Comments

Episode-2136- Expert Council Q&A for 12-21-17 — 9 Comments

  1. Jack, Concerning you comment on dog diet.  One of our older Dachshunds was very ill last week.  Replacing his rather expensive brand of dog food with chicken hearts really seemed to help turn his condition around.  Diversity of diet is certainly important but I think we may have found one of the big blocks in his new food pyramid.

    Any reason why not?

  2. Jack, the drop in crypto today maybe due to the tax bill that just passed. The original senate bill had a bunch of crypto related stuff that would make it a good idea to sell before the end of the year.

    • I saw that too when trying to find if there was a trigger event for the continuing crash in crypto prices yesterday.  I don’t think it was the primary catalyst as this news looks to have emerged as the prices were already dropping, but it may be adding some downward pressure.

      Supposedly it makes moving between different cryptocurrencies no longer a “like kind exchange”, and while the tax rule change doesn’t specifically mention cryptocurrency the wording at least appears to logically lead to this effect.  If so then it’s probably a good idea to move cryptocurrency one has from Coinbase to a different exchange or wallet that the IRS doesn’t have potential visibility in or leverage over (maybe before Jan 1st when the tax rule takes effect?).  At least whatever portion of said crypto that one expects to eventually convert to other currencies.

  3. Jack, you have stopped listing the length of your shows. Not a huge deal but I really miss it. Sometimes I spend several hours a day in my work truck and knowing the length when I am downloading makes it easier to know what other shows I have time for. I prefer to learn while I drive than listen to the same music over and over. Not a big deal but I miss it. Love the show.

  4. It was great to hear the favorable coverage of the carnivore diet.

    Besides being perfectly healthy, an all- or mostly-meat diet is simple and cheap from a prepping perspective. Right now my freezers are loaded with bacon, pork belly, hamburger, and steak. I purchase all of this food when the prices are super-low. For instance, with Christmas coming up the local groceries are selling ribeye roasts as a loss-leader for $4.77/lb. (They have a 1 roast per visit policy but it’s easy to get around this). When I bring them home I carve them into steaks and throw them in the freezer.

    While frozen meat doesn’t have the longevity of beans, rice, and pasta, I know I will be able to get through a lot of lengthy grid-down situations with my freezers, car engine, inverter, ice-maker, outdoor grill, extra gas, and extra propane.

    As pointed out ,this isn’t the most entertaining diet but I don’t think many people denied access to the local grocery store for a few days would turn down a ribeye steak seasoned with some salt and pepper.

    Regarding the Vitamin C/scurvy question, the way I look at it is that turning plants into meat (us) is a more complicated chemical process than turning meat into meat. And therefore our body requires more chemical co-factors to complete the process.

    I’d enjoy you talking more about this from a prepping perspective. Also, Dr. Baker seems to be making the podcast rounds quite a bit lately … maybe you could have him on the show.

     

    • I agree with all of that, I am booked with guests out till almost April abut we can reach out to him later about being on.

      On scurvy I put those concerns up there with rabbit starvation, NONSENSE in the modern world.

      Random Person “But but but muh rabbit starvation or muh scurvy.”

      Me – “Have you ever seen a single person get _______ in your life”

      Random Person – “No but I read a forum post and…..”

      Me – “Dude shut the fuck up and find something else worth worrying about”.

      As Gary said scurvy was mostly being stuck on a boat for months at a time with no vegetation at all. If you eat any level of vegetation you are not going to get scurvy. You are more likely to be killed by a metaor then get scurvy or rabbit starvation if you in fact eat rabbit for dinner 5 nights a week and never eat and orange.

  5. Jack, I was intrigued by your observations about the comparison between the flow-through wicking bed and the passive (ordinary) wicking bed, and took the question to my friend the plant physiologist. We had a lot of fun drawing diagrams of root zones and wicking bed layers, and here is the upshot. It is probably not that the flow-through changes any nutrient concentration as far up as the root zone of (say) a garlic bulb, but it might be more effective at keeping a consistent moisture level throughout the bed once the medium is charged.

    The difference from the passive bed might be subtle and hard to tell by feel alone. It occurs to me that an inexpensive moisture meter might be a good item of the day. (I just got one because the old finger-in-the-dirt method was not sensitive enough for the indoor citrus I am working on growing; Meyer lemons are fussy.) The whole thing would make a great homeschool science project, of course. 🙂

    Oh, and fun fact: alliums (including garlic) have contractile roots that actually pull the bulbs into the ground. I thought that was pretty cool.