izzy 🌾

Let's check in on Gerald's water consumption. Gerald woke up this morning and did the following: 6am - drank from his trough. Approximately 30 litres. In British beef cattle, this is 100% of Gerald's actual blue water use for the day. 6:15am - it rained on him. This has been counted in the statistics as Gerald consuming water. Gerald did not decide it would rain. Gerald did not apply for the rainfall. Gerald has not been asked whether he endorses the accounting methodology. 8am - Gerald ate grass. The grass required rainfall to grow. This rainfall has also been attributed to Gerald. The rain fell on the field in 1742 as well, when there was no spreadsheet. 10am - Gerald produced manure. The manure will go into the soil. The soil will grow more grass. The grass will need more rain. The rain will fall regardless of Gerald's continued employment on this farm. Gerald's daily blue water use: about 30 litres. The same as a moderately long shower. The headline figure: 15,000 litres per kilogram. The gap between those two numbers is rain. Gerald is not a drought. Gerald is what happens when you point rain at a field and give it a biological purpose. This is, broadly, what farming is.

Here is a fact so perfectly constructed it seems like something a polemicist invented, except it is simply true and sitting in every etymology dictionary on the shelf. The Anglo-Saxon peasant kept a cow. He raised it, fed it, moved it to pasture, treated its ailments, watched it give birth, and if things went badly in winter made the decision about whether the family could afford to keep it. He called it a cu. It was his animal, his responsibility, his labour. He did not eat it. The Norman lord ate it. And he called it beef. From the Old French boeuf. The Anglo-Saxon kept a pig. He called it a picga. The Norman ate it and called it pork, from porc. The Anglo-Saxon kept sheep, which he called scep. The Norman ate them and called the meat mutton, from mouton. The Anglo-Saxon watched deer move through the forest that had just been legally declared the king's personal property under the Forest Laws. He called them deor. The Norman hunted them and called the meat venison, from venaison. The animal in the field has an Anglo-Saxon name because an Anglo-Saxon was looking after it. The meat on the table has a French name because a Norman was eating it. This division is sitting in plain sight in the English language and has been sitting there for nine hundred and fifty years, which is roughly the amount of time it has taken for anyone to notice that it tells you something important. Walter Scott noticed it in 1819. He put it in Ivanhoe. The swineherd Gurth says to the jester Wamba: the swine is Saxon when he is kept and Norman when he becomes pork. The observation got filed as a colourful literary detail rather than as the class analysis of the food system that it actually is. The language is the record. The record has been in every dictionary the whole time. The Anglo-Saxon raised the food. The Norman ate the food. The English language has been commemorating this arrangement ever since. I genuinely cannot believe this isn't in the national curriculum.

The working class fought for decades for higher wages to afford meat. "A chicken in every pot" was a promise of prosperity. Now that meat is affordable, they tell you it's unhealthy and you should eat grains and beans instead. They convinced you to voluntarily return to poverty rations.

Dr. Blake Donaldson treated 17,000 patients with all-meat diets from 1919-1962. His protocol: - Eat fatty meat to satisfaction - Drink water only - No medications needed Success rate: 95% for obesity, diabetes, and digestive disorders. These published results were ignored by mainstream medicine. Probably just didn't fit the narrative.