How a Paleo Diet could connect to a more sustainable food systrem

I gave this short talk in a meeting at home on PEI about local food. The format is unusual. Each speaker has 20 slides and 6 minutes – which is why I go so fast – but I think as a format it works. It forces the speaker to be concise.

The future will depend not only on what we eat but how we get our food. It was our overshooting as hunters that forced us into agriculture. Our overshooting as farmers using oil is also threatening all life now on the planet. Is there another way? I think so – I think we now know enough to work with nature and I will expand on this over the next months. But in this short video you will see where I will be going.

A Local M.E.A.L. – Robert Paterson from nick battist on Vimeo.

How do you want to grow old? Sick & helpless or fit and active – Our choice!

On PEI the average man gets so ill that by the time he reaches 65 is is defined as helpless and disabled. He becomes reliant on his family and the state to look after him.

Worse! He then lives for 9.7 years.

This is why our healthcare system will fall over as the majority of Islanders will be over 60 in 15 years time.

This is what will happen to PEI’s Economy. Already Healthcare is 78% of the province’s own tax resources. By 2015 it will be well through what we could possible tax and what we could possibly think our economy coud provide. By 2020 it will be double. So the crisis is in site.

So that is what is on the cards for us as a society – and this applies right across Canada and in the US medicare is under the same pressure. For it is the disability that our chronic diseases create later in life that are the cost driver. So long as our normal is to take care of things after they have gone wrong we are in trouble.

All of this applies to you and me as individuals too. I don’t want to be ill and helpless if I can avoid it. That is why I have decided to find out how best to avoid this. This is why it is such an eye opener to discover that this is not inevitable and that I and you can take steps to have a better outcome. Our design is the black line in the graph. We age well and fit and active. And then we die. Just like that.

I will do my best not to burden my family or you with my aging. So dear reader – what about you?