The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [77]
One cautionary note: In all your cooking, do your best to follow the spirit of the diet. If you eat certain Paleo foods or food combinations excessively, you can sabotage and defeat this lifetime nutrition plan and even gain weight. With modern food-processing techniques and creative recipes, a clever cook can assemble Stone Age ingredients in a manner that defies the basic logic of the diet. For instance, it is possible to make nut and root flours in food processors that can be combined with honey, olive oil, and eggs and later baked to resemble almost any modern processed food with very un-Paleo characteristics—high in carbohydrates, sugar, and fats. Those high-fat, high-sugar, high-carbohydrate Paleo food combinations may taste good, but they’re not much better for your health and well-being than cookies, cakes, breads, and doughnuts. These foods are great treats to be eaten every once in a while and are better for you than the commercially available, processed versions. But if they become common fare—particularly if you’re trying to lose weight—many of the potential benefits of the Paleo Diet will be lost.
When eaten in excessive quantities, even unprocessed or minimally processed foods that would have been available to our Paleolithic ancestors, such as dried fruits (raisins, dates, figs, and others), nuts, and honey, can throw the diet off balance and can be particularly troublesome if you’re trying to lose weight. The best way to satisfy your craving for sweets is to eat fresh fruit. Instead of pie, think melons—or blueberries, blackberries, pears, peaches, strawberries, or any other favorite fresh fruit.
If you still feel hungry after eating a Paleo meal, eat more lean protein—chicken or turkey breasts, fish, lean beef, shrimp, crab, or game meat if you can get it—or more crisp, succulent vegetables or juicy, sweet, fresh fruit.
When you carefully examine the Paleo Diet recipes, you’ll notice that most of them contain only fresh meats, seafood, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, with added spices, certain oils, and condiments made from all of these ingredients. Stick to these foods. Depending on your level of the Paleo Diet (I, II, or III), you may occasionally want to include a few recipes that contain vinegar, wine, honey, or a dash of salt. There’s nothing wrong with eating these foods occasionally, unless you have a health problem or an autoimmune disease, as discussed earlier in the book. Enjoy a glass of wine, a trace of salt in your food, a bit of honey in your dessert, or even an occasional bagel—but don’t make them your norm.
Basic Recipe Principles
When you make Paleo recipes with modern foods, make sure that all the ingredients are free of:
• grains
• legumes, including peanuts
• dairy products
• salt
• yeast (baked goods, pickled foods, vinegar, fermented foods, and fermented beverages all contain yeast, which may cause trouble for people with autoimmune diseases)
• processed sugars
• potatoes
• added fats (except for permitted oils in limited quantities)
Try to choose lean cuts of domestic meats. Cook simply by baking, broiling, steaming, or sautéeing in a little oil.
Stone Age Food Substitutions
Salt
Substitute powdered garlic, powdered onion, lemon juice, lime juice, lemon crystals, lemon pepper free of salt, cayenne pepper, chili powder, commercially available salt-free spice mixes, black pepper, cumin, turmeric, ground cloves, oregano, ground allspice, celery seeds, coriander seeds, and ground cardamom seeds. Actually, any spice or combination of spices can be used to replace salt. I do not recommend using any of the so-called lite salts or potassium chloride salts, because chloride,