What's the Beef?

One of my favorite low carb blogs is PaleoNu. It's basically the perfect approach to diet. Go check it out. The problem I have is the strange attitude the author has toward zero carb. He complains that zero carbers are too dogmatic in their beliefs that "carbs are bad"; that a toleration to plant matter means it's ok to eat it but he also points out that there is no reason to eat it. Basically, zero carbers are considered too dogmatic because we see no value in eating plants even though by his own admission there is no value in eating plants, except, presumably, that he likes them? WTF?

All dietary source carbs do have negative side effects in the body -- from the glucose and fructose to the fiber. These are unavoidable. One can tolerate a little poison but that doesn't mean he should eat it, even if it is really tasty. It is perfectly reasonable therefore to shun plant matter on principle, saying that is it bad; it is in fact bad. This is hardly dogma but objectivity.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

On Zero Carb and Infectious Disease

I essentially follow a zero carb diet. This means that I only eat meat and fat or at least the vast majority of the time. Where I completely believe that this way of eating is superior and leads to optimal health in general, I do not believe that it is a magical cure-all for all disease, especially infectious disease. Recently, at the Zeroing in on Health forum (I had been a member since inception), vaccinations were being discussed. Several people, including the founder of the site, Charles Washington, chimed in that they basically didn't believe in inoculation and that being zero carb would prevent them from contracting infectious diseases. WTF?

In Cancer, Disease and Civilization, Arctic explorer Vilahjmur Stefansson reported that although the Inuit were of great health they did demonstrate a tragic susceptibility to European infectious disease. Charles Washington tried to argue that this was because they had carbs introduced to their diets at that time and so that made them susceptible. Well I have no way of knowing if Stefansson observed infectious disease in carb eating and purely carnivorous Inuit or not but it is known that the rate of tuberculosis, for example, among the Saskatchewan natives dropped dramatically 40 years after they were first exposed to the disease. At this point the Inuit would have been eating a great deal of Western carby foods.

While the Inuit were dying of small pox and other viral diseases, measures to stop the spread of small pox were underway in Europe and the U.S. Keep in mind that at this same time, consumption of carbs and sugar in the U.S. was increasing on average. The small pox vaccination was invented in 1796 and by 1897, after wide spread vaccination programs had begun, the disease was almost non-existent in the U.S. Whether or not this was due to the vaccination programs doesn't matter here so much as the plain fact that while the Inuit populations were experiencing high rates of small pox their carb-eating counterparts to the south were experiencing reduced rates of small pox. Today, of course, small pox has been eradicated.

So in other words: There appears to be no correlation between diet and rates of infectious disease.

A Universal Question

Let's say you live on a small island with a few dozen other people. There is a doctor on this island. One day you find you need medical treatment but you cannot immediately afford his fees. You can afford to pay the local thug who is known to be more than happy to coerce people into doing his bidding. So you:

A: Dictatorship: Hire the thug to coerce the doctor into treating you and/or hire the thug to coerce other islanders into giving you money so that you can afford the treatment.
B: Capitalism: Get together voluntarily with other islanders to create a fund to help each other out in the event that someone can't pay the doctor's fees.
C: Democracy: Get a majority of the islanders to vote to hire the thug to coerce everyone into paying the thug to coerce everyone into paying into a fund to pay the doctor's fees.

Does Democracy legitimize coercion? Leftists and Rightists alike say yes. Good luck with the enslavement. Y'all have been doing really well so far.

Which one of these best matches how Universal Healthcare Blah Blah Fishcakes would be funded?