Over the last 5 months, I’ve been trying an experiment with a newish diet. It’s not fad diet, nor is it endorsed by some celebrity. Simply put it’s a way of eating which takes into account more of what our bodies are evolved to eat, rather than what current food providers produce.

One of the drivers for my venture into this experiment was... sad to say, seeing a year go by which told me ‘perhaps you should more seriously look at what you’re eating.’ Plus the desire for a bit of change; eating for me has always been a hassle. I’m far more interested in doing other things rather than wasting time with shopping, prepping, cooking, cleaning, ect. More often than not I’ve found myself wishing I could just pop a pill, drink some water and keep going with whatever project I was previously working on. Funnily enough, what I found out isn’t that far from it.

Now, I could look up a whole bunch of facts/figures on all kinds of websites – and parrot them here, but I’m not going to do that (you’re all more than capable of doing this yourselves.) Instead, I’ll tell you about what’s stuck and made sense to me over this time.

History

It all starts with how long we’ve been generally upright, and eating what we’ve been. Before we had agriculture, Homo Sapiens were hunter/gatherer. This means we ate what we could while on the go. And it’s generally understood among researchers that this was for around 225,000-200,000 years. That’s a pretty significant amount of time in the evolutionary scale. Basic agriculture has been around for say 10,000 years, and that was largely by hand or beast of burden, with the modern/mechanized being only in the last 200. 200 years, compared to 200,000 – that’s a pretty big leap. And yet what we’re eating in the last 50 years alone is such a massive departure from what our bodies are evolved to be eating.

Today we look at people from 100 years ago and are aghast that they would eat from cans sealed with lead. /Of Course/ that’s bad for you, you would never want to do this! But... they didn’t know that then, they couldn’t. And I suspect today we’re reaching a point where we’re looking at how we eat/prepare food and coming to a similar realization about what we should/shouldn’t be eating.

The Basics

The way ‘Hunter/Gather’ works is like this: Food which takes little to no preparation to accumulate. Animals you can kill, fruits you can pick off a branch, vegetables which you can pick straight off the plant, or dig up, with a minimum amount of effort to gather a significant quantity.

Where this departs however is those plants which want animals to eat them, vs those plants that /don’t/ want animals to eat them. What I mean here is seeds which are designed to be spread by wind, or seeds which are designed to be spread by eating. (Yes, the poops.) From what I’ve read and been told – Any plants that seeds are designed to be spread by wind have chemicals in them which inhibit the animals digestive system, either, robbing a necessary vitamin, or mineral, or just outright making them sick over a period of time. Basically put, a plant that has evolved over time to spread its seed by scattering/wind/ect. – has a very vested interest in /not/ being eaten, and so has evolved to make it an unpleasant situation for the animal eating it.

But, there are plants which /do/ want to be eaten, surrounding the seeds with all kinds of tempting and juicy plant parts which entice one to eat it. This is so the animal will take the seeds far away and give that plant far more spread then it could get simply by the wind. Obviously there is a lot more complication to this, but this is a basic description of how these things work.


Let’s start with some basic Rules.

Rule number one: If the plants seeds are designed to be spread by wind, probably not good in the long run to eat it. (This pretty much involves any grain, and especially corn.)

Rule number two: the ‘What goes in, Must come out’ issue. If what you eat looks the same going in, as it does coming out, chances are your body just isn’t designed to process it. I’m pretty sure if you swallowed a plastic cube, it would come out looking like a plastic cube. The same goes for corn and peanuts, yet people go right on eating corn and peanuts without giving them a second thought. Why is this?

Rule Number three: If the ingredient list in what you’re eating is mostly chemicals, I’ll give you three guesses as to how good for you it is. Really, this is kind of a no brainer. Your body is a fantastic chemical factory capable of pumping out all that you need so long as you supply it the raw materials it needs. I can guarantee you that a large amount of that chemical soup in the ingredients of what your eating has NOTHING to do with your health, and a lot more to do with making sure what you’re about to eat has a absolutely perfect taste, and can stay fresh and tasting that way for months. So you’ll buy it over the other guys product. I don’t think I need to detail the inherent wrongness with this.

Rule Number four: If you feel really bad after what you ate, chances are what you ate wasn’t good for you from the start. This is a real no brainer here but I’m kind of shocked to hear the number of complaints/stories/anecdotes people share of having a large meal, only to feel really sick about an hour or so after. I can tell you all after being on the diet I’m on that I can absolutely gorge myself silly and yet I’ll feel absolutely fine afterward with no ill effects. Yet it seems to be the way it goes in many advanced cultures to expect the all hallowed ‘food baby’ after a big meal.

Rule Number five: If it takes longer than a minute to gather a handful, then chances are you’re not evolved to eat it. What this is mostly concerning is grains, and rice. I realize that a great percentage of the planet eats rice, but rice has only been a staple in Asian cultures for only 5,000 years or less, that’s doesn’t hold a candle to the 225,000 odd years of human evolution in hunter/gather mode.

Carbohydrates and you.

Here’s some basics of what I’ve learned over the months. There are two different kinds of basic energy sources you can eat. We’re talking the stuff that your body breaks down and uses for energy. Fat, and Carbohydrates. The body, generally speaking will /always/ take the easy way out, for two reasons, back in our hunter/gatherer days, we needed as much energy we could get and sometimes things needed to be processed as quickly as we could get them. Fats, eat up a lot of resources to be used as energy, but are really easy to store. So as a rule they’re considered the ‘long burn’ energy. Complex Carbohydrates on the other hand, bypass a lot of the steps necessary from mouth to muscle movement, and so our bodies like to prioritize them and will burn them before fats – storing the fat for later use when times are lean.

This is ok because for the longest time, carbohydrates were not a common commodity. We didn’t subsist on them and our metabolism was generally run on fat burning. The major benefit to relying on fat for energy, is the amount of byproducts that were made from the body converting them. You see, in the process for turning fat to energy, lots of vitamins and minerals are converted, used, created into things we need. Complex Carbohydrate conversion doesn’t have the same effect, and so the body misses out on all the needed processes. So now because today our diet mostly consists of carbohydrates, and ‘Low Fat’ everything else, is it any wonder that so many people need to take vitamin supplements to stay healthy?

Where we now throw a monkey wrench into the works is simple carbohydrates. Sugars, basically. To the body this is instant energy, no need to pass go, no conversions or vitamins/minerals necessary – just go straight to the muscles to do the work needed, but there are no regulators or checks in this system. All the fats in the body are immediately stored, and the complex carbohydrates are clogging up the system. However, the problem with this is our bodies were never evolved to handle this kind of energy intake. It’s like throwing straight ether and NOS into a lawnmower engine and giving it full throttle. (hint: it’s going to do serious damage to the engine.) And yet what does the diet of most advanced countries comprise these days? Sugar. Here’s a hint folks. 50 years is not enough time to completely overhaul the human body’s base chemical processes to handle a diet shift like this. It doesn’t matter how fast industry or technological processes work. Unless people get a lot less squeamish over genetic engineering, we simply are not evolved to handle it.

To the human body, we’re still in Hunter Gather mode. And have suddenly come upon a massive field of wheat, surrounded by cane sugar. Now all we’re doing is eating burned grains, and sucking on sugar cane, all the while not moving around.

Everyone knows if you own a pet, wildly altering its diet is a really bad thing. Yet we’ve done it to ourselves as a species over the last few hundred years, and in fact do it on a daily basis.

What I’ve discovered

Let me ask you all this. Is it possible to overdose on alcohol? How about sugar? Now consider, ever hear of someone overdosing on vegetables? There are things which we know to obviously be bad for us in large quantities, and yet every day what we are feeding ourselves could be considered overdosing.

Let me walk you through what I generally eat in a days’ time.

Breakfast, starts out with three eggs, a small bit of full fat milk mixed in to fluff up the eggs, and a handful of frozen vegetables thrown straight in, along with some cubed ham, and a few spices. A cup of coffee sweetened with honey. Two hashbrowns, topped off with some non-sweetened, non flavored yogurt. (They call it Greek style here.)

Lunch/dinner is similar, except instead of eggs I use a meat, either ground beef, lamb, deer, typically a red meat. I’ve found that chicken and fish don’t have nearly enough fat to keep me going. (Tho it’s good to have these occasionally just to mix things up.) Once the meat is half cooked, I’ll throw in either a lot of frozen, or fresh vegetables in with it till all is fully cooked.

A hint about boiling/steaming vegetables: Don’t. Even steaming vegetables leeches some of the useful content from them. Best to just throw them in with the meal your preparing directly to retain 100% of what they are.

Once the meat and vegetables are cooked (all the water is boiled off), along with whatever spices I wanted, this all gets put into a bowl, fat and all, and then three heaping spoonfuls of Greek yogurt. I’ve also found all natural pasta sauce works nicely, or both together.

I usually cook about 600gm of meat and 350gm of vegetables, eating most of it right then. I’ll save say a third for later. I’ve got 5 juices in my fridge, all as naturally pressed with no additives. Apple, Orange, Cranberry, Tomato, and Pineapple. Along with milk and water, I don’t drink much else. I’ll snack on unflavored potato chips, or a piece of fruit throughout the day, but generally speaking I can go 12 hours without feeling much desire to eat.

The way I understand it, our ‘hunger sense’ comes from blood chemistry. Not from the fullness of our stomach. Because fat is the ‘long burn’ way of subsisting, a good fatty meal can carry you for quite a while. But one based mostly in carbohydrates burns quickly and leaves you feeling hungry again after a much shorter time. (How many of you have gone to Mackers and stuffed your face only to feel hungry again an hour after?)

Because I’m on the long burn, I have a much deeper energy reserve – I don’t get tired as quickly, or cold. Generally speaking my skin has cleared up amazingly, and as a benefit of no more sugar, fruits taste AMAZING.

And for all you weight loss people out there. Despite the fact that I’m going out of my way to eat the fattiest meats I can, I’ve /lost weight/ and have gained some serious muscle definition – to the point that people have been asking me ‘Are you working out?’ When in fact I’ve not seen a gym or much exercise really in the last few months.

Additionally, my weekly food bill is about $90 a week, and I’m eating till I’m absolutely stuffed, which is generally speaking about twice a day.


The shopping list.

These are the various vegetables I’ve been eating:

Broccoli
Butter beans
Carrots, Orange
Carrots, Yellow
Cauliflower
Edamame beans, Shelled
Garlic, Fresh and chopped
Green beans, Italian
Kumera, Red, Brown (Sweet Potatoes for you Yanks)
Onions
Peas
Peppers, Red, Yellow and Green
Potatoes
Romanesco broccoli
Shiitake mushrooms
Snow Peas
Spinach
Sugarsnap Peas
Zucchini

Meats and Protein: (All freerange if possible.)

Ground Beef
Boneless Chicken
Various Fish
Lamb (Lamb is fantastic, it has a lot of fat and is far cheaper because of the mistaken idea that fat is bad.)
Venison
Eggs
Pig, (A note about bacon: The nitrates put in bacon to preserve it, are really bad for you, unless you can get nitrate free bacon, give this a miss.)

Drinks, listed by order of priority:

Water, Water, WATER. (Let me clue you all into something here, water is fantastic for you, it makes /everything/ in your body do what it needs to do and what comes out of the tap – is perfectly fine – I think everyone now realizes that most bottled water is a complete scam and if you want to pay over a dollar per liter of water, good luck with that.)
Apple juice
Orange juice
Cranberry juice
Milk, full fat
Tomato juice
Pinapple juice

Various:

Freeze dried coffee
Herbal Teas
Honey
Natural Potato Chips
Various Fruits (Whatever looks appealing that day.)
Greek Styled Yogurt (large 1kg container.)
Varied spices


That pretty much compromises the buy list. The off-the-menu list is actually pretty easy

Sugars, of any kind.
If it contains sugar, then you can’t eat it. This includes any and all sodas, sports drinks, and even some canned soups I’ve seen sugar as the primary ingredient!

Anything containing any variant of Grains.
I could go through a huge list of all the various grains there are, but basically if it’s windblown, and doesn’t want to be eaten, it has something in it called ‘Lectin’ these are SUPER BAD for you and basically put are how the plants have evolved to make animals eating them overly sick. There are a host of websites out there explaining what these do to you so just Google ‘Why Grains are killing you.’

Anything containing any kind of Legumes.
If the whole Lectin thing wasn’t bad enough, Legumes (Pretty much any pea or bean.) contain both Lectin, and Phytates, which basically prevent you from absorbing Calcium, Magnesium, Iron and Zinc. You know – those basic things you need to live. (Some beans and peas I’ve listed previously contain the least amount of these toxins out of them all, which is why I still eat them, but I’m weaning myself off.)

Dairy, and how it varies.
I don’t give this a complete miss like the Paleo diet says you should. Mostly because I believe that this is one of the diet items humanity is most adapted to accepting, as we all drank ‘milk’ as babies from our mothers. It’s a smaller step in evolving to handle this later on in life. And it’s my estimation that humanity is in the process of evolving to handle more of this right now. So, I’ve cut down my dairy intake a good deal but not all together. This obviously fluctuates with other people so your results may vary.

Oils:
I don’t use much oil in the things I make, but from what I’ve found, there are some oils which you should absolutely avoid as while they might taste good, they really muck up the works later on.
-Corn oil
-Cottonseed oil
-Peanut oil
-Soybean oil (same as soy oil)
-Rice bran oil
-Wheat germ oil


The Verdict.

So, what has this all come down to? Yes, this has been a major departure in what I’ve been eating for the last 30 odd years, but in the end it’s made quite an improvement in my overall well being. I spend far less at the grocery store, I have ABSOLUTELY NO desire to eat fast food ever again. My general health and energy levels are way over what they used to be. It takes me less than 25 minutes at a time to prepare a meal. I don’t have the constant ‘hungry, eat, lethargic, hungry’ cycle any longer. Now I can go at least 12 hours between meals and feel perfectly fine. My skin has cleared up quite a lot, and I’ve lost weight without even trying, not to mention getting some enviable muscle definition with 0 effort. (I’m just imagining what would happen if I started working out.)

A warning however: Switching over to this diet is not easy, both physically and mentally. Food and our patterns can be pretty well ingrained, and I can guarantee switching from a carbohydrate, to fat burning metabolism will leave you feeling lethargic and foggy for 2-3 weeks while your body figures itself out. But, once you’re switched over, you’ll never want to look back.

I’m not saying this is for everyone, and there are those out there who would say the paleo diet can be too dull. But, here’s something to consider. Your body can only tolerate so much variation before problems arise. The mind is far more malleable and the imagination limitless. Better to entertain yourself with intellectual pursuits which can last a lifetime, rather than foods which will shorten it.

-Kalt The Dragon