Truth & Lies

Author: askfibs

I just feel like throwing out some thoughts on a few things that aren’t complete bullshit, just about 50% bullshit.

Paleo Diet

The Lie

Humans of the Paleolithic Era (~10,000 years ago) had evolved digestive systems specialized for their hunter-gatherer diet, but humans and their food have not evolved a lick since then, so we should still be eating it to magically make all disease go away.

That means no agriculture and no ranching, so no grains and no dairy. Just meat, fish, vegetables, and nuts.

The Truth

The Paleo Diet does one thing right – it discourages eating processed and preserved food. Just about everybody agrees that processed and preserved food is not healthy.

However, the idea that humans magically stopped evolving 10,000 years ago is at odds with any and all scientific knowledge on the matter. Here are just a few of the more obvious ways the world is different today:

• Paleolithic adult humans were all lactose-intolerant. Most adult animals are. Humans evolved the ability to drink milk because we started keeping goats, cows, etc.
• The human jaw is smaller than it was in the Paleolithic Era because we don’t need a big strong jaw to eat tender-cooked meats and stews. (But our teeth are the same size, so many of us have crooked teeth that don’t fit in our silly modern-day baby mouths.)

Not only have humans evolved, but so has the food we eat. Many vegetables like broccoli are modern inventions created by artificially selecting breeding pairs. Most of the produce you find in the market won’t germinate if planted, because they are almost all man-made hybrid plants and most hybrids cannot consistently reproduce. Modern bananas have no seeds at all and continue to exist only with human assistance.

So not only is the Paleo Diet no longer the “evolved ideal”, but it would be impossible to replicate even if it was, because we no longer have the food they ate in the first place.

Studies on the Paleo Diet suggest an improvement in cardiovascular health consistent with avoiding processed foods and sugar/salt preservatives, but no other particular benefits compared to any other diet that does the same. There is a risk of Vitamin D and calcium deficiency, and eating too much fish (especially higher-on-the-chain fish like sharks) carries a risk of mercury poisoning.

The Paleo Diet is just another marketing gimmick for relevant companies to sell their product more easily. Stop falling for this voodoo bullshit.

Susan B. Anthony

The Lie

(as told by the original Powerpuff Girls, S03 E12B “Equal Fights”)

Susan B. Anthony lived in the U.S. in an era where women were not allowed to vote. When she did that anyway, she got arrested, and when the authorities tried to go easy on her because she was a woman, she demanded a jail sentence in order to be treated equally to a man.

And now she’s the first woman to be featured on U.S. currency.

The Truth

Susan B. Anthony lived

in the U.S.

in an era where women were not allowed to vote. When she did that anyway, she got arrested, refused to pay the fine, and then made the 19th Amendment & shoved it up the government’s ass.

And now she’s the first woman to be featured on U.S. currency.

It’s stupid to say that the authorities “went easy” on a woman for violating a law specifically designed to discriminate against women in an era where women were legally treated as property of men, and it’s also stupid to say that Anthony demanded a jail sentence “to be treated the same as a man”. She would be treated the same as a man by being allowed to vote – which is probably why she not only tried to vote but changed the highest law of the nation specifically to permit it.

19th Amendment

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

I’m not sure whether Anthony or her bestie Elizabeth C. Stanton

actually wrote any of the 19th Amendment themselves, but they were definitely the key forces in bringing it to the attention of Congress; both had been very loud feminists for over 20 years by then. At the time, the public referred to it as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, so I presume she was the louder one.

Forgetting about the 19th Amendment may be the worst-possible oversight in any feminist story, not to mention questionable for a colossal nerd like Blossom who ought to know her god damn history.

… but then it would have had nothing to do with the episode, which was about a female criminal saying men couldn’t arrest her because then they’d be males bullying a female and the PPG saying yo fuck that do not pass go.

So eh, what can ya do.

Author: askfibs

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