Cereal Grains
• Barley (barley soup, barley bread, and all processed foods made with barley)
• Corn (corn on the cob, corn tortillas, corn chips, cornstarch, corn syrup)
• Millet
• Oats (steel-cut oats, rolled oats, and all processed foods made with oats)
• Rice (brown rice, white rice, ramen, rice noodles, basmati rice, rice cakes, rice flour, and all processed foods made with rice)
• Rye (rye bread, rye crackers, and all processed foods made with rye)
• Sorghum
• Wheat (bread, rolls, muffins, noodles, crackers, cookies, cake, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, pasta, spaghetti, lasagna, wheat tortillas, pizza, pita bread, flat bread, and all processed foods made with wheat or wheat flour)
• Wild rice
Cereal-Grainlike Seeds
• Amaranth
• Buckwheat
• Quinoa
Legumes
• All beans (adzuki beans, black beans, broad beans, fava beans, field beans, garbanzo beans, horse beans, kidney beans, lima beans, mung beans, navy beans, pinto beans, red beans, string beans, white beans)
• Black-eyed peas
• Chickpeas
• Lentils
• Peas
• Peanut butter
• Peanuts
• Snow peas
• Sugar snap peas
• Soybeans and all soybean products, including tofu
Starchy Vegetables
• Starchy tubers
• Cassava root
• Manioc
• Potatoes and all potato products (French fries, potato chips, etc.)
• Sweet potatoes
• Tapioca pudding
• Yams
Salt-Containing Foods
• Almost all commercial salad dressings and condiments
• Bacon
• Cheese
• Deli meats
• Frankfurters
• Ham
• Hot dogs
• Ketchup
• Olives
• Pickled foods
• Pork rinds
• Processed meats
• Salami
• Salted nuts
• Salted spices
• Sausages
• Smoked, dried, and salted fish and meat
• Virtually all canned meats and fish (unless they are unsalted or unless you soak and drain them)
Fatty Meats
• Bacon
• Bacon bits
• Bologna
• Breakfast sausage
• Chicken and turkey skin
• Chicken wings
• Deli meats
• Fatty lamb chops
• Fatty pork chops
• Pepperoni
• Pork sausage
• Salami
• Spam
Soft Drinks and Fruit Juices
• All sugary soft drinks
• Canned, bottled, and freshly squeezed fruit drinks (which lack the fiber of fresh fruit and have a much higher glycemic index)
Sweets
• Candy
• Honey
• Sugars
As you can see, there’s a bounty of wonderful foods you can eat on the Paleo Diet, so you’ll never get bored. Use your imagination and have fun with these delicious foods.
8
The Paleo Diet User’s Manual
Stocking Your Refrigerator and Pantry
You know those diets where you have to buy their food, in their packaging, at their stores? This is different. You don’t need to buy any special foods to follow the Paleo Diet. Just about everything you need is right in your local supermarket—particularly if it has a health food section. Even if you live in a rural area, the basics of the diet—lean meats, fish, fresh fruits, and vegetables—can be found in small grocery stores. If you choose, you can order specialty oils and game meats through the mail (some suppliers are listed below). But you don’t need anything out of the ordinary to get started.
Look for Lean Meats
The mainstay of the Paleo Diet is lean animal foods. Always choose the leanest cut of meat you can find.
Beef
If you can get it—it might be at the butcher’s counter, not out in the main meat aisle—“range-fed” is better than grain-fed beef because it’s leaner, and it has a better ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. Note: The words “natural beef” are no guarantee that the animal hasn’t been fattened with grains (or pumped full of antibiotics, for that matter); check with your butcher. A simple visual inspection of the fat on any cut of meat lets you know if the animal was raised on pasture or on grains. Pasture-produced meat has fat that is orange to dark yellow in color, whereas grain-produced meat has fat that appears white.
Poultry
“Free-range” chickens are almost always better than broiler chickens, because—like range-fed beef—they’re not as fat. Here, too, the natural foraging diet (of insects, worms, and wild plants) guarantees a healthful ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. Free-range chickens can be found in many upscale or health-oriented supermarkets.
Turkey
Turkey breast is one of the best and cheapest sources of very lean meat—it’s even leaner than most game meat—and fortunately, it’s available almost everywhere. Tip: Before you cook very lean domestic meats, rub them with olive oil. This will add flavor and help keep them moist during cooking.
Pork
Some pork is even leaner than chicken. Lean pork tenderloin, for instance, has 28 percent fat compared to skinless chicken breasts at 37 percent. Naturally grown pork—similar to free-range chickens—is leaner, too.
Other Choices
What about organ meats? Many people mistakenly think organ meats are fatty. Organ meats are low in fat and are rich sources of vitamins, minerals, and omega 3 fat. Bone marrow is another overlooked food that’s seldom eaten in the United States but is considered a delicacy in Europe. Even though it contains about 80 percent fat by weight, almost 75 percent of the fat is monounsaturated—which means that marrow is a good fat that won’t raise your cholesterol.
As for lamb, if you can find grass-fed, free-range meat, go for it. The type of lamb produced in Australia and New Zealand is leaner than American grain-fed lamb and contains more healthful omega 3 fats. Remember, leaner, grass-produced meat is the key to making this lifelong nutrition plan work for you.
One of the best online resources for locating healthy, naturally produced, grass-fed meats is my friend and colleague Jo Robinson’s Eatwild Web site: www.eatwild.com. Jo’s Web site is an incredible cornucopia of information that will help you locate a reliable producer of grass-fed, natural meat in your local region. Eatwild’s Directory of Farms lists more than 1,300 pasture-based farms, with more farms being added regularly. It is the most comprehensive source for grass-fed meat in the United States and Canada. For your convenience, Jo provides customers with contact information of suppliers who will ship their products to you.
Wild Game Meat—at a Gourmet Store Near You
In the United States, it’s illegal to harvest wild game meat for commercial use. This means that the game meat you can buy from specialty suppliers (some are listed below) didn’t come from the wild, but from a ranch or a farm—where these animals graze freely in large fenced or open areas. Most game animals are raised in free-range conditions. Like its wild counterpart, this game meat is quite low in fat and maintains a healthful balance of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids.
You can find buffalo and sometimes rabbit meat in many supermarkets—especially the upscale or health-oriented ones—and more exotic fare in specialty meat and butcher shops. Your local butcher may be able to order game meat as well, but be prepared—it isn’t cheap. If you are a hunter (or if you know someone who is, who would be willing to help out), you can save a lot of money by acquiring wild meat yourself.
Like all very lean meat, game meat is a bit
tricky to cook. It’s also easy to ruin so that it loses its texture and appeal.
It also helps to rub the meat thoroughly with olive oil before cooking and keep basting it as it cooks. If you grill game meat, keep it on the rare side, baste it often with olive oil or marinades, and it will be tender.
The secret to making game tender—and not rubbery or leathery—is to cook it very slowly over low heat in a covered dish with a bit of water
If you’ve never tasted game meat, you may be in for a big surprise. Some game meats, like buffalo and elk, taste a lot like lean beef, but with a sweeter, richer flavor. Others, like antelope or sage hen, can have a distinctively pungent flavor—the telltale “gamey” taste. This gamey flavor is actually a good sign; it results from the increased levels of omega 3 fats in the meat, plus various wild plants in the animal’s diet. It also indicates that the game meat you’re eating is healthy, with a good balance of omega 6 and omega 3 fats. If you’re not used to game meat’s distinctive flavors—or if you never want to get used to it—overnight marinating can do wonders.
Here are some mail-order suppliers that specialize in the sale of game meat:Game Sales International
P.O. Box 7719
Loveland, CO 80537
Phone: (800) 729-2090
Fax: (970) 669-9041
www.gamesalesintl.com
Exotic Meat Market
130 Walnut Avenue, Unit A-18
Perris, CA 92571
Phone: (951) 345-4623
http://exoticmeatmarket.com
Hills Foods Ltd.
Unit 130 Glacier Street
Coquitlam, British Columbia
Canada V3K 5Z6
Phone: (604) 472-1500
www.hillsfoods.com
Grande Natural Meat
P.O. Box 10
Del Norte, Colorado 81132
Phone: (888) 338-4581
www.elkusa.com
Mount Royal Game Meat
3902 N. Main
Houston, TX 77009
Phone: (800) 730-3337
www.mountroyal.com
Polarica (West Coast)
105 Quint Street
San Francisco, CA 94124
Phone: (800) 426-3872
www.polarica.com
Broken Arrow Ranch
3296 Junction Highway
Ingram, TX 78025
Phone: (800) 962-4263
www.brokenarrowranch.com
Exotic Meats USA
1330 Capita Blvd.
Reno, NV 89502
Phone: (800) 444-5687
www.exoticmeatsandmore.com
Southern Game Meat (Kangaroo)
Unit 1/5 Stanton Road
Seven Hills
NSW 2147 Australia
Phone: 61-2-8825-8350
www.sgm.com.au
Fish and Seafood
Nutritionally speaking, fish and seafood are a lot like humanity’s original staple food—lean game meat. They’re high in protein, low in total fat, and typically high in omega 3 fats. Many scientific studies have shown that regular fish consumption reduces bad LDL cholesterol and triglycerides while simultaneously increasing the good HDL cholesterol. The omega 3 fats in fish also prevent the heart from going into irregular, uncontrolled beating patterns called “arrhythmias,” which can be fatal. Fish is just plain good for you. It lowers your risk of heart attack, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. By eating fish and seafood regularly, you can significantly reduce your risk of dying from the number one killer of all Americans—heart disease.
Unfortunately, there’s a downside, and it has nothing to do with fish and seafood, but with our own environment. Fish and seafood are often contaminated with heavy metals, particularly mercury; by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); and by pesticides such as DDT and dieldrin. The places where fish live—oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams—are also the dumping grounds for many of these potentially harmful chemicals. Once in the water, these toxins seep into the sediments and then into the plants. They’re ingested by the tiny animals that form the base of the food chain. Little fish eat plants and tiny animals, and bigger fish eat little fish. Heavy metals and fat-soluble pesticides can become concentrated in older fish, in predatory fish, and in fatty species of fish.
Mercury finds its way into our waterways as a by-product of fuel-burning and through household and industrial wastes. Bacteria in the water convert mercury into the toxic compound methylmercury. When we eat mercury-contaminated fish, we can develop mercury poisoning, which can damage the brain and the nervous system. The good news is that most of the time, the amount of mercury we get from fish is quite small. And the amount of mercury that you can potentially accumulate by eating fish three or four times a week is tiny compared to how much you could get by industrial or occupational exposure.
For healthy people, regular fish consumption poses virtually no risk to brain or nervous system function. It’s safe even for pregnant women and very young children, concludes a comprehensive study conducted by Dr. Philip Davidson and colleagues at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York. Their findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, come from a nine-year study conducted in the Republic of the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, where most people eat fish nearly a dozen times a week and have mercury levels about ten times higher than those of most Americans. In fact, no harmful effects were seen in the nervous systems and behavior of children at mercury levels up to twenty times the average American level.
It is a worrisome fact that we live in a polluted world, and most of us are exposed to a host of toxic compounds. However, the greatest risk to your health is not from environmental pollutants, but from heart disease, diabetes, obesity, stroke, and the associated health disorders of metabolic syndrome. Eating fish protects you not only from these diseases but from all causes of death, including cancer. Because fish is one of our greatest sources of omega 3 fats, it can also help prevent depression and improve your mood, as my friend and colleague Dr. Joseph Hibbeln of the National Institutes of Health has shown. In short, fish should be part of your diet.
You should still be prudent when you shop for fish and seafood. Here are a few ways you can minimize your risk of eating contaminated fish:• Avoid freshwater fish taken from lakes and rivers—particularly the Great Lakes and other polluted, industrialized areas.
• Choose fish that come from cleaner waters, such as the Pacific Ocean and in Alaska.
• Eat mainly smaller, nonpredatory species such as flounder, herring, sardines, sole, pollock, catfish, halibut, and clams.
• Eat big fish—swordfish, shark, and tuna—sparingly. These long-lived predatory fish tend to accumulate more mercury.
Fortunately, over the long run, the Paleo Diet’s many fruits and vegetables—and their disease-fighting antioxidants—can help prevent cancers and health problems that are a direct result of our environmentally polluted world.
How to Be a Savvy Shopper for Fish
Yet the possibility of environmental contamination isn’t the only thing you have to worry about when you eat fresh fish and seafood. Another, much bigger concern is simply whether the fish has gone bad. Improper handling and warm temperatures offer great potential for bacterial contamination and spoilage as fish makes its way from wherever it was caught to its eventual place of sale. The freshness clock begins to tick immediately: most fish have a shelf life of seven to twelve days once they’re out of the water. But fish often remain on a boat for five to six days after they’re caught. They may spend another day or two in transit from the processor / wholesaler to the marketplace—and then may sit on a retailer’s display counter for several days more before they are sold. If the fish get too warm during any stage of transport, they’ll spoil even faster. Bacteria are the main culprits in the spoilage process, but enzymes in the fish tissue and even atmospheric oxygen can contribute. Fortunately, spoiled fish release a pungent warning—a compound called “trimethylamine,” which
causes the telltale fishy odor associated with bad fish.
Fresh fish is practically odorless. If a fish smells, spoilage is most likely well under way—so stay away from smelly fish. Here are some other tips:• If you’re buying whole fish—and it passes the odor test—check the gills. If they’re bright red and moist, the fish is probably fine. If the gills are brown or clumped together, the fish has been on the shelf too long.
• Buy fish last. If you’re making a prolonged excursion to the grocery store, don’t get the fish first and then let it sit in the cart for an hour while you get everything else on the list. Select it, pay for it, go home—and immediately refrigerate the fish in its original package in the coldest part of your refrigerator. Try to eat the fish no more than a day after you buy it.
• To protect yourself from bacterial contamination, wash the fish in cold water and then cook it thoroughly, until it’s opaque and flakes easily with a fork. This is important: bacteria and parasites sometimes live in raw fish. But if you cook the fish completely, you’ll minimize your chances of getting sick—even if you inadvertently eat fish that has partially spoiled.
• Avoid eating raw fish of any kind for the reasons above.
• If you can’t eat fresh fish within a day or two of buying it, freeze it. Freezing completely stops bacterial growth. However, once the fish thaws, the same deterioration process starts again.
• Be careful when you buy fish labeled “previously frozen.” This may be once-fresh fish that wasn’t bought, went past its expiration date, was frozen by the retailer, and was thawed again for quick sale.
The Paleo Diet Page 14