For a million years Man has hunted and woman has gathered.
As a hunter, man is hard wired to eat meat. Up against prey that was often bigger stronger and faster, man had to rely on team work and stamina.
Meat was consumed to give stamina before the hunt, during the hunt and after the hunt. Once the prey was killed a portion was eaten immediately to provide the strength to carry the rest back to the cave, village or camp.
When man wasn’t hunting the meat consumed was stored as fat on the body to provide substance during absences of consumable meat. Even when man became farmers or fighters the tough physical effort ensured that most meat consumed was needed for energy not stored as fat.
As society became more organised and groups of men no longer hunted, fought or toiled in the field, weight began to become a problem.
Hence fat friars and royalty.
Today less than 10% of the male population toil in the fields and toil today means tractors and quads. Very few men work as physically hard as even 20 years ago; the advent of technology has made life easier even for what were physical jobs (farming, building, contracting, and maintenance).
Now we come to modern man, we are hard wired to eat meat and to convert that meat to fat and unless you physically workout around 12 hours a day you may have a problem.
There are two solutions.
1) Increase your physical work out to match your meat consumption or
2) Stop eating meat.
I prefer a mixture of 1 and 2. I started with 2 only I didn’t stop eating meat I cut back and started eating more vegetables especially salad.
Now eating salad is like doing sit ups if you go from no sit ups to 100 in one go it is bloody hard. It is the same with salad don’t go from none to 250grams in one sitting, it is hard. Like sit ups you build up to it.
Every body should eat 400grams of fruit and vegetables per day, that’s 2.8kg per week. So for a family of five like mine, that’s 14kg per week. Sounds a lot? Well build to it slowly and it really isn’t that much.
Start your salad consumption with 50grams, place you meat on top of the salad and the juices will flow through the salad and it will taste just like the meat. Slowly (days, weeks what suits) cut the amount of meat back but only after you have got up to eating about 150grams of salad. You can still put the meat on top of the salad but the trick is to end up eating the salad first.
Once you have got to 200grams of salad at dinner time and you’re eating your salad first you actually won’t want to eat as much meat. You have now soft wired yourself to eat less meat, there are now many advantages. You should feel better, less stogie so exercise should be easier. So building your fitness is now easier.
Another advantage I have found is during ½ time in a Super 15 game on Friday night put a pie in the microwave for 2 minutes, chuck 250grams of salad on the plate with some cheese and you now have a healthy dinner in time for the second half.
So when I hear a man say “I don’t eat rabbit food” I release it is a million years of hard wiring at work.
Real men don’t let evolution speak for them. They eat Salad.
