The WHO and the JV diet

WHO Meat guidelines

The WHO freaked a lot of people out last week. I'm not one of them.

That's partly because I understand how percentages work. But it's also because I eat so little meat. I've mentioned before how little meat we eat. Without really trying, we're following Michael Pollan's 3 basic guidelines for people who want to eat healthy.

1. Eat food
2. Mostly plants
3. Not too much

DISCLAIMER: The following discussion of how Mountain House JVs' diets relates to Michael Pollan's diet guidelines is not based on my having read his book, In Defense of Food. My father read the book. But, as anyone who has had dinner with him knows, he's an excellent explainer. He's like a human cliff notes. So I feel like I got the key points down.

Eat food

Pollan defines food as “the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food.”* Basically non processed stuff. We don't buy much processed stuff because there's barely any processed stuff to buy. We can't buy any of the normally canned foods in the US (beans, tomato sauce, veggies). The only thing we do buy in cans is evaporated milk, because refrigerators aren't very common here so normal milk would go bad.

Mostly plants

This is the big one this week since the WHO dropped the bomb that processed meat causes cancer without releasing any dietary guidelines. We don't eat much meat because it's expensive. It's expensive for us to buy with our dollar per person per day food budget. So we stick to beans, quinua, and eggs as in-house protein sources. Meat's expensive for the school and the parish to buy when they're cooking for hundreds of children. There is usually a bit of meat in the lunch dishes, but it's used more as a flavoring than as the main focus of the meal.

Not too much

It's hard to eat too much food when you're on a budget. We certainly don't go hungry, but we don't have lots of leftovers lying around the house either. The only time we do eat too much is at parties, when the plates of food are massive and it's rude to not finish the meal. But those we usually skip dinner and just munch on fruit in the evening.

After this week, the only question I'd like to as the WHO: Is cuy red meat?