PEOPLES DAILY, TUESday, may 12, 2015
Page 39
Strange World
True Carnivores – This family has eaten nothing but meat for the last 17 years
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ost nutritionists claim that a balanced diet is essential to living a long and healthy life, but the Anderson family is proof that their theories don’t apply to everyone. For almost two decades now, they have been following a zero carb, allmeat diet that they claim has kept them healthy, happy, and strong for all these years. It all began when Joe Anderson experimented with high protein diets in the mid 1990s. And when his wife Charlene was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 1998, the only food she could consume without having severe reactions was red meat. “This blew us away: fatty red meat, the very thing that had been demonized by the entire health community was giving her strength,” Joe said in a recent interview with a popular zero-carb diet website. Faced with this information, Joe
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f you believe millionaire art collector Forrest Fenn, there’s actually a real treasure buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, just waiting to be found. The 84-year-old author claims he hid a chest full of gold and jewelry – worth millions of dollars – in the mountains five years ago, and even left clues in his book The Thrill of the Chase. Tens of thousands of people have joined the hunt, but no one has managed to find the coveted treasure so far. Fenn, a native of New Mexico, moved back to Santa Fe with his wife in 1970. He has always had a strong sense of adventure, but he didn’t get the idea
and Charlene spent the next few years reading books and articles on meat-based diets that encouraged the consumption of fatty, red meat. They were trying to understand how such an ‘extreme’ diet was working so well for them. They were eventually convinced and completely switched over to eating only meat. When they first turned to a zero carb lifestyle, Joe said that they included non-meat foods such as eggs, cheese and whey. They also ate various types of meat like fish, bacon, chicken and lamb. But they slowly began to notice that they never felt as good with other meats as they did with beef. “The more we ate beef, the less we desired other meats,” Joe explained. “I noticed that eggs and dairy gave me puffy eyes, frequent headaches and a stuffy nose.” They also stopped consuming animal organs because of how “inflamed” they felt the next morning.
Today, Joe, 57, Charlene, 42, along with their kids Charlie, 10 and George, 8, have only one large meal every night, consisting of beef – preferably the rib-eye cut. They ask their butcher for untrimmed rib-eye, which has so much fat that they don’t need to add additional fat to cook it. Joe eats about two to three pounds of beef, while Charlene and the boys stick to one or two pounds. “We all eat until we’re stuffed. I mean literally,” Joe revealed. “Thanksgiving full. Every night is an all out gorge fest!” “Early on, we ate grass-fed exclusively,” Joe added. “We were pain-in-the-ass, religious zealots about it until we realised that we felt better eating grass-raised, grain-finished good ol’ fashioned grocery store meat. Goodbye frozen bricks of way too lean beef, goodbye toe cramps and leg cramps in the middle of the night, goodbye restless nights, goodbye to our air of superiority as we attempted to savor the flavor of a cut of meat from an obviously undernourished animal.” Joe Anderson also revealed that
they do not drink any beverages other than water, and do not salt their food because salt makes them “puffy faced.” They don’t even use spices to season their meat, or take any supplements to enhance their diet. There’s always just one thing their grocery list, and that’s beef! But their grocery bills are surprisingly huge – between $1,000 and $1,750 a month – because, well, beef is expensive. Interestingly, the Anderson children have adapted pretty well to the unusual diet. Joe said that both boys were raised on meat ever since they started eating solid food. But if they do display curiosity towards other types of foods, they aren’t discouraged. “Around the age 4 both boys went through a phase where they became curious about other foods. I told them I would buy them anything they wanted – just let me know and we’ll see how you feel,” Joe said. “They tried a few things here and there but with little interest. Occasionally they’ll have something now and then but they feel pretty
lousy afterwards! It’s a built in deterrent! Try eating zero-carb for 4-5 years and then eat a piece of cake! Ha ha!” Joe revealed that of all the other foods his children have tried, the least destructive to their “overall general happiness” have been chocolate and candy. “The worst food, and I mean agonizingly horrific temper tantrums and overall belligerent behavior was fruit. Yes – fruit! Apples one time and raspberries another made them into crying, angry, little monsters. A complete turnabout from their general demeanor!” The children are raised differently too – they don’t attend regular school. Instead they are enrolled in a variety of classes, like history classes at the Museum, science classes at the Library, Ballet classes, Art classes, craft classes at the park and Gym classes at the College. “Not once have either boy complained that someone has made fun of them or treated them badly because of their food choices,” Joe revealed.
Eccentric millionaire who hid gold treasure in the rocky mountains five years ago says it’s still up for grabs to hide his treasure until 1988, when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He was told that his chances of survival were slim, so he started thinking of creative ways to share his wealth. That’s when he thought of a treasure hunt. As he was being treated for cancer, Fenn purchased an antique 10-inch by 10-inch bronze chest and filled it with gold and priceless historical artifacts from his collection. Although his cancer
went into remission eventually, he still went ahead with his plan to bury the chest. He hid it somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, but no one knows exactly where, or even in which state. Fenn himself has olny confirmed that it could be in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, or Wyoming, but says people have to follow his clues in order to find it. He hasn’t revealed its exact
contents, but he says that numerous people laid their eyes on it before he hid it, including New York Times bestselling writer Douglas Preston. He told the media that the treasure chest contains 256 gold coins, among other articles of value – “mostly American eagles and double eagles, hundreds of gold nuggets, some as large as chicken eggs, ancient Chinese carved jade
figures, Pre-Columbian gold animal artifacts, lots of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds and other things.” The New Mexico Tourism Department estimates the value of the treasure to be at least $2 million. “I wanted the monetary value to be a consideration for those who are looking for it, but mostly my motive was to get kids off the couch and away from their texting machines out in the mountains,” Fenn said. Understandably, the treasure caught the attention of the nation when Forrest Fenn first made his announcement, five years ago. Hordes of people have tried to make sense of the nine clues that Fenn claims to have hidden in a poem in his book. About 30,000 people searched for the treasure last summer, and 50,000 are expected to go on the hunt this summer. “I think it’s out of control,” Fenn said. He did reveal that some people have come very close to finding it – as close as 200 feet away from the spot – but they were unaware of how close they really were.