Saturday, July 2, 2011

Blog Review

Modern Paleo This blog is run by a very bright lady, it will be fun to track.

Here's a taste of her work:

  1. Eat real foods, prepared well. Prepare your own food as much as you can. Beware the junk ubiquitous in convenience and restaurant foods.
  2. Don't eat wheat, corn, rice, or other grains. If you choose to eat some grains, eat them sparingly and prepare them to minimize toxins, such as by sprouting and soaking. Wheat seems to be the worst of all the grains, while rice seems to be the most benign. Whole grains are not better than refined grains. 
  3. Don't eat sweets: avoid sugar, corn syrup, agave nectar, honey, maple syrup, and artificial sweeteners. If you must have some sweetener for a dish, you might try a bit of stevia. With time, your tastes will adjust: ordinary sweets will taste cloying, but formerly bland vegetables will seem delightfully sweet.
  4. Don't eat modern oils derived from grains and seeds -- such as canola oil, corn oil, or soy oil. Make your own mayonnaise and salad dressing. Don't eat fried foods in restaurants: rancid vegetable oils are standard for frying. Avoid all hydrogenated fats; they contain damaging artificial transfats. Instead, use liberal amounts of animal fats -- like butter, ghee, lard, and tallow -- as well as unrefined coconut oil and olive oil. (Reserve your bacon grease: it's delicious rendered lard!) Do not fear saturated fat: it's healthy, including for your heart. 
  5. Don't eat soy. Some fermented soy might be okay, if tolerated. However, all soy is goitrogenic and contains estrogen-mimicking hormones. 
  6. Don't eat beans and other legumes. If you choose to eat some legumes, eat them sparingly and prepare them to minimize toxins, such as by soaking them. 
Not rocket surgery but it is always good to review the basics.  As she points out, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."  Eat to enjoy, but work to optimize your "pleasure only eating."  In other words, I enjoy the heck out of eating paleo foods, all the more so since I've outgrown, in the last year or two, my sweet tooth.  But I still work up a good old craving for certain foods that are distinctly not Paleo, especially around holiday weekends!  So I eat them.  But I recommend you only eat the really, really, exquisitely good feast foods - skip the chips and those "not very good anyway" baked beans.  Dodge the ridiculous white stuff they call "buns" on your dogs and burgers.  Enjoy the dogs!  Eat up on the burgers, with an extra serving of cheese (assuming it is actual cheese!).  Save room for some ice cream, if is is actually ice cream, and better yet - high quality ice cream, vice some sugary junk that's stuffed by the pound into a plastic tub.

In other words, even with feast days, work for quality in your food selections!

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