Paleo and primal

[Daughteroughter]

I have been reading about paleo and primal diets has anyone tried them?

Ohhhh noooooo! I've succumbed to a Nakd bar (cocoa orange) and it was bloody lovely and now I want to buy a box of them [grrrr]

They are, technically, primal/paleo in that they are just fruit and nuts smushed up together (well, mine had a bit of cocoa in it) - right? Right?! I made sure I didn't buy the oaty ones.

Bloody high in carbs though - 18g per bar . That alone should ensure I don't eat too many of them! Was scrummy though.

Damn you, Tesco.

Am concentrating on dinner tonight - a sort of paella-y thing without the rice (!!) Fish, prawns and mussels with spices and tomato and veg. Hopefull delicious!

Hello. Can I join this paleo community?

Am starting off eating this way as I have significant weight to lose and also particular health issues that indicate that this lifestyle is the one for me: - gluten intolerance, joint pain, asthma, excema, headaches etc etc etc .

Am going back to page one to read the thread.

I think if people can avoid bars of any kind that is better but no point in thinking things are derailed if you err and stray.

My second daughter brought home the article I had set out for the children by coinicidence just now. In today's Telegraph
www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/healthyeating/9987825/Sweet-poison-why-sugar-is-ruining-our-health.html
www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/healthyeating/9987977/How-to-kick-the-sugar-habit-tips-and-low-sugar-recipes.html

Teaandthorazine, that sounds nice! I had similar recently - mussels, mushrooms, sugar snap peas, spinach and an onion just lightly fried together. Really filling. Mussels are definitely going on my shopping list from now on, they're really meaty and tasty and a frozen two quid bag has done me about six meals.

Can I ask what oil people use for cooking? I've been using proper butter and not a lot of it - I seem to have it ingrained in my head that butter = bad. Other oils I have at home are toasted sesame and olive infused with chilli.

In fact, thinking about it, I feel like I've eaten some truly delicious food this week and I certainly don't feel deprived. I'm not sure I'm really doing the diet properly - my basic rules have been :
No rice
No bread
No pasta
No beans
Nothing processed.
I know that sounds quite restrictive and there will no doubt need to e some flexibility, particularly in social situations but I feel great at the moment.

Oh and no potatoes!

Stuffez, best cooking oils and fats are butter, coconut oil and olive (olive for lower temp cooking only), they should all be raw and cold pressed if at all possible.

Depending on where you live, coconut oil may not be available in the shops, but goodnessdirect or a similar online store sell it.

I think avacado oil is ok too but haven't tried it.

Oils to avoid - all the "normal" cooking oils such as sunflower, rapeseed, canola etc as all are subject to intense chemical and heat processing and also are too full of omega 6 oils, we need to eat a better balance of omega 3 to omega 6.

As per paleo/primal guidelines, the more natural and least processed fats and oils are the best choices

Avocado oil is indeed fine, and I've just bought a big tub of ghee which in very much looking forward to experimenting with! Don't be afraid to use plenty of butter (organic if possible -apparently kerrygold is the best brand, paleo-wise).

Stuffez - I think your basics sound fine. It's not a diet though. right? No grains, no sugar, nothing processed. So glad you're feeling good on it!

And I would suggest lots of any kind of oils are not really needed. basic meat and fish and nuts have fats in them. For 2 million years it was unlikely our ancestors were cooking in pressed oils of any kind really.

Oops, no, not a diet - a way of eating!
Thanks for the oil suggestions. There is a small Chinese supermarket about 100 yards from my house, I wonder if they will sell coconut oil. Happily, right next to there is the best independent green grocer ever, so cheap and gorgeous produce. I would be more than happy to give them my custom as opposed to Tesco.
i don't tend to use a lot of oil, just a bit for frying vegetables together.
On a happy note, I've just discovered a big bag of venison hidden in my freezer. Happy days!

Indeed Xenia. They wouldn't have had frying pans for a start, to fry anything in!

However, adding an omega 3 rich oil to farmed meat may balance the ratio of 3 to 6, to somewhere close to what it should be.

Unless a persons budget stretches to buying only wild fish, game and completely grass fed, there is likely to be an over abundance of omega 6 in the fat of the meat they buy. I have a very large food budget (and realise I am very fortunate), but there is a limit to how far I can go wrt buying only grass fed/wild/game food... We are a family of 6 including 3 teens!

Raw Coconut oil is probably the best fat for adding in nutrition- it's pretty cool stuff, great for the brain, tasty straight off the spoon, good in lots of raw "cooking" recipes. Can be used as a moisturiser also!

Sadly, it is hardly a budget item at about £7 for the equivalent of a block of butter- so kerrygold grass fed butter would be the budget option!

I would advise anyone interested in this woe to get a slow cooker (or 2), as they are fantastic for cooking cheaper cuts of meat, making large batches of paleo chilli or sweet potato hash etc for the larger family or for batch cooking and freezing.

For those on a smaller food budget, I know there are a couple of paleo-on-a-budget cookbooks available.

This sounds really interesting! I've recently gone through a nasty break-up with carbs; I thought it was forever . I hit mid-thirties and all of a sudden, they turned on me. If I eat pasta or pizza for dinner, I see it on my legs the next morning .

Luckily, I adore veggies so I can imagine lots of lovely lunches and dinners but what on earth do you eat for breakfast? Do I have to give up my porridge with nuts and fruit!?!

RawCoconut Our Costco has big tubs of raw coconut oil that are a lot cheaper than the little jars I used to get from my health food store. Not sure if you have that in the UK, but might be worth a look.

I I eat a big spoonful of coconut oil most mornings - it's delicious and keeps hunger at bay for hours, especially handy if you know paleo foods are going to be hard to come by when out and about

Wrt oils/snack bars etc - I'm afraid my take on the whole paleo/primal deal is that it's inspiration for natural healthy food that does my body good, not historical re-enactment. I do aim to eat produce, not products, but I also live in the 21st century and shop in supermarkets

Macayoni, we have Costco here in Scotland, I think 3 in the whole country! Never seen coconut oil though I will look more closely next time I go. Locally, I have only seen it in one shop, and its cheaper online but I see more paleo/primal friendly foods appearing in the past year or so maybe this woe is starting to reach a critical mass here.

Breakfast... There's a few posts about breakfasts earlier in this thread, the main thing is ... Free you mind! Breakfast can be anything, it doesn't have to be "breakfast food".

The easiest thing for rushed mornings is just leftovers from the night before. A lot of people cook a bit extra by design, and that solves the breakfast problem.

You don't need to give up your porridge with fruits and nuts... Just the porridge!

RCM, yes. However in my view if British people simply moved from processed to non processed foods they would be more than half the way to a healthy diet and I would not want them put off eating better by thinking unless they can buy all kinds of special foods and organic products they are not "paleo" as it is such a broad term. Paleo can be your tinned tuna fish and greens which are not expensive and if they aren't organic that is not going to have a major impact on your health whereas giving up the bars, diet drinks, cakes and the like will do so.

Our local Waitrose I think has coconut oil - I opened the jar in the cupboard a few weeks ago and is smell of coconut (not surprisingly) so not used it yet. I do not think I use much oil anyway and I probably will at some point but it is like all oils quite manufactured and in a sense a kind of processed food so certainly not essential to use it although yes definitely better than many oils.

The traditional English breakfast has always been protein and veg - meats, eggs, kippers have a long tradition at English breakfasts, kidneys (I can't stand them), tomotaoes, mush rooms and then we decided in effect to poison the nation by making it move to a whole load of processed carbs. Even shreddies have sugar added, even the lower sugar cereals are very processed and would probably taste of cardboard if they did not have fake stuff added for taste.

Really interesting thread. Can someone explain the differences between paleo and primal for me please? Thanks.

We have loads of costco stores in the uk was at mine yesterday stocking up on meats eggs raspberries veggies and maple syrup but couldn't find any coconut oil? Where abouts is it in your store as may have looked in the wrong place?

I got a bargain yesterday! Went to Holland and Barrett to get coconut flour and they had 5 bags left going ood end of April reduced to 1.40 a bag so I got all 5 for 7.00 (normally 6.79 per bag!!) It will last ages :) as best before date is just a guide.
Got a massive pack of chicken mini fillets at costco so gonna turn half of it into paleo chicken nuggets for the freezer ( the kids are eating quite a lot of paleo recipes but that should make it easier for them to cope lol)

Am doing pork fillet with chinese cabbage for dinner cant wait!

For breakfast over the last week or so I've been having usually something egg based, so scrambled egg with a couple of spears of asparagus, or similar. Left overs is a good idea though, funny how we see some foods as not really "suitable" for breakfast. I've been off work all this week so won't have as much time in the morning from now on and will need something quick.
Sorry to bang on about how I'm feeling but I'm just in awe of how good I feel at the moment, it's like a cloud of stodge and heaviness has been lifted. Rather than wake up and feel like a sack of wet sand from the previous nights binges, I feel light and awake... It really is wonderful.

LaVida, as I understand it, paleo is stricter that primal, and also primal focuses on the wider lifestyle (like getting sufficient sun and sleep). There seems to be a lot of crossover.

Me and DS (2.5) had apple and cold mackerel for breakfast. I also had tomato and avocado in olive oil. Quite satisfying!

We are off on holiday for a few days and the plan is to do a Whole30 when we return. I'm not much of a cook at the best of times and with a toddler and newborn I don't get much chance to cook atm! Understatement...

Anyway, I think that means we will be eating a lot of very simple meals, not many complicated salsas or baking etc!

Xenia, you are right of course. Real food!
But probably the biggest single change as far a Health is concerned, even without adopting a paleo/primal woe, is if people would simply cut out gluten/gliadin containing foods (without replacing them with fake "gluten free" foods.

Firstly, there is the appetite increasing properties of grain proteins, but also the inflammatory and bowel damaging effects of a number of grain proteins (gluten is only one, and probably not even the worst!).
Also, as so many junk foods have wheat or gluten in, adopting a "no gluten" lifestyle will almost certainly be much healthier even if a paleo lifestyle as such is not adopted iykwim.

I have been tying to sell that idea to family and friends with some success, to people who have no intention of doing a full paleo woe.
I would say that is "paleo-lite", maybe a good starting point for healthier eating... .

Waitrose? Sadly my nearest one is 70miles away! By paleo friendly I don't mean manufactured fake foods, I just mean staple ingredients are now available in my local shops which weren't before - bags of nuts, seeds and dried foods with NO additives, sugar, gluten. Also a much wider range of olives in olive oil rather than "vegetable" oil, raw nut butters and so on. These basics were MUCH harder to find even a year ago locally (rural Scotland).

Otoh, we have lots of farm shops for good meat, local produce etc so its not all bad.

If anyone is interested in looking into why wheat is not great - wheatbelly blog is an interesting read, and free to use.

Read this threadwith great interest. I've done low carb, but still have a stone to lose. Primal seems a really good long term WOE. I've looked at the daily apple website, but have one quick question; is coconut water allowed with primal eating? I've heard very good things about coconut water, and as coconut oil is allowed I wondered about coconut water, but is it too sweet?

Coconut water is most definitely allowed. :)

For those craving moments, here are a couple of treats:

Coconut chocolate mousse
1)Put a can of coconut milk in the fridge. Once chilled (3/4 hrs), transfer the solid coconut mass- which will be a the top of the can (do not throw the liquid at the bottom)- into a foodproccessor.
2)add 50g (or more ) melted but cooled chocolate (I use 85%).
3)If a softer consistency is required add some of the retained liquid.
4) Enjoy (can be stored in the fridge)

Coconut and berry Ice-cream
Same as above but substitute chocolate with 3-400g of fresh or frozen berries. Using fresh berries might require 1 hr in the frezzer. Store in freezer.

To make it sweeter for guests I use 1/2 tsp of xylitol (Paleo,tooth friendly, low GI).

Sorry!Missed a step between 2) and 3)
step 2 1/2) blend