Paleo diet?

[Susan]

I have been considering giving Paleo - at least the grain-free (gluten free) part of it, I can't imagine giving up milk and yoghurt - a shot for quite a while now. The reason I didn't commit myself to it fully is that it is really complicated if you eat out or with other people. I do cook gluten-free myelf most of the time and don't terribly miss grains or bread. But at my parents home there is just no meal that is gluten-free. And you never really know what you get when you eat out.

How do you deal with this problem?

[Gypsy]

I'm slowly easing into eating Paleo.

It hasn't been as hard as I thought. Dairy was affecting the ezcema on my hands, and eliminating it has significantly improved it. I found that out accidentally -- I went a week without eating any cheese and I didn't itch! That made me look into elimination diets and that brought up Paleo for me.

I wasn't a big grain eater anyway -- I had avoided breads for a while, although when I traveled, I would eat some in restaurants, or just occasionally in my home city, but at good restaurants. It was never significant. I was eating a lot of legumes and brown rice and I've eliminated those as well. I'm replacing it with more vegetables and fruit and my carb % has gone down significantly, around 150-160 grams (which I know is NOT that low) and it's made me realize that what I thought was medium to low carb diet was not really... Denial, not just a river in Egypt.

Anyway, I haven't had an issue eating out in restaurants, because I will try to go with a protein and a vegetable. Yes, maybe they are using some kind of gluten product in the cooking, but I am not sensitive or celiac, so I am not rigid about my eating to insist that they prepare "clean."

As for eating with my parents, who are big legume eaters, we just had a conversation about it. I told them what I was doing, we talked, they understood and were willing to accommodate IF.... and only IF... I would help them cook so that they could be sure I was getting what I needed. Love them!

(For dairy, because I saw a reaction, stopping eating yogurt was easy -- I didn't want my hands to flare up. Same thing with cheese. I had a couple of instances where I would forget the effect, eat cheese, and then wake up scratching my hands in the middle of the night. Doing that a couple of times has made me hyper aware of the situation and if I eat cheese from now on, it will be with the full knowledge that I am going to hurt myself by doing so.)

[westtexas]

The reason I didn't commit myself to it fully is that it is really complicated if you eat out or with other people.
How do you deal with this problem?

So, this was a hang up for me too. I love going to restaurants and trying new things, and it can definitely be difficult sometimes to find something paleo-friendly on the menu. You just have to make smart choices. Go for meat and veggie plates that have no breading. Or salad (hold the croutons, of course). The idea of Paleo is not that everything has to be 100% perfect all the time. I still drink when I go out (especially with my mom!) and if the place has great dessert, I often splurge. You just have decide if it's worth it for you, your health, your personal internal system.

What I have found for eating out though, is that I have to go to real places - not chains. Chilis, Cheddar's, Olive Garden... those places make (in my opinion) fairly terrible food anyway. I go with my co-workers every now and then (for staff meetings and such), and do the best I can. If it's me and friends, I suggest a place that meets my needs. Everyone is always saying they don't want to decide, so now I do it for them. You just have to explore and find those great places that have good, high quality food. There are plenty here that have that, and it's not any more expensive than eating at a chain or what have you.

I've also found that by telling my friends about what I'm doing - they support me in it. They try to find places where we can all go and find something to eat that we like. And their support helps you stick to it and keep on that road to better health.

[GLC1968]

I agree with westtexas about dining out. Nicer places are easier too because they are more willing to bend over backwards for you, if you ask. I have at least one item that I can order at just about every local restaurant, so it's not that difficult. I do find that we eat out a lot less, so when we do, we pick nicer places and make a point of enjoying the environment, company and service as much as the food.

As far as bacon goes, it must be cured with either sugar or nitrites. In the US, 'uncured' on the package means that it was not cured with nitrites. Uncured and sugarless bacon is kind of ugly and it tastes different than what one expects. Only trace sugar is left in the meat after the sugar curing process, so it's a personal choice as to what kinds of sugar you are ok with. Bacon is cured with regular sugar, turbinado sugar, honey, maple syrup or even corn syrup...so read labels. Personally, I'll take trace amounts of natural sugars over nitrites, any day.

A bigger concern with bacon is what is in the fat. A big problem with high fat, industrial meat is that the bad things an animal is exposed to ends up concentrated in the fat. So since bacon is so high in fat, a pig fed a lot of antibiotics or hormones will produce bacon full of this stuff. This is why most paleo diet proponents recommend only lean meats if you are buying traditionally raised (ie factory farmed) meat. If you can get pastured grass-fed meat, then the fat is actually healthy for you, so eating it is no big deal. This is my long way of saying that more important than how your bacon was processed is how the pig was raised when it comes to heath.

Honestly, I've become so incredibly particular about the products that I'll buy since doing this Whole30 that we do our grocery shopping at 4 different places every week. (plus our CSA and our own raised stuff) It is kind of a pain, but it's worth it to me.

[Susan]

I can imagine eating out is not so much trouble because you can order whatever you like. I think my usual order - some kind of salad with some kind of meat - is already quite paleo. Still, if you want to go strictly gluten free you never know if the maybe used flour or anything like that...

The bigger problem I guess would be family and friends. You don't want to be disrespectful and eat what they offer... this is a big problem for me anyways, glutenfree would make it even more of an issue. On the other hand... it would be an obvious reason not to be able to eat cakes


I'm often astonished what cooks - at home or in restaurants - make out of simple dishes. Sometimes you don't quite get what you expect. Vegetables get drenched in sauce or salad comes with strange dressings... my mum regularly asks "And what do we do with the vegetables" (will we cover them in breadcrumbs? will we drench them in oil? could we add flavour enhancer? )

[GLC1968]

The friends thing can be a little difficult at first. We actually had plans to dine with some friends we don't see that often during our super strict Whole30. They are kind of 'foodies' (I hate that term, but it really applies to them!) so we knew they would go all out for us. I stressed about it for a week wondering how we were going to handle it and then I decided that it would be easier to have them to our place. So I explained our special diet needs and asked if we could do the cooking and they agreed! Dinner was fun, somewhat fancy, delicious and totally Whole30 compliant.

These same friends asked us a lot of questions about our meal choices and when they led a kayaking trip a month later, purposely chose a meal that was mostly compliant to our diet for us. In fact, the other couple that went also did the same thing (ie, asked our needs when planning their meal), so really, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected it to be.

It would be tough if someone made a lasagna dinner with cheesy garlic bread on the side, but typically, if you let friends know ahead of time what you are avoiding, most things people put on the table are ok. And really, regular people don't hide gluten, soy or seed oils in their dishes, so it's usually not too difficult for them to just avoid serving pasta dishes on the night you'll be a guest.

I will say that for the first month or two we were paleo, I avoided a lot of invitations because I felt like a burden. Once I got a better hang of eating this way, it was easier to ask and easier to deal with on my end. Even my mom was willing to accomodate me and she's VERY anti anything that limits bread and/or wine from her diet.

[solobiker]

I have not run into too many problems with going out to eat because for the most part we really don't do it all that often...maybe 1x/month. Lately my trouble has been that our refrigerator has not been working great. About 2 weeks ago the freezer was working and the refirgerator stopped..it was sitting at 65 degrees. After 2 days we were able to get a repairman out to fix it and when he got here it was working. He could not find anything wrong so we had him change the timer out. Well come this Saturday the same darn thing happened again. I had to try to put lots of food in a cooler and I go to get some of my chicken that I had cooked and it is sitting in a pool of water from the melted ice. But I am holding strong despite not having a fridge to use for close to a week if you count both times it went out. We did get another one but they delivered the wrong one. Sigh....

[westtexas]

A bigger concern with bacon is what is in the fat. A big problem with high fat, industrial meat is that the bad things an animal is exposed to ends up concentrated in the fat. So since bacon is so high in fat, a pig fed a lot of antibiotics or hormones will produce bacon full of this stuff. This is why most paleo diet proponents recommend only lean meats if you are buying traditionally raised (ie factory farmed) meat. If you can get pastured grass-fed meat, then the fat is actually healthy for you, so eating it is no big deal. This is my long way of saying that more important than how your bacon was processed is how the pig was raised when it comes to heath.

Keep in mind that in America, pigs cannot be given hormones. Any antibiotic given puts that hog on a Withdrawal list - meaning they cannot be slaughtered before a certain number of days determined by regulatory agencies after administration of that product. Generally this allows for any drug residues to be "washed out" of the tissue. The only major antibiotic I know of that is in regular use on most swine farms is Tylosin, which treats the chronic diarrhea these guys can get.

Of course pasture raised and grass fed is better in all respects, as those animals are not likely to have been exposed to antibiotics at all - but I assure you, any farmer who cares for their herd will treat those that need to be treated, with antibiotics if that's what's needed.

The reason confinement operation (CFO) beef is bad for you is because those animals eat a crap ton of corn, which they aren't designed to digest. This puts them in a constant state of ruminal acidosis (ie chronic heartburn) which makes the animal sick. Sick animals aren't good to eat. Corn also has 0 nutrients so all the good Omega-3s these guys have been building up out on pasture in the cow-calf operation gets depleted and replaced by oxidized omega-6, of which too much is very bad for you.

[GLC1968]

The reason confinement operation (CFO) beef is bad for you is because those animals eat a crap ton of corn, which they aren't designed to digest.

This is true of course, but I'm also disgusted at the idea of eating meat from animals that live in rivers of their own refuse. That just cannot be healthy no matter what they are fed. Have you seen some of the feed-lot conditions? Ick! And animals raised on pasture generally have less of a need for antibiotics because they get sick less both because they aren't fed corn and because they aren't kept in such ridiculously close and unnatural confinement (same for chickens, actually).

I'll take happy animals raised on grass/pasture and fed a varied diet (in the case of pigs) any day!

[Catrin]

...

I'll take happy animals raised on grass/pasture and fed a varied diet (in the case of pigs) any day!

THIS

There is a weekly farmers market in front of my office building and I found a vendor last week who was new to me. They sell grass-fed beef, pasture-raised chicken and turkey AND grow all of the food they feed their animals when at all possible. Some of their cows do get a small amount of corn and they keep that meat separate. Prices appear reasonable ($5/lb for grass-fed ground beef compared with $8-9 that I've seen elsewhere,

Guess where a good amount of my meat is going to come from I did ask them what they've been feeding their cows during this drought and they had the right answer...hay!

BTW, I am amazed at the amount of energy that I now have after 6 days of no grains...

[Owlie]

Interesting. For me, if I get a high calorie breakfast with plenty of fat and protein, I'm good to go almost until dinner with a snack in the afternoon. (My parents, who seem to have this oatmeal fixation, think I'm crazy. I can't eat oatmeal at all. I'm hungry again in an hour.) I wonder if the benefits are less from eliminating grains/legumes (unless you've got hidden gluten sensitivity, etc) and more from a shift in where you get your calories from a rapidly-burned source to one that takes longer to use.