The Smarter Science of Slim: Advanced Review Copy

Raised on the standard American diet, I’ve been overweight for most of my life. Around 1995, I decided to read up on nutrition and health, and devise an eating strategy. My goal was to eat myself into a six-pack and achieve optimal nutrition. Unfortunately, it didn't quite happen like that.

The first book I read on health and nutrition was John Robbins’ Diet for a New America, and it shocked the hell out of me. I had no idea how cruelly animals were treated in our industrial agricultural system, or that meat it produces contains pesticides, hormones, growth and appetite stimulants, tranquilizers and antibiotics. It was enough to make a person sick—or vegetarian in my case.

Vegetarianism jibed with my personal ethics, and I assumed that what I was doing was healthy—until my health started to decline. Although I looked thinner, the ring of fat around my midsection had actually grown, and my body became much frailer. Lethargic and weak, I would often catch colds, and in October of 2001 I suddenly came down with debilitating, year-round allergies, or chronic rhinitis. Undaunted though, I kept at it, delving deeper into vegetarian and vegan literature. I even started running. Yet despite all of this, I was still fat. Fat and frail.

When I would talk with people about weightloss, they would invariably say the same thing. It's a numbers game: calories in, calories out. If you expend more calories than you eat, then you are guaranteed to lose weight. If you eat more than you expend, then you are guaranteed to get fat. It’s that simple. However, as I would later find out, it’s not that simple at all. It’s actually quite complex.

My foray into this realm of complexity began about a year and a half ago, in 2010, when a friend recommended reading Lierre Keith’s The Vegetarian Myth. Always up for some controversy, I picked up a copy, and was inspired by her environmental message, but found the book lacking in two crucial aspects: Keith completely misrepresented vegetarians, the group her book targets, and she seemed to know nearly nothing about nutritional health. Yet this didn’t stop her from making a bunch of random and often times vague nutritional recommendations that including eating more animal protein, saturated fat and cholesterol.

Unpersuaded by Keith’s claims, I nevertheless wanted to understand how she came to have such unorthodox nutritional views in the first place, and scoured her index for clues. Two sources kept appearing over and over: Protein Power by Drs. Michael and Mary Eades and Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Although written by two respected doctors, Protein Power sounded like an Atkins-type fad diet, so I shelved it and opted to read Good Calories, Bad Calories. As it turned out, this one source was a much richer vein than the book itself.

Taubes was a revelation. His book totally obliterated the old “calories in, calories out” model, and I finally understood why—vegetarian, vegan or carnivore—I could not lose weight. Unfortunately, Taubes’ book did not contain any specific dietary information, so I was at a loss about how to put this information to work.

Enter Jonathan Bailor and the New Science of Slim. The first thing I noticed about Bailor’s book was how well it was written. He has a very casual writing style that I found inviting. The next thing I noticed was how superbly the book was researched. Not only is Bailor easy to understand, but every fact he presents is backed by a host of credible sources—a rarity in science writing of any kind.

Much like Taubes, Bailor spends a good portion of the book showing how and why the calorie in-calorie out theory is false, but he takes the discussion much farther by giving specific dietary recommendations based on four factors: satiety, aggression, nutrition and efficiency. (Sorry, but you'll have to read the book for a detailed explanation of these factors.) Similar to the Paleo Diet, which I have had much success with recently, Bailor recommends cutting out simple carbohydrates, like rice, wheat, corn, potatoes and sugar, and upping the intake of nutrient- and protein-rich seafood, lean meats, non-starchy vegetables, nuts, seeds and fruits.

Bailor does not stop with diet, though. He also devotes a hefty chunk of the book to the subject of exercise, and the benefits of short, infrequent, high-intensity resistance training. Although I’m not a bodybuilder by any means, I’ve been lifting weights on and off for over a decade, and recently started dabbling with Cross Fit, yet in all these years I have never encountered anything similar to Bailor’s hormone-triggering eccentric lifting techniques—a way of maximizing muscle fiber use while minimizing actual lifting time. These are simple, easy, effective lifting techniques that anyone can do, anywhere. You won’t need to go to a gym or purchase any special equipment. A huge bonus.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Bailor’s book is that he is not pushing any product, industry or ideology above and beyond the book itself. He has merely collated the results of hundreds of current scientific findings into a compact, easy-to-understand guide for the nutritionally perplexed. The Smarter Science of Slim will help you discover that losing weight and feeling great do not involving eating less and hauling your butt into the gym five nights a week. It’s about eating and exercising more intelligently.

If you want to learn how to eat right, exercise more effectively and shed fat, I can’t think of a better book.

Are humans meant to eat meat?

Vegetarians will often tell you that humans did not evolve to eat meat. Take the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt72EPHpS_U

Now, I’m by no means an expert on this subject, but it doesn’t take a degree in evolutionary biology to realize that almost everything about this video is complete and utter bullshit. For starters, it lumps the world into two categories—carnivores and herbivores—when in fact human beings are by all accounts omnivores. And as an omnivore, meat is definitely on the menu.

Take, for example, the Maasai of Kenya, who along with maze-meal rely on meat, milk and the blood of cattle. Yum. And there are the Plains Indians, who along with wild fruits, roots and vegetables, ate almost every edible part of the buffalo—not just blood and bone marrow, but also raw intestines and the half-digested prairie grass they contained. A delicacy according to Lame Deer. Or how about the Chinese? Along with rice and pork, they have been known to eat monkey brains, ox penis and pretty much anything else you can imagine.

But let’s get specific. How exactly is this video bullshit? Let's take it point for point.

1. “Carnivores have long pointed jaws and large incisors for tearing at flesh. Herbivores have rounded jaws for munching vegetation.”

First of all, let's look at the chimpanzee, since it split from human evolution about 6 million years ago and is the closest living relative to humans, sharing about 94-95% of our DNA.

What do chimps eat?

Although their primary source of food is plants, the chimpanzee diet is, not surprisingly, omnivorous. Along with fruits and plants, they also eat insects, and will steal eggs and baby chicks from bird nests whenever the opportunity arises. Chimps especially love eating termites, and have ingenious methods for catching them. When fingers alone don't cut it, they craft special tools from stems and sticks to coax the termites out their mounds.

Chimps also gather into groups and hunt for meat—in their case, baby bushbuks, colobus monkeys, young baboons and other small mammals. As with humans, it is mostly the male chimpanzees that hunt, and all together meat consists of about 5% of their diet.

All together, the chimpanzees are known to eat over 200 different types of foods. They are extremely intelligent creatures capable of learning from their experience. They use different tools for hunting, breaking open coconuts or similar hard-shelled fruits, and smoking out termites and ants from their underground homes.

Which brings us to humans...

Few would argue that homo sapiens probably started out eating much like our cousin, the chimp: an omnivorous diet rich in variety. However, at some point prior to the dawn of the Paleolithic era, around 2.6 million years ago, we evolved away from a chimp diet and chimp lifestyle (as is evident from all the hunting tools unearthed by archeologists), and this shift changed our physiology. To understand this change, we should take a quick look at the physiological differences between chimps and humans.

What makes us different from chimps?

Well, aside from standing upright and having less hair (some less than others), we also have shorter intestines and much larger brains—so large in fact that passing a baby’s head through the birth canal is a matter of life and death for the mother.

Why did our brains get larger? Or an even better question: How could our brains have gotten larger?

To understand the answer to this question we must look inward, at the structure of the brain itself. The human brain is comprised of 60% fat, and not just any fat, but a specific kind of fat—omega-3 fatty acids. And since our body can't produce omega-3 fatty acids, we must get it directly from our food.

To properly form and function, the human brain (along with the components of our eyes’ photoreceptors) requires omega-3 fatty acids from the time we are still forming in our mother's belly to the day we die. Without them, we become weak and frail, eventually diseased. However, the amount of omega-3 fatty acids that our brains required to evolve in size and complexity could not be met with an herbivore diet—that is, unless our Paleolithic ancestors were cold pressing flax and hemp seeds for their oil (unlikely, given that neither agriculture nor industry had been developed).

Currently, there are two prominent theories of how we got additional omega-3s in our diet. The first theory claims that our species began eating more seafood and fish—rich sources of omega-3 fatty acids. The other theory, what I like to call the Savage Scavenger Theory, suggests that we began cracking open the skulls and bones of animal carcasses with rocks or hatchets after they had been killed by lions, and ate the omega-3 rich marrow and brains.

Since these theories are not mutually exclusive, I’m partial to believing both. I assume that like our chimp cousins, we were smart enough to exploit multiple niches and eat a wide variety of foods. In any event, as a result of eating more fish or meat (or, more likely, fish and meat), human intestines shrank and our brains grew—which corresponds neatly with the zero-sum nature of our bodies. Chimps and gorillas, on the other hand, have longer intestines, which correspond to their plant-heavy diet.

2. “Carnivores have many natural hunting skills, like night vision.”

First of all, night vision is an ability—not a skill. Skills are usually acquired or learned; abilities are often thought of as innate. And although it is true, that we don’t have night vision, we are certainly not shy on innate ability or skill as a species. The gift of intelligence our large brains endowed us with gave us a huge advantage when it came to making hunting tools, such as spears and axes. And thankfully, we are not limited to using our tools and intelligence only at night, when we can’t see. We can also hunt during the daytime. Duh.

3. “Another ability hunting animals possess is the speed and ability to catch a wild animal with their bare hands.”

Recent researchers (e.g., Bernd Heinrich's Why We Run) have shown that humans, natural born endurance runners, can chase down a gazelle during the heat of the day, but you don’t have to believe that to understand the above claim is bullshit. Again, humans have big brains—and thus technology—so we don’t have to rely on our bare hands to hunt. We evolved axes, knives, spears and the bow-and-arrow to do things our hands can't. Moreover, with the ability to communicate and cooperate, we can hunt in groups, which makes much more formidable. All of these hunting abilities were quite remarkable, even by Paleolithic standards.

4. “A meat eaters intestines are very short, so that the fat content can be absorbed into its body. Humans have long intestines and must wait days to digest meat.”

Again, our intestines shrunk when we started eating seafood and meat. We do not have the same intestines as a chimp or gorilla. This is a fact.

5. “Excess fat absorption can lead to heart attacks and strokes.”

First of all, what kind of fat? There are many kinds: including monosaturated fats (MSF), saturated fats (SF) and polysaturated fats (PSF). MSFs, found in olive oil, nuts and avocados, have been proven to lower cholesterol and help prevent artery clogging. SFs, found in meats and dairy products, were standard fare for the 2.4 million years we gathered and hunted wild game, but then suddenly became “bad fats” in the 1950s when the late physiologist Ancel Keys and his now-infamous "Seven Countries Study" concluded that higher saturated fat consumption leads to increased levels of cholesterol and thus a greater occurrence of heart disease (aka "The Lipid Hypothesis"). However, as bestselling author and science journalist Gary Taubes so brilliantly outlined in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories, the data supporting Keys' claims was severely flawed and he made some rather misleading conclusions as a result.

Moreover, not all meat is equal. Meat from cows that have been fed grains—which are not part of their natural diet—has a low quantity of omega-3 fatty acids and a high amount of omega-6 fatty acids, which have been proven to cause inflammation. However, meat from grass-fed cows—or rather, cows allowed to feed on grass, the food they evolved to eat—is much healthier all around, containing a high amount of brain- and heart-friendly omega-3 fatty acids, and less inflammation-causing omega-6 fatty acids.

6. “Carnivores have special enzymes in their stomachs that kill the bacteria in rotting meat, and they love the way dead animals smell. Herbivores are without these enzymes and must find some other way to kill the bacteria, lest it kill them.”

Why would a human being want or need to eat rotting meat? A carnivorous scavenger might eat a rotting carcass; not a hunter. —Nor would he need to with all that fresh meat lying at his feet.

7. “Human culture may have evolved to eat meat, but your bodies have not.”

Oh, but they most certainly have. As I already mentioned, our big-ass brains simply would not have evolved had our ancestors avoided eating omega-3 fatty acid-rich meat and seafood. Chimps are not chimps because they lack a proper culture, they lack the proper brains.

8. “Eating meat is like smoking tobacco. Humans have done it for centuries and find it pleasurable, but in the end it can kill you.”

Although Ancel Keys would agree, there is a growing body of evidence that this statement is utter bullshit. If you like cheap yet convincing documentaries, see comedian (and chronic meat-eating) Tom Naughton's “Fat Head.” If you are of a more academic bent, read Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories. Or, hell, hit 'em both up.

9. “If you want to find out if your own species is carnivorous, try this test: Give a baby an apple and a bunny. If it plays with the apple and eats the bunny, you’ve got a carnivore.”

Fail. First of all, babies don’t eat apples or bunnies. Certainly not whole. They drink mother’s milk—and should continue to do so at least until age two according to the World Health Organization. In most tribal cultures, babies are breastfed for at least three years. In any event, if you actually gave your darling infant daughter a whole apple—and I have—she will indefinitely play with it. Which she did. But along with breast milk, she does eat apples (mashed), along with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and fish. She’s not picky. I imagine she’d eat rabbit too—although we haven't yet tried. As long as it wasn’t served whole and raw, that is.

Certainly a chimp wouldn't turn down a delicious plate of beer-braised wabbit, and perhaps you shouldn't either.

Love Crystal

Many years ago, I bought a book called Love, Hate and Everything in Between: Expressing Emotions in Japanese, but it wasn’t until I got married and had a baby that actually pulled it off the shelf and began to read it. It was from that book that I gleaned the title of my speech today, Ai no Kesshou (“The Crystal of Love”). It’s a great title, don’t you think?

Perhaps it’s difficult for you to agree with me. My wife told me that the expression is a bit kusai, or smelly. In English, we might say it’s a bit too lovey-dovey. But be honest, and tell me what you think. Is it a bit kusai? Don’t give me any tatemae (a politic answer rather an honest opinion). You’re not going to hurt my feelings.

Smelly or not, I decided to go with “The Crystal of Love” because I thought it was a very beautiful expression in English. We have a similar expression in English—“love child”—but I prefer to the Japanese expression, and the next time I return to America, I intend to pass it along to my friends and family. Perhaps the expression will catch fire and spread.

The way we speak about love and our loved ones is different from culture to culture—and perhaps there is no greater difference than that between Japan and America. In Japan, it’s considered uncouth to praise your family members publically. In fact, depreciation of one’s family has almost been elevated to an art form.

For example, if someone were to say, “Your wife is so beautiful,” you might reply with “Not at all. You should see her without makeup—ugh. And her cooking? My god, it’s atrocious!” In a like manner, if someone were to say, “Your son is so smart,” the average Japanese would likely reply with, “You must have my son confused for someone else’s. He’s a total idiot.” I sometimes even hear Japanese people refer to their son or daughter as uchi no baka—literally, “our house fool.”

Of course, this is all just tatemae, but in America, whether serious or not, if you were to actually say such a thing, people would think you were an uncultured, heartless beast. One of the rudest things you can do in America is badmouth your own family—it’s considered the height of ingratitude. Thus, you will often hear Americans praising loved ones: such as “my brilliant son,” “my lovely wife” or “my adorable daughter”—whether they really mean it or not.

Another one of the many useful expressions I found in the book was oya no yokume, “the biased eye of the parent.” I can understand this expression easily enough, for perhaps I have a biased eye of my own. I can’t help but feel that my daughter is the most beautiful baby on the face of the planet. No doubt, every parent feels this way about their baby, but since I’m an American I can say it shamelessly. I’ll spare your ears the pain of having to hear me to say it again, though.

Perhaps it’s just tatemae, but people often tell me that my wife is beautiful. I can’t help but agree. “Of course, she’s beautiful! If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have married her!” I want to say, but if I said this in Japanese, I’d just sound like a shameless braggart, so instead I say: “Not at all. You should see her without makeup—ugh. And her cooking? My god, it’s atrocious!” To be honest, though, I really do think she is beautiful. Perhaps it’s just my "biased husband eyes" (otto no yokume).

People often ask me if there is “tatemae” (public face) and “honne” (one’s secret, true feelings) in America. Of course there is. We’re just not as good at changing masks as the Japanese. For example, the last time I was in Oregon, I got a chance to see my sister’s new son Calvin. Although Calvin was probably the ugliest baby I have ever seen in my life, I told my sister he was very cute. Later, when I was talking to my mother in private, I said, “Can you believe how ugly that baby is? He looks more like an alien than a human being.”* Needless to say, she was shocked. “How could say such a thing?” she said. I suppose a Japanese person would have done a better job keeping his honne corked. As the old expression goes, uso mo houben da—or “even lies can have Buddha nature.”

[* No offense, Sis. Calvin has since become quite a handsome little devil.]

Oyagokoro (literally, “parent’s heart” or the love one has for his or her child) is another cool Japanese expression. Recently, one of my friend's daughters was to be marreid. Before giving away his daughter, he told her, "After you get married, if things ever get rough, feel free to come home." Hearing this, my wife said, "That’s oyagokoro.” I don’t agree, though. A truly loving father would never have let that wolf get his claws on his little princess in the first place! Personally, I’ll never let my daughter marry. That is oyakokoro!

All the same, I don’t want my daughter to end up a hakoiri musume—that is, a sheltered “daughter in a box.” For starters, I don’t think my chubby little love crystal could fit in a box. She’s rather big-boned. Perhaps a large chest or small closet would be more suiting.

Anyway, enough with the jokes. I came here to give a serious talk about a serious subject. What was it, again? Oh, that’s right—my “crystal of love.” I find this expression quite apt when it comes to child rearing. As with crystals so with children: conditions must be perfect for them develop.

Like crystals, children require a certain environment and certain key ingredients to grow. Just what are those ingredients one needs for successful child rearing? Many people might stress how important money is. Personally, I don’t think it’s so important. In fact, if you read the tabloids, it would seem that the kids with most money often have the most problems. There is an old expression that goes, "More money, more problems." Perhaps a little poverty is good for a child's moral growth. In any event, I've certainly got that covered!

Another ingredient I think is very important is family. In Africa, there is an old saying: “It takes a village to raise a child.” I couldn’t agree more. Luckily, my daughter is blessed with the love and support of four generations under one roof—all the way up to her eighty-eight year old great grandmother. So when it comes to the family ingredient, our little love crystal is more than blessed.

Of coruse, the most important ingredient of all is love. Love is the end all be all of child-rearing. Working at the middle school, I often talk with students about their daily lives. And I always find it shocking when a student tells me that he rarely ever sees his father. This is a particularly Japanese phenomenon. Traditionally, child-rearing in Japan was thought to be women's work—and that tradition, although weakened, is still very much alive today. I personally couldn't stand such an arrangment. Not only do I want to spend time with my daughter, I think it's absolutely essential for a child to feel the father's love.

Listening to all of this, you might be inclined to retch and call me oya-baka (“parent stupid”—that is, a doting parent). That’s fine. I suppose I am. Just so long as I’m not a baka-oya (“stupid parent”).

Thank you for listening.

愛の結晶

何年か前に「愛とにくしみ、そしてその間の全て」という本を買いましたが、結婚して子供が生まれるまで一度も読まなかったです。その本から今日のスピーチの題名、「愛の結晶」を引用しました。私はとてもすばらしい題名だと思いましたが、妻によると、愛の結晶という表現はちょっと感傷的で、「臭いだ」と、普通の日本人はそう感じるでしょうと言いました。

まあ、臭いかどうか「愛の結晶」に決めたのは、英語にするととてもステキな表現になるからです。「ラブ・クリスタル」なんてステキじゃないですか。英語にも似たような「ラブ・チャイルド」という表現はありますが、また今度アメリカに帰ったら、ぜひ友達や家族に「ラブ・クリスタル」という表現を教えたいと思います。新語になるかもしれません。

愛と家族についての話し方は世界様々です。その中、アメリカ人と日本人が全く逆なのです。日本では、他の人に自分の家族を自慢することがとても野暮なことです。むしろバカにすることが普通じゃないですか。

例えば、「奥さんはきれいですね」と言ってくれたら、「冗談じゃないよ、ケショウを落としたら、見られたもんじゃないよ、それにご飯もまずし」とか「いや、間違えた結婚しちゃったんだよ」などと、ケナスに違いありません。

まあまあ、建前だと思いますが、冗談かどうかアメリカで同じことをいったら、野蛮だと思われてしまいます。家族の悪口を言うのがアメリカではとても許されないことです。恩知らずということです。ですから、アメリカでは「家の子頭いい」とか「 最愛の妻きれい」などと、家族のほめ言葉をよく聞きます。本音かどうかは別です。

その本の「親の欲目」という表現も気に入りました。私はこの言葉がよく分かります。なぜかと言うと、自分が親の欲目を持っているからです。我が愛娘がこの地球上でもっとも美しい赤ちゃんだと、どうしても思いたくて仕方ありません。まあ、みんなさんも同じことを言うかもしれませんが。でも私はアメリカ人で生まれたから、恥ずかしく思わずストレートに言えます。恥を知らぬが仏。

建前かもしれせんが、「奥さん奇麗ですね」と言ってくれる人が多い。そう言われたら、「当たり前だよ、そうじゃなきゃ、結婚しなかっただろう」とアメリカ人らしくて、いつも返事したいけれど、日本でそういったら、「あつかましい男だ」と思われてしまいますから、「冗談じゃないよ、ケショウを落としたら、見られたもんじゃないよ、それにご飯もまずし」とか言います。でもまあ、正直に言えば、奥さんは奇麗だと思いますよ。夫の欲目かもしれません。

アメリカにも「本音と建前があるか」とよく聞かれます。もちろんありますよ。だたし、その使い分けは、日本人の方が上手です。例えばこの間、里帰りした時、妹の３番目の子供のカルビンと初めて会うことが出来ました。カルビンは今まで見た赤ちゃんの中で、間違えなく最も醜い子ですが、最愛の妹に「かわいいな」とほめました。後でお母さんと２人きりで話した時に「カルビンは本当に不細工だな」と言ってしまいました。それを聞いたお母さんに、「そんなこと言ってアカン」と怒られてしまいました。（ハハは関西生まれじゃないけど、そんな感じがする）

親心という表現もステキですね。この間、友達の娘が結婚しました。彼は娘が結婚するとき、「つらかったらいつでもかえっておいで」と言いました。それは親心だねと、妻に言われましたが。しかし、私は、それが「親心」だと思いません。本当の親心を持つ親は、自分の娘にそんな悪い虫がつかないように、もっと努力するべきです。我が愛娘の場合は、やはり結婚させません。それが本当の親心だ。

そう言いながら、「箱入り娘」にもなってほしくないものです。まずは、我が愛の結晶サクラちゃんは、少しぽっちゃり体形なので、普通の箱に入れるのは狭すぎて、とても無理なことです。おそらく、大きいな金庫や小さな物置でちょうどいいぐらい。

まあまあ、冗談はさておき。真面目なテーマについて話すために来ましたので、真面目な話をしなきゃ。そういえば、テーマはなんでしたっけ。あっ、「あいの結晶」でしたね。この表現は育児にはぴったりです。結晶と同じように、条件がそろわないと、子供もうまく育てられないものです。

子育てというのは何が必要でしょうか。普通の人に聞くと、この三つの条件がよく出ます：金、家族、愛。

子育てのために沢山お金が必要だと思う人が大勢いますが、私は違います。英語の諺に、「More money, more problems」という言葉があります。ようするに、お金があればあるほど問題が増えます。ですから、我が愛の結晶のために出来るだけ貧しく生きて行きたいと思います。

あら、また冗談を言ってしまいましたね。でも正直に言えば、お金はそんなになくてもいいと思います。何よりも愛と家族が大事だと思います。

アフリカでは、こういう諺があります：“It takes a village to raise a child.” ようするに、「一人の子供を育てるには村全体必要だ。」今現代の社会は、昔と違って地域のために努力したいと言う意識がどんどんなくなってきている感じがします。みんな、大人になって、仕事について、結婚したら、親と別のところで自分らの家を立てて、小さな家族として住むことが多くなってきています。

でも家は違います。家は一歳の娘から８８歳のヒイおばあさんまで、同居していて、四世代家族です。愛想がいいママと、たくましい馬鹿なパパだけではなく、やさしいジジとババ、知恵の豊富なヒイおばあちゃんも、皆同じ家に住んでいますから、我が愛の結晶は非常にラッキーだと思います。

しかし、お金や家族があっても、愛がなければ意味がないと思います。育児には、何よりも愛が大事です。私は何年も中学校に勤めています。そこで、子供たちとよく話します。びっくりしたことに、沢山の子供たちは、あまりパパと会話しないと言います。そうでもない子もいると思いますが、日本では昔から、子育てというのは女の仕事だと言う伝統があります。私は違います。私は、パパの役目はママと同じくらいに大切と思います。パパがいないと、その大切な愛もなくなります。ですから、私は娘と毎朝と毎晩いっぱい遊んだり話したりしています。我が愛の結晶には、世界に比類にならないくらい、愛をいっぱいあげたいのです。

まあ、こういう臭い話を聞いて、ウエッとして、「親ばかだ」と思われるかもしれませんが。でも、それは仕方ない。実際にそうなんだから。でもまあ、ただの馬鹿親じゃなければいいんじゃないか。

長い時間、聞いていただいて、ありがとうございました。

Zen and the Art of Killing Frogs

I will not eat anything that walks, runs, skips, hops or crawls. God knows that I've crawled on occasion, and I'm glad that no one ate me.
– Alex Poulos.

Vegetarians make much of the fact that nothing was killed for the sake of their meal, and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Today, while I was out harvesting rice in the fields, I couldn’t help but take note of all the creatures I was killing in order to produce this quintessential vegetarian staple. Barreling over the fields in my giant Mitsubishi MC 6000 combine, I could see Yae-yama-ao frogs (Owston's green tree frogs) and short-horned grasshoppers literally jumping for their lives.

“Do frogs scream?” I wondered. “Can a grasshopper sense when two tones of steal is heading its way?” Of course they can, or else why would they be fleeing?

Some (the lucky few) are able to escape the hurling juggernaut as it lurches toward them. Others (the unlucky majority) are either smashed under the thick rubber treads or gobbled up, along with the rice; and then, if they are not squished by the gears that pull the rice stalks down into the belly of the machine, they are pulverized by the mechanical thresher, which first separates the head of the grain from the stalk, and then further separates the kernel from the head.

“Frogs in a blender,” I thought, as the machine pushed on, wanting for a more appetizing analogy.

A keen rice farmer might be able to tell you that, on average, you’ll yield about four tones of rice per hectare, but no farmer could put an average to the number of frogs that are annually gobbled up or smashed by combines and ploughs in the process of maintaining just one rice paddy. The figure would be in the hundreds.

Nor could one, even if he desired, count the number of tadpoles, frog eggs, water skippers, spiders, baby fireflies, pond snails, leeches, worms, helmet shrimp and fire belly shrimp (to name but fraction of the creatures that make their homes in wet rice paddies) that are killed in the weeks prior to harvest, when the paddies—which were basically man-made ponds up until that point—are suddenly drained of water, and left to bake in the hot sun. That number would be in the thousands—if not millions.

Hitler, were he still alive, could certainly appreciate the efficiency of my Mitsubishi MC 6000.

“OK,” your vegetarian friend might interject. “Some amphibians and a few insects are killed. So what? I think we can all agree that a dead bug is not quite the same thing as a dead cow.”

Vegetarians are quick to point out that each animal has a variety of species-specific abilities and behaviors. Pigs, for example, are smarter than dogs, and incredibly social animals. Much like humans, they form into complex social hierarchies and reinforce their status through contest. Also, like humans, they are highly sensitive to stress; and can easily faint or go crazy when confined in close quarters. And yet, despite how similar to humans they are, we tend to look down on them. Perhaps you have heard the phrases, “sweat like a pig” or “as happy as a pig in shit.” In point of fact, pigs don’t sweat, and they don’t wallow in feces. Overheating is a major problem in pigs, and wallowing in mud is a way of regulating their body temperature. And when it comes to defecation, pigs choose a location to deposit their feces and faithfully return to it. Given the choice, pigs choose to live in clean conditions.

I know all this because a vegetarian was kind enough to teach me. However, I’ve never received a vegetarian lecture on the species-specific behaviors or intrinsic worth of, say, a frog. Wanting to learn a little more about the critters I was mowing over, I decided to pull out the encyclopedia, which states (and here I might add that, if you already know how badass frogs are, feel free to skip ahead):

Like other amphibians, frogs can breathe through their skin, but they can only do so if the skin is moist. Most frogs are active at night, which is when the air is more humid. Humid air helps them keep their skin moist. During the daytime, these frogs sit still in moist places, like under a rotting log, in a muddy place, underground, or in the crack of a rock. Even when frogs are active at night, they spend a good part of the time sitting still. This is how many species hunt. They remain in one place and wait for an insect or other prey animal to wander past, either grasp it with their mouths or flick out their tongues to snatch it, and swallow it whole. Most frogs have sticky tongues that attach in the front of the mouth and flip outward. Some frogs, including the poison frogs, take a more energetic approach to hunting, and hop about looking for their next meals.

Frogs often mate based on the weather. Those that live in warm, humid places may mate any time of year but usually only do so during or after a rainstorm. Frogs that make their homes in colder climates commonly wait until the temperatures warm and the spring rains have come. For species in especially dry areas, the rainy season is the time for mating. The males of almost all frog species call during the mating season. They make the calls by sucking in and letting out air from the vocal sac, which is a piece of balloon-like skin in the throat area. Most frogs, like the spring peeper, have one vocal sac, but some species, including the wood frog, have two. The males of each species have their own calls. The calls not only attract females, but sometimes tell other males to stay away and find their own mating places. In a few species, calls may not be enough, and two males may fight. Most fights are little more than wrestling matches, but in some species, like the gladiator frogs, males have sharp spines and often injure one another. In many frog species, the males call together in a group. This type of group calling is called a chorus. In some species, the males all call and mate over a very short time, often within a few days. Frogs that breed over such a short time are called explosive breeders.

To mate in most species, the male scrambles onto the back of a female in a piggyback position called amplexus and hangs onto her. As she lays her eggs, he releases a fluid. The fluid contains microscopic cells called sperm that mix with the eggs. This mixing is called fertilization. Once fertilization happens, the eggs begin to develop. The tailed frogs do things a bit differently. The males have "tails," which are actually little bits of flesh they use to add their fluid to the eggs while the eggs are still inside the female's body. Depending on the species, a frog may lay less than a dozen eggs at a time or more than a thousand. The typical female frog lays her eggs in the water, often in underwater plants, and she and the male leave the eggs alone to develop on their own. In a few species, one of the parents stays behind to watch over the eggs and sometimes stays to cares for the tadpoles, too. The typical frog egg develops in the water into a tadpole. In some species, the egg develops instead in a moist spot, and in a few species that moist spot is inside a pouch or on the back of one of the parents. A number of the frogs that have their young on land lay eggs that skip the tadpole stage and hatch right into baby frogs. In most frogs, however, the eggs hatch into tadpoles that continue growing in the water. Most tadpoles begin to change into froglets within a month or two, but some remain tadpoles for a year or more. The change from a tadpole to a froglet is called metamorphosis. In this amazing process, the tadpole's tail becomes shorter and shorter, tiny legs sprout, and the tadpole begins to take on the shape and color of the adults. Soon a tiny froglet, often still with a little bit of the tail left, takes its first hops.

So, in other words, frogs are basically like little Zen monks, peacefully sitting zazen for the greater portion of their day, accepting whatever nature happens to ‘drop in their bowl’ so to speak—whether it be a water skipper or a two-tone combine.

Like humans, pigs and everything else that contains the breath of life, frogs eat, sleep, propagate and, one would assume, have fun—albeit in a particularly frog way. And yet, why do we value pigs over frogs? Why would it be acceptable to kill a few frogs in order to make a bowl of rice but not a few pigs?

Quite simply, because we are biased.

Humanity tends to identify with and pay sympathy to those creatures with whom it bears the greatest similarity, and to shun those of least similarity, thus creating a great chain of being: in which the nematode’s life is worth more than amoeba’s; the insect’s is worth more than the nematode’s; the frog’s life is worth more than the insect’s; the mouse’s life is worth more than the frogs; and so on, all the way up to large animals and ‘higher order’ primates, above which, in all its glory, stands homo sapiens—the species that named itself ‘wisdom.’

And then there is the rice itself. Is not rice a living thing—possessed of the same self-preserving anima we find in all living things? It drinks water and eats the sun’s energy, pure. It bears seeds, which like the egg of a frog or the child of a woman, are its progeny, serving the propagation of its species. And yet we, by harvesting rice, kill it so that we might eat its precious seeds. No, I’m not going to argue that plants are conscious (although they may be), or that we shouldn't eat them because they are alive. My point is that, the premium we place on consciousness itself is a byproduct of our biased worldview, which places it at the pinnacle of the great chain of being we preside over.

To sum up that worldview in a nutshell: We value the large (human scale) over the small (microscopic), the sentient (animals) over the insentient (plants), the emotional (mammalian) over the unemotional (reptilian), and the cognitive or rational (human) over the emotional and instinctual (animal). It is precisely this system, the presumption of an intrinsic hierarchy of life, that allows the vegetarian to eat rice—and thus kill frogs, mice, spiders, newts, worms and other small ‘pests’—but makes eating, say, a pig anathema.

It is a sick calculus, in my opinion, that values the death of 1,000 frogs less than that of a single pig or a cow. How could one even begin to compare such things? By body weight? By amount of consciousness or pain involved? By the size or number of their respective souls? There simply is no way to quantify or compare such things. All death is a tragedy; and I am one with the vegetarian in that, were it possible, I would rather not kill anything in order to eat. Unlike the vegetarian, though, I am aware that—no matter what one eats—one must kill in order to live. To believe otherwise is to live in delusion.

By this I am not suggesting that you should continue eating CAFO-raised beef or give up vegetarianism. Clearly, not all killing is the same. My point is simply that you should open your eyes and recognize what it means to be alive: namely, that in order for you to live, something must die; and that someday, you too will become something’s dinner.

No amount of broccoli and tofu can change that.

A very short review of Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction

Just finished Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction and was utterly disappointed. The book starts out quite factual but ends with a 30-page digression into the historical blame game: criticizing Japan for not 'repenting' or doing 'penitence' (I'm not making this up) for its WWII sins, claims that modern Japan is 'schizophrenic' and living in a 'pathology of denial,' and even cites suspicions of 'a new kind of Japanese empire' based on the yen, Nissan cars and Sony Playstations. Most impressive was how seamlessly it transitioned from the factual to patronizing psycho-babble.

Get a copy of John Dower's Embracing Defeat if you want to understand something of modern Japan, but lack the time or resources to come and see for yourself.

Book Review: No Impact Man

While decrying the devastation humanity has wreaked on the planet, in voice, most environmentalists live their lives much as the author of No Impact Man, Colin Beavan, did before he began the No Impact project: They drive cars, fly in jets, use grid electricity, go shopping and may even eat a steak from time to time. Heaven forbid.

Sure, they may keep a garden, seal their taps, swap out incandescent bulbs for longer-lasting compact fluorescents, throw a few solar panels up on the roof and drive a Prius—but, on the whole, their lifestyle is part and parcel with the general consumptive trends that are, sadly, thrashing the planet. And yet very few are as honest about this fact as Beavan, who not only admits his guilt, but tries to do something to remedy the situation.

Not content with taking any half measures, he decides to set off on a yearlong experiment in Zero Impact living, In his own words, “I wanted to find a way of doing things that sucked no new resources out of the ground. Cut no tress down. Excavated no new mountains. Polluted no new streams or rivers to make what I used”—and he wanted to do it all in the fourth largest metropolis in the world, the Big Apple, New York. And, what's more, he wanted his family to join him on the adventure.

The result of this experiment is the pragmatic tale of one man—an “everyman” as he calls himself—dragging his wife and one-year-old daughter on a rain-soaked, leg-powered, candle-lit, handmade quest to reduce their ecological footprint as much as possible, and to make up for whatever impacts they couldn't reduce by doing ecological good turns: like picking up trash along the Hudson river, volunteering to help plant trees, and lobby for political change.

If this experiment sounds extreme to you, that’s because it is. And Beavan himself would be the first person to admit it. Yet this is not the tale of some “eco-martyr” bent on doing eco-penance. As Beavan makes clear, the No Impact project is not about deprivation—it’s about removing himself from what the Positive psychologists call the “hedonic treadmill” of working to consume to work to consume, ad nausem, and living, as Thoreau or Emerson would say, more deliberately. And as he and his at-first-begrudging wife would come to find out, the simple, deliberate, no-impact life dovetails perfectly with the good life.

At the end of his experiment, Beavan is a changed man. You can even see it in the style of his writing, which begins in the tone of a practical, down-to-earth New Yorker—a man on a mission—and ends up metamorphasizing into a Thich Nhat Hanh-esque lecture on the groundlessness of being. Informative, inspiring, funny and soulful, No Impact Man is a story that anyone can appreciate and enjoy, a book that will help you on your own quest to live a happy, fulfilling life.

Note: Apparently there is also a No Impact Man documentary out there, although I haven't seen it yet. You can get nmore information about the documentary and the book from his official blog @ http://noimpactman.typepad.com/