So what can’t you eat on Paleo then? When ever the Paleo Diet comes up, this is the question I get asked. It seems like a perfectly innocent question, and the person asking it is doing so perfectly innocently. But there’s a problem with this question and the problem stems from the perspective that it’s being asked from. Many people’s perspective is this:

I eat a perfectly normally. Diets mean abnormal eating; that I should exclude foods that I normally like to eat. Then when the diet is finished I can go back to normal. Medicine works like this, so diets should as well. I’d like to take my diet-medicine and then go back to not worrying about food, or my health or my weight.

This is why diets fail people. At the core of all popular diets are some good workable ideas. But dieters often dont fully understand them and after a while they forget why they were on the diet in the first place and drift back to their old normal.

There’s also the way I often answer the question when put on the spot

Erm, well, you can't eat dairy, and no wheat, and also no legumes, or Potato’s, but Sweet Potatos are fine…

Then I start to tail off as it all sounds a bit boring and formulaic and much like information the questioner has heard before. It also doesnt really get to the heart of what Paleo is.

A better answer might be:

Lean Protein, Fruits and Vegetable, Healthy fats from nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oil, fish oil and grass-fed meat.

http://robbwolf.com/what-is-the-paleo-diet/

But that doesnt really do the Paleo Diet justice either. Of course advocates of a Paleo Diet and lifestyle have all read the books by Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain and Chris Kresser. We are probably regulars over at Mark’s Daily Apple and listen to the Latest In Paleo Podcast. So we know it’s more complex than just an easy description of what you can and cant eat.

It’s the quality of the food, the seasonality of the food, and every individual is different. I can tolerate a glass of milk now and again, or some good Natural Yoghurt, but the next person’s stomach will explode if they have cream in their coffee.

To properly embrace a Paleo Diet you have to redefine your normal. Breakfast Cereal? Nope, thats not normal, it’s a weird abberation conjured up by the food industry to use up otherwise unpaletable corn. Deserts and Ice-Cream after every evening meal? Nope, thats just not normal either. Take-a-way food, Fast-Food, eating out at restaurants two or three times a week? Probably shouldn't be your normal anymore.

But that doesn’t sound like much fun to most people.

Now that the Paleo Diet is gaining some traction and the main stream media is starting to regualrly report on the failings of the Standard Amercian Diet and the classic Food Pyramid, the Food Industry is more than happy to provide quick and easy Paleo Diet ready foods for all.

Hurray for big Agribusiness. We’d all starve to death without them.

Suddenly Big Food has made it easy to go Paleo. Do you love your toast in the morning? Easy, just buy some Paleo Toast! Are you really missing that mid-morning Chocolate Muffin? No problem, these Almond Meal Organic Cocoa Muffins are Paleo TM guarenteed. Paleo Pasta? We’ve got that too.

Replacing like-for-like in your diet and carrying on as normal without really understanding the principles of a Paleo Diet blueprint isnt going to yield results for anybody that tries it. They’ll drift back into old habits and the Paelo Diet will be discredited as just another fad by the public and mainstream media. Which would be a real shame.

So when someone asks you about eating Paleo, it’s important to place emphasis on avoiding Processed Foods. Stress importance of making new shopping habits, like visiting your local Farmers Market once a week; get them thinking about whole-foods as a foundation.

One arugument I hear is “But we’ve eaten bread for centuries with no problem”. Maybe. But the bread your Great Grandmother ate was a world away from the bread you can buy today. The strong nutritional profile of a good slow risen Sourdough Bread makes it a different food from the bread you get in the super market. Bread that in some cases was found to be part-baked and made in China before being imported. For the record, I’d rather have a slice of really good artisanal SourDough Bread made the old fashioned way than I would Paleo Toast made from Almond Meal.

http://www.danreid.org/health-alerts-sour-dough-health.asp

The catastrophic changes in bakery procedures were a disaster that went largely unnoticed and today some bakeries produce some bread in just 40 minutes from start of dough to baked finish. The general public has become conditioned to commercial bread products and is uninformed about the effects of the commercial processing that regular bread undergoes.

Free of commercial yeast, sourdough breads have
an aroma and distinctive flavors all of their own
and are naturally leavened by a fermented starter.

Very basic sourdough bread that had once been fermented for a healthy 8 hours or more is not to be found anywhere except in ones own kitchen today. In commercial bread yeast levels are dramatically increased, accelerants and proving agents introduced including bromide, a known thyroid poison that was insanely substituted for iodine in the US. Fast-made bread is one of the most destructive implementations into the modern diet. It has become normal fare. Poorly-prepared and poorly-digested wheat is the chief contributor to the current plague of “gluten-intolerance,” obesity, diabetes, Candida diseases and many allergenic conditions all of which contribute to the conditions that cause cancer.