleo, as in “Paleolithic.” I’m intrigued, in part because of my current One Step Back obsession and also because of my anthropology degree. I learn that these variations are for people striving to eat diets approximating that of our Paleolithic hominid ancestors. Immediately, skepticism drops in like a piano onto a cartoon sidewalk. There’s no such thing as a single Paleolithic diet—it varied by terrain and population.
Ah, well. Whatever. I flip the page of my cookbook. I’m in no hurry to return to the office. One of the Slow Food movement’s goals is to help people integrate good food into their day-to-day routines. There’s wisdom in that idea; I return to the office more refreshed and invigorated than if I’d sat at my desk through my meal. Making my lunch better makes the rest of my day better.
There’s nothing not to like about that.
* * *
During the evening, I resume my research into how to increase the strength and endurance of all the leg muscles that aren’t in use when one runs in shoes. There are Web sites dedicated to doing barefoot right, run by happy, bearded evangelists with “Barefoot” in their names. I find several approaches that all emphasize the same attributes—running bolt upright; not overextending my steps; and taking quick, light, whisper-soft strides.
I also notice something else—people knowledgeable about barefoot running also are frequently, though not always, evangelical about avoiding processed sugars and most grains, whole or not. My ears perk up. Then, on a message board, someone refers to this as Paleo. The Paleo diet, once again. It’s following me. Stalking me.
Or, perhaps given the circumstances, hunting
and gathering me.
I am not the smartest person to ever draw breath on this pale blue marble we call home. But I do know that when several distinct, seemingly unrelated intellectual vectors converge on a particular commonality, I should perhaps pay attention. So, disbelief momentarily suspended but skepticism still firmly in place, I turn my attention to the dietary approach commonly known as Paleo.
The first thing I learn is that there are about a half a dozen sets of lifestyle guidelines and diets all calling themselves some variety of Paleo. In fact, it would be more accurate to characterize the collection of approaches as a Paleo movement, rather than a specific diet per se. Essentially, the Paleo movement takes the Weston A. Price argument one step further. Rather than noting that traditional foods are generally healthier than modern, industrial fare, adherents of the Paleo approach posit that many foods developed after the advent of agriculture—especially those foods created from cereal grains—at best contain suboptimal nutrition and at worst are actively toxic. In short, most modern humans subsist on diets from which they are not evolved to derive maximal nutrition.
Just like grain-fed cattle that don’t derive maximal nutrition from corn.
Just like my dog, Basil, who didn’t look bad when on a diet of (grain-heavy) dry dog food. But she thrived almost beyond belief when we returned to feeding her in a manner closer to the food she evolved to eat.
In a way, this approach posits that most people eat in a manner opposite that of the way we feed zoo animals across the world. For example, just because a chimp can eat a certain food—Cheetos, for example—without dropping dead doesn’t mean that a benevolent zookeeper would consider them a suitable food for that animal. A benevolent zookeeper would feed that chimp a diet optimized for its species. Every day, however, humans feed themselves an enormous variety of nutritionally suboptimal foods. It’s an interesting argument. And so I wonder, viewed objectively, how many of the foods that people frequently eat would be considered a suitable food for humans? If an alien landed in LA, abducted a Kardashian, and examined them in a lab, what would the aliens feed that “animal” after it was placed in an extraterrestrial zoo? What foods would keep a person in optimal health?
Like the Weston A. Price folks, the various branches of the Paleo family tree have strong views on what people should ideally eat. Whereas these branches don’t overlap completely, they do share commonalities. First, whole foods. Eat stuff that either used to walk around or once grew from the ground and was edible with minimal processing. Broadly, this would be stuff that could be hunted or gathered, but not exclusively. This largely describes my diet now.
Second, however, Paleo adherents eschew cereal grains entirely. Corn, wheat, rye, barley—all of them. Period. Gone. Grains are avoided partly because they’re nutrient-poor and irritant-rich. Gluten, a protein found to varying degrees in grains, is completely intolerable to sufferers of celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder. In celiac sufferers, the gluten proteins set off a chain reaction in the small intestine, causing ferocious gastrointestinal distress in the short term and a reduced ability to absorb fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, K, and E) in the long term, potentially causing further complications due to malnutrition.
Gluten intolerance can also be found in non-celiac individuals to varying degrees, with symptoms ranging from abdominal discomfort to joint pain to generalized inflammation. Cereal grains also contain compounds that inhibit the absorption of other minerals by the body. Among Paleo folk, the real or potential grain-derived health perils are generally not considered worth the relatively minor nutritional value those grains provide.
Further, Paleo adherents avoid nearly all processed sugar as a matter of course. Ditto sugar substitutes such as aspartame, saccharin, stevia, and the like. Especially sodas and sugared beverages; the human body is really bad at recognizing calories in a liquid form. The extremely high levels of sugar found in a modern American diet spike blood glucose levels through the roof and tax the pancreas—possibly to the point of partial failure, which manifests as type 2 diabetes. Prior to that, however, cells can grow accustomed to elevated levels of insulin in the body—required by a high-starch, high-sugar diet—and then become resistant to insulin’s effect. As a result, the pancreas must produce even more insulin to compensate, taxing it even more and furthering the diabetic spiral.
So what’s left? After cutting out processed foods, grains, and any sugar that didn’t come from a bee or a bush—what’s left to eat? Veggies. Lots and lots of veggies. Whole foods that come out of the ground in a naturally edible form and ready for consumption. Also, meat. Preferably meat humanely raised—without the use of unnecessary antibiotics or growth hormones—on the food that the animal itself evolved to eat, such as grass in the case of cows. Hence the Paleo community’s love of grass-fed beef.
In a way, the various Paleo philosophies overlap pretty significantly with the edicts of the Weston A. Price community that have served me so well thus far. If anything, the Paleo suggestions go a step further. Avoid all sugar, refined or not. Avoid grains entirely, fermented or not. Eat lots of nutrient-dense vegetables. Eat high-quality protein that, when alive, lived in a way that was natural to the animal.
One thing the Paleo community does not shy away from is fat. Unlike starches and sugars, fat actually forms structural elements of the body—cell membranes and hormones, for example. In addition, fats are a ready source of quick energy and a medium for fat-soluble vitamins. Further, fat triggers certain receptors in our gastrointestinal tract, causing us to feel “full.” People tend to find dietary fat extremely satisfying.
What Paleo adherents do pay attention to, however, is the type of fat: stuff you could find in or around nature. Coconuts. Avocados. Nuts. Animal fats from pastured animals. Stuff that could go bad, rather than products designed to last until the next ice age. To be avoided are industrial, highly processed, or refined fats: vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, shortening. I’m avoiding most of that stuff already. Studies have shown industrial fats can have a variety of undesirable effects on the body, and whatever nutrients were present in the original food, if any, are destroyed by the high-heat refining process.
Although all the Paleo approaches seem to vary somewhat around the edges, the core principles are very similar. They aren’t diets per se, in the faddish sense (though some approaches could be described as fads), and the archetypal “Paleolithic ancestor” is just an illustrative tool, rather than an attempt to emulate a specific preagricultural population. The approaches are more descriptions of how the body works and how a person can run it at optimal efficiency. Like cows eating corn or runners wearing crazy shoes—the body didn’t evolve to get plantar fasciitis at the first hint of a 5K—we’ve put the body in a position for which it isn’t really adapted.
Running shoes have been around for only about fifty years. Agriculture has been around for about twelve thousand years, but Homo sapiens have been around for two hundred thousand years. Homo erectus first stood up somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.7 million years ago. Like shoes to runners, agriculture confers some definite dramatic and tangible advantages to those who utilize it. However, a civilization’s adoption of agriculture historically was frequently accompanied in the archaeological record by signs of malnutrition in their skeletal remains, as well as increases in dental cavities. Though one should be careful not to generalize a process as widespread and varied as the adoption of agriculture, there is some evidence to assert that the adoption of agriculture frequently led to overreliance on one or a small number of foods and had some systemic detrimental effect on health—in addition to the positive effects of ready food sources as a hedge against starvation.
We evolved to avoid diseases of food scarcity. Today, however, many of our diseases are diseases of abundance. “In the wild,” sweet things are rare. Berries. Honey. The saps of some trees. Our bodies evolved to like sweet things, because in nature sweetness indicated that a food would provide an intense simple-sugar burst of energy—a ra
rity. For millions of years, there was no worry about us overdosing on sweet things. Now, there is.
Preagriculture, corn actually looked like the grass that it is: pinhead-sized kernels on slender amber stalks. It would be hard to live on a diet composed of 69 percent preagricultural corn. But now, Americans consume about 69 percent of their calories from this mutant grass in one form or another.
Rather than consisting of a dour list of prohibitions, however, the various Paleo philosophies celebrate the foods that they consider healthy and wholesome in much the same way that the Slow Food and Weston A. Price movements do. Grass-fed and pastured animal protein. Offal. Copious amounts of vegetables. Good fats. In addition, there is an emphasis on physical exuberance. On moving with joy as well as with ferocity. On sucking the marrow out of life—both literally and figuratively. I like that.
I’m intrigued. As with barefoot running, I can’t really see any downside to self-experimentation. My One Step Back approach has served me well so far. I wonder what will happen if I take it one step further.
I was down the rabbit hole before. Now, I wonder how deep it goes.
* * *
It’s Wednesday night. Declan is playing with blocks in the living room. I’m standing barefoot in my kitchen next to Summer, trying to figure out something for dinner. We aren’t having any luck.
“I could make spaghetti,” Summer offers.
“Nah,” I say. Spaghetti is made from grains. As an experiment, I’ve decided to eschew grains for a while and see how it makes me feel. So far, it makes me feel like crap. Sluggish, fuzzy-headed—just a bit out of sorts. Still, I will persist. I’m nothing if not persistent. This experiment does not, however, make it easier to put together dinner for the family. “What about a salad?” I offer.