Not to exaggerate, and sure, some of this is probably depression-related, but I find everything that is happening, lately, to just be... Exhausting.
Particularly the "coof" shit. Australia, where I live, is ground zero for quite literally the most oppressive approach in any supposedly "democratic" country (yes, some parts of the US are more restrictive in some ways, and yes, Ardernistan exists, but, overall, I'm sorry, but I would have to say we are worse), and it is just... EVERYWHERE.
Like, I try to get offline, I really do, but I am not kidding when I say it is everywhere, here. The TV (idiot box), of course, is utterly saturated with it. The newspapers are, naturally, too. When I leave the house, pretty much to do anything, now, I have to "check in" on my fucking smart phone, even just to buy bread, or I am literally breaking the law. This is all anyone talks about now (well, this and Afghanistan). This DOMINATES our fucking lives.
And I can't travel anywhere. Hell, I can barely even go interstate. The prevailing attitude in this country has always been "love it or leave", but now we can't even fucking LEAVE...
So... I'm just so very tired. "Get off the internet" isn't working. "Talk to someone, then"...
Oh sure, let me go talk to my doomer parents, then, who are so brainwashed by the news and their own agendas that they literally regurgitate it all word for word, and then yell me down when I try to literally SHOW them it is wrong. Or how about my girlfriend, who is so depressed, and so anxious, now, that she barely goes out except to work and to walk her dog (much like me), let alone bearing in mind that we live hundreds of miles apart, anyway... Or maybe my grandfather. Oh wait, I can't, because I'm not even allowed to visit him in his nursing home, because, get this, I haven't had the fucking FLU vaccination yet. Not Covid. The flu. Because they fucking can...
So yeah, I'm sorry, I just... I hope y'all are doing better than me, in your "righteous anger", because personally, after having learned that my country is fucking shooting rescue dogs (see the post yesterday), and laughing that "Haha, this is because of Covid", I'm just... Beyond exhausted by it all. And I'm not sure how much longer I can keep living like that, let alone all the other clown world bullshit that is going on, around, and in some cases allegedly unrelated to, the sniffles... :-(
I'll see how long anger can keep someone alive, soon, I suppose. Because there's not much else that burns me enough to keep the overwhelming sadness and sheer frustration at bay...
We've always eaten lots of animal products. Some survived on animal sources alone, like the Inuit. The difference is that now we are capable of much larger human population sizes than in the past, when we relied on what we could individually hunt or fish for. A properly fed cow eats grasses, not corn. So modern agriculture makes it possible to mass produce cheap, fatty meats, but not only is it not necessary, it actually harms the nutrition of the resulting product. And fish obviously don't require agriculture to produce. If you did not have access to seafood or domesticated animals like cows, sheep, lamb, etc., then you relied on hunting wild animals such as moose, elk, deer, or bison. (which made you nomadic since you followed the herd).
While those people certainly supplemented meat with berries or other vegetation, they would not be able to survive on that alone. The Indians of America were the ones who helped settlers understand the importance of Vitamin C to cure scurvy (not that they understood it in a scientific way, it was just intuition). Their primary source of that was not potatoes or pine needles (though the latter is what they encouraged them to use as medicine), it was actually the organs of the animals they hunted. They knew which ones would provide them what they needed to sustain themselves, at least before they lost that ancestral knowledge.
There are books discussing remote populations which did not take advantage of modern technology, and the healthy ones all consumed the following sources of nutrition: butter, milk, cheese, animal organs, fish, and fish eggs. Certain foods like fish eggs were rare and highly prized for fertility benefits, so you are correct about that, but most of these things were staples. The main difference in modern times is that we no longer congregate in groups where the food is plentiful, but have the food delivered to us instead.
I've read stories that the strongest African tribes preferred cattle, and not only would they drink the milk and eat their flesh, they also had a technique where they would puncture a vein to draw blood from the animal, and drink the blood to sustain themselves. Of course they would not eat meat every day the way we do now, but they didn't need to do that. If you live on milk, meat, and fat, then you don't need to consume three meals a day. I can drink three cups of raw milk a day and not have to eat anything because there are so many calories, vitamins, and minerals in that alone.
Just consider, we cannot sustain ourselves on plant sources alone. We require animals to digest and extract the nutrients from the plant material for us, since their bodies can manufacture certain things that we require but can't make on our own, and they do a lot better at digesting grasses than we do. The plants pull the minerals from the earth for us, and the animals add some vitamins that we can't do without. Additionally, the best sources of nutrients that we need are animals, which makes sense because they are basically collecting the same minerals for their own body building and life sustaining activities.
No, humans need Vitamin A and Vitamin D as well, and both come only from animal sources. People point to things like carrots for Vitamin A, but that is a different form that the body can convert only in small quantities.
There is enough land for grass feeding. The reason they use corn is the greater profit.
Vegetarianism is indeed unnatural (which is why you need some kind of supplementation for what you are lacking from your diet), but humans have been drinking animal milk for a long time. Things like butter and cheese are also made from milk. It has the vitamins, minerals, and fats we need to be healthy, so I don't understand why you would say it is unnatural. It's not any less unnatural than consuming honey or fish eggs, and even bears do that.
We overeat low quality meat. If we had higher quality meat then we would not need to eat as much of it to sustain ourselves. People also focus almost exclusively on muscle meats instead of organs, which means they have a hard time satisfying all of their nutritional requirements. It's a product of ignorance. Part of the reason we overeat in America (over half of people are obese) is because our bodies instinctively know we are not getting what we need, so we end up eating more to compensate. If we ate more nutritionally dense foods, we would not need to eat the same number of calories. There's a reason the leading causes of death in America are heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, strokes, diabetes, nephritis, and flu/pneumonia. It's all due to poor nutrition.
For example, I buy my meat from local farms in MO and New Zealand and have it shipped to me. I stick to organ meats and I only eat them maybe two or three times a week. I can buy a few pounds of liver/kidney/etc from pasture raised animals and have it last a long time. You would think it to be expensive, and it is definitely higher priced than most meat I could find in supermarkets, but since I eat a lot less of it than I used to, it actually ends up being much cheaper. If everyone acted the way that I do, there would be more than enough grassland, and the animals would have much better lives.
Only if you live below the 39th parallel (meaning closer to the equator). People north of that (there is a nice map in the article) will not get adequate amounts of Vitamin D from the sun even if they are out in a clear day, except for in the summer months. And although the article I linked mentions fortified foods as a possibility, I wouldn't rely on it. The natural sources will be fish and unprocessed dairy products. If you want to supplement, then great, I only mean if you are trying to get adequate Vitamin D from food.
How do you know? I thought I wasn't deficient until I started eating liver and drinking raw milk, and my eyesight went from blurry at midrange to crystal clear. I thought I was going to need glasses and now my vision is excellent, and the main factor I can think of is that my Vitamin A consumption and absorption have significantly increased. (though my iron and zinc intake, among other minerals, also significantly increased at the same time, so it's hard to say for sure what I was missing) Also keep in mind that Vitamin A is fat soluble, so if you aren't consuming it with fats then it probably isn't being absorbed as well as you might think. (the Vitamin D supplement you mentioned adds coconut oil for that reason) We have to keep in mind that vitamins, minerals, and fats work together synergistically. That's why taking a single multivitamin doesn't work the wonders that people expect.
You can read about the limitations of beta-carotene here:
So in other words, it does vary for people, but even in the best case you are talking about having to eat three times as much in plant matter to get an equivalent amount of retinol that you would from meat, and it's as bad as 28 times. Don't take a retinol supplement. Try eating liver cooked in butter regularly. You are always going to get better results the closer you get to actual food. The only supplements I would take would be freeze dried non-defatted animal parts. (organs, fish eggs, etc) So something like this, this, or this. I take them along with essential fats every day. It's convenient when I don't feel like cooking meat.
Are you vegan or vegetarian?