The Paleo Diet Cookbook: More than 150 recipes for Paleo Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Snacks, and Beverages (3 page)
Authors: Loren Cordain
BOOK: The Paleo Diet Cookbook: More than 150 recipes for Paleo Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Snacks, and Beverages
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The diet is incredibly easy to follow—eat fresh fruits, fresh veggies, lean meats, and seafood. Stick to the outside aisles of your supermarket and away from the center aisles, and you will be 85 percent of the way there. As you increasingly shun foods made with refined sugars, grains, vegetable oils, and salt, your palate will respond positively to the incredible cornucopia of flavors and textures and wealth of tastes that reside in real foods. Highly salted, sweetened, and processed foods blunt our palates to the subtle flavors of nature’s real groceries. With the Paleo Diet, a fresh strawberry becomes exquisitely sweet and just right, whereas a fancy chocolate becomes too sweet—an artificial adulteration of the real thing that sends your blood sugar rushing up and then down, making you feel bad in the end.
Sometimes it’s not so much what you eat but what you don’t eat that affects your health and well-being. Scientific evidence increasingly implicates grains, dairy products, legumes, and processed foods in metabolic syndrome diseases (type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, gout, acne, and more), cancer, autoimmune diseases, and others. In fact, I know of very few chronic illnesses that don’t respond positively to the Paleo Diet.
If you have these diseases or just want to lose a little weight and improve your overall health, what better way to do so than by enjoying the Paleo cuisine we offer you in
The Paleo Diet Cookbook?
With its more than 150 recipes, two-week meal plan, and hundreds of helpful hints for preparing, cooking, and serving Paleo foods, you will become a winner (and also a loser, if you need to drop some weight).
The Paleo Diet Cookbook?
With its more than 150 recipes, two-week meal plan, and hundreds of helpful hints for preparing, cooking, and serving Paleo foods, you will become a winner (and also a loser, if you need to drop some weight).
With
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
, I’m pleased to introduce you to my team of culinary experts, whose decades of combined experience with humanity’s original diet will make this way of eating and preparing food simple, appetizing, and second nature to you. My wife and lifelong companion, Lorrie, has probably been eating Paleo style longer than anyone on the planet, except for the few remaining hunter-gatherers. Lorrie has been preparing innovative and delicious Paleo meals and snacks for nearly twenty years. She single-handedly produced nearly every recipe in my first book,
The Paleo Diet
.
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
, I’m pleased to introduce you to my team of culinary experts, whose decades of combined experience with humanity’s original diet will make this way of eating and preparing food simple, appetizing, and second nature to you. My wife and lifelong companion, Lorrie, has probably been eating Paleo style longer than anyone on the planet, except for the few remaining hunter-gatherers. Lorrie has been preparing innovative and delicious Paleo meals and snacks for nearly twenty years. She single-handedly produced nearly every recipe in my first book,
The Paleo Diet
.
Lorrie’s interests run far and wide; she is not only an accomplished Paleo chef, a former triathlete, marathon runner, and high school cross-country coach, and a wonderful mother and wife, but she is also an experienced teacher with master’s degrees in both elementary and special education. Lorrie has a special talent for merging my scientific writings with many of Nell Stephenson’s innovative recipes to produce a book that is lively, coherent, and relevant to today’s cuisine.
Nell Stephenson is an internationally recognized Ironman triathlete, marathon runner, personal fitness consultant, and nutritional counselor, and like Lorrie she is also a Paleo chef. In her personal quest, Nell experimented with nearly every nutritional plan under the sun. She eventually discovered the Paleo Diet and found it to be superior to all other ways of eating. Nell has become a staunch supporter of the Paleo Diet and has years of practical experience in prescribing this lifetime plan of eating to her international clientele, including athletes as well as people just trying to lose weight and regain their health.
With a bachelor’s degree in exercise science from the University of Southern California, culinary school experience, and more than a decade of wisdom garnered in the fitness and nutrition industry, Nell brings important practical experience to the recipes that she and Lorrie have created for this book. Based in Los Angeles, she can be contacted through her Web site,
www.nellstephenson.com
.
www.nellstephenson.com
.
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
owes its origin to the resounding international popularity of my first book,
The Paleo Diet
. Although it was published several years ago, it has steadily sold more and more copies over the ensuing years and has recently risen into the top ten best-selling diet and health books. Such a sales history for a diet or health book is almost unheard of, as books of this genre typically sell like hotcakes when first released but then rapidly fade into oblivion. I have now thoroughly revised and updated
The Paleo Diet
;
The Paleo Diet, Revised Edition
, which has just been published, reflects the latest scientific research and revisions to the diet, as does this cookbook.
owes its origin to the resounding international popularity of my first book,
The Paleo Diet
. Although it was published several years ago, it has steadily sold more and more copies over the ensuing years and has recently risen into the top ten best-selling diet and health books. Such a sales history for a diet or health book is almost unheard of, as books of this genre typically sell like hotcakes when first released but then rapidly fade into oblivion. I have now thoroughly revised and updated
The Paleo Diet
;
The Paleo Diet, Revised Edition
, which has just been published, reflects the latest scientific research and revisions to the diet, as does this cookbook.
The Paleo Diet
and
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
are different from all other diet books and cookbooks in that they outline a lifetime program of eating based not upon the fallible ideas of charismatic diet doctors whose books eventually wither away, but rather upon our species’ ancestral diet. This is the foundational diet to which we are all genetically adapted and the diet consumed by every single human being on the planet a mere 333 generations ago.
and
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
are different from all other diet books and cookbooks in that they outline a lifetime program of eating based not upon the fallible ideas of charismatic diet doctors whose books eventually wither away, but rather upon our species’ ancestral diet. This is the foundational diet to which we are all genetically adapted and the diet consumed by every single human being on the planet a mere 333 generations ago.
When we restore our diet to the one for which we are genetically adapted, chronic illnesses and diseases with obscure or currently unknown causes improve or completely disappear. For instance, dermatologists once told us that diet had little or nothing to do with acne. Fast-forward to 2010, and the best medical and nutritional journals in the world now recognize that the typical Western diet—filled with processed foods, sugars, dairy products, and cereal grains—represents the main trigger of this common skin disease. Research from my scientific group in 2002 broke the diet-acne story wide open with our publication in the flagship dermatology journal,
Archives of Dermatology
.
Archives of Dermatology
.
My insight for uncovering acne’s dietary basis came from the evolutionary template that is the foundation for the Paleo Diet as well as for the delicious foods you will soon be preparing from the recipes and meal plans in
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
. This organizational template has allowed me and other scientists worldwide to uncover the optimal human diet. This nutritional scheme was not only the dietary master plan for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but remains so for all of us today.
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
. This organizational template has allowed me and other scientists worldwide to uncover the optimal human diet. This nutritional scheme was not only the dietary master plan for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but remains so for all of us today.
The Paleo Diet and even the word “Paleo” itself have become household concepts in the past decade, with recent coverage in the
New York Times,
the
Washington Post
, and other national and international media. A few years ago, if you searched for “Paleo Diet” with an Internet search engine, you would have been lucky to find my Web site,
www.thepaleodiet.com
. Now the Internet is literally bursting with Web sites, people, products, and services catering to this concept.
New York Times,
the
Washington Post
, and other national and international media. A few years ago, if you searched for “Paleo Diet” with an Internet search engine, you would have been lucky to find my Web site,
www.thepaleodiet.com
. Now the Internet is literally bursting with Web sites, people, products, and services catering to this concept.
The world has rapidly embraced this concept because it works. If you are overweight, the Paleo Diet will help you to lose weight effortlessly and without constant hunger. If you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, or cardiovascular disease, the Paleo Diet will swiftly improve your disease symptoms. In the past decade, thousands of scientific studies have verified the nutritional concepts I originally laid out in my first book.
In
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
, you will discover an incredible wealth of scrumptious, mouthwatering foods that will restore your vigor and guarantee your birthright of a long and healthy life.
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
, you will discover an incredible wealth of scrumptious, mouthwatering foods that will restore your vigor and guarantee your birthright of a long and healthy life.
1
The Paleo Diet Basics
Many of you have read my first book,
The Paleo Diet
, and are longtime Paleo Dieters with years of experience under your belts. For both you and for newM comers to the concept,
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
will provide a wealth of new Paleo recipes and menu plans that we have created, along with hundreds of helpful food, preparation, and cooking tips.
The Paleo Diet
, and are longtime Paleo Dieters with years of experience under your belts. For both you and for newM comers to the concept,
The Paleo Diet Cookbook
will provide a wealth of new Paleo recipes and menu plans that we have created, along with hundreds of helpful food, preparation, and cooking tips.
In this chapter, for the benefit of Paleo newbies as well as veterans, I will review the basics of the Paleo Diet, since a number of key points have changed since the first book’s publication in 2002.
The Paleo Diet, Revised Edition
, which has just been published, contains the latest essential updates to the plan.
The Paleo Diet, Revised Edition
, which has just been published, contains the latest essential updates to the plan.
The diet that nature intended for us is simplicity itself. You don’t have to count calories, keep dietary logs, or even measure portions. Instead, the essential rules of the Paleo Diet are incredibly easy: all the lean meats, poultry, fish, seafood, fruits (except dried fruits), and vegetables (except potatoes and corn) you can consume. Since the foundation of the Paleo Diet is high-quality, low-fat protein foods, don’t feel guilty about eating lean meat, poultry, fish, or seafood at every meal—it is precisely what you need to do, along with adding as many fresh fruits and vegetables as you like.
When you follow the uncomplicated nutritional principles laid out in this chapter and later spelled out in the book’s delicious, easy recipes and meal plans, you will lose weight, reduce your risk of metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes), cancer, autoimmune diseases, and virtually every other chronic illness that afflicts modern societies. You will sleep better, you will have increased libido, and you will have an even energy level throughout the day. Best of all, you won’t feel hungry all day long on this diet, because its high protein content is the best satisfier of the brain’s appetite center. If you eat a high-protein lunch, you will eat fewer calories not only at this meal but also at dinner.
By mimicking the diets of our hunter-gatherer ancestors with common everyday foods that you can purchase at your local supermarket or grow in your own backyard, you’ll be able to reap the health benefits that are your birthright: freedom from obesity, vigor, and optimal health throughout your life span. It is not crucial to exactly duplicate hunter-gatherer diets. This would be a next-to-impossible task in our twenty-first-century world, as many of those foods are no longer in existence, are commercially unavailable, or are simply unpalatable to our contemporary tastes and cultural biases.
For instance, hunter-gatherers typically ate the entire animal—brains, eyeballs, tongue, marrow, liver, kidneys, intestines, gonads—whereas these organs are unappetizing to most of us. However, these differences need not present any nutritional shortcomings in modern-day versions of our ancestral diet, particularly if we include seafood, fish, healthy oils, and a wide variety of fruits and veggies.
Most adults in the United States and other Westernized countries have never gone through a single day in their lives without eating grains, dairy products, refined sugars, or processed food. So, believe me, I have compassion for you when I ask you to forgo certain foods that have probably been daily staples for most of your life. It clearly isn’t easy to alter the habits of a lifetime, but you don’t have to do it all at once. You can soften the transition by easing into the Paleo Diet progressively, in a series of three levels of adherence. The levels are designed with the idea that what you do occasionally won’t sidetrack the healthy benefits of what you do most of the time.
Does this mean you can occasionally cheat? Absolutely. The flexibility of the Paleo Diet allows you to cheat occasionally, without losing the diet’s overall health benefits. Infrequent cheating is a great psychological strategy to help you adhere to the diet most of the time, and it won’t necessarily derail the weight loss and health effects you are trying to achieve. The only exceptions are for people with severe illnesses or autoimmune diseases, who should try for 100 percent compliance. Keep in mind that many people find that once they abandon a favorite food, its reintroduction makes them feel so awful that they simply have little or no desire to eat it again.
The key to the three compliance levels of
The Paleo Diet
is what I call the 85-15 rule. Most people eat about twenty meals a week, plus snacks. Consequently, three meals per week represent 15 percent of your weekly meals. At Level 1 of the Paleo Diet, you can cheat 15 percent of the time by including three Open Meals per week. At Level 2, you are allowed to cheat 10 percent of the time, with two Open Meals per week, and finally at Level 3 you are permitted a single Open Meal, which represents 5 percent of your total weekly meals. The beauty of this tactic is that you don’t have to forgo your favorite foods completely and forever. I recommend that beginners start at Level 1 for a few weeks and then gradually move toward Level 3 as they become accustomed to the diet.
The Paleo Diet
is what I call the 85-15 rule. Most people eat about twenty meals a week, plus snacks. Consequently, three meals per week represent 15 percent of your weekly meals. At Level 1 of the Paleo Diet, you can cheat 15 percent of the time by including three Open Meals per week. At Level 2, you are allowed to cheat 10 percent of the time, with two Open Meals per week, and finally at Level 3 you are permitted a single Open Meal, which represents 5 percent of your total weekly meals. The beauty of this tactic is that you don’t have to forgo your favorite foods completely and forever. I recommend that beginners start at Level 1 for a few weeks and then gradually move toward Level 3 as they become accustomed to the diet.
For Paleo Diet novices, one of the key issues that frequently arises is the proper amount of plant and animal foods that should be eaten on a regular basis. The best way to answer this question is to follow the example of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. My research demonstrates that although there was no single Stone Age diet, animal food was always favored over plant food. Our analysis of 229 hunter-gatherer societies showed that animal foods composed about 60 percent of the total daily caloric intake. On the Paleo Diet, you should therefore try to obtain a little more than half of your calories from lean meat, organ meats, poultry, seafood, and fish. The remainder should come from plant foods. A general rule of thumb is to put a fist-sized piece of meat or fish on your plate and then fill the remainder of your plate with fruits and veggies.
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