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In theory, holidays are a time of joy and celebration. In practice, even the most superficial attention to health and nutrition can make the month-long festival of candy canes, chocolate Santas, and seasonal Starbucks drinks a challenge. At first, the idea of “surviving” the holidays seems silly: if they’re that unpleasant, why participate in the first place? But it’s not always possible to opt out of such an important cultural event, and besides, not everything about the holidays is irritating. With some smart planning ahead of time and a little ingenuity, it’s possible to enjoy the good parts of the season without compromising your health.

The holiday season presents two main types of challenges. The first one is the general seasonal stress that lasts from Thanksgiving (or even before!) to January 1. Stress reduction is an incredibly important part of the Paleo lifestyle, so just the shopping, cooking, and planning would be challenging enough, but the struggle doesn’t end there: the constant seasonal pressure to indulge in sugary desserts and candies can tempt the most committed of Paleo dieters. The holiday season often brings an intense sense of deprivation when everyone around you seems to be merrily enjoying the candy canes and sugar cookies that you can’t have, and the cultural pressure to experience holiday food as part of the festivities can make you feel socially isolated when you don’t join in.

The second kind of pressure is the acute stress of the big family feast. While the seasonal pressure builds up over a month or more, family dinners only last a few hours – but they’re much more intense. For Paleo dieters, traditional holiday dinners become a minefield of food temptations, offended relatives, and rude questions about “this weird new caveman diet.” This is especially true if you’re also travelling, without access to your own kitchen and a place to get away if you need a break.

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer approaching your first Christmas without fruitcake, the holidays can be a challenging time to stay Paleo. But you don’t have to give up on your health to enjoy the season: these 12 tips can help you make the most of the holidays without compromising your Paleo goals.

Part I: Holiday Season Strategies

It’s important to remember that Paleo is about more than what you put in your mouth. Yes, candy canes are bad for you, but staying up until 4:30am wrapping presents isn’t doing your health any favors, either. The tips below are designed to help you cope with the entire holiday season and the lifestyle challenges that come with it. It might not seem obvious, but these are also crucial steps to surviving the bigger hurdles along the way. Think of sports: if an athlete exhausts himself overtraining in the week before a big game, he won’t perform nearly as well at crunch time. In the same way, if you wear yourself out at the beginning of December, you won’t have the energy and resilience you need for the family parties at the end.

1. Boost your Immune System

The holidays hard enough when you aren’t sick, but just when you least want to come down with that nasty winter cold, you’re in the ideal environment for it. During the weeks leading up to the holidays, most people spend more time than usual packing themselves into small indoor spaces like malls and shopping centers, sleeping at each other’s houses, or crowding into cars for road trips to Grandma’s. Colds, flus, and nastier bugs like pneumonia flourish in that kind of environment. Fortunately, a Paleo diet is a wonderful way to keep your immune system in peak condition – make sure to get plenty of Vitamin D (especially if you live somewhere cold and dark) and Vitamin C. It’s always tough to get enough sleep during the holidays, but sleep deprivation makes you much more vulnerable to disease, so try to get in at least 8 hours every night, or take a nap in the afternoon if you were up late.

2. Set December Exercise Goals

Regardless of whether or not you indulge in holiday desserts, sticking to your exercise plan will help you handle the stress of the season. Just maintaining your routine can bring an important little bit of sanity to an otherwise crazy time of year. Exercising also releases endorphins, natural mood boosters that help cheer you up on dark winter mornings. As a bonus, many people find that when they stagger out the gym after a hard workout, it’s much easier to make smart nutritional choices because they just aren’t interested in sugary junk food.

To keep yourself motivated during the holidays, try setting a personal exercise goal for December, and planning some kind of reward if you make it. Having a definite plan in mind will help you much more than the vague idea that you need to keep up with your workouts. Try shoveling out your driveway as fast as you can on December 1st, and then set an ambitious speed shoveling goal to make by the end of the month (this is also a great way to spread some holiday cheer to your elderly or housebound neighbors). Or get together a group of friends and start your New Year’s resolutions early – you’ll beat the January crowds at the gym, and help each other stay fit and active during the winter.

Even if you’re travelling for the holidays, you can still make time to move around. Your grandmother might not have a full set of Olympic lifting equipment tucked away in her basement, but a brisk walk in the snow before breakfast, or an energetic snowball fight will get your blood pumping just as well – if you’ve been pushing yourself athletically in the season leading up to the holidays, this can even function as a deload week, giving your muscles a welcome chance to relax and repair themselves. For a more intense workout, try a run around the neighborhood, or some bodyweight exercises that you can do anywhere: the Angry Birds workout from Nerd Fitness is easily scalable and can be done with only your bodyweight. Think of holiday visits as a beneficial challenge to your fitness routine, and take the opportunity to try something you don’t usually go in for – you might be surprised by how much you like it.

3. Make it Yours

Too often, people approach “surviving the holidays” as though they’re powerless to change anything about the season, and they just have to put their heads down and grit their teeth until January. But that doesn’t have to be the case! Sure, the modern holiday season revolves around sugar and candy, but there’s no reason why you can’t find the parts of the season that are actually meaningful to you, and develop your own Paleo-style celebration. The religious tradition of Christmas doesn’t require any kind of special food and a secular celebration of family, generosity, and goodwill definitely doesn’t have to depend on what you eat. Traditional Jewish food for Hanukkah can present more of a challenge, but even if you decide to prioritize religious observance over Paleo, you can still avoid the peripheral cakes, candies, and other non-Paleo desserts while celebrating the season with your loved ones.

The key to this is to be proactive about it. Instead of suffering mutely through the commercialized, sugar-laden version of December, try creating your own traditions. Go for a sleigh ride, have an epic snowball fight with all your relatives, or get together to create handmade paper ornaments instead of just throwing a box in your cart at Target These are traditions that appeal to everyone, no matter what kind of food they eat, and you might be surprised at how happy your relatives are to escape the typical Christmas visit activities.

4. Give Yourself a Break

Counterintuitively, one of the best ways to handle the holiday stress is just to acknowledge that it exists. The cultural pressure to feel constantly cheerful and merry during the entire month of December is stressful in itself, and dietary pressure is just icing on the cake (the cake you have to constantly resist eating). Almost everyone feels deprived and exhausted at some point. It’s tempting to surround yourself with tough love and white-knuckle it through December: food is nothing but fuel and you only feel so unhappy because wheat is addicting. But food is so much more than fuel. From the beginning of recorded human history, we’ve used food as a tool of cultural exchange – when you turn down the gingerbread at a party, you’re excluding yourself from a cultural connection, and that hurts. Give yourself permission to feel unhappy, lonely, and deprived at times, and those feelings will become much more manageable.

It’s also important not to expect perfection from yourself. In the middle of all the craziness, if you give up and just eat a bagel because it’s right there after a marathon shopping trip and you’re starving and exhausted and don’t have the energy to go home and cook, let it go. If you’ve spent the better part of a week fending off your grandmother’s gingerbread and you don’t have the patience to smile about it any longer so you eat it just to get her off your back, let it go. Beating yourself up about it won’t help. Try putting it in perspective: if you’ve stuck to your guns since before Thanksgiving, a few cookies on December 23rd won’t undo all your hard work.

Some people might even find it helpful to plan a “cheat” during the holidays. Obviously if you have a life-threatening allergy or intolerance to something, the fact that your mother made it over Christmas doesn’t matter. But if you’ve been eating Paleo long enough to heal your gut from the damage of the standard American diet, and you’re willing to accept the consequences of eating foods you normally wouldn’t, it might not be such a big deal to plan on enjoying some of the holiday goodies all around you.

This doesn’t mean that you should binge on everything in sight – pick your cheats carefully, and make sure they’re actually worth it. What’s “worth it” will depend on you – for some people, it might be their grandma’s traditional Belgian chocolate cake; for other people, it might be a well-savored bowl of Ben&Jerry’s. If Reese’s Pieces are really what you want, there’s no point “cheating” with homemade fruitcake and then having to suffer the health consequences even though you didn’t actually get what you were craving. If this sounds like a good way for you personally to maintain your sanity over the holidays, check out the Whole30's guide to nutritional off-roading for suggestions on how to “cheat” intelligently.

Part II: Dinner with Grandma

The stress might start after Thanksgiving, but holiday dinners are the time when the seasonal pressure really comes to a head. These visits often bring an intense dose of culturally required interaction with people you know just well enough to be irritated by, in the context of meals loaded down with emotional significance. In that situation, many people will seize on superficial differences as a topic of conversation, since they don’t know each other well enough to have any kind of meaningful discussion. Health-conscious dietary choices are obvious in the context of candy canes and gingerbread cake, so they make for an easy conversation topic (especially for groups trying to avoid touchier subjects like religion and politics).

Unless you’re very good at going undercover, chances are that your diet will draw attention at some point. But this doesn’t have to mean gritting your teeth for the next four hours while repeating your answers to the same questions about saturated fat and whole grains. With a little planning and some tactful conversation maneuvers, you can enjoy your meal despite the non-Paleo foods present and the people who might pressure you to eat them.

5. Understand what Food Pushers really want

Simply put, a food pusher is someone who pushes food on you – someone who won’t stop trying to make you eat something even though you’ve already politely refused. Chances are, if you have to attend any kind of holiday party, you’ll run into at least one food pusher. Ironically, the real issue behind a food pusher’s behavior often has nothing to do with food. It doesn’t seem obvious when Aunt Susan is waving her tray of pumpkin spice cookies under your nose, but food is often just a proxy. Sometimes, food pushers want assurance that you like and appreciate them. This often takes the form of a guilt trip: “What, you don’t even eat Christmas pudding now? But I made it just for you! You don’t like my cooking?” This person is using food because it’s the cultural language of choice during the holidays, but really, they just want emotional reassurance that you care. Fortunately, you can address their actual concerns just as well without eating (maybe by spending quality time with them during your visits, or just by letting them know you love them), and head off a battle before it starts.

Other food pushers really want to feel better about themselves – they see that you look and feel amazing, and they’re jealous, so they try to pull you down to their level. This is petty and low, but unfortunately, it’s very common. Some people just want to show off how much they know (or think they know) about nutrition by “proving” you wrong however they can to make themselves feel important. Other food ushers are genuinely concerned for you: they’re worried that if you aren’t eating dairy you might not be getting enough calcium, or they honestly think you’re missing important nutrients by giving up whole grains. Another kind of food pusher might feel bad for you – she thinks you’re depriving yourself, and wants you to have a good time like everyone else.

How you respond to someone pushing food on you will depend on why they’re really doing it – if they actually think you’ll enjoy a brownie, they’ll offer you the plate once and not make a big deal out of it when you refuse. But if they keep pushing it, there’s something bigger than the food itself at stake, and you can respond to it much more effectively if you understand what it is. By addressing the actual issue at hand, you can address their actual concern without eating something that makes you sick.

6. “No, thank you.”

When it comes to surviving holiday dinners, potluck parties, and almost every type of food pusher, “no, thank you” is one of the strongest weapons in your arsenal. You are an adult. You decide what you do and do not eat. You don’t need to justify anything; you don’t need to deliver a doctoral dissertation on the molecular structure of gluten or the role of lectins in autoimmune-related gut irritation. It doesn’t matter why. All that matters is that you’re an adult, and you choose to eat some things and not others, full stop.

At first, this seems like it shuts down debate – isn’t it good to discuss your life choices with people who disagree, to challenge your own beliefs instead of dogmatically clinging to your right to have your own opinions? Some of the time, yes. If you’re blessed with relatives who can discuss dietary differences of opinion in a calm and rational way, take full advantage of your good fortune. But it just isn’t always possible to have an honest and productive conversation about diet. Food pushers don’t care about your health; they just want to satisfy their own emotional needs by getting you to eat something. It has nothing to do with whether the food is healthy or not. When you try to argue with a food pusher on nutritional grounds, it’s like trying to explain to an avalanche why it shouldn’t hit you: you might as well save your breath. Don’t ruin your own evening by getting caught up in the argument.

7. Take the focus off yourself

A great combination move for “No, thank you” is “…but how do you like your new job?” Or “…but how’s your home renovation going?” or “…but I heard you’re going to Hawaii in the spring?” or any other kind of open-ended question that has nothing to do with your diet. If you try to justify your choices, or if you just leave it at “no, thank you,” you’re leaving the topic open for debate, as though it were ok for the other person to keep asking questions about it and try to persuade you that you’re wrong. That’s not the message you want to send. By bringing up a new topic (preferably something really juicy and interesting so they forget all about the cookies), you can deflect attention from the food and forestall an argument before it starts.

8. Deflect the Urge

Another way to handle people pushing food on you is to use the magic word: “later.” Claim that you’re completely stuffed, but you’d love to take home some leftovers. Then when you get home, you can just throw away whatever they sent you home with, avoiding a conflict while keeping your diet intact. In some ways, this seems like a sneaky, dishonest way out, since you’re deliberately misleading someone into believing that you’re going to eat their marshmallow pudding. Whether you feel comfortable with this as a “white lie” or not is up to you, but keep it in mind as a potential strategy for handling people who just won’t give up.

9. Make it Personal

Blanket statements that “[food x] is unhealthy” are likely to make other people very defensive. They’re inviting argument: if you claim that “grains are unhealthy” surrounded by a group of relatives munching dinner rolls and lasagna, you’re asking to start a big argument about whether or not grains are healthy in the abstract. Everyone else will naturally try to defend their dietary choices. Instead, try making it personal: “I don’t feel well when I eat gluten.” Nobody can argue with you about that. Nobody can claim that you’re wrong. Of course you know that you feel sick eating gluten because grains are unhealthy, but you don’t have to bring that up at the table.

10. Fake an Allergy

If a simple “[food x] makes me feel sick” doesn’t work, some people bring out the heavy artillery and pretend to have a life-threatening condition like Celiac Disease or a peanut allergy. Pretending to have a serious allergy when you don’t is a very controversial strategy, since many people feel that it’s “crying wolf,” making others less likely to believe people who actually do have life-threatening problems. On the other hand, it’s a very effective way to shut down debate and attempts to persuade you that “just a little bit won’t kill you” or “it’s the holidays; lighten up.” People respect a physical disability more than they respect the attempt to stay healthy; you shouldn’t have to pretend to be Celiac just to get out of eating cookies, but sometimes you do.

11. Plan Ahead, and Come Prepared

A lot of dinner-party pain is avoidable with some simple forethought. If you’re travelling at all for the season, it’s especially important to come prepared with everything you need, since you might not have the opportunity to find much Paleo food while you’re there. Plan ahead and stock up on jerky, trail mix, and other easily portable Paleo snacks so you won’t be stuck without a Paleo option when you’re hungry. If you’re going to help with the cooking, try bringing your own coconut oil or other cooking supplies: most people are perfectly happy to substitute coconut for canola (or another toxic vegetable oil). If you can work out menu details with your host, so much the better – try requesting eggs for breakfast, or lots of salad ingredients so you can whip up your own lunch in a pinch. Most hosts want their guests to feel welcomed and relaxed, and they’ll be happy to make these kinds of arrangements within reason.

If you’re hosting the festivities, you’re in luck: with all the advantages of your home turf and no need to lug coolers full of food from state to state, you can enjoy your own cooking without the fear of mystery oils or hidden gluten. If your guests aren’t Paleo, you might have to make some concessions to the food they’re used to eating, but if you don’t make a big deal out of your special diet, most people won’t object to omelets for breakfast, or lunches and dinners of hearty roasts accompanied by some safe starches like rice or potatoes.

You might even find that your guests are relieved at the healthy food, because it gives them less trouble in sticking to their own health and fitness goals. Many people worried about surviving the holiday season forget that others are also struggling to maintain healthy eating habits – if you were the only one, you wouldn’t be able to find nearly as many blog posts about it. If your relatives bring dessert foods (as many people do), you won’t even need to buy any; otherwise, try serving some Paleo chocolate pudding or berries with whipped cream. Even if you have to buy a few loaves of bread or some muffins for the picky eaters in the house, it’s easy enough for you to avoid the side dishes if the main meal is Paleo.

Mental preparation is also key to navigating the inevitable dinner-table comments about your “caveman diet.” Before you head off to your relatives’, brush up on the latest topics of interest so you’ll have a ready stash of subjects if you need to change the topic. Even if you don’t personally care about the Petraeus scandal or your uncle’s favorite football team, they’re more pleasant to hear about than how you’re killing yourself with all that saturated fat. It’s also helpful to decide in advance how far you’re willing to make dietary concessions. Have a strategy in place for what you’re going to eat and what you’re going to turn down; don’t wait to make your plans until everyone is waving pie and cake in your face and you’re already hungry. Planning your visit ahead of time – including when (if at all) you plan to deviate from a strict Paleo diet – will save you a lot of pain down the road.

12. Find a Buddy

Paleo dieters and vegans don’t generally have much in common, so the advice to stick together might seem ridiculous at first. But in the context of overly-nosy relatives, your vegan (or macrobiotic, or Kosher, or Atkins Diet) relatives are probably suffering from the same nosy comments and other annoyances that you are – which means they probably sympathize with your irritation, if not your plate full of ham. Try striking up a conversation about how annoying it is that everyone feels the need to comment on your food choices, and then finding something totally unrelated to talk about – which both of you will probably be longing for at that point.

Note that this tactic depends on the person in question – some vegans, just like some people of every other dietary persuasion, are passionate evangelicals and will simply seize the opportunity to lecture you about how unethical and unhealthy your Paleo diet is. But there are also a lot of vegans in the world who don’t approach their diet with near-religious fervor, and just want people to stop asking them why they won’t eat the turkey. Finding someone who shares your pain and engaging with them removes you from the people picking at your eating habits and might even lead you to a new friend.

Conclusion

It’s unrealistic to expect that the holiday season will go smoothly from start to finish. Even if you do everything right, something will inevitably happen that throws you off – maybe your in-laws turn Christmas dinner into a political clan war, or your kids bring home a nasty case of the flu from school and lay you out for a week. But taking care of your health with a Paleo diet will give you the energy to handle the rough spots, and appreciate what you do like about the season. And as a bonus, January 1 will be so much more pleasant when you’re already set in a healthy routine, instead of trying to get back on track after a month off.

It sneaks in everywhere, hiding behind a long list of different names and clever disguises. It creeps into tomato sauce, lurks in every salad dressing, and infiltrates otherwise-innocent canned soups. Even bacon isn’t safe! If you spend any time at all on Paleo, you practically start to see sugar peering out from behind every corner, shrouded in a black trench coat and hatching nefarious schemes to trap you in its clutches.

Assigning personality to a food can itself be unhealthy, but in this case, the food doesn’t even deserve all its bad press. Of course, like any other food, sugar is unhealthy when eaten to excess, or when eaten in a processed, refined, and artificial form. Some people would do better to avoid it – just as some people would do better to avoid nightshades, dairy, or eggs. But in the context of a diet rich in nutrients, sugar – especially sugar from whole foods like fruit or dairy – is not the kiss of death.

What Is Sugar?

Most of us think of “sugar” as the white powder we like to add to our coffee, but in biological terms, sugar is nothing but the building blocks of carbohydrates. Sugars come in several different types, including single sugars and double sugars (combinations of two single sugars). Since your body digests them all differently, the distinctions among all these types of sugars are actually quite important.

Any food with a carb content greater than zero will have some sugar in it. Even foods we don’t usually think of as “sugary,” like potatoes, contain sugar in the form of glucose. Refined foods like white flour and table sugar are called “simple carbohydrates” because their molecular structure includes single or double sugars. Whole grains and legumes are called “complex carbohydrates” because they’re made of three or more sugars. When you eat simple carbohydrates, your body can use them for energy right away (this is why you can get a “sugar rush” from eating too much candy); when you eat complex carbohydrates, your body has to break them down into simple carbs first. Since this process takes some time, most people don’t get the same immediate rush of energy from complex carbohydrates.

The role of these complex carbohydrates, also called starches, in the diet is itself a fascinating topic, but this article will focus on simple carbohydrates and the way we break them down. Understanding what sugar is, and the different forms that it can take, is important for everyone attempting to maintain a healthy diet in the face of the post-industrial food environment. As sugar has come under intense scrutiny for potentially contributing to the modern obesity crisis, this knowledge can help us interpret the reams of conflicting studies and chart a sane and healthy course between binging on Jolly Ranchers and panicking over every strawberry.

Sugar and the Science of Obesity

The number of studies on the relationship between sugar and weight gain is enormous, but unfortunately, this mass of scientific literature has not managed to produce anything like a consensus. The studies that exist are frustratingly inconclusive, and seem to contradict each other more than they agree. An hour of searching for scientific studies will give you a huge pile of evidence that sugar is the underlying cause of every modern health problem, and an equally huge pile proving that sugar is actually harmless – in some rodent studies, a higher sugar intake even appeared to promote leanness!

Making sense out of this huge mass of contradictory data is daunting. One fairly comprehensive review of studies on sugar and weight gain concluded that the decisive factor is not sugar, but calories: only hypercaloric trials (trials where sugar intake caused a net increase in caloric intake) produced weight gain, and that this might just as easily be due to the calories. Thus, it’s important to separate the effects of sugar specifically from the effects of simply adding calories to the diet.

This is especially true if the subjects are already overeating, as in this study. In a conclusion that shouldn’t surprise anyone, scientists discovered that a group of overweight and obese adults experienced all kinds of negative effects (including weight gain and metabolic damage) when they added sugar-sweetened beverages to their diet as 25% of their daily calories. However, this study is a perfect illustration of the many complexities involved in determining the effect of sugar in the diet. First, obese people are already metabolically deranged: people with a healthy metabolism might not react the same way. Second, 25% of calories is nowhere near a moderate sugar consumption; finally, the consequences of drinking highly processed sweetened beverages do not necessarily extend to natural sources of sugar like fruit.

All of these confounding factors suggest that something much more complicated is at work than the simplistic idea that “sugar makes you sick and fat.” Anthropological studies of traditional hunter-gatherer diets have also failed to find a conclusive link between sugar and health problems: while some hunter-gatherers do eat a diet very low in sugar, others, such as the Hadza in Tanzania or the Kuna in Panama, eat a diet fairly high in sugar without any noticeable difference in health or body composition.

The reams of contradictory evidence about sugar consumption make it clear that just talking about “the effect of sugar on the body” is very imprecise, because it fails to specify three very important points. What type of sugar, how much, and whose body? The effects of sugar also depend on what kind of food you get the sugar from: chugging a liter of Coke is a world away from eating an orange, even though they both contain sugar. Making a blanket statement about how all sugar is always harmful for everyone sounds very tough-love and inspiring, but it isn’t necessarily true.

What Type of Sugar, How Much, and Whose Body?

As noted above, “sugar” is a term that can actually refer to one of several different compounds. Table sugar is just one of these compounds. Instead of assuming that all types of sugar are the same, it’s important to read any research on “sugar” with a crucial question in mind: what kind?

As noted above, sugars are generally separated into two broad categories: single and double. Single sugars include glucose (found in fruits and starchy carbohydrates), fructose (found only in fruits), and galactose (found in dairy). Double sugars are combinations of these single sugars: one very common double sugar is sucrose (table sugar), which is a 1:1 mix of glucose and fructose. Lactose is a mixture of glucose and galactose. High fructose corn syrup sounds like it should be 80 or 90% fructose, but the ratio of glucose to fructose that it contains is closer to 1:1. Honey is another double sugar, but the ratio of glucose to fructose in honey varies, depending on the bees that produced it.

Each different single sugar is digested differently. Glucose, for example, can be sent directly into your muscles and other cells, and either used immediately or stored as glycogen for future energy. Fructose, on the other hand, needs to be processed by your liver first, and either turned into fat (in a process called de novo lipogenesis) or glucose. Because it’s harder to metabolize, many people have trouble digesting fructose, while negative reactions to glucose are much less common. Seeing fructose metabolism as nothing but a less efficient way of getting glycogen, many Paleo researchers have concludes that fructose is the “bad sugar.” Glucose (the sugar found in “safe starches” like yams and white rice) might be acceptable, but fructose is out.

The problem with this approach is that it ignores another important question: how much?

Excess sugar or a huge dose of fructose is clearly harmful. If nothing else, eating too much sugar makes it very easy to eat too many calories – especially if you get that sugar through sweetened drinks that don’t fill you up for very long. Metabolizing large amounts of sugar, especially fructose, is also stressful to the body: too much fructose can put a heavy strain on your liver, and cause oxidative stress and inflammation. Excess fructose interrupts your normal production of leptin (the hormone that tells your body when to stop feeling hungry), making it very easy to gain weight. Too much sugar of any kind – glucose or fructose – can also lead to all the problems of a high carbohydrate diet: insulin resistance, weight gain, inflammation, and diabetes.

Eating too much sugar is dangerous, but this doesn’t necessarily prove that any level of sugar consumption is bad: eating too much of anything is problematic. Vitamin A could also be considered a "dose-dependent toxin" (something that harms your body if you eat too much of it), but this doesn’t mean we should avoid it altogether!

So how much sugar is too much for the body to process safely? The answer depends on yet another question: whose body? Many foods do not have the same effect on everyone who eats them. A perfect example of this is dairy. If you don’t have the gene that allows you to produce lactase, the lactose in dairy can make you feel very sick. If you do have that gene, you can enjoy dairy products without a problem. So it’s silly to say that dairy is a “safe food” or a “harmful food:” whether it’s safe or harmful depends on the person eating it.

In many ways, the same is true of any kind of sugar. Since digesting sugar requires a healthy metabolism and a certain degree of insulin sensitivity, the upper boundary of a healthy sugar intake is probably much smaller for people who already have trouble with insulin metabolism, such as diabetics or people who are already obese. On the other hand, people with a healthy metabolism might not have any problems digesting a moderate amount of sugar.

As with any carbohydrate, the amount of sugar that you can eat healthily also depends on your activity level: very active people frequently burn through the glycogen stored in their muscles, so when they eat carbohydrates, the glucose goes to replenishing the glycogen stores, not to creating fat. On the other hand, sedentary people need to be much more moderate with their carb intake, since they don’t have as great a need for glucose in the diet.

Additionally, some people with specific digestive disorders should avoid certain types of sugars. People with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) very frequently suffer from a problem called fructose malabsorption, an intolerance to fructose that can cause a variety of digestive problems. In this case, avoiding fructose can provide significant relief of IBS symptoms. People sensitive to FODMAPs should avoid foods high in fructose and several other types of sugars like sugar alcohols, since these can irritating to the gut. It can also be beneficial to steer clear of sugars in general if you’re struggling with an overgrowth of harmful gut bacteria like Candida: since sugar is these bacteria’s favorite food, avoiding it can help get your gut flora back under control.

Physical problems aren’t the only reasons why someone might want to avoid sugar. It can also be a very problematic food for anyone recovering from a binge eating disorder. Switching to a Paleo diet high in nutrients and cutting out all food toxins and processed foods can do a world of good for your body, but it doesn’t remove the emotional and psychological issues that underlie an eating disorder. It’s not uncommon for recovering binge eaters to have trouble moderating their intake of some foods on Paleo, and foods high in natural sugars (like fruits) are among the most problematic. Thus, if you’re recovering from an eating disorder, it might be helpful to restrict your sugar intake, at least at first.

In short, the answer to “What effects does sugar have on the body?” is, “It depends.” It depends on what kind of sugar, how much of it, and exactly whose body. An overweight, diabetic, and sedentary office worker digesting a bowl of ice cream and a lean, healthy athlete digesting a bowl of strawberries are both, technically, metabolizing sugar. But these two situations are so different that they barely deserve the same name.

Where is it From?

The example above illustrates another important consideration with sugar: how you get it. Think of the difference between meat and protein shakes. There’s nothing wrong with eating meat that contains protein, but protein powders and shakes are generally harmful. Why? Because protein powders provide protein in an artificial, processed, and highly concentrated form that our bodies don’t digest well, accompanied by a hefty wallop of preservatives, sweeteners, and other chemicals. There’s nothing wrong with eating protein, but where you get it from matters. The same is true for sugar. People don’t eat pure fructose or galactose; they eat foods, and foods have much more to them than sugar.

First, some sugar-containing foods also contain other valuable vitamins and minerals: one orange, for example, contains 12 grams of sugar, but also significant amounts of Vitamin C, Folate, Calcium, and Potassium. Four ounces of Coke provide the same amount of sugar, no vitamins or minerals, and a Nutrition Facts label full of unpronounceable chemicals and additives. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the orange and the Coke will have a very different effect on your overall health – especially since many people eat one orange and then stop, while almost nobody drinks just 4 ounces of Coke at a time (a standard can is 8 ounces; a bottle is 20 ounces).

Studies that try to link sugar and obesity seem to have come to the same conclusion. Natural forms of sugar don’t appear to be reliably linked to obesity; the problem comes with refined and processed forms like high fructose corn syrup. Most studies that attempted to correlate overall sugar intake with weight gain in humans couldn’t find a clear connection, but sugary drinks (which contain very highly processed sugars) were clearly linked to a higher rate of obesity. This is why hunter-gatherers eating traditional diets can include sugar as a high percentage of their daily caloric intake, but stay lean and healthy with none of the metabolic problems associated with the first world. Many of these groups are even famous for the great efforts they make to get honey – and yet they don’t see the same health problems from it as we see from the sugar in Coke and Skittles. In other words, where you get your sugar matters.

One possible explanation for this has to do with food reward. As discussed in a previous article about obesity, the food reward theory states that “hyperpalatable” foods (processed food products that present us with tastes and textures much more intense than anything found in nature) cause obesity because they confuse our natural appetite regulation systems. Highly processed foods and beverages definitely fall into the category of superstimuli that we aren’t designed to handle. Fruit and other natural sources of sugar, on the other hand, are not hyperpalatable, so they don’t cause the same negative metabolic reaction. One study even fed the same sugar water to two groups of mice: one group that was capable of tasting sweetness, and another group that wasn’t. The group that could taste sweetness got fat; the group that couldn’t, didn’t.

Whether or not the food reward theory can adequately explain the difference between natural and artificial sugars, it’s clearly important to consider what kind of foods we get our sugar from. Sugary drinks do promote obesity, but this doesn’t mean that a whole, natural food like a banana will have the same metabolic effect as a glass of soda loaded with all kinds of refined and processed chemicals.

Table Sugar Substitutes: Other Natural Sweeteners

Since processed sugar is so much more harmful than natural sugar from whole foods, one common question about refined table sugar is whether other, more natural sweeteners are preferable. The idea of these foods as “sugar substitutes” is somewhat misleading, since common “sugar substitutes” like honey and maple syrup do also contain sugars. We’ve chosen to refer to one type of sugar as “sugar” and another type as “honey,” but in the end they’re both biologically made up of sugars. All natural sweeteners contain some form of sugar, even if we call them by another name.

Nevertheless, some replacements for table sugar do have other advantages that are worth noting. Honey, for example, has several beneficial compounds (although the specific content will depend on the flowers available). Chemically, honey is approximately 40% glucose, 36% fructose, and 24% other sugars, although the exact proportions vary depending on what the bees ate. While the high fructose content can cause trouble for some people with fructose malabsorption problems, the fructose in honey is accompanied by an equal amount of glucose, which makes it much easier to digest. Furthermore, honey has the advantage of a long evolutionary history: humans have been going to incredible lengths to get it since we figured out how delicious it was. Several preindustrial peoples consumed a significant percentage of their daily calories from honey on a regular basis: one 10,000-year-old painting from Spain shows two men gathering honey from a beehive. Raw honey (as opposed to pasteurized honey) is also a completely unprocessed food, while even other natural sweeteners like maple syrup and molasses require some processing.

If there’s any such thing as a “Paleo sweetener,” honey is probably it. But honey is far from the only naturally-occurring sweet substance. Maple syrup is relatively low in fructose (making it a good option for the fructose-intolerant), and contains manganese, potassium, iron, and calcium. Molasses is essentially table sugar, but with nutrients: it contains minerals like iron, calcium, and magnesium that are stripped from table sugar when it’s refined and processed to get its white, powdery consistency. Coconut palm sugar is a relative newcomer, and not very common, but it contains higher amounts of magnesium, nitrogen, and Vitamin C than any other natural sweetener.

Agave Nectar is a health-food darling, best known for its very low glycemic index. In other words, it doesn’t cause as large of an insulin rush as other sweeteners. On the other hand, agave is also 90% fructose, which can cause serious problems for people who don’t digest fructose well. It also contains saponins, one of the same toxins that make grains and legumes so harmful. Although the lack of an insulin spike is tempting, agave is definitely the worst of the “all-natural” group: avoid it when you can.

Thus, although all of these natural sweeteners contain approximately as much sugar as the table sugar, some of them do at least give you a significant amount of nutrients along with the calories. This makes them preferable to the refined, chemically processed table sugar that most of us think of as “sugar.” Even though they aren’t healthy to consume to excess, honey, molasses, and maple syrup are superior to table sugar, and can make relatively harmless replacements in the occasional Paleo treat.

Table Sugar Substitutes: Artificial Sweeteners

Since all of these natural sweeteners do contain sugars, many people searching for a non-caloric sweetener turn to artificial compounds instead. The major types of artificial sweeteners are Aspartame (added to diet soft drinks or sold as Equal and NutraSweet), Saccharine (Sweet’n’Low), Stevia, and Sucralose (Splenda).

As with actual sugar, artificial sweeteners are hotly debated. Their main selling point is, of course, that they have no calories. As with the studies supposedly demonstrating the evils of salt, studies linking these sweeteners to cancer are not seriously concerning: they showed that rats who ate the equivalent of several hundred cans of soda every day did get a form of bladder cancer, but humans don’t even have the specific protein that causes this cancer, and nobody eats that much Splenda anyway. On the other hand, “no calories” doesn’t always translate into “no insulin response:” many types of zero-calorie sugar substitutes (with the exception of sugar alcohols, discussed below) may still contribute to metabolic problems and weight gain even though they don’t have any caloric value themselves. Essentially, when your body senses that you’ve eaten something sweet, it releases insulin, expecting to have some kind of carbohydrate (sugar) to digest. Even if you don’t follow up the sweet taste with any calories, the sudden rush of insulin can contribute to insulin resistance, and confusing your body like this can prompt you to overeat later.

Sugar alcohols are one type of artificial sweeteners that avoid this problem. These include xylitol, sorbitol, maltitol and erythritol (if it’s a sweetener that ends in –ol, it’s probably a sugar alcohol). These chemicals have a much lower glycemic index than sugar, because they’re very difficult for the body to digest. This isn’t necessarily a point in their favor, however: except for erythritol, sugar alcohols are polyols (the P in FODMAPs), meaning that they’re not the best choice for people with FODMAPs intolerance. Even people who don’t otherwise react to FODMAPs can have trouble with sugar alcohols: one study, for example, found that subjects who drank a xylitol-sweetened beverage reported higher rates of nausea, bloating, and other digestive troubles. Thus, sugar alcohols aren’t necessarily harmless for everyone, and if you react to them, they’re best avoided.

One noncaloric sugar substitute that gets slightly better press than the others is Stevia, an herbal extract frequently promoted as a natural alternative to products like Equal and Splenda. Although the raw leaves of the plant are also sweet, the “stevia” (sold under several brand names, including Truvia) that you can buy at the store as a liquid or a powder is a processed, refined version of those leaves. The scientific evidence on Stevia is just as self-contradictory as the evidence about sugar: some studies seem to demonstrate that Stevia does cause an insulin spike, and others suggest that it doesn’t. It may also have some beneficial effects on hypertension, memory, and blood lipids, but on the whole, the research doesn’t conclusively support one side or the other.

In short, artificial sweeteners are somewhat of a mixed bag, and more research is clearly needed on their effects before anyone can say with any certainty that they’re either harmful or harmless. If you do choose an artificial sweetener, erythritol seems to be one of the better choices – the jury is still out on chemicals like aspartame and sucralose, but sugar alcohols definitely don’t spike blood sugar, and erythritol is the sugar alcohol least likely to cause gastrointestinal problems and IBS-like symptoms. Stevia is another intriguing option that may be just as good – especially if you can get the whole leaves rather than the processed powder form. In general, while these substitutes won’t add anything nutritious to your diet, they probably won’t cause significant harm either, so consuming small amounts of them isn’t problematic for most people.

Conclusion: Dietary Recommendations for Sugar

Since the effects of sugar in the diet can vary so greatly depending on the source and composition of the specific sugar in question, the health of the person eating it, and the amount of sugar consumed, there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation. Not all people need to avoid sugar entirely. In many ways, it’s useful to think of a healthy sugar intake as falling on a spectrum: on one end of the scale is a very low-carbohydrate diet (meat and non-starchy vegetables) with as little sugar as physically possible. This kind of diet is perfect for diabetics and people with metabolic syndrome, people who react very poorly to starches and sugars in general, and some people trying to recover from an eating disorder.

A step above that would be a diet with some sugar-containing foods (fruit) but no added sweeteners. This more moderate approach is probably fine for healthy people who get regular exercise, especially if they don’t react poorly to fructose. Some people can even go further than that, and use small amounts of added sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, or even sugar itself without a problem. Serious athletes do need higher levels of carbohydrates than most other people, and even people who don’t enjoy endurance sports won’t see much harm from the occasional treat. Beyond this level, sugar consumption probably becomes unhealthy: eating large amounts of added sweeteners, especially processed chemical sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup, isn’t good for anyone.

Ultimately, the most important consideration with sugar is your own reaction to it – and the only way to discover this is by experimenting. Try some Paleo chocolate pudding sweetened with a small amount of honey, or this meatloaf with a honey sauce and notice how you feel afterwards. Unless you’re diabetic or have another life-threatening metabolic disorder, there’s no need to be demonically strict about avoiding all sugar – and as we head into sugar season (the unholy trinity of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas), a sweet Paleo treat might even help banish cravings for candy corn, and chocolate Santas, helping you stay on track with your diet but keep your sanity intact.

Most people’s mental image of “meat” is a thick, juicy T-bone steak. On Paleo, bacon might be a close second. But while there’s nothing wrong with steak and bacon, focusing too closely on just a few kinds of animals can lead to a very limited menu of poultry, beef, and pork. Even if you eat a variety of organs and different cuts of meat, restricting yourself to land animals like this can reduce the variety and micronutrient content of your diet, not to mention cutting you off from a whole world of delicious recipes! Two thirds of the Earth is covered with water; fish and other types of seafood present a wide array of Paleo meal options. While it’s important to be aware of environmental issues and potential food toxins, the benefits of eating fish are far greater than the risks, making seafood one important part of a balanced diet.

Nutritional Benefits of Fish

Fish isn’t quite as much of a micronutrient superhero as liver , but its nutritional profile is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, the micronutrients found in fish are so important to proper brain development that some scientists speculate that we may even have evolved as coast-dwellers to take advantage of these essential nutrients.

As well as being an excellent source of protein, fish contains high levels of Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). In particular, seafood provides significant levels of two especially beneficial Omega-3s, a pair of long-chain fatty acids called EPA and DHA. While it’s important not to eat too much PUFA, making an effort to eat some O3s can actually be healthy, because the ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 also matters, and the modern diet contains far too much O6 and not nearly enough O3. Eating high-quality seafood can help you improve your health by balancing this ratio: studies have shown that moderate doses of EPA and DHA protect against heart disease. On the other hand, more is not necessarily better: above a “modest consumption,” (about two servings of wild-caught salmon or mussels per week) the risk of a heart attack was not lowered any further. Like safe starches, O3s are best consumed in moderation, rather than avoided entirely or eaten to excess.

Fish and other types of seafood also contain Vitamins A, C, and E, and even some Vitamin D (although to get all your required Vitamin D from food, you’d have to eat quite a lot!). Even better, seafood contains two essential minerals that can be hard to find from other foods. Iodine is one: table salt is fortified with iodine, so most people eating the Standard American diet get plenty of iodine from the iodized salt found in processed foods. On Paleo, though, it’s fairly easy to develop an iodine deficiency, especially if you don’t eat a lot of seafood and aren’t used to adding salt to your food. This is dangerous, since iodine is extremely important for healthy thyroid function, brain function, and cell metabolism. Iodine deficiency can cause thyroid problems and mental retardation, especially in babies born to iodine-deficient women. Anything that lived in the sea at some point (fish, shellfish, seaweed, or anything that ate them) will contain significant amounts of iodine.

Another essential nutrient found in seafood is selenium. This makes seafood an ideal dietary choice for people avoiding nuts, since the other major dietary source of selenium is Brazil Nuts. Like iodine, selenium supports thyroid function and helps prevent oxidative stress. Although most people get plenty of selenium in their diet, people with malabsorptive disorders (like undiagnosed food intolerances, Chron’s disease, celiac disease, or IBS ), and people with chronically inflamed guts are more susceptible. Thus, getting enough seafood is especially important if your gut is damaged, because people with gut disorders should generally be avoiding nuts, including Brazil Nuts.

Unsurprisingly, the fattier a fish is, the more nutritious it tends to be: salmon far ranks very lean fish like Swai or Tilapia. It’s also useful to look beyond eating only fish: mollusks (clams, oysters, and mussels) are extremely nutritious, with high levels of B vitamins and iron in addition to the micronutrients above. Shrimp, crab meat, squid, and lobster are also delicious options, and aquatic vegetables like seaweed can be prepared as a salad, or dried for a crispy, salty snack. Eating a many different types of seafood will provide you with a rich variety of micronutrients – and help keep your diet constantly interesting and exciting.

Heavy Metals and Toxic Pollutants

Fish is a tasty and very nutritious addition to your diet. But like land animals, fish can also contain various environmental toxins that seep into our seas and oceans from commercial farming operations, manufacturing plants, and other wastes. One of the most common of these toxins is mercury, a heavy metal used in all kinds of industrial applications. Microorganisms in marine environments convert this mercury into methylmercury, which accumulates through the food chain. This means that the higher a fish is on the food chain, the more concentrated the mercury in its body will be: small fish like sardines and anchovies have a very low concentration of mercury, while large, predatory fish like swordfish have more.

Mercury poisoning is the first risk of fish consumption that many people think of, and it’s definitely a serious problem – mercury is a very dangerous neurotoxin (a toxin that damages your brain and nervous system). Exposure to large amounts of mercury can cause loss of brain function in adults, and mental retardation in children. Pregnant women in particular are often warned to avoid mercury exposure, because of the risk to the fetus.

As serious as mercury poisoning is, all the well-intentioned warnings against eating fish may not actually be warranted. Mercury is certainly toxic, but the high levels of selenium in most fish naturally protects against mercury poisoning by binding to mercury, preventing the body from absorbing it. Thus, there’s no reason to avoid fish because you’re afraid of mercury poisoning. If you’re very concerned, make an effort to eat fish lower on the food chain, and avoid fish that are very high in mercury. The four worst offenders in this regard are Tilefish, King Mackerel, Shark, and Swordfish: Tuna gets a lot of bad press for being loaded with mercury, but this is mostly because tuna is very popular, not because it’s particularly problematic.

Another common concern with fish consumption is the presence of other toxins, like PCBs and dioxins. Like mercury, these chemicals are industrial byproducts that leak into the water supply and contaminate our food from there. Although these chemicals are definitely cause for concern, fish isn’t the major source of them in most people’s diets: in the US food supply, 90% of the contamination from PCBs and dioxins comes from other foods, with only 9% from fish. Reducing your fish consumption to lower your overall risk from dioxins and PCBs is like running outside naked in the winter, deciding you’re cold, and putting on one sock. It won’t hurt, but it won’t do much to help, either. In fact, if you replace the fish in your diet with foods higher in dioxins, you might even be making the problem worse. If you’re concerned about environmental toxins – and you should be – you’re better off focusing on the meat and vegetables in your diet.

One last toxin that might sneak its way into your dinner is BPA. BPA is an environmental estrogen (a chemical that prevents your hormonal systems from functioning normally) commonly used in the lining of aluminum cans: from there, it can leach into your food. If you buy salmon, tuna, sardines, or other canned fish, make sure to choose a brand packaged without BPA.

Thus, although it’s impossible to completely avoid consuming the toxins that modern industrial facilities spew out into the water, you can avoid BPA entirely by choosing your canned fish carefully, or simply buying fresh fish and avoiding cans altogether. As for mercury, PCBs, and dioxins, studies agree that the benefits of fish consumption are well worth the risks. Comparing the dangers of these toxins to the health benefits of a moderate fish intake, scientists found that the potential dangers were insignificant compared to the obvious and well-documented benefits.

The Ethical Carnivore: Undersea Edition

While fish farms don’t raise the same animal-rights issues as factory farms for mammals like cows and pigs, fish consumption raises an entirely different kind of ethical issue: sustainability. The oceans are vast – but they aren’t endless. Our current fishing practices are simply catching too many fish, diminishing populations faster than the fish can reproduce. This leads to long-term population decline, which has the potential to disrupt entire ocean ecosystems. Further destruction of the undersea food chain can then occur when fishermen move on down the food web, slowly eroding the base of the food chain and removing the food that other species need to survive. Many species of fish are becoming endangered due to unsustainable fishing practices, especially fish that reproduce slowly, and fish that we especially like to eat, like tuna and cod.

Unsustainable fishing practices are putting ocean resources in serious danger, and these poor fishing practices are directly driven by consumer demand: if nobody wanted to eat salmon, nobody would bother catching it. This puts the responsibility on all of us to make sure we only eat fish that can are harvested in sustainable ways. Good methods include hook-and-line fishing (the kind you’d do with a fishing rod and a worm) and specially designed traps that allow young fish to escape while doing very little damage to the seafloor. Bottom trawlers, by contrast, drag huge nets over the seafloor, destroying local ecosystems and killing everything in their path. As well as damaging the physical face of the ocean floor, these methods trap huge amounts of bycatch, fish that just happen to get caught in the net even though the fisherman wasn’t looking for them and has no use for them. Bycatch kills huge numbers of animals for no reason – they’re just thrown back into the sea, and most of them don’t survive.

Avoiding fish caught with unsustainable methods can be tricky, since fish companies love to make their harvesting practices sound better than they are. If you’re lucky enough to buy your fish from a local fisherman, you’ll be able to ask questions firsthand about how the fish was caught. If you’re stuck with the grocery store, look for the blue Marine Stewardship Council certified label to find fish that was sustainably harvested by operations that treat their workers fairly. When you’re dining out, the Monterey Bay Aquarium offers wallet-sized cards that you can print and carry with you.

The Great Debate: Farmed vs. Wild-Caught

One of the biggest ethical issues concerning fish is the choice between wild-caught and farm-raised animals. At first glance, fish farms seem like the perfect solution to overfishing: if humans like to eat a particular species of fish, we can just grow more of it, saving wild populations from depletion. This is why nobody is worried about whether cow or chicken populations can keep up with demand: if we need more, we’ll just breed them. Why couldn’t we do the same with fish?

Unfortunately, it isn’t quite so simple. For one thing, the fish most people like to eat are high enough up on the food chain that they eat other fish. This means that fish farms have to catch smaller fish to feed their products – they simply shift the damage of overfishing further down the food chain, rather than eliminating it. This problem can be somewhat alleviated by raising naturally vegetarian fish, like barramundi or tilapia, which don’t require much (if any) other fish in their diet.

Farmed fish also raise the possibility of genetic modification – a company called AquaBounty, for example, has introduced a new breed of salmon called the AquAdvantage Salmon, which is genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as an unmodified fish. Such genetic modification raises the same health concerns as modification of plants like soy and corn, as well as ethical considerations (AquAdvantage salmon would be the first genetically modified animals to be distributed for human consumption). Also, even if these hybrid fish don’t pose any risk at all to humans, they could still damage local ecosystems if they escaped from fish farms (as farmed fish quite commonly do) and began breeding with wild, unmodified fish populations.

Furthermore, although most people aren’t as horrified by the crowding and unnatural conditions in a fish farm as they are by the cruelties inflicted on factory-farm animals, the fact remains that diseases and infections spread very rapidly in a fish farm environment, requiring farmed fish to be regularly dosed with massive amounts of antibiotics. These drugs can then go on to damage the health of the person eating the fish. Fish farms also have the potential to release enormous amounts of pollutants in very concentrated doses, since they involve much more concentrated populations of fish than would ever occur in the wild.

To add to these disadvantages, the fish themselves are not as nutritious: farmed fish have no Vitamin D and contain much lower levels of the Omega-3s that make seafood so beneficial. Conversely, they do contain higher levels of Omega-6s, which most of us get too many of already. This is most likely due to their diet – a steady stream of industrially manufactured pellets can’t replace the variety of fresh, wild food the salmon would otherwise be eating. The amount of waste generated by these fish farms also makes farmed fish slightly higher in toxins than their wild-caught cousins (although even farmed fish don’t contain enough toxins to outweigh the benefits of eating them).

Fish farms aren’t perfect. But they aren’t all doom and gloom either: a new type of farm, based on a model called recirculating aquaculture, shows serious potential to resolve at least some of the problems with current fish farming methods. A recirculating aquaculture operation involves both fish and fields: the fish are grown in tanks on land, and their waste provides fertilizer for the plants. This eliminates the problem of fish farms dumping waste into the oceans and the danger of farmed fish escaping into wild populations. Scientists studying sustainable aquaculture are also experimenting with different ways of feeding farmed fish to make aquaculture operations truly sustainable and farmed fish more nutritious – one USDA formula uses corn, soy, wheat, and barley proteins instead of food made from smaller fish. While this may or may not be ideal for human nutrition (meat from grain-fed fish might have some of the same nutritional deficiencies as meat from grain-fed cows), it represents an encouraging effort to preserve ocean resources and support sustainable development.

By combining recirculating aquaculture operations with naturally herbivorous fish, fish farmers have the potential to create truly sustainable operations that can help take some of the pressure off the world’s overexploited oceans. However, it’s important to note that not all fish farms are recirculating aquaculture operations. For consumers concerned about the environment, therefore, both wild-caught and farm-raised fish can be good options, depending on the specific operation in question. The most important point is not whether the fish came from an ocean or a farm, but whether it’s nutritious and non-toxic to eat, and whether it’s produced in a sustainable way. Rather than making snap judgments in favor of one or the other, look for the Marine Stewardship Council label and focus your efforts on supporting workable, real-world solutions to the problem of overfishing.

Fish Oil Supplements

Whether they’re tight on money, too busy to cook, or just plain don’t like the taste of fish, many people try to get the benefits of dietary seafood from fish oil supplements instead. Unfortunately, supplements are rarely as good as the real thing. Although they provide a more highly concentrated dose of EPA and DHA, this might be a drawback, rather than a benefit, as too much O3 contributes to inflammation. Moreover, fish oil does not contain any of the other beneficial nutrients found in fish, and isn’t absorbed as well.

If you do take fish oil, make sure to choose it carefully. Unlike whole fish, fish oil does not contain selenium to counteract the negative effects of any mercury that it might contain. Thus, it’s very important to find a brand made from fish with low levels of mercury. If you’re pregnant, nursing, or particularly worried about mercury poisoning, ask the manufacturer for a Certificate of Analysis, verifying that an independent lab has tested the product and found it safe. You could also take a selenium supplement with your fish oil, or eat another dietary source of selenium, such as Brazil nuts. As well as paying attention to the potential toxins, choose a brand of oil made from sustainably harvested fish: it should be certified by a reputable body. To get some additional vitamins with your O3s, maximizing the benefit of your supplement, you could also look into fish liver oil.

Once you’ve chosen and bought your supplement, make sure the oil is fresh by breaking open a capsule and smelling it. If it smells like rotten fish, it’s rancid – throw it out! Since fish oil goes bad very easily, make sure to keep it in a cool, dark place so that it stays fresh. Take the supplement with a fatty meal, to aid in absorption: all the DHA and EPA in the world won’t do you any good if your body can’t use it.

By paying attention to the brand you choose, treating it carefully, and taking it correctly, you can maximize the benefits of a fish oil supplement. But taking a pill for anything should always be your second choice: before you think back on your grandmother’s soggy fish sticks and despair, try some of the recipes below and see if you can’t find a way to prepare fish in a way you like.

Fish and Seafood Recipes

There are two kinds of fish recipes: recipes for people who love fish and want to revel in it, and recipes for people who can barely stand it and want to disguise the taste as much as possible. If you find yourself hovering over the fish counter in breathless anticipation each week, you’ll want a recipe that lets the fish itself shine. Baking or grilling a whole fish isn’t as difficult as it sounds, and makes an impressive centerpiece for a special-occasion dinner. Eating the whole fish also has substantial nutritional benefits: the bones, eyes, and skin are all good for you. This tuna steak recipe unapologetically showcases the tuna flavor with a fresh-tasting marinade. For a light summer dinner, try some shrimp with fruity salsa or baked salmon on a bed of greens. Canned sardines are a tasty snack on the go, and also make a delicious topping for a spinach salad – as a bonus, the fat in the sardines will help you absorb the valuable fat-soluble vitamins in the spinach.

If you’re not wild about the taste of fish but want to enjoy the health benefits anyway, try a recipe like fish tacos, which have a very mild taste if you make them with a white fish like tilapia. You can add tomatoes, herbs, and spices to disguise the flavor of the fish, or even replace half the fish with a very mild-tasting vegetable like cauliflower. In this recipe for salmon with cherry tomato salsa, the bright, refreshing taste of the tomatoes balances out the stronger flavor of the salmon. Thanks to the potatoes in these fish cakes, the taste of the fish itself is quite mild – to further disguise it, you could eat the cakes with tartar sauce or another kind of dressing.

Seafood skeptics might also want to look beyond fish: other types of seafood contain many of the same nutrients, without the strong fishy taste. Scallops are extremely nutritious and have a very mild flavor – try them baked or pan-fried, or as a salad topper in this spicy scallop salad. Mussels are among the most nutrient-dense foods available, and taste delicious covered in a variety of sauces, from this very sophisticated white wine sauce to a simple topping of butter and pepper.

No matter what kind of fish recipe you prefer, if you live anywhere near the coast, you’ll want to check out your local fish markets: everything tastes better when it’s fresh, and fish is no exception. A local fisherman can also answer all kinds of questions about how the fish was harvested, to help you make the most healthy and sustainable choices.

Conclusion

As a delicious source of many important vitamins and minerals, seafood is an important component of a balanced Paleo diet rich in high-quality animal products. Although many people are afraid of mercury poisoning, the high levels of selenium found in seafood provide an effective antidote to any mercury-related problems – if you take reasonable precautions to avoid the fish that are highest in mercury, you’ll be fine.

Another common objection to fish is sustainability: if the oceans are so devastated by overfishing, should we really be eating any seafood at all? If we’re lucky enough to have a choice about what we can eat, shouldn’t we avoid fish and give the planet a chance to recover? Sustainability is a serious problem, and a valid concern, but by choosing to support ethical seafood, you can actually help encourage the fish industry to develop more environmentally friendly ways of producing fish, whether through better fishing methods or through sustainable fish farms. While there’s no need to eat fish for every meal (or even every day) it’s one important part of a nourishing, balanced diet: experiment with fish recipes until you find one you like, and enjoy the chance to add a variety of nutritious recipes to your culinary routine.

Introduction: What Is IBS?

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a frustratingly general disorder that can cause a wide range of digestive symptoms: constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, and general abdominal discomfort. In general, there are three basic types of IBS, classified according to the type of digestive problem involved. Patients with IBS-D suffer mostly from diarrhea; patients with IBS-C suffer mostly from constipation. IBS-M is a mixed type of IBS that includes both symptoms.

Although it’s incredibly common – approximately 1 in every 6 Americans has some IBS symptoms – scientists have not discovered any one clear cause or treatment, or even a reliable test for the problem. IBS is classified as a “functional disorder,” meaning that the symptoms aren’t obviously caused by any physical or metabolic abnormality. This makes diagnosis very frustrating: essentially, all doctors can do is rule out the possibility that you might have anything else. A doctor might test you for other digestive disorders with similar symptoms, like Celiac disease, Chron’s disease, or ulcerative colitis. Colon cancer is very rare but also a possibility. Anemia or other very severe nutrient deficiencies can cause digestive problems. You might also have an infection or a parasite – this might sound worse, but it’s actually not as bad: unlike IBS, infections and parasites are generally completely curable. If all of these tests come back negative, you’ll probably be diagnosed with IBS through process of elimination.

This lack of one clear cause implies that IBS is caused, not by any specific food or nutrient deficiency, but by a variety of interrelated diet and lifestyle factors that combine to do several types of damage to the digestive system. While treating such a vague problem can be frustrating and time-consuming, understanding your symptoms and learning about potentially problematic food groups can help you handle IBS without making your gut the center of your life.

Causes of IBS: Gut Flora Imbalances

There is no one cause of IBS. However, examining patients’ specific digestive problems can provide into the variety of different reactions and dysfunctions that can provoke IBS symptoms. One of these problems gut flora imbalance. Since gut flora play such an important role in healthy digestion, an altered or unhealthy pattern affecting these beneficial bacteria can cause severe digestive problems, and recent research has found that gut flora imbalances play an important role in all kinds of functional digestive disorders, including IBS.

Many different foods, lifestyle choices, and medications can disrupt your gut flora and create an imbalance. A healthy relationship with these bacteria goes all the way back to birth: babies born vaginally receive a starter colony of gut bacteria from their mothers, while babies born through C-section have no such advantage. Throughout your life, eating a diet free from toxins and high in nutrients will help your gut flora; eating junk food will harm them.

Another very common source of gut dysbiosis (the scientific name for gut flora imbalance) is antibiotic use. Antibiotics are commonly prescribed for everything from minor puncture wounds to tuberculosis; unfortunately, they’re also very dangerous to your gut. Although most antibiotics do a wonderful job of eliminating harmful bacteria, they aren’t choosy about what they attack, and they’re just as happy to kill the helpful gut flora that you need for normal digestion. Taking antibiotics reduces the number of strains of bacteria in your gut, and weakens the ones that survive. This can not only lead to the kind of gut flora imbalances that cause IBS, but can also leave you vulnerable to infection with even worse bacteria like C. difficile. Thus, antibiotics are another potential trigger for IBS symptoms, especially since your body is generally exposed to them when it’s already weakened by disease.

One particular imbalance strongly associated with IBS is Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO): this is a condition in which the bacteria in the small intestine grow too rapidly, causing general digestive symptoms like bloating, nutrient malabsorption, weight loss, and malnutrition. SIBO is found in 30-85% of patients with IBS symptoms; although scientists disagree about which condition is the cause and which is the effect, the two problems are clearly related, and treating one can only be helpful in treating the other.

Causes of IBS: Inflammation

Another digestive dysfunction strongly associated with IBS is systemic inflammation of the digestive tract. Inflammation is nothing but the body’s response to injury, so gut inflammation is a general sign that something is harming the lining of your intestines. This could be a certain type of food – for example, if you’re still eating products with gluten, or if you’re unknowingly eating something you’re allergic to, but gut inflammation can also be caused by injuries, diseases, stress, or any number of other factors.

Diseases can also cause this kind of inflammation, especially gastroenteritis. Gastroenteritis is an inflammation of the stomach and intestinal lining; it can be caused by a virus, a parasite, or a bacterial infection, and it produces symptoms similar to those of the stomach flu. After a bout of gastroenteritis, or any other inflammatory digestive disorder, you’re much more likely to develop IBS symptoms. Scientists speculate that the gut flora disruption and the systemic intestinal inflammation caused by acute gastroenteritis are to blame for this – and if you’re taking any kind of antibiotics to deal with the disease, that certainly won’t help. This development of IBS symptoms following an acute digestive illness is so common that doctors even have a special name for it: post-infectious IBS (PI-IBS).

Since the brain and the gut are so closely related, your mental health also has a huge effect on your gut function, and psychiatric illness is strongly correlated with IBS. Mental health problems don’t cause IBS on their own, but they can contribute to it. Specifically, elevated levels of cortisol (one of the major hormones produced by stress) interfere with a neurotransmitter called serotonin, which regulates not only feelings of happiness and depression, but also gut motility (how quickly you digest your food and how often you have bowel movements). People with IBS very often have abnormal levels of serotonin in the blood, indicating that chronic stress is a serious trigger not only for depression, but also for gut dysfunction. Since constantly feeling sick without a clear cause or treatment can be very stressful, having IBS can easily set off a chain of stress responses: chemical imbalances in the brain affect gut function, which causes gut inflammation, leading to inflammation and further hormonal problems in the brain.

Another common condition, leaky gut, causes both gut flora imbalance and gut inflammation at once; it’s strongly associated with IBS in general, and especially with IBS-D. If you have a leaky gut, your intestinal wall is abnormally permeable, meaning that molecules of food and other foreign substances can pass through the intestinal lining directly into your bloodstream. This provokes an inflammatory autoimmune response – your body knows that these molecules don’t belong in your blood, but in its attempts to get rid of the invaders, it also attacks itself. Scientists have found that this autoimmune response strongly contributes to intestinal inflammation and gut flora dysfunction, both conditions associated with IBS.

In general, anything that disturbs the balance of your gut flora or causes inflammation in the gut probably has something to do with IBS symptoms. While we would all love to know the precise relationships between all of these processes, we don’t need to know everything to understand what we can do about it: minimize anything that might cause leaky gut, inflammation, or unhealthy gut flora. A diet designed for overall gut health and recovery should be the first line of treatment against IBS – once you learn more about your particular symptoms, you can start modifying the diet to fit your situation.

Treating IBS Symptoms: Diet Recommendations

Since IBS symptoms have no one cause, it’s not particularly useful to embark on endless rounds of invasive tests and examinations to try to pinpoint the precise source of the problem. Instead, start by making a general effort to heal your gut from whatever problems are causing the gut flora imbalances and inflammation that lead to IBS. The wonderful advantage of this approach is that you can’t possibly go wrong: if one particular trial doesn’t eliminate your symptoms, you can rest assured that at least you haven’t done any harm and continue with your efforts. This is more than conventional doctors can say about antibiotics, antidepressants, and other conventionally prescribed IBS treatments!

First, cut out all the foods, medicines, and products that might be contributing to gut symptoms. Grains, legumes, and seed oils are harmful and inflammatory; for most people, so is dairy (even if you don’t think you have trouble with dairy, try eliminating it for a month as an experiment; if you don’t notice any improvement, you can add it back in). Some medication that you might be taking can also cause problems. NSAIDS (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) like Advil, Motrin, and Aleve prevent the stomach from protecting itself against the highly acidic digestive juices that it holds; this can cause bleeding in the stomach and digestive tract, and even ulcers. As discussed above, antibiotics can wreak havoc on your gut flora and general intestinal health. If at all possible, stop taking over-the-counter painkillers and antibiotics, and also make sure to get any antibiotic soaps and lotions out of your house.

The recommendations above would be useful for everyone, even people with a perfectly healthy digestive system, but some foods that are otherwise perfectly healthy and normal parts of Paleo can be harmful to people with chronic gut dysfunction. IBS can cause your digestive system to become hypersensitive, or intolerant to foods that otherwise wouldn’t cause any problems. While you’re in the first stages of gut recovery, try eliminating nuts and seeds, nightshades, and eggs. Nuts are inflammatory due to their high levels of Omega-6 PUFAs, nightshades (like eggplant, bell peppers, and tomatoes) can exacerbate autoimmune problems, and eggs (especially egg whites) can be irritating because they contain anti-microbial compounds as part of their natural defenses. These proteins are designed to protect the growing egg from microbes and viruses, but they can also harm your digestive system. Fruits are not normally dangerous, but if you have trouble with SIBO or other gut flora imbalances, the fructose they contain can provide a delicious food source for the bacteria that are already too numerous, making the problem even worse.

IBS can also cause you to react very poorly to a group of foods high in several varieties of carbohydrate known collectively as FODMAPs (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols). Foods high in FODMAPs include several fruits and vegetables like apples, onions, and cauliflower. The problem with these foods isn’t that they’re naturally toxic; it’s that an unhealthy digestive system just isn’t up to them. FODMAPs aren’t easy to digest, so they linger in the small intestine while your gut flora ferment them. This extended digestive process can cause abdominal pain, gas, bloating, and constipation or diarrhea

Eating to cure digestive problems can seem like an endless list of foods to eliminate, but in fact, the foods you do eat are just as important as the foods you don’t. It’s crucial to get enough micronutrients while your body is healing itself, especially since malabsorptive digestive disorders like IBS often rob your body of nutrients. Make sure to get enough vegetables, preferably very well cooked (this makes them easier to digest). An easy way to do this is to just throw them into a slow-cooker with your meat for a delicious and tender meal that takes almost no time to prepare.

You’ll also want to eat plenty of bone broth at this stage: bone broth is very soothing to the digestive system, and it contains a wealth of vital nutrients extracted from the bones. Many people with IBS or related problems (like leaky gut, poor gut flora, or gut inflammation) find that bone broth is extremely helpful in restoring and maintaining normal gut function. Fermented foods will help restore your gut flora to healthy levels. A probiotic can also help – research into various types of therapy for the gut flora has indicated that both prebiotics and probiotics can be helpful, depending on the specific case. You might want to be cautious with your probiotic use if you have a problem related to overgrowth of gut flora (Candida or SIBO), though, since this might just feed the bacteria you don’t want. Some people find that taking digestive enzymes also helps relieve IBS symptoms.

It’s important to be very strict about your diet at first, to get the clearest possible picture of what you do and don’t react to, and to give your body the best possible change to recover. After your gut has healed, you can start experimenting with “grey area” foods that you may or may not have a problem with.

Treating IBS Symptoms: Healing the Gut

IBS is marked by two major physical problems: gut inflammation and an unhealthy pattern of gut flora. To treat the symptoms, you need to address both of these. Since inflammation is nothing but a response to injury, to heal your gut you need to stop injuring it: eat a clean, healthy diet as outlined in the last section, avoid toxins and stress as much as possible, and make sure to get plenty of micronutrients.

Eating a proper diet will avoid injuring your gut, and the inflammation will eventually subside, but healing your gut flora can take a more intensive effort. First you need to handle any bacterial overgrowth problems, like SIBO and Candida. This, unfortunately, can be harder than it seems. One of the reasons why bacteria are so resistant to your body’s natural defenses is that they have natural shields called biofilms, which protect them from your immune system. These biofilms are built from the same minerals that you eat to nourish yourself (especially iron, calcium, and magnesium), so they present you with a dilemma: if you starve the bad guys, you’re starving yourself along with them, but if you feed yourself, you’re feeding the bad guys, too.

In the case of iron, one way around this is to supplement with Lactoferrin or Apolactoferrrin, two proteins that bind to iron and help deliver it to your cells instead of to the bacteria that want to steal it. Limiting calcium in the short term won’t cause serious damage, as long as you make sure to eat a calcium-rich diet when your gut has healed. Magnesium is trickier: there is no equivalent of Lactoferrin or Apolactoferrin for magnesium, and intentionally creating a magnesium deficiency while attempting to heal your gut is a very poor strategy, since magnesium is one of the most important micronutrients for healthy digestion. Don’t go out of your way to take magnesium supplements, but the benefits of magnesium restriction are generally not worth the drawbacks.

A slightly more controversial therapy is chelation. This has mostly been tested in animal and test tube models, but it does show some promise for destroying the biofilms that protect bacteria from your own natural defenses. On the other hand, chelation therapy isn't without its risks: talk to your doctor before you decide one way or the other.

To supplement your body’s natural defenses, some mainstream doctors recommend antibiotics for gut flora imbalances, especially problems like Candida or SIBO, where you have too many of the wrong kind of bacteria. This is not an ideal treatment option, since antibiotics can actually contribute to gut flora imbalance and gut inflammation. Unless you have no alternative, stay away from antibiotics and focus on helping your own immune system handle the problem - or try more gentle antibacterial substances. For example, one of the most common natural antimicrobials is garlic, which is available almost anywhere and tastes delicious on all kinds of foods.

Another helpful natural treatment is peppermint oil; other herbal remedies include turmeric extract, Arrowroot, and artichoke leaf extract. It’s important not to go overboard with these supplements, though: if your diet is sound and you have your stress levels under control, you shouldn’t need a shelf full of pills in addition to your diet.

Treating IBS Symptoms: Mental Health

What you put in your mouth can go a long way towards healing your gut. But since the brain-gut axis is such a significant factor in the health of your digestive system, it’s important to also treat any mental health problems that might be causing IBS symptoms. Minimize stress and anxiety in your life as much as possible – if you can’t eliminate a stressor, make a plan for dealing with it productively, instead of allowing it to keep you worried and tense. Get 8 hours of sleep every night, and more if you need it: nothing will make you anxious and depressed like a chronic sleep debt. If you have more serious mental health concerns, consider finding a therapist or psychiatrist to help you work through the issue.

This connection between stress relief and fewer IBS symptoms isn’t just common knowledge: doctors studying treatments for IBS have found that an integrated mind-body approach typical of Eastern medicine can be very effective. Depending on your symptoms and personality, you might want to look into alternative mental health approaches like meditation, hypnosis, or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This type of treatment is especially useful because it doesn’t involve any invasive procedures or harsh drugs.

IBS-Friendly Recipes

When you have IBS, eating can seem like a minefield, with your gut ready to react at the slightest provocation. Every new study recommends that you avoid a different food or group of foods, and cooking is not much fun when a simple grocery trip requires an encyclopedic list of forbidden foods and precisely specified supplements.

While it can be a challenge to play meals around an ever-changing grocery list, living with IBS doesn’t mean that you have to subsist on nothing but ground beef and vegetables. You can eat a Paleo diet without eggs, FODMAPS, nightshades, or nuts, and still enjoy your meals! This pork roast recipe makes a delicious entrée with plenty of leftovers to grab for a quick breakfast or a cold lunch. For a lighter meal, try a shrimp and mango salad or cinnamon chicken (just leave out the onions if you’re eliminating FODMAPs foods). This tuna steak recipe even calls for garlic, a helpful natural antibacterial. For a rich side dish on long winter evenings, try some roasted acorn squash: this would be a delicious accompaniment to a roast chicken or a nice, juicy steak. Kale chips would make a great snack in the place of unhealthy crackers or cookies.

As you learn more about your specific triggers and intolerances, you’ll be able to add more different types of foods into your diet – after all, if you don’t react to something there’s no reason to avoid it. Everyone’s gut issues are unique: experiment in your own kitchen, and find a way of eating that works for you.

Conclusions

Although doctors continue to research potential treatments for IBS, so far it remains a vaguely defined collection of digestive symptoms classified by elimination: if it isn’t anything else that your doctor can recognize, it’s probably IBS. The very general nature of the problem demands a very general treatment: maximize your gut health as much as possible by reducing inflammation and healing your gut flora, and identify your trigger foods so you can avoid them in the future. Someday, you might wake up to a New York Times headline about the cure for IBS, but until then, healing and supporting your gut as well as you can is your best bet for controlling IBS symptoms, so you can look better, feel healthier, and move on with your life.

A Paleo diet makes many people much more aware of how the foods they eat affect their body – without the constant low-level gut problems caused by unhealthy modern foods, occasional digestive issues are much more noticeable. But not all stomachaches are created equal – a food allergy, a food intolerance, and a negative reaction to food toxins are three different problems, and it’s important to understand the distinction, to help you quickly identify and avoid the foods that are causing you problems.

Allergies vs. Intolerances

If you tell someone that you’re “lactose-intolerant,” one of the first questions is likely to be, “so…you’re allergic to milk?” But while an allergy and an intolerance both make you feel sick, they’re actually two completely different biological issues.

An allergy is a problem caused when IgE antibodies in your immune system mistakenly think that a harmless substance (like pollen or cat hair) is actually dangerous. Trying to defend your body, these IgE antibodies trigger the release of histamine, which provokes an inflammatory response to get rid of the “threat.” You sneeze when you have a cold because your body is trying to get rid of the germs; you sneeze when you have an allergy because your body thinks cat dander is a kind of germ. Sometimes, this response is nothing but an inconvenience: hayfever isn’t fun, but it’s also not a serious problem. On the other hand, some allergies cause a life-threatening condition called anaphylaxis – peanut allergies are so notoriously severe that several schools have banned peanuts altogether.

While allergies are all biologically similar, intolerances have a much greater variety of causes. In general, allergies are problems with the immune system, while intolerances are problems with the digestive system, but the term “intolerance” is really more of a catch-all label. If a food makes you sick, but you don’t have the specific IgE allergic response, it’s probably an intolerance. Lack of certain enzymes can cause a food intolerance, as is the case with lactose intolerance (caused by a deficiency of the enzyme lactase). Mabasorption in the gut, immune problems that don’t have to do with IgE antibodies, or metabolic disorders like diabetes are also common culprits.

Other medical conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) or Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) can provoke a reaction to a wide variety of foods. One common problem that many people with IBS suffer from is FODMAPs intolerance. FODMAPs (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides And Polyols) are small carbohydrates that are not completely absorbed in the small intestine, and are easily and quickly fermented by the gut flora. This can cause bloating, gas, and abdominal pain - if you have SIBO as well, the excess gut flora will only make the symptoms worse.

Even foods that are perfectly acceptable on Paleo can be problematic if you’re FODMAPs intolerant: foods high in FODMAPs include certain kinds of fruit (apples, mango, pears, and watermelon), milk, and some vegetables (like asparagus, broccoli, and onions). Unfortunately, coconut can also cause problems for people who are sensitive to FODMAPs, as can most kinds of nuts. Eating FODMAPs won’t cause a healthy person to develop IBS or SIBO, but for people who are already sick, they’re a common source of problems, and even some healthy people find that their digestion improves when they stop eating foods high in FODMAPs. If you do suffer from IBS or Crohn’s disease, eliminating FODMAPs from your diet won’t cure the underlying problem, but it can help control the symptoms.

One food intolerance can also beget another: most commonly, gluten intolerance can create other problems when gluten damages the lining of your intestinal tract, allowing molecules of food to pass from your gut directly into your bloodstream. The resulting “leaky gut” symptoms allow all kinds of foods to pass through the intestinal lining. Since foreign bodies of any kind in the bloodstream trigger an autoimmune reaction, your immune system will create antibodies against all of these foods. Thus, you appear to have problems with wide variety of foods, but in fact, the only real issue is the gluten. If gluten weren’t giving you a leaky gut to begin with, none of the other foods would cause any problems. This is why many people suffering from Celiac disease or gluten intolerance find that they no longer have problems digesting dairy after cutting gluten out of their diet.

Since they have so many causes, and so many different symptoms, food intolerances are often not recognized correctly or misdiagnosed as allergies. Adding to the confusion, the symptoms of food intolerances are often chronic, rather than severe. If you immediately break out in hives and start to have trouble breathing after eating peanuts, it’s not hard to connect the trigger food to the reaction. But if you’re suffering from persistent, low-level digestive problems that don’t become noticeably better or worse after eating any specific food, it might not be easy to connect those symptoms to fructose malabsorption, salicylate intolerance, or another very general problem that involves many different foods. Sometimes, a very small amount of a food you’re intolerant to might not cause a noticeable reaction, leading you to mistakenly believe that the food is safe. This makes food intolerances frustrating to live with, and even more frustrating to diagnose.

Food Toxins

Allergies and intolerances cause you to have a reaction to a food that isn’t necessarily dangerous for everyone. Someone with an egg white allergy, for example, cannot eat eggs because of their particular allergy, not because eggs are inherently unsafe for people to eat. Food toxins, on the other hand, are substances that are harmful to everyone. Basically, toxins are substances that all humans are intolerant to, just because of the way our digestive systems function. Many toxins – like gluten, lectins, saponins, and phytic acid – are found in legumes, grains, and pseudograins. Other toxins end up in ordinarily harmless food from the environment: pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and other chemicals can leak into the food and water supply all too easily.

It is possible to be allergic or strongly intolerant to one or more of these food toxins, but toxins are still harmful even to people who don’t notice an immediate allergic reaction. For example, someone with a peanut allergy has a severe anaphylactic reaction that will strictly prevent them from ever eating peanuts, but even for someone without an allergic reaction, peanuts are still a problematic food because they contain toxins like phytic acid. These toxins can cause a wide range of problems, from acne to leaky gut to hormone imbalances; many of these problems are cumulative, meaning that they sneak up on you over the years, without one clear cause. This is why so many people are surprised at how much better they feel on Paleo: they didn’t realize they were sick until they cut toxins out of their diet.

Case Study: Wheat

To demonstrate the differences between all these digestive problems, let’s look at wheat as an example. Like other grains, wheat is not part of Paleo because it’s a product of the Agricultural Revolution, and the human digestive system hasn’t fully adapted to processing it. It contains several toxins, including gluten, lectins, and phytic acid. These harmful compounds cause gut inflammation and irritation, leaky gut, and a cascading series of autoimmune and digestive problems. Since toxins are harmful for everyone, all of us should avoid wheat, but some people have even more serious allergic reactions or intolerances to it.

Many people think that Celiac disease, gluten intolerance, and an allergy to wheat are the same problem; in fact, however, these are three different issues. You can be gluten intolerant without having Celiac disease, and a wheat allergy is an entirely separate problem.

Celiac disease is a genetic intolerance of gluten that affects approximately 1 in 130 people. Although it does cause problems with the immune system, Celiac disease is not the same problem as a wheat allergy. First, allergies involve the IgE antibodies, while Celiac disease does not. If you have Celiac disease, one specific protein (gluten) provokes an autoimmune response in the small intestine, causing your gut to attack itself. This destroys the villi (the tiny hairs that line your intestine), perforates the lining of your gut (“leaky gut” syndrome), and prevents you from absorbing all the nutrients in your food. On top of the digestive and autoimmune symptoms, Celiac disease can also cause a rash called Dermatitis Herpetiformis, but it does not cause anaphylaxis the way an allergic reaction would. If you have a wheat allergy, on the other hand your immune system reacts to one or more of four different proteins (albumin, globulin, gliadin, and gluten) as a threat. For someone with a wheat allergy, eating wheat can cause the typical "allergy symptoms" like hives, a runny nose, or even anaphylactic shock, as well as more obvious digestive problems.

Additionally, Celiac disease is inherited, while wheat allergies are not. Celiac is a lifelong problem; wheat allergy is most common in children, and many children grow out of it. Also, Celiac Disease requires the avoidance of all gluten grains (wheat, barley, and rye), while people with wheat allergies don’t need to avoid anything but wheat itself.

Thus, Celiac Disease and wheat allergies might have similar symptoms, but in reality they’re two very different conditions. Furthermore, even if you don’t have Celiac disease, you can still have non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Non-Celiac gluten sensitivity is usually less severe than Celiac disease; for example, the symptoms do not always include leaky gut. Celiac can be life-threatening, but non-Celiac gluten intolerance usually isn’t. The two problems also involve different parts of the immune system, and provoke different responses (if you have Celiac disease, your gut attacks itself; if you’re non-Celiac gluten intolerant, your immune system attacks only on peptide, gliadin, in gluten itself).

Testing for Allergies, Intolerances, and Toxins

Since allergies, intolerances, and food toxins can do so much damage, most people want to avoid their effects as much as possible. The way to prevent damage from toxins is fairly simple: don’t eat them. The list below shows the most common food and environmental toxins. Everyone should avoid these – think of them as foods that all of us are intolerant or allergic to. Even if you don’t notice an immediate reaction from eating them, preventing the long-term health damage is worth the effort. Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done: it’s one thing to cut out grains and legumes, but almost impossible to protect yourself from the chemical soup in your drinking water, or the pesticides that might be sprayed into the air you breathe. But as difficult as it is to escape them, it’s important to avoid toxins as much as you possibly can.

Common toxins include

• Gluten;
• Lectins;
• Saponins;
• Phytic acid;
• Pesticides;
• Herbicides;
• Heavy metals;
• Environmental estrogens (like BPA);

Toxins are harmful to everyone, but since allergies and intolerances don’t affect everyone, there’s no need to start avoiding non-toxic foods if you don’t react to them. Many people are allergic to shellfish, but that doesn’t mean you should automatically eliminate them without any proof that they’re causing you problems. But if you’re still having digestive symptoms after you’ve cut toxins out of your diet, an allergy or intolerance is a likely suspect. The list below shows the most common foods that people are allergic or intolerant to, to give you a starting point for your research. Unfortunately, the tests for determining what foods you might be reacting to aren’t very good, and can sometimes seem even more confusing than the problems they’re supposed to solve.

Common allergies include

• Milk;
• Eggs;
• Peanuts and tree nuts;
• Fish and shellfish;
• Soy;
• Wheat;

Common intolerances include

• Gluten (Celiac disease or non-celiac gluten intolerance);
• Dairy (lactose intolerance or casein intolerance);
• Fructose (fructose malabsorption or fructose intolerance);
• Food additives (preservatives, food coloring, etc.);
• Alcohol (alcohol intolerance);
• Histamine (histamine intolerance);
• Salicylates (salicylate sensitivity);
• FODMAPs (FODMAPs intolerance);
• Sulfites (sulfite sensitivity);

For food allergies, doctors can use a tool called an ELISA test or a RAST test for IgE (Immunoglobulin E, the antibody involved in allergic reactions) in the blood; ideally, this is done immediately after the patient eats a small amount of the suspect food. If there are IgE antibodies in your blood after you eat the food, it’s a sign that your immune system is trying to attack it, which means you’re probably allergic. Your doctor can also administer a skin test by scratching your skin with an extract of the food you might be allergic to. If you are allergic, your immune response to the allergen will cause a bump and an inflamed area at the injection site. These tests, however, are frequently inaccurate: a positive skin test doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have problems eating the food, and a negative skin test doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t.

An ELISA test can also be useful in determining intolerances: although they do not involve IgE, doctors can administer an ELISA test for two other kinds of antibodies, Immunoglobulin G (IgG) and Immunoglobulin A (IgA). These tests, however, are not very reliable and often deliver false positives. To test for intolerance to some FODMAPs, you can also take a breath test, but this won’t give you an answer for all of them. The method that most doctors accept as best is called an Elimination and Challenge test: after the patient eats a very restricted diet for 3-6 weeks, a doctor slowly introduces potential problem foods, noticing any side effects or reactions. Since this involves a diet so restricted that it might cause nutrient deficiencies, and since many people have very bad reactions when the foods they are intolerant to are reintroduced, this kind of test should only done under medical supervision.

If you don’t have the resources to have a full battery of tests done, you can also try a self-diagnosis with an elimination diet: starting with the common problem foods in the list above, eliminate foods from your diet until you have no more symptoms, and then reintroduce them one at a time. When your symptoms reappear, you’ve found the problem! You might have to repeat this experiment with several groups of food, if you have more than one allergy or intolerance.

Living with Food Allergies

Living with a bad reaction to one or more foods requires special attention to everything you eat. Packaged foods are generally suspect on Paleo, because manufacturers have a way of sneaking in soy products, artificial flavors and colors, and all kinds of preservatives. But if you do have an allergy or intolerance, you’ll need to be even more careful with any kind of packaged or prepared food. In the US, food manufacturers are required to label 8 common allergens: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans. Other foods that commonly cause problems, however, are not always labeled – if you have an allergy or intolerance to anything not in the top 8 list, you’ll need to be especially careful about reading labels and staying aware of what foods might cause a reaction.

Certain allergies and intolerances can also require you to change more than just your diet – salicylates, for example, are common ingredients in soaps and shampoos as well as fruits and some nuts; if you’re intolerant to salicylates, you might need to pay as much attention to your bathroom as your kitchen.

Very severe allergies may require you to carry an epinephrine autoinjector (EpiPen), which allows you to immediately inject yourself with a high dose of epinephrine if you accidentally eat something you are allergic to. This can be life-saving if you go into anaphylaxis far from a hospital. If your allergy is serious enough to send you into anaphylaxis, it’s a good safety precaution to always carry an EpiPen in case you accidentally eat something that’s been cross-contaminated (for example, if a food service worker forgets to change her gloves between someone else’s peanut butter sandwich and your tuna salad).

As you spend more and more time on Paleo, you might notice that some of your allergies or intolerances begin to disappear, or at least become less severe. This might be because your gut is healing - as described above, the leaky gut symptoms caused by eating gluten can cause you to become intolerant of all kinds of other foods (most commonly dairy). When you eliminate gluten from your diet, and give your intestinal wall a chance to heal itself, the problems with some other foods might suddenly disappear. This requires some time and patience (it’s a good idea to wait a few months for your gut to fully heal before you start experimenting) but it’s always an exciting discovery to find that you suddenly can eat a food you thought you couldn’t.

Diagnosing and living with food sensitivities or allergies can be difficult and frustrating, especially if you have an uncommon allergy that isn’t labeled on most food products. But be patient with yourself and our digestive system: get rid of food toxins first (whether or not you have an obvious reaction to them), and give your body a few months to heal before you try allergy testing for everything you can plug into Google and find a blog about. As you start testing yourself further, remember to leave enough time between tests to fully observe the results, and try not to get discouraged if you don’t find the culprit immediately. You’ll find it eventually – and when you do, you’ll be able to enjoy your newfound health and eat other foods joyfully and confidently.

It’s 4 p.m., you haven’t eaten since breakfast, you’re hauling two oversized carry-on bags and a cranky toddler around an unfamiliar airport terminal, trying to find the new gate for a flight that just got delayed another hour, and you’re getting desperate. Somewhere, somehow, there has to be something you can eat. Sometimes there is, and sometimes you have make do with a bun-less McDonald’s patty and a $10 pile of wilted lettuce. But Paleo travel doesn’t have to be like this! Staying Paleo outside of your own kitchen is always a challenge, but with some strategic planning before your trip, you can minimize the stress and keep yourself sane.

The key to success here is preparation: a little planning ahead of time will save you a lot of pain and hunger down the road. Using your trip as an intermittent fasting window is always an option, but if you’re taking a longer trip or just prefer not to travel hungry, you can use a combination of food packed from home and meals at restaurants you looked up beforehand to make Paleo travel into much less of a nightmare for everyone involved.

Pack Your Own

Even if you plan to stop at restaurants along the way, you’ll probably want to pack at least some of your own food for snacks and emergencies. If you’re a veteran traveler, your first instinct is probably to grab a pile of granola bars: they keep well at any temperature, they’re quick to eat on the run, and they don’t make a mess. But most commercially available granola bars are just the standard American diet compressed into a travel-sized package: refined grains loaded with sugar, artificial sweeteners, and a laundry list of preservatives to prevent them from spoiling. Rather than relying on such terrible meal options, it’s possible to prepare the nutritional core of Paleo – meat – in a travel-friendly way.

One source of menu inspiration for this is history. Admiral Lord Nelson didn’t grab a quick PowerBar before the Battle of Trafalgar, and the Hudson’s Bay Company didn’t carry a rack of foil-wrapped packages for explorers to choose from. Throughout history, different groups have developed a variety of ways to preserve meat at room temperature. One method was to mix it with fat, which functions as a natural preservative. This process gave us pemmican, a traditional travel food for Native Americans. A delicious and energy-dense mix of equal parts meat and animal fat, pemmican can last for years without going bad. You can buy pemmican online, or make your own for a pre-trip project.

Removing the water from a piece of meat is another way to preserve it. Drying is a preservation method that’s very literally Paleo: Neanderthals used it to make mammoth jerky after a kill. Jerky doesn’t store quite as well as pemmican, but it provides a handy protein boost for slightly shorter journeys – and, more importantly, it’s easier to make at home. You can also get high-quality jerky (grass-fed meat and organic ingredients, with minimal chemicals) online, but be careful with commercially available jerky – it’s often loaded with nitrates, sugar, and soy sauce. Make sure to check the ingredients list carefully.

Traditionally, removing water also went hand in hand with another process: adding salt. Salt draws water out of the meat, restricting the growth of the bacteria that would otherwise cause it to spoil. Unless you’re restricting your salt intake – and you probably shouldn't be – salting your jerky is a perfectly healthful (and tasty!) way to make it keep for longer.

For the less historically inclined, canned meats also store and travel well and don’t require anything more laborious than a trip to the grocery store. All kinds of fish and other seafood (squid, shrimp, etc.) are commonly available canned; so is chicken. Some cans even have peel-top lids, for easy on-the-go snacking. Be sure to check the labels carefully, though – several brands of canned foods do contain soy sauce.

While meat is the heart of Paleo , most people like a little more variety in their meals. Especially on a longer trip, package after package of jerky gets very boring very fast. Fortunately, you also have plenty of non-meat options. Nuts are a classic Paleo travel food for a reason – they’re shelf-stable at room temperature, crunchy and delicious, and they’re one of the few Paleo foods that you can usually find at gas stations and rest stops. Single-serving packets of nut butters can also make a great emergency snack in the middle of a crowded airport line. Canned olives, like canned meat, keep forever and make a tasty snack on their own or a great addition to an uninspiring gas station salad. A small container of olive oil can also come in very handy for restaurants where the only salad dressing options are Ranch or Lite Ranch. LARABARS are energy bars made entirely from fruit and nuts, so they’re also a safe option. Save them for an emergency, though, because they’re based on dates and have a very high sugar content.

If you only need one meal (for example, if you have an 11am flight), you’re in luck: most cooked foods will keep for a few hours at room temperature without serious danger, especially in an air-conditioned environment. Hard-boiled eggs hold up very well, even outside the refrigerator. They’re not the food to keep for the final day of a week-long roadtrip, but they’re excellent for an airplane-friendly lunch. Many people don’t enjoy the taste of room-temperature meat, but if you don’t mind it, there’s nothing dangerous about packing up some leftovers before you leave the house and enjoying them a few hours later. This is also a great way to save money – instead of throwing out leftovers that will go bad by the time you go back, just bring them for lunch! Fresh veggies will also stay crisp and tasty for hours if you pack them properly (bring along a small container of guacamole for a filling snack), and most fruits will last several days.

If you’re travelling in a car and you have a cooler, you can extend the useful life of all of these foods for several hours or even a few days (especially if you keep topping off your cooler with ice from gas stations or hotels). Lettuce is also a great cooler addition for long car trips, since it’s crunchy and entertaining to munch on, and prevents you from getting dehydrated in the car. For a slightly stronger flavor, pack a small container of mustard to dip the lettuce in.

These travel-friendly foods might not be the most gourmet Paleo meal options, but you do have choices. An hour of prep the night before you leave can save you a huge amount of time and irritation, whether you’re packing a quick snack or a day’s menu.

Restaurants

You could always avoid restaurants altogether and eat only the food you brought from home. But especially on longer trips, most people like to have at least one hot meal. Restaurants sound tricky to handle, but in practice they’re fairly easy to work around as long as you’re comfortable being polite but firm about your diet. The best way to ensure a pleasant experience is to research beforehand: look up the places you’ll pass on the way, glance through the menus, and decide where you’ll eat before you have to make an instant decision on an empty stomach.

If you land in a steakhouse, a seafood restaurant, or another meat-centric place, you’re in luck: since meat is the main event, you’ll be able to enjoy most of the entrees with very little modification. Any restaurant with a buffet-style salad bar or custom salad options can also be very Paleo-friendly – at Chipotle or Subway, for example, you can get a vegetable salad topped with meat and guacamole.

Even if you have to settle for a restaurant that doesn’t have a lot of Paleo options on the menu, most of the time you’ll be able to simply order a cut of meat with a side of vegetables, prepared in a Paleo-friendly way. Grilling, roasting, poaching, and steaming lend themselves well to Paleo preparation; pan-frying can be fine, but make sure the cook knows to use an acceptable type of oil. If you’re a fan of safe starches, you could also order a baked potato or a side of plain rice. The key here is to be very polite to everyone involved: they are doing you a favor by cooking special food that meets your dietary requirements. Clearly and patiently explain what you do and don’t eat, and don’t expect them to make you something incredibly complicated and difficult.

For a hot meal on the road without the hassle of finding a restaurant, many health food stores have hot buffet lines that allow you to mix and match (and while you’re there, you can refill your cooler). Whole Foods, for example, has several Paleo-friendly options that you can sit down to eat in the attached café or pack in a travel container to take with you.

Guest Bedrooms and Hotel Rooms

Once you’re finally off the plane or out of the car, you’ll have a slightly easier time finding nutritious meal options, especially if you’ve planned ahead. Hotels aren’t the most Paleo-friendly environments, but they’re a lot better than airports! Some hotel rooms have full kitchenettes; if at all possible, try to get one with at least a mini-fridge. Before you leave, look up grocery stores near where you’ll be staying, so you can stock up right away: as well as the travel foods listed above, a rotisserie chicken is a convenient and fairly cheap way to get a hot meal the night you arrive, with enough leftovers for breakfast and snacks the next day.

Staying as somebody’s houseguest can be slightly more complicated if your hosts aren’t Paleo – even if you’re not trying to be rude, food is very personal and many people feel rejected or insulted if you refuse their cooking. You say, “I’m sure it’s delicious but I don’t eat ___________;” your host hears “your food isn’t good enough for me.” This is especially true if you’re staying with relatives: almost inevitably, you’ll have to field an endless stream of questions about your diet.

This can easily ruin your trip by turning every meal into an interrogation, and the stress and exhaustion of travelling only make it worse. Staying in someone else’s house leaves you very little privacy to unwind, which can make even a mildly irritating situation seem much worse. The best way to handle this is to prevent it before it starts. Before you leave, talk to your host about your diet. Explain what you do and don’t eat in a calm and nonjudgmental way. Present it as a personal choice (“this diet makes me feel better”) that you’re not trying to force on anyone else. Offer to pitch in for groceries and help with cooking. This also gives your host the chance to ask questions before you arrive, so your dinner conversation can revolve around something more interesting than your decision not to eat the bread. The key is mutual respect: you want your host to respect your diet, but you also have to respect theirs.

If you can’t come to a reasonable agreement with your host, seriously consider staying in a hotel: it might be expensive, but the chance to eat without a constant stream of judgmental commentary can be worth it.

When the subject comes up during your stay (and it inevitably will, even if you discuss it in advance or choose to sleep in a hotel), changing the subject is usually the path of least resistance. Rather than digging in your heels and getting into a barely civil argument over saturated fat or insulin resistance, politely stick to your preferred eating habits and change the subject: “No, thanks. Hey, what do you think of Susan’s new job?” You won’t win any grand Paleo victories this way, but you also won’t make any enemies, and you’ll be able to enjoy your visit without food battles getting in the way.

The Best of the Worst: What to Do When You’re Stuck

Even with the most careful planning, sometimes we all get stuck in a bind. Maybe the TSA got worried that you were going to hijack the plane with your jerky and confiscated your lovingly-packed spread of Paleo fare. Maybe you forgot your cooler at a rest stop, or someone broke into your car and grabbed it. Or maybe your trip was such an emergency that you didn’t have time to pack. Whatever the reason, it happens. But even if you’re stuck with food that isn’t strictly Paleo, you don’t have to give up completely and jump into the candy rack.

Your first choice should be “almost Paleo” foods: foods that probably won’t make you sick even though they aren’t on your usual diet plan. You might have to settle for meat that’s been cooked in seed oils (buying a fast-food burger and throwing away the bun can get you emergency protein in a pinch). Since many people don’t have immediate reactions to legumes and safe starches, you could go for a Mexican dish based on rice and beans, an Indian curry with lentils, sushi with white rice (but avoid the soy sauce, since it contains gluten), or mixed nuts that include peanuts. A smoothie with protein powder is also not technically Paleo, but it can carry you through for a few hours. If you can handle dairy fairly well, you could also try yogurt or string cheese.

If you can’t find anything “almost Paleo,” at least try to avoid gluten, added sugar, and anything that you react particularly poorly to. You can usually find at least one dish based on rice or potatoes instead of wheat. In this type of situation, accept that you have to eat something that might make you feel sick for a day or two, and try not to spend the whole meal beating yourself up for “cheating.” One meal won’t throw you completely off track if you don’t let it. The important part is to get back to eating Paleo as soon as possible, and to remember the situation so you can plan for it next time.

Travelling and the Paleo Lifestyle

Even with a carry-on or a trunk cooler full of Paleo edibles, travelling is a far cry from the active lifestyle that most people on Paleo try to maintain. Human beings just were not designed for the crowded, noisy, and sedentary world of modern travel. Sitting for most of the day can leave you stiff, store, and cranky; fighting through interstate traffic or airport security can send your stress levels through the roof.

One of the best ways to handle this is by making regular movement part of your travel routine. If you’re driving, stop every hour or two and get out of the car. Take a few minutes to walk around and stretch, then try some basic bodyweight exercises like push-ups or jumping jacks – even a few of these will get your blood pumping and bring up your energy levels. If you’re travelling with a friend, have a race to the bathroom, or find an unoccupied picnic table and see who can do the most box jumps in a minute. You don’t need to bust out the most extreme Crossfit WOD you know; just moving around a little is enough.

In an airport, your space and options are even more limited. Gentle stretching and yoga poses are a relaxing option that won’t disturb anyone else in the area; you could also take a brisk lap around the terminal. Some airports even have gyms built in (or a very short commute away); this is a great option if your flight is delayed or if you just have a very long layover.

Of course, if you’re exercising in any public place make sure you’re always considerate of everyone else who has to use it. Don’t crowd the kids out of a playground so you can do your pull-ups on the monkey bars, don’t practice your tabata sprints on the moving sidewalks, and bear in mind that you probably don’t want to get too sweaty unless you have somewhere to shower afterwards.

The Paleo Travel Checklist

Most of us forget at least one important thing on every trip we take, and return vowing to never forget it again…only to forget something else the next time. This Paleo travel checklist is designed to help you keep track of everything diet-related, so that even if you leave your toothbrush at home, at least you’ll have enough to eat. For a road trip grocery list, print out the checklist and simply cross out any foods you don’t intend to buy.

Food

• Jerky;
• Pemmican;
• Canned fish;
• Mixed nuts or trail mix;
• Nut butter packets;
• Canned olives;
• Small bottle of olive oil;
• Fruit;
• Vegetables;
• Guacamole;
• Hard-boiled eggs;
• Bottled water;
• Tea and/or coffee, if you drink it;
• Salt and pepper;

Non-Food

• List of restaurants and grocery stores along the way
• Utensils
• Napkins
• Hand sanitizer
• Tupperware (for storing restaurant leftovers)
• Allergy translation cards (if you’re travelling away from your native language)
• Any supplements that you take regularly
• Thermos bottle
• A sleep mask and a pair of earplugs

Travelling on Paleo can be tough – you’re thrown out into the world far from the safety of your own kitchen, and you have to make the best of it. But with some basic planning and preparation, you won’t have to sacrifice your health on the road.

Lean protein is the darling of the diet industry. Still married to the same low-fat dogma that brought us the obesity epidemic in the first place, mainstream weight-loss programs can’t recommend a diet based on fat. With the growing popularity of low-carb diets for weight loss, carbohydrates have also become a black sheep, leaving protein as the only “good” macronutrient left.

Paleo dieters, fortunately, aren’t interested in conforming to mainstream nutritional guidelines. Healthy animal fats are the backbone of a Paleo eating plan: even the much-demonized saturated fat is nothing to be afraid of. But this doesn’t mean that a Paleo diet excludes the other macronutrients – carbohydrates are a hotly debated topic, but everyone agrees that a healthy diet includes at least some protein. The question is not whether to eat protein, but how much protein is ideal for optimum health.

What Is Protein?

Biologically speaking, proteins are complex molecules (polymers) formed from smaller subunits called amino acids. Each of the 20 known amino acids amino acid belongs to one of three groups. The first group, called the essential amino acids, includes the ten amino acids that your body cannot make on its own; you have to get enough of them in your diet. In the second group, the nonessential amino acids, are all the amino acids that you can synthesize either from essential amino acids or from protein. Despite their name, these amino acids aren't any less important than their essential cousins. They might not be “essential” to get in the diet, but they’re still “essential” from your body’s point of view. The third group, the conditional amino acids, contains the amino acids that are usually nonessential, but become essential when your body is under stress (for example, if you get sick).

Protein plays many important roles in the body. It’s a fundamental building block, functioning as the structural “skeleton” for cells. Various types of proteins also perform an enormous number of functions – enzymes (the substances that drive biochemical reactions like digestion) are a type of protein, other proteins help cells in your body communicate, and special motor proteins are responsible for large-scale movements like muscle contraction as well as the microscopic movements involved in cell reproduction. Proteins also help transport substances within the body, and can combine to form even more sophisticated mechanisms.

Making sure to get all 10 essential amino acids every day sounds like a tedious chore, but fortunately the answer is very simple: eat meat. Almost any kind of animal product (meat, eggs, or dairy) is a “complete protein,” meaning it contains all the essential amino acids, so on a Paleo diet, getting your amino acids in shouldn’t be a problem. The only people who have to worry about mixing and matching specific protein sources are vegetarians, since plant proteins like beans are generally not complete.

Goldilocks and the Macronutrient Ratios: How Much is Just Right?
Protein indisputably plays an important part in almost every physical process, and unlike glucose (which your body can synthesize if you aren’t eating carbohydrates), you can’t manufacture protein from other sources. If you don’t eat enough essential amino acids, your body will start breaking your muscles down to get them. In other words, any healthy diet needs adequate protein, preferably the complete proteins found in animal products.

At the lower limit, a diet consisting of 10% protein by caloric intake will meet your essential needs. Eating less than 10% protein for an extended period of time risks deficiencies in one or more essential amino acids. On a Paleo diet, eating less than 10% protein is also quite difficult – you’d have to make a serious effort to restrict your meat intake and choose only the fattiest cuts.

10% could thus be considered the lower end of the healthy range of protein consumption. At the other end of the spectrum, a “high-protein diet” contains 20-29% protein, while a “very high protein diet” is 30-39% protein. The human body’s ability to metabolize protein ends at around 35%. Thus “high protein” is a relative term: even advocates of higher protein consumption are not claiming that it should account for the majority of calories.

Note that these ratios are based on a fairly normal (approximately 2,000-calorie) diet. The absolute amount of protein is also significant. At the very upper limit, protein toxicity begins to set in when you eat more than 230 grams (920 calories) of protein a day (remember that this is not the same as eating 920 calories of meat, since some of the calories in meat come from fat). On a 2,000 calorie diet, 920 calories is 46% of energy from protein, well above even the “very high protein” range. On a 5,000 calorie diet, however, a toxic level of 920 calories is only 18% of energy. This means that on a very high calorie diet, the percentage of protein must be lower to stay within a healthy range.

These calculations leave us with a fairly wide range of potential protein consumption – 10% to 35% of the diet, as long as protein does not comprise more than 920 calories total. A human could survive on any protein intake within this range, but that does not mean that the optimal protein intake is so broad. Traditional hunter-gatherer diets offer a clue as to how much protein the human body is equipped to handle. Loren Cordain estimates that hunter-gatherers traditionally ate around 19-35% of energy as protein, but this is probably an overestimation because Cordain bases his calculations on the “average” animal when in fact, hunter-gatherers wisely singled out the fattest animals in the herd for consumption. Most hunter-gatherers probably consumed closer to 10-20% of calories from protein. Thus, for people with no special nutritional considerations, 10-20% protein is a reasonable starting point.

The Dangers of Excess Protein

Consistently eating inadequate protein (less than 10%) will cause serious problems, but in the real world it doesn’t happen often. Especially on a Paleo diet, most people have very few problems eating enough protein. A more common problem is eating too much. A relatively high protein diet (20-29% protein) might not be ideal, but it probably won’t do any serious damage, especially if you eat that protein along with high-quality fat and carbohydrates. Some people, however, fall into the trap of trying to get much larger percentages of total energy from protein, especially after drastically cutting their carbohydrate consumption when they stop eating grains.

In many cases, this overconsumption of protein is simply due to a lingering fear of fat –restricting carbohydrates is not completely alien to mainstream diet advice, but if you were raised to think that “low-fat” was synonymous with “good for you,” learning to embrace butter as a health food can be a challenge. Many people stumble at first by trying to eat a “low-fat Paleo” diet, which automatically ends up being high-protein, because if you restrict carbohydrates and fat, protein is the only energy source left. This kind of diet could easily contain 60-70% of calories as protein – a meal of skinless chicken breast or tuna with vegetables doesn’t offer much in the way of fat or carbs.

At first, this diet can make maintaining a caloric deficit fairly painless: since protein is the most satiating macronutrient, eating a lot of protein helps you stop feeling hungry quickly. This sating effect, however, doesn't last forever – in the short term, a high-protein diet can help you feel full while in a caloric deficit, but in the long run, your body will adjust. On the other hand, such an extreme excess of protein can quickly lead to a whole range of health problems.

Protein toxicity is a general term that refers to the harmful effects of eating too much protein. It is caused both by the absolute amount of protein in your diet, and by the ratio of protein to the other macronutrients (carbohydrates and fat). When you break down protein into energy, the kidneys first need to remove nitrogen from the amino acids, a process called deamination. This process produces a chemical called ammonia as a byproduct. Since ammonia is highly toxic, your liver converts it into a waste product called urea, which passes out of the body through urine. Eating too much protein can thus put unnecessary stress on your liver and kidneys, as they struggle to convert the protein into a useful form of energy.

Processing ammonia properly also requires carbohydrates and fat as co-factors, so an overload of protein without the other two macronutrients is doubly stressful. This is why lean protein is so satiating – your body recognizes that it can only digest a relatively small amount, so you feel full quickly. Fatty meats are comparatively less satiating because your body has enough co-factors (fat) to process more of the protein.

If you only eat protein without any accompanying fat or carbs, not only will you overwork your liver and kidneys, but you also won’t get enough of the fat-soluble micronutrients that your body needs for other important processes. The health problems that result from this kind of extreme protein overload are well documented. The Inuit referred to protein toxicity as “rabbit starvation,” not because it results from eating too much “rabbit food” in the form of raw vegetables, but because the Inuit suffered from it when the only food they could obtain was rabbit, which is a very lean meat. The symptoms of “rabbit starvation” are weakness, weight loss, and a general feeling of illness. Excess protein consumption can also lead to mood problems and anxiety, by interfering with the proper function of neurotransmitters in the brain.

While dietary protein overload can cause serious problems, periodic protein restriction – much like intermittent fasting – can actually be very beneficial. Intermittent protein restriction helps your cells perform a kind of “spring cleaning” of old and useless proteins that would otherwise accumulate in your body. This process is called autophagy; it’s also one of the benefits of intermittent fasting, but for this particular perk, you don’t necessarily have to abstain from all food. Restricting protein alone (while eating as much fat and as many carbohydrates as you feel hungry for) will provide the same result.

Protein for Athletes

Weightlifters and bodybuilders are often extremely skeptical of any advice to restrict protein – conventional wisdom dictates that to gain muscle, you need to eat extremely high levels of protein all the time, digging into piles of tuna and chicken breasts, and chugging down protein shakes after every meal. Muscle is indeed built of protein, but protein consumption won’t necessarily cause muscle gain any more than fat consumption will cause fat gain. For most people attempting to gain muscle, it’s primarily important to have a calorie surplus. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. If you train correctly, that weight will be muscle. You could theoretically eat a calorie surplus of lean protein, but you could also eat the same number of calories from fat and achieve the same results without the drawbacks of a high-protein diet.

The exceptions to this are people who train at an extremely competitive level and want to gain muscle beyond the normal range of the human body. This is the level of athletics where eating for performance begins to differ from eating for health. Powerlifters or professional bodybuilders do need to eat more protein, especially if their diet is also relatively low in carbohydrates. All the drawbacks of a high-protein diet still apply; these athletes have simply decided that the trade-off (increased muscle mass) is worth it. For most people, however, the primary goal of exercise is health rather than competition, so consuming extreme amounts of protein would be counterproductive.

Thus, while athletes might want to stay in the upper end of the 10-20% range, and highly competitive strength athletes probably need even more than that, most people should have no need to go overboard. Protein powders, in particular, are one of your worst options: not only are they usually unnecessary, but they present protein in isolation (without any carbs or fat to help you metabolize it), after it’s been heavily processed and loaded with all kinds of artificial colors and flavorings. If you need a quick and portable post workout meal, try some hard-boiled eggs or leftover meat with a baked sweet potato.

Practical Takeaway: Protein for a Paleo Diet

Claiming that a certain percent of the diet should be protein is scientifically very interesting, but this kind of recommendation is not directly applicable to the way most of us think about food. People don’t buy “36 grams of protein;” they buy half a dozen eggs, or a nice piece of salmon. Weighing and measuring everything you eat is always an option, but this can be irritatingly time-consuming and often impractical. Fortunately, it isn’t necessary. Most of us can make a rough visual estimate of how much food we’re hungry for; learning to do the same for protein isn’t difficult.

The table below shows the recommended daily protein consumption for several different groups of people. In general, eating around 0.7 grams of protein per pound of total mass, or 1 gram per pound of lean mass, will put you within a healthy range of approximately 15% protein (assuming a normal caloric intake – people on a very high-calorie or very low-calorie diet will have different needs). Since your protein needs will vary depending on your lean body mass, women (who naturally have a higher body fat percentage) will have lower protein requirements per pound of total weight than men. The table shows several general recommendations; body fat percentage is within the normal range for all age/sex groups.

The meal plans aren’t designed to be rigid templates, or even nutritionally complete (they only include the protein-containing foods at every meal). Rather, they can give you an idea of what “100 grams of protein” looks like on your plate, to help you make real-life food choices that adequately meet your protein needs.

In general, to stay within an adequate range of protein consumption, just focus on fat as your main source of calories (but not necessarily the main part of your diet by volume). Don’t eat protein without fat – choose fatty cuts of meat like pork shoulder and lamb, and eat your chicken with the skin on. There’s nothing wrong with lean meats like tuna, but make sure to eat them accompanied by some other fat source, like this delicious tuna steak with avocados.

Conclusion

Protein is an essential macronutrient that supports almost every type of cell in your body. While it’s important to get enough high-quality animal protein, humans were never designed to use it as our main energy source. If you’re new to Paleo, it’s especially important to remember that fat, not protein, should make up the bulk of your calories: there’s no such thing as “low-fat Paleo.” All the calculations about percentages and grams per pound of body weight can be fascinating, but if they seem overwhelming, there’s no need to spend time and energy worrying about them. Simply eating a variety of fatty meats as part of a well-balanced diet should keep most people within a healthy range of protein consumption without needing to pull out the calculator.

A Paleo diet emphasizing high-quality meat and fresh vegetables will naturally be lower in carbs than a standard American diet based on cheap carbohydrates like wheat and other cereal grains. By excluding foods that contain toxins (like gluten and lectins), a Paleo diet replaces many starches with fat and protein, effectively treating the problems that spring from a carb-heavy modern diet, especially metabolic disorders like diabetes. But not all carbohydrate-rich foods contain toxins or antinutrients, and some are even high in nutrients: sweet potatoes, for example, are a rich source of Vitamin A. This raises the question: do these non-toxic starches have a place in Paleo? If wheat is unhealthy because of the gluten, not the carbohydrates, starches like potatoes and yams ought to be acceptable, and even encouraged.

This is precisely the concept that Drs. Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet set forth in the Perfect Health Diet. Defining a “safe starch” as “starchy food which, after normal cooking, lacks toxins, chiefly protein toxins,” the Jaminets encourage healthy non-diabetics to consume approximately 400 calories per day (or 20% of daily caloric intake) of safe starches, prioritizing glucose over fructose. While acknowledging that a high-carbohydrate diet leads to all kinds of metabolic disorders, the Jaminets also argue that a diet too low in glucose can lead to problems like nutrient deficiencies, kidney stones, and lower mucus production, which impairs the immune system.

The concept of “safe starches” has sparked criticism from advocates of very low carbohydrate (VLC) diets like Dr. Ron Rosedale. The differences between the two groups should not be overstated. Both the advocates and the opponents of the “safe starch” principle agree that the body needs glucose – and both also agree that too much glucose is toxic, leading to chronically elevated insulin levels, insulin and leptin resistance, and eventually metabolic disorders like diabetes. The question of “safe starches,” however, reveals important differences, even between diets that are ultimately much more similar to each other than to the standard American approach to food.

Glucose: The Basics

Carbohydrates come in three major forms: glucose, fructose, and fiber. Glucose and fructose are the only two forms that provide energy to your body, since fiber is not digestible (by humans – the bacteria in your gut love it!). Of the two forms of carbohydrate that you can digest, glucose appears to be preferable. Humans need glucose: it supplies energy to the brain, makes up molecules called glycoproteins (including mucins, the building blocks of mucus), and supports immune function. Fructose, on the other hand, is redirected to the liver as fast as possible – your body essentially treats it like a toxin and tries to get rid of it. While glucose is a necessary fuel, fructose is a tasty reward that fruits evolved to deliver so that animals would eat them and spread their seeds around through defecation.

Moreover, too much fructose can lead to bacterial overgrowth in the gut, causing malabsorption and other digestive problems. Between the two sources of carbohydrate energy, then, glucose is clearly preferable – and, in fact, necessary. Unless your body is highly adapted to a very low carbohydrate diet, it uses at least 600 calories of glucose every day, more if you’re athletic or fighting off any kind of infection. Your brain alone needs 480 glucose calories daily to function. But your body’s need for glucose doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to supply that glucose through diet. Through a process called gluconeogenesis, your body can create glucose from fat and lactic acid, ensuring that your brain and immune system get the fuel they need even in the absence of dietary glucose.

The question therefore arises, which is better: obtaining glucose from the diet, or from gluconeogenesis? Advocates of the “safe starch” theory claim that optimal health requires some dietary intake of glucose, while the critics of “safe starches” argue that dietary glucose is toxic at any level, and that the body is completely capable of synthesizing all the glucose it needs from fat and protein.

The Safe Starch Debate

In late 2011, Paul Jaminet and Dr. Rosedale debated the concept of “safe starches” in a series of admirably civil blog posts, with Dr. Jaminet advocating the daily consumption of starches, as per the PHD recommendations, and Dr. Rosedale arguing that dietary glucose is toxic at any level, and that the idea of a “safe” starch is an oxymoron. The debate revolved around several basic questions, revealing fundamental differences between the PHD and the Rosedale diet. One major point of divergence is that the two diets are designed for different groups of people. Dr. Rosedale, who specializes in treating people with diabetes and other metabolic disorders, considers everyone to be “metabolically damaged to some extent.” His diet is essentially medicinal – because everyone is sick (insulin and leptin resistant) to some extent.

Jaminet, on the other hand, does not classify every potential adopter of the PHD as metabolically damaged. He explicitly states that he is not a diabetes specialist: although the PHD is not bad for diabetics, it is designed for people without metabolic disorders. Diabetics may need to adjust their carbohydrate levels to find the optimal amount – and the adjustment depends greatly on the individual. The two diets are, in other words, based on dramatically different premises: Rosedale starts from the assumption that everyone is sick and in need of treatment; Jaminet starts from the assumption that most people are healthy.

On a deeper level, Jaminet and Rosedale disagree on the goal of the optimal diet. Rosedale focuses on extending the human lifespan by outmaneuvering nature – explicitly claims that “I have no qualms about saying that what I’m doing and teaching to be healthy is quite unnatural, as it is the quest to be able to live a long, happy, and youthful life after making babies.” Jaminet, on the other hand, focuses on optimizing health by eating as evolutionarily “natural” a diet as possible. In this sense, the PHD is closer to Paleo in principle, although the Rosedale diet may resemble it more closely in practice. On two diets optimized for different groups of people working towards different goals, it is hardly surprising that the specific recommendations differ.

Dietary glucose: toxin or hormetic stress?

The most obvious point of contention in the debate is the level of dietary glucose most beneficial for human health. Rosedale and Jaminet disagree not only about the specific amount of glucose in an optimal diet, but even more basically, about how to best measure the effects of glucose in the first place. Their disagreement reflects the difference in their attitudes: Rosedale, addressing people he considers to be universally metabolically damaged, and focusing on the effect of glucose on insulin, considers glucose intake a dangerous stressor; Jaminet, writing for an audience of people he considers metabolically healthy and focusing on the effects of glucose on blood sugar, views these it as a tolerable, and even beneficial stress.

Rosedale claims that any amount of dietary glucose is toxic. His ideal glucose level is as low as possible – while he acknowledges that any diet will include some glucose, he asserts that the less, the better. No starch is “safe:” any amount of glucose “will, at least to some extent, by spiking blood glucose, insulin, and leptin, mimic the stress response.” Synthesizing glucose via gluconeogenesis, by contrast does not create insulin resistance, since the liver knows exactly how much glucose it needs to make, and does not create excess glucose for the body to process. While he acknowledges its existence and utility, Jaminet claims obtaining glucose solely from gluconeogenesis is less than ideal. In his view, “the dose makes the poison” – too little dietary glucose can cause health problems, and too much is certainly harmful, but small doses of glucose do not cause measurable harm and might even contribute to health through a process called hormesis.

Hormesis is the same kind of “good stress” that makes intermittent fasting so beneficial: when your body copes with stress, it becomes resistant to that stress, and you “toughen up” in general. Rather than a straight line, Jaminet sees glucose toxicity as a U-shaped curve, with the greatest risk at very low or very high blood glucose levels. He recommends a fasting blood glucose level of around 100mg/dl for optimal health, and proposes that most people can achieve this by eating approximately 400 calories of starch a day (on a 2,000 calorie diet, this amounts to 20% of calorie intake from starch).

Rosedale addresses this question when he rephrases the crucial question of the debate as: “Is there a diet (Rosedale’s or Jaminet’s) or glucose (starch) intake that can better maximize the repair/damage ratio that life, health, and youthful longevity depends on, admitting the inevitability of damage from glucose at any level?” While Jaminet based his recommendations for “safe” levels of glucose consumption on levels of fasting blood glucose, Rosedale challenges his premise by arguing that fasting blood glucose is an inadequate measurement of the damage that glucose does to the body, which mainly occurs when high levels of postprandial glucose spike leptin and insulin levels. Eating a 20% carbohydrate diet might lower blood sugar levels, but only at the expense of raising insulin levels, making it worse than useless.

In response, Jaminet simply states that he finds Rosedale’s arguments unconvincing, but prefers to let the matter drop. Several other researchers, however, have noted that insulin resistance does not correlate directly with glucose consumption. Most followers of Paleo understand that chronically high blood glucose levels cause frequent insulin spikes, leading to eventual insulin resistance. However, following a VLC diet can also create a kind of insulin resistance – as a response to a scarcity of glucose, not an excess of it.

When your body is forced to create glucose through gluconeogenesis, rather than receiving it through diet, every molecule of glucose is precious. Your muscles become slightly insulin resistant as a protective measure, to spare scarce glucose resources for your brain, which needs them most. This is not a sign of diabetes, and is not necessarily reason for concern: as Guynet has it, “a healthy body increases insulin sensitivity in response to increased demand for glucose disposal.” But the fact remains that insulin resistance occurs at both extremes of the glucose consumption scale, with the diet least conducive to insulin resistance probably falling somewhere close to the PHD recommendations for starches.

This goes back to Jaminet’s idea of hormesis: consuming glucose raises blood sugar (a stressor), causing your body to adapt and become stronger in response (insulin sensitivity). In sum, these two different recommendations for dietary glucose reflect the two doctors’ different ideas about their readers: hormesis is only beneficial to someone in generally good health and strong enough to withstand the stress; since Dr. Rosedale sees everyone as metabolically deranged, he would logically shy away from recommending an additional stress to an already damaged system. In their treatment of metabolically damaged individuals, the Jaminet and Rosedale approaches are remarkably similar; the main difference is in whether they consider any significant number of people to be “metabolically healthy.”

Are there any risks associated with very low intake of dietary glucose?

Rosedale and Jaminet disagree not only on the optimal levels of glucose in the diet, but the consequences of straying from those levels. In Rosedale’s view, a “deficiency” of dietary glucose is just as illogical an idea as a “deficiency” of dietary cyanide.

Jaminet, on the other hand, argues that a scarcity of dietary glucose does indeed have measurable negative effects, especially for the immune system and the thyroid. While he supports ketogenic diets as helpful for people with certain neurological disorders and infections, he maintains that most metabolically healthy people will be healthier with some dietary glucose intake, describing four major symptoms of “glucose deficiency:” scurvy, mucus deficiency, kidney stones, and thyroid problems.

Jaminet’s challenge to a VLC diet comes partly from personal experience: while on a VLC diet himself, he developed scurvy, a nutrient deficiency caused by inadequate levels of Vitamin C. Upon reintroducing the carbohydrates that he describes as “safe starches,” his health improved. After more research, Jaminet found that insulin is actually vital to maintaining healthy levels of Vitamin C – when Vitamin C is damaged by oxidation, insulin is the hormone that prompts the glucose transporters to restore it, allowing your body to recover from injuries and infections. Selenium, another mineral commonly depleted by a ketogenic diet, is also essential to maintaining healthy levels of Vitamin C.

Thus, Jaminet argues that a VLC diet can create a Vitamin C deficiency, or even scurvy, even in a person whose dietary intake of Vitamin C is perfectly adequate. From his experience developing the PHD and his dietary research, Jaminet also concluded that a VLC diet reduces mucus production, since mucus is primarily made of water and sugars. Mucus is made from glycoproteins; when these proteins are broken down in gluconeogenesis, they are unavailable to be used as mucus. This dries out the eyes, mouth, and intestines, depriving the body of a crucial barrier against irritants and pathogens and increasing the risk of infection and gastrointestinal cancers. During 2 years on a zero-carb diet, Dr. Jaminet personally noticed uncomfortable dryness in his eyes and mouth, and self-experimentation revealed glucose deficiency as the major culprit. He cites other low-carb dieters who have had similar experiences, as well as a study showing that dry membranes commonly occur during starvation, when the body breaks down its stores of protein to maintain glucose levels.

Critics of the “safe starch” approach argue in response that the mucus is a response to the irritation that carbohydrates produce in the intestines – Rosedale also claims Jaminet fundamentally misunderstands mucus deficiency as a problem of glucose scarcity: “eating extra glucose will not make mucus any more than taking calcium will make bone. There must be instructions to do so.”

Furthermore, Jaminet argues that a zero-carbohydrate diet can dramatically increase the risk of kidney stones – in children put on a ketogenic diet to treat epilepsy, 1 in 20 developed kidney stones, compared to 1 in several thousand among those not in ketosis. Jaminet sees four factors as primarily responsible for this dramatic increase in kidney stones. First, a person on a ketogenic diet must metabolize both glucose and ketones from protein, producing much more uric acid than someone not in ketosis. Since DHAA is not recycled into Vitamin C on a ketogenic diet, it is degraded into oxalate, which must be excreted by the kidneys in a process that consumes electrolytes and water – both of which the kidneys need to excrete uric acid. Thus, the uric acid and oxalate precipitate as deposits, forming kidney stones.

The dehydration common on ketogenic diets merely compounds this set of problems. As a fourth measure of glucose scarcity, Jaminet describes a condition called “euthyroid sick syndrome.” In a healthy thyroid, the hormone T3 stimulates glucose transport and utilization. In a person with low levels of dietary glucose, the thyroid stops producing T3 and produces an inactive hormone called rT3 instead, reducing glucose transport and utilization in the body. In euthyroid sick syndrome, these hormones are out of balance, without any malfunction in the thyroid: essentially, low glucose levels mimic a thyroid problem. Jaminet also connects this to high LDL levels.

In response, Rosedale argues that the lower body temperature and metabolic rate consequent to reduced T3 are actually beneficial. With caloric restriction, glucose is reduced, therefore leptin is reduced, therefore T3 is reduced. This, he claims, is healthy because it is “part and parcel of genetic expression of increased maintenance and repair.” Responding to Rosedale’s response, Jaminet contends that low body temperatures suppress the immune system, among other signs of suboptimal health. Rosedale responds by criticizing Jaminet’s understanding of why the thyroid is low: “I am not talking about hypothyroidism. I am talking about a thyroid that is purposefully being lowered to enhance the wellness and survivability of that life.” The low levels of thyroid hormone, he argues, are a sign that a VLC diet mimics all the advantages of calorie restriction, without the restriction. Rosedale argues that a purposefully low thyroid does not suppress immune function, since it does not prevent fever temperatures when necessary.

While Rosedale does not specifically address the first three of Jaminet’s arguments, except for a brief assertion that mucus deficiency is caused by problems in the body’s enzymatic reactions, not low levels of glucose, he contends in general that “glucose deficiency” is not caused by insufficient glucose. It’s a problem of “improper instructions about what to do with glucose…and improper insulin and leptin signaling.”

Safe starches and starchy vegetables: Conclusion

Both Rosedale and Jaminet agree that a low carbohydrate diet is optimal for diabetics or anyone suffering from metabolic syndrome. But while Jaminet sees diabetes as a disease affecting only some people, Rosedale argues that everyone should eat as though they were diabetic, because to a greater or lesser extent, we all are.

However, this is simply not the case – a normal person with a healthy metabolism does not need to reduce the stress of glucose metabolism by eating a VLC diet any more than an uninjured person needs to reduce the stress on his knees by using a wheelchair, no matter how helpful that wheelchair might be to someone with a broken leg. Many metabolically healthy individuals feel more energetic and vibrant when they increase their carbohydrate intake to levels roughly in line with PHD recommendations – and far from being automatically obesogenic, some even find that moderate carbohydrate intake can help break through a weight loss plateau.

As well as being beneficial in moderate doses, dietary consumption of glucose is in line with the evolutionary basis of Paleo: glucose is an ancient food that our bodies have evolved a specific enzyme (amylase) to digest. Different indigenous cultures have thrived on a broad range of macronutrient ratios – without the slightest idea of what a macronutrient is, or how much of which ones a particular food contains.

Even more radically, Kurt Harris suggests that the process of gluconeogenesis is not a sign that dietary glucose is unnecessary, but rather “evidence that glucose is so metabolically important that we have evolved a way to make sure we always have it.” Harris agrees that most people should have no problems eating 15-20% of calories as starch, and that this approach is actually healthier than eating a VLC diet.

Furthermore, he claims that “the whole concept of a macronutrient, like that of a calorie, is determining our language game in such a way that the conversation is not making sense.” Pointing out that the body digests different forms of carbohydrates in different ways, he suggests that we focus instead on the nutritional value of foods, without categorizing them by macronutrient ratios that don’t give meaningful information about the actual value of those foods to the body.

Several other Paleo practitioners agree: eating nutrient-dense foods that do not contain harmful toxins is healthful and natural; micromanaging the intake of any particular nutrient is not – and therefore, probably not necessary. “Safe starches” such as potatoes (especially sweet potatoes) and other starchy tubers are therefore a perfectly acceptable element of a healthy, evolutionarily-based diet for someone with no (or few) metabolic problems. For athletes or anyone else who performs relatively large amounts of intense exercises, dietary carbohydrates are essential to performance and general well-being. If you feel better eating a moderate amount of carbohydrates, enjoy them without fear.

Safe starches in your diet

If you’re stumped for a way to add safe starches to your diet, take a look at this table from Balanced Bites, which shows the best Paleo sources of carbohydrates, along with their nutritional values. The only major one missing from the table is chestnuts, which are a great safe starch option. The most commonly available sources are potatoes, sweet potatoes, and squashes; to find the slightly more exotic starches like cassava or lotus root, you might need to venture out to an ethnic supermarket or a specialty grocery store. The easiest way to cook any kind of potato is to bake it – poke a few holes in the skin and microwave it on high until it’s soft to the touch (around 4 minutes for a fist-sized potato).

If you’re looking for something fancier, try making sweet potato soup with lime or leeks. Sweet potato fries are a delicious classic; you can also mash your potatoes or include them in a frittata, a salad, or a casserole. And even if you don’t have access to the more exotic types, yams and sweet potatoes have an amazing variety: look for them at ethnic markets or try some as a vacation treat.

Squashes taste delicious in soup, or simply roasted with spices. Spaghetti squash can replace traditional pasta in any kind of dish – or try it baked with some sweet potatoes and spices for an easy, portable addition to any meal. Pumpkin pie is easy to make Paleo: just leave off the crust, or make your own from Paleo ingredients.

Plantains make excellent chips (delicious with salsa or guacamole), or try frying them with cinnamon. They also make a unique addition to an omelet. Serve them up as fritters with some bacon, or cook them with pork for an easy crock pot dinner. Experiment with varieties of these recipes, or try your own – the basic concepts (baking, mashing, stewing with meat) are infinitely adaptable to many different combinations of spices and additions.

Taken within the context of modern food culture, Paleo can easily start to seem like an endless list of limitations: no grains, no legumes, no seed oils, no processed foods... Paleo appears to be a series of restrictions or deviations from the “normal” diet that everyone would presumably eat otherwise. But Paleo only appears restrictive in the context of a warped food system that floods our diet with toxins because it privileges industrial profits over human health. Despite this less than ideal context, defining “health” as simply avoiding these toxins is short-sighted and ultimately misleading. The absence of toxins is a prerequisite for health, but the normal functions of the human body also require the presence of nutrients. Paleo, in other words, can also be defined by what we do eat: enough energy and nutrients to support vibrant physical and mental health.

With this different attitude toward food comes a focus on maintaining a well-balanced nutritional framework, rather than simply avoiding junk. This framework consists of two types of nutrients: macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrates), which supply energy in the form of calories, and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), which support the various biochemical processes in your body. An ideal diet should provide enough micro- and macronutrients to keep your body healthy and strong.

Keeping track of macronutrients is fairly simple – there are only three, and most people have a rough idea of what kinds of foods supply which ones. But tracking every single micronutrient in your diet to make sure you meet your RDA would be impossibly tedious. Luckily, you don’t have to. First of all, the official government recommendations are often flawed goals. The recommendations for any particular nutrient are based on how much of that nutrient you need to avoid the associated deficiency disease. So for example, if you eat the RDA of Vitamin C every day, you won’t get scurvy. But simply avoiding a deficiency disease doesn’t necessarily mean that you have enough of a nutrient for optimal health. One study found that some problems associated with calcium and Vitamin D deficiency build up slowly over several decades, even in the absence of the official deficiency disease; preventing these long-term problems may require more than the RDA.

But more important than the imperfection of any one set of nutritional recommendations is the fact that humans thrived for millennia before we even knew what vitamins were, much less had the capacity to measure them. If we were all so fragile that we couldn’t survive without tracking and controlling every nutrient to the last microgram, we would have died off as a species long ago. Simply eating a wide variety of vegetables, animal products, and other nutrient-rich foods is enough to meet most people’s nutritional needs.

Groups with special micronutrient needs

While most people don’t need to spend much worrying about individual vitamins and minerals, some people – especially people who enter the Paleo lifestyle with pre-existing deficiencies to address – have special requirements for one or more micronutrients.

Pregnant and nursing women

Pregnant and nursing women need to pay special attention to the nutrients in their diet because they have to eat for two. Since their iron needs are higher, pregnant women are particularly at risk for a deficiency of iron, which helps carry, store, and use oxygen in your bloodstream, and supports a variety of enzymatic reactions. As well as causing symptoms of anemia in the mother, iron deficiency can increase the risk for a premature birth. Even after birth, low iron levels in a nursing mother can impair the normal motor functions and mental development of the baby. Dietary sources of iron include clams, oysters, organ meats, spinach, and red meat.

Expecting mothers should also take care to get enough folate. Folate supports the growth and maintenance of new cells, making it especially vital for anyone undergoing rapid growth or physical changes, like infants and pregnant women. Folate also complements the functions of iron in the body: like an iron deficiency, a folate deficiency can cause anemia, premature birth, low birth weight, and slow development. On the positive side, adequate levels of folate in the pregnant woman can greatly reduce the risk of problems with the baby’s spine, skull, and brain. Several of the same foods that provide iron, like liver and spinach, are high in folate as well; asparagus and avocado are also good sources.

People with Malabsorptive Digestive Disorders

Many kinds of diseases can interfere with the absorption of nutrients from food. As well as diseases of the digestive system like Crohn’s disease or Celiac disease, HIV/AIDS, certain types of cancer, parasite infections, and other problems can prevent the body from absorbing micronutrients even if you eat enough of them. Symptoms of malabsorption include all kinds of general digestive problems like bloating, gas, diarrhea, and weight loss, and can lead to more serious deficiency diseases like anemia, kidney stones, and osteoporosis if left untreated. As well as seeking treatment from a doctor, many people find that the severity of the malabsorption decreases significantly after spending some time on a Paleo diet – bone broth and fermented foods are particularly helpful for restoring normal gut function. A probiotic supplement might also be useful.

People on Antibiotics

Antibiotics are sometimes necessary to treat diseases that would otherwise be a serious threat, but one of their unfortunate side effects is disruption of the gut flora, the helpful bacteria that live in your intestines and support your digestive function. Essentially, the antibiotic kills everything that isn’t you, without making a distinction between harmful and helpful bacteria. This can cause temporary depletion of several vital nutrients, including iron, magnesium, and vitamins B and K. Fortunately, Paleo supports your immune system well enough that you should rarely get diseases or infections that require antibiotics, and eating organic, pastured meat and dairy products will reduce your exposure to antibiotics from your food. If you do need a course of antibiotics, eat fermented foods or supplement with a probiotic to reduce the damage to your gut flora, and make an extra effort to eat a nutrient-rich diet: if you feel too sick or nauseous to for solid food, try a green smoothie.

Ex-Alcoholics

Alcohol abuse impairs nutrient digestion and absorption by damaging the pancreas, stomach, and intestines. Because alcoholism causes extensive damage to your liver, it can also reduce your body’s ability to use the nutrients you do absorb. And since many addicts replace food with alcohol, they aren’t even taking in enough nutrients in the first place. Alcoholics are at special risk for deficiency of Vitamin A,, which aids in cell reproduction, bone growth, and vision, but also commonly have inadequate levels of vitamins C and B, as well as calcium, iron, and folate . Recovering alcoholics should be sure to get enough of these nutrients in their diet, but since large doses of Vitamin A can be toxic, don’t assume that more is necessarily better. Getting adequate Vitamin A from foods like sweet potatoes, carrots, kale, and spinach will slowly but surely yield better results than deliberately over-supplementing.

Ex-Vegetarians and Vegans

Paleo attracts a lot of nutritionally aware, health-conscious people – and if you’ve tried to eat healthy in modern society for any length of time, chances are you’ve at least considered becoming a vegetarian or vegan. Unfortunately, maintaining a diet devoid of meat for any length of time can leave you with serious iron deficiencies. Iron comes in two forms: heme iron (found in meat and animal products), and non-heme iron (found in beans, legumes, and spinach); vegetarians, obviously, are restricted to non-heme iron sources. This can cause problems because your body uses heme iron much more efficiently, so consuming 5mg of iron from kidney beans doesn’t do you nearly as much good as consuming 5mg of iron from a steak. Vegetarians are therefore at greater risk for iron deficiency and anemia. Fortunately, the cure is tasty: dietary sources of heme iron include clams, oysters, organ meats, and red meat.

Low levels of iron can contribute to another common deficiency among vegetarians and vegans: anemia can impair the uptake of B12 vitamins, which naturally occur only in meat and animal products. Vitamin B12 plays a crucial role in the formation of red blood cells, cognitive function, mental health, and the immune system; B12 deficiency is alarmingly common, and related to all kinds of chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Clams, liver, trout, salmon, tuna, haddock, and beef are all good sources of B12.

People with a current or former eating disorder

Eating disorders can lead to a broad spectrum of nutrient deficiencies in several different ways. Anorexics may simply not eat enough to get all the nutrients they need – calcium deficiency is particularly common, sometimes resulting in osteoporosis. Orthorexics may follow a diet so restrictive that it doesn’t include enough sources of certain nutrients (although which specific nutrients depends on the particular diet). Bulimics may also develop deficiencies, from eliminating their food before it’s digested: the constant purging can deplete the body’s stores of sodium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphorous. Anyone recovering from an eating disorder should concentrate on maintaining a generally nutrient-rich diet: especially for anorexics and orthorexics, a precise focus on specific micronutrients might be more triggering than helpful.

Nourishing and Delicious: Paleo Nutritional All-Stars

Any version of Paleo will supply a rich variety of micronutrients, but some foods are so rich in nutrients that they deserve special mention. They’re the nutritional equivalents of that kid in high school who captained three varsity sports, led the debate team, got straight As in his full schedule of AP classes, and still found time to volunteer at the local retirement home and teach himself to play guitar. These are great additions to your diet because they have exceptionally high levels of multiple nutrients, but no one of them is required: if you can’t stand the taste of kale, don’t force yourself to choke it down.

Organ meats

When most people think of organ meats, they think of liver. Liver is the Paleo version of a multivitamin. It’s high in protein and packed with Vitamins A, B6, and B12, folate, iron, phosphate (also called phosphorous), zinc, copper, and selenium. The cholesterol in liver also helps you synthesize Vitamin D. Many people like to sauté liver with onions, but if you’re not the biggest fan of the taste, try toning it down with some liver pâté. You could also disguise the liver a little by including it in a recipe for hamburgers or meatballs, along with a healthy helping of ground beef and spices.

Other organ meats, like heart, kidney, tongue, or brain also provide many more micronutrients than traditional muscle meat – and as a bonus, they’re usually cheaper. Like liver, heart contains high levels of B vitamins, thiamin, folate, selenium, phosphorous, and zinc, and heart tastes very similar to a roast, making it more palatable if you’re used to muscle meat. Kidney is also a good source of Vitamins C and B12, selenium, iron, zinc, copper, riboflavin, and phosphorous. Like liver, kidney has a strong taste – mixing it with steak in a casserole can tone down the flavor, or go all-out and try some Irish kidney soup. Other organ meats include sweetbreads (the thymus and pancreas glands of young animals), tongue, tripe, gizzards, and brains. The best place to get organ meats is from a butcher you know, but most supermarket meat sections have at least beef and chicken livers, and sometimes they have other organs behind the counter if you ask.

Kale

One cup of kale provides a hefty dose of Vitamin C, as well as manganese and Vitamins A and K. It also has smaller amounts of a variety of nutrients, including calcium, copper, and Vitamin B6. If straight-up kale tastes too bitter or tough for you, jazz it up with a little bacon, or whip up some kale chips for a salty, crunchy Paleo snack. Kale is also a wonderful ingredient in soups or stews.

Spinach

Popeye, as it turns out, was wrong: spinach isn’t actually a great source of iron. But it does deliver Vitamins A, C, and K, as well as folate and manganese. Spinach can make a delicious replacement for lettuce in any kind of salad, but if you don’t enjoy the taste, you can unobtrusively add quite a lot of spinach to a curry or any spicy dish: the leaves shrink drastically when you cook them, and the flavor is almost undetectable.

Mollusks

Mollusks pack an incredible nutritional punch. Mussels, clams, octopus, and oysters are powerhouses of B vitamins, and also have high levels of Vitamins C and A, riboflavin, niacin, iron, phosphorous, zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium. The last two make mollusks especially useful for anyone avoiding nuts: nuts are commonly cited as excellent sources of manganese and selenium, but they’re not the only ones. Mollusks can be as simple or as fancy of a dinner as you have time for. In a rush, you can steam them, throw some butter on top, and call it dinner. For a slightly more sophisticated meal, try steaming your mussels with tomato and basil, or spicing up your clams with some coconut-lime sauce. These oyster dolmades even include spinach, another nutritional MVP.

Seaweed

Seaweed is best known for its iodine content – iodine is an essential micronutrient that supports cell metabolism and healthy thyroid function. Most Americans have no problem getting enough iodine, since they consume huge amounts of processed foods loaded with iodized salt. But on a diet devoid of takeout pizza and Doritos, your salt intake is likely to be much lower, especially if you also switch to sea salt (which contains other minerals but does not provide iodine). This makes seaweed a smart addition to your meals, especially since it’s also full of all kinds of other minerals that it absorbs from the sea. You can eat seaweed as a salad, or add it to soups and broths for a salty, delicious flavor.

Bone broth

Bone broth gives you access to nutrients stored in the animal’s bones, which you wouldn’t get from just eating the meat. As well as containing generous amounts of minerals like calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous, bone broth is also a source of gelatin, which supports your body’s connective tissues (this is why it congeals when refrigerated – if you end up with beef Jell-O, you’re doing it right). As well as containing nutrients in its own right, bone broth also helps heal your gut from any damage caused by irritating foods or chronic disease, making you better able to absorb other nutrients. You can make broth on a stove or in your slow cooker. It does a while, but you can spend almost all of that time doing other things while your broth simmers slowly away.

Fermented foods

Fermented foods don’t necessarily contain high levels of nutrients themselves. Instead, they support the beneficial gut flora that allow you to digest and use those nutrients from other foods. For all these vitamins and minerals to do you any good, your body has to be able to process them first. Yogurt is the most common fermented food in the modern supermarket, but if you react poorly to dairy, you still have a wide range of options including sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, and water kefir. You can buy these at your local grocery store, or save a little money by making them yourself.

Sunshine

It’s not technically a food, but sunshine does deliver one essential micronutrient. When you go out in the sun, cholesterol in your skin reacts with the UVB rays to synthesize Vitamin D. While some foods (most notably fatty cold-water fish like salmon) do contain Vitamin D, sunshine is an essential part of the equation because most people can’t get enough from dietary sources alone.

Unfortunately, this makes the modern lifestyle the perfect way to develop a deficiency of one of the most important vitamins for overall health: most people work indoors, drive home to spend their leisure time inside, and wear sunscreen (which blocks the absorption of UVB rays and prevents the synthesis of Vitamin D) when they do go outside. Vitamin D is crucial for bone health; low levels of Vitamin D are also strongly associated with diabetes (both Type 1 and Type 2 ), metabolic problems, and obesity. Inadequate Vitamin D can provoke an autoimmune response in the gut, and some evidence also links low Vitamin D levels to certain types of cancer.

While you shouldn’t rush out to lie on the beach all day without sunscreen, regular sun exposure is the best way to make sure you get enough Vitamin D: do your body a double favor by combining your sun time with a walk or a swim.

Good Sources of Specific Nutrients

If you do have one of the conditions listed above, or need to pay special attention to any one micronutrient for some reason, the table below lists dietary sources for the most common micronutrients.

Nutritional Supplements

Even if you make an effort to maintain a healthy diet, a multivitamin seems like a tempting safety net. But vitamin supplements are not strictly regulated, and often contain vitamins in a form your body can't absorb, making them useless. And a useless multivitamin might actually be the lesser evil. The nutrients that you do absorb can harm you by overloading your body with more of a vitamin than it can handle. Taking individual supplements instead of one multivitamin can also throw your levels of micronutrients completely out of balance: all the elements in your diet interact with each other, and artificially high levels of one nutrient can cause more harm than good.

Fortunately, a diet rich in nutrients from a variety of healthy foods will meet most people’s nutritional requirements without requiring any extra supplements. Eat a wide range of meat from different parts of different animals, vegetables of different colors, fermented foods, and healthy sources of fat – $10 spent on free-range liver will do you more good than $10 spent on a bottle of gummy candies shaped like Fred Flintsone, no matter how much iron they claim to contain.

Many people switching to a Paleo diet worry specifically about how to get enough calcium without consuming dairy products. It’s an understandable concern, but an unnecessary one. First, many people have calcium deficiencies not because they don’t consume enough, but because they can’t absorb what they do consume. Consuming more of other nutrients like vitamin D, magnesium, and vitamin K will increase your body’s ability to absorb calcium, meaning that you can get a greater benefit even from smaller amounts. Moreover, more calcium is not necessarily better: over-supplementing can cause a hypercalcemia, which can damage your kidneys and interfere with the absorption of other nutrients like iron and magnesium. Unless you have a specific medical condition requiring very high levels of calcium, you don’t need a supplement.

Even if you have one of the specific medical conditions listed above (or another condition that requires you to take in unusually high levels of certain nutrients), make supplement pills a last resort, not a first line of defense. Similarly, people who live in very dark climates (like Scandinavia during the winter) might need to supplement with Vitamin D, but don’t turn to a pill until you’ve tried all your other options. As a rule, a well-balanced diet will give you everything your body needs, in an amount and form you can actually use.

Conclusion

The “Paleo diet” isn’t a set of restrictions designed to help you lose weight at the expense of your overall health. It’s a way of eating that nourishes your body with a rich supply of energy and nutrients to support your body’s essential functions. Getting enough vitamins and minerals is important, but most people who eat a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and different kinds of animal products don’t need to spend time or money tracking down deficiencies and loading up on extra supplements to correct them. Unless you have a medical condition requiring special focus on one nutrient or another, supplements should take a distant back seat to a healthy diet: pack up some sauerkraut and a healthy chunk of beef heart, and spend your time enjoying a picnic lunch in the sun instead of obsessing over micrograms of selenium.

Eating the best food for your health doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg. In fact, you'll understand after you read this article why I think the better you go for your health, the cheaper it gets.

The good news is that with some commitment and preparation, your food bill can be lower than your average food bill on a regular Western diet. This article is written with a poor college student in mind so it won't be about variety and fancy flavors, but no concession was made in terms of food quality.

In fact, I have to admit that I don't follow all these tips myself and that my food cost is higher. I allow myself pricier options to please my palate. Even if you end up spending more on food, which is likely to happen anyway, you're still making the best investment possible for your health and the health of your family. You'll save on medical costs, drugs, supplements and you'll enjoy vibrant energy and a long, disease-free life. I'd rather put my money in that than on clothes, shelter or a car any time of the day. What about you?

Some of the Paleo savings tips presented here will ask you to be more involved in your kitchen for preparation. I think that this is actually a good thing.

Spending some time in the kitchen playing with food can be quite therapeutic. It gives you a way to disconnect with your otherwise busy life and to turn off your brain, play with food and flavors, listen to your favorite music, sing and anticipate the taste and satisfaction you'll have from your creations. If your skills in the kitchen are less then optimal and it's stressful for you, know that it can only get easier with time and practice. Don't be scared to follow your instincts and creativity and never feel forced to follow a recipe too strictly. The best cooks only follow recipes as general guidelines.

Don't despair if you're short on time or simply hate cooking because some of the money saving tips presented here will also allow you to actually spend less time in the kitchen.

I also wanted to add that these tips have nothing to do with factory farmed animals because I believe free-range, pasture-raised and grass-fed should be a first priority and can often be sourced for less than you'd imagine.

Now without further ado, here are my tips to live the healthy Paleo lifestyle without breaking your wallet.

Buy in bulk

For a lot of items, you can save a lot by buying in bulk. One of them is olive oil. Buy those big 1 gallon or more instead of the smaller fancy glass bottles. As an extra, it has less chance of being oxidized because it's not exposed to sunlight. I recommend you keep the gallon in the refrigerator and pour a smaller quantity in a jar you'll keep handy so this way the bulk of your olive oil stays fresh longer.

The other area where you can save big bucks, and this is probably the most significant savings you can make, is buying your meat in bulk direct from the farmer. You'll literally pay pennies on the dollar for your investment and you'll get the best meat money can buy. What you want to do is buy a half or quarter of either beef, lamb, pork, bison or any other animal that might be available at one of your local farmers. You'll need a chest freezer big enough for the meat, but I'm sure you can find a used one for very cheap. When buying meat in bulk like that, you'll often have portions of all the cuts available so you can vary your meals and use different cooking methods. You'll have to learn how to cook those cuts, but the resulting dishes will be very rewarding.

When you buy your meat like that you can often visit the farm and see the animals so you know for sure that they are well-treated, have free access to pasture and eat grass.

I highly recommend you buy your meat in bulk if you want to save and have access to the best meat, but I'll also show you tricks if you can’t.

Choose cheap cuts and buy bone-in

Most people choose tender cuts that they can cook and eat right away. This is why the tender cuts are more expensive. Choose cuts like the shoulder, hocks or shanks that are much cheaper and slow cook them in a liquid for a delicious and easy to prepare meal. It takes longer to cook, but no more investment on your part. After cooking those cuts of meat you also have a delicious free stock for soups, stews and sauces.

If you always chose your meat bone-in, you'll have a steady flow of bones to make stocks all the time. Same thing for chicken. Whole chickens end up being much cheaper, are easy to roast and will leave you bones for a wonderful stock. I much prefer roasting a whole chicken and munching on it than cooking individual parts.

Having stock as the basis of most of your meals won't just cut your bill, it's also very healthy. Stocks are full of nutrients that we only find in good quantity in bones. In fact, eating only muscle meat is not optimal and one should always try to have bone broths and organs incorporated in their diet regularly.

Some of the extremely healthy traditional communities studied by Weston A. Price always drank broths instead of water. It's no wonder they have strong bones!

Another good replacement for tender cuts is ground meat. A lot of people think they have to buy those fancy schmancy cuts, but ground beef is cheap and perfectly fine when it comes from a healthy pasture-raised and grass-fed animal. Don't be scared to go with the fatty kind either. Use it to make delicious meat balls, Paleo spaghetti with spaghetti squash or Paleo shepherd's pie with pureed cauliflower or turnip instead of potatoes.

So next time you shop at your butcher's, choose tough, bone-in cuts, whole chickens and ground beef instead of tender cuts, steaks and roasts.

Eat organs regularly

Organ meats like liver, kidneys, heart or brain are not only very cheap, but are also a nutrition powerhouse. They should be part of a healthy Paleo diet and traditional cultures always preferred them over muscle meat, showing that they really are the important parts.

It's definitely an acquired taste and not everybody has an easy time learning to love them, but there are plenty of ways to prepare them so they end up being absolutely delicious. Liver pâté is one such example. Who doesn't like liver pâté?

Render your own tallow or lard

Paleo should really be high fat, moderate protein and low to moderate carbs so if you can save on the fat portion, it'll make a good difference. It turns out I was able to make significant savings with fat. Butter and coconut oil are all fine and tasty, but not very cheap, especially when having huge quantities. If you change your main fat source from butter and coconut oil to tallow and lard, you'll save so much money you won't believe it.

You'll have to do a little more work though to render it. Your butcher or local farmer will sell you a hard white piece of fat with all the connective tissues. Back home, cut out any remaining meat or blood vessel and cut out the piece of fat very finely (you can use a food processor). Put those pieces in a pot or crock-pot on low heat and let the pure fat get extracted for a couple of hours. You then remove the small browned hard parts to get the pure rendered beef tallow or pork lard. It will harden at room temperature and can be used everywhere. Don't be scared to cook with it, it's highly saturated and won't burn, even at high temperature.

Just to give you an example of the kind of savings possible, a local farmer recently sold me a piece of pasture-raised heritage pork fat for $2 that lasted me about 2 weeks once rendered into lard. That's a dollar a week for my main macronutrient intake, fat. If coming from a well-treated and well-fed animal, those fats will also contain plenty of fat-soluble vitamins.

Buy whole or canned wild fish

With this tip, you'll never have to buy farmed fish. I find that Alaskan wild canned salmon is very affordable while being the best source of salmon possible. Compared to that, fresh wild salmon will cost you your bank account. Canned sardines are also very affordable.

Those canned products are also often on sale so make sure to buy a huge quantity when they are.

Another great technique with fish is to buy it whole from your fishmonger. It's really not that hard to prepare whole fish, it will taste fabulous, thanks to the skin and bones and it's cheaper. As an added bonus, the nutrient value is much higher when you eat the skin and when the fish cooks with its bones. Whole fishes tend to be fresher and have less exposure to bacteria. You can at least get a better idea of their freshness by the way they look, which you can't with fillets. Even if you buy whole fish, your fishmonger will still gut it, remove the gills and scale it so you save all this work and only need to cook it. Make sure the fish you buy is wild caught and don't be scared to try new things.

Fresh mussels can also often be bought for a very reasonable price and are delicious.

Buy in season from your farmer's market

When you buy fruits and vegetables in season and locally either directly from the farm or from your farmer's market, you'll often get amazingly low prices and very fresh and natural produce. Focus on the vegetables and fruits of the hour. At specific times of the year, farmers get a surge of some fruits and veggies and have to sell them fast or else they will be lost.

When in season, local lettuce and cucumbers, for example, are very, very cheap. At that time, I buy lots of them and make lots of salads and lacto-fermented cucumbers.

If you get to know your farmers a little bit, if you buy a lot from them or if you go near the end of the day, you'll often be able to bargain a special price. This is especially true at the end of the day when everything unsold would go to waste. Don't miss that chance.

Buy frozen fruits and vegetables

When you have no option other than buying your produce at the grocery store, frozen produce is a good choice. It's cheaper, it's often on sale and can often be much fresher since it was frozen shortly after it was picked. The other added bonus is that it's likely that they were picked ripe instead of unripe, which makes for a more nutritious produce.

Where I live, frozen berries are the only way to get them all year round at a reasonable price and quality. I can even get wild blueberries that where picked right here in Quebec.

Participate in farm shares and CSA programs

This way of encouraging local farmers and getting fresh produce has become very popular over the last few years. The way it works is that you buy a share of the farm's production before the season starts and you then get a steady flow of very fresh, seasonal and natural produce as the farming season progresses. This is either delivered in a box right at your door or at a nearby pick-up location. This is a very good way to get close to the farm and to get fresh, local and seasonal produce for a fraction of the regular price. Like with buying your meat in bulk, you pay a higher fee up-front, but save a lot down the road. If you do both, you'll end up with almost zero weekly expenses once the initial investment is made.

Grow and pick your own produce

Growing your own small garden can be a very therapeutic and rewarding experience. You get to spend time outdoors, exercise, get fresh air and sunshine and get really close to the earth all at the same time. You'll also learn a lot about food by growing it yourself. Some vegetables are so easy to grow that you won't even have to think about them.

If you don't have access to a yard where you can start a small garden, your county might offer a community program where you can get a small piece of soil to grow your own vegetables.

If those two options are off limits for you, something you can almost always do is grow your own fresh herbs indoors. Some of them are really easy to grow given some sunlight and will be a perfect addition to make your meals taste fantastic. Growing your own herbs can also be a great experience for kids. It's very enjoyable for them to see a plant grow from the fruit of their labor and they learn skills that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Another thing you should consider doing is pick your own fruits when in season. Where I live, there are specific times of the year where I can go in fields and pick fresh berries or go pick apples directly off the tree for very cheap. You can of course enjoy them right away, but you can also preserve and freeze them, which leads to my next tip.

Preserve, ferment and freeze

When we get cheap access to produce, our instinct is to eat more of it during that time, but preserving and freezing are great ways to benefit all year long from the delicious fruits and vegetables.

Berries, for example, are easy to freeze and enjoy at any time. Another example is when you get so much tomatoes that you don't know what to do with them. I recommend you make huge batches of Paleo spaghetti sauce and freeze it. This way, every time you need a quick meal fix, you only have to get a jar of sauce out of the freezer.

Pesto, when fresh basil is plentiful, is also very easy to prepare, freeze and enjoy later.

Another great way to preserve produce is to ferment it. It's a process called lacto-fermentation and almost any fruit or vegetable can be fermented that way. The most well-known version is fermented cabbage, or sauerkraut. Cabbage is also very cheap, by the way.

Lacto-fermentation is not only a great way to preserve produce for a longer time, it produces natural lactic acid producing bacteria that is really good for your gut health and should be part of all healthy diets. Lacto-fermented vegetables are a staple in my diet and I try to have some at every meal. Once you get the trick, you'll see it's not very hard to prepare. Traditional cultures studied by Weston A. Price all ate fermented staples which contributed greatly to their good health.

Make your own dressings

A lot of people on the Paleo diet will stop buying commercial dressings because of the bad polyunsaturated fats, sugar, artificial ingredients, and preservatives used to make them. Another good reason to stop buying the commercial stuff is to save big dollars. All it takes is olive oil or some other good oil, an acidic like lemon juice, apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar and your favorite blend of herbs and spices. About 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, whisk, taste, adjust, enjoy! Much better and much cheaper.

Bacon 'n eggs

The famous bacon and eggs is a great way to start the day and both bacon and eggs can be bought for relatively cheap, even the good kind. If you buy your eggs direct from the farmer you could save even more, and remember that even at $5 a dozen you can still make 4 meals out of them if you eat three per meal.

Hunting and fishing

I won't go too deep into this subject because I understand it's out of reach for many people, but hunting and fishing for your own food is about the most Paleo you can really get. Other then the equipment you'll need, the food is free and Mother Nature approved (better than organic).  You participate in the normal circle of life and you spend some precious time outdoors in nature. What's more rewarding than grilling fish you caught yourself for your whole family?

Conclusion

You saw in this article that with some basic commitment and preparation, you'll be able to have great food for a very low price.

The staples in my diet are lard, stocks (in soups and stews), slow cooked cheap cuts of meat, organ meat, salads and lacto-fermented vegetables. Those items can all be obtained for very cheap and are the basis for a very balanced and nutritive diet.

So to those who still say a Paleo diet is only for the more fortunate, I say that a Paleo diet is only for those committed to their health and longevity and who are willing to spare some time and creativity when their budget is low.

The dentist’s office: it’s a place most of us would only willingly go if the alternative was slow death by a swarm of piranhas. Maybe not even then. So how’s this for some motivation to stick with Paleo: you might be able to spend less time in pain, staring at the ceiling, while someone stabs at your gums with Medieval torture instruments and lectures you about flossing!

Diet is huge for preventing and even healing tooth decay. A diet high in sugar and low in micronutrients can accelerate tooth decay and cause cavities, but a diet low in sugar and rich in important vitamins and minerals can help heal and prevent tooth damage. Here’s a look at the evidence.

A quick note on terminology: “tooth decay,” “dental caries,” and “cavities” all mean the same thing, and they’re used interchangeably here.

The Bad Guy: Sugar

The most notorious dietary culprit for tooth decay is sugar. And it’s not just the total amount of sugar that matters. How often you eat sugar also counts - eating just a little bit of sugar five times a day might be worse than eating a lot all at once.

Here’s how it works. Just like your gut, your mouth is full of bacteria. Even healthy people have a thriving colony of oral bacteria, and normally they don’t do anything bad. But just like the gut, the mouth can also develop colonies of harmful bacteria, especially if you give those harmful bacteria their very favorite food: sugar.

Sugar on your teeth is like an all-you-can-eat buffet table for a type of harmful bacteria that eat the sugar and produce acids as a by-product. Since the sugar is stuck to your teeth, the bacteria are also growing right on your teeth, and producing acid exactly where it can do the most damage. The acids eat away at the protective enamel on the outside of your teeth.

Your body does have a defense against this. Saliva is naturally rich in minerals, and your body can use those minerals to repair damage to the enamel - it’s like a constant tug-of-war between sugar damage and repair mechanisms. The enamel is kind of like a buffer zone, and as long as the acid damage is limited to the enamel, it’s repairable. But if you’re constantly eating sugar after sugar after sugar, without ever giving your mouth a chance to repair the tooth damage, the acid simply eats away at the teeth faster than your body can repair them.

This really starts to be a problem when the sugar-eating bacteria eat through the enamel (the hard outer layer of a tooth) into the rest of the tooth underneath. Your body’s repair mechanisms can only repair enamel, so once the damage starts in on the rest of the tooth, that tooth is really in trouble. Ultimately, this causes holes in the teeth, aka cavities, tooth decay, or dental caries.

So basically the point is: all the dentists are right (and so was your mom): sugar really does rot your teeth, and the best thing you can do for your dental health is avoid it.

The Good Guys: Minerals and Fat-Soluble Vitamins

That was the bad news. But here’s the good news: you can also give your body’s tooth-healing ability a big boost with food.

It’s Not Just About Calcium

One huge misconception about healthy bones and teeth is that calcium is the start and end of important nutrients. Not even close! Getting enough calcium is obviously important - here are some non-dairy Paleo calcium sources - but just putting calcium in your mouth, chewing, and swallowing doesn’t guarantee that the calcium will actually do you any good.

For that, you need fat-soluble vitamins and good gut health to make sure you absorb and use the minerals in your diet properly.

The Importance of Fat-Soluble Vitamins

It’s impossible to write about Paleo and tooth decay without mentioning Weston A. Price. Weston A. Price was a dentist from Cleveland who traveled all around the world looking for the nutritional causes of tooth decay - he wrote a book about it called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and there’s now an organization called the Weston A. Price foundation dedicated to advancing his discoveries.

So what did he discover that was so important? Mostly, his research pointed out the importance of fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K2, especially K2. Vitamin K2 is responsible for directing dietary calcium into the right place in your body, so that it ends up in your bones and teeth (where you want it) and not blocking your arteries (where you definitely don’t). Vitamin K2 is found in grass-fed (not grain-fed!) meat and butter. You can also make it yourself if you have a healthy gut, but that’s a pretty big if.

The other fat-soluble vitamins are also important. For example, if a mother has a high Vitamin D intake during pregnancy, her baby will be at a lower risk of developing cavities. Vitamin D is important for calcium absorption. There’s also some evidence that children with tooth decay have lower levels of Vitamin D, and that Vitamin D may be helpful for treating cavities, although not all studies show a relationship.

This study also found that Vitamin A intake was associated with lower tooth decay in children.

All of this research just confirms what Dr. Price found out back in the day: fat-soluble vitamins are important for building healthy bones and teeth. It's not just calcium.

Evidence from Malabsorptive Diseases

Another important part of good dental health is making sure you absorb the nutrients from your diet. No matter how much calcium, K2, D, or other nutrients you eat, if you’re not absorbing them, there’s really no point. You can see this in action if you look at the way diseases that reduce absorption of vitamins and minerals from food increase rates of tooth decay.

For example, celiac disease is associated with an unusually high rate of tooth decay and an unusual amount of enamel problems. The problem might be malabsorption - celiac disease damages the gut, which prevents the absorption of important minerals like calcium, iron, and fat-soluble vitamins.

Other causes of malabsorption include Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis), weight loss surgery, and abnormal intestinal permeability (aka "leaky gut").

Preventing and Healing Tooth Decay

Want the short “tell-me-what-to-do” list? Here it is:

• Don't eat a lot of sugar.
• Eat foods rich in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K2:
  • Grass-fed butter and dairy (grain-fed has very little K2)
  • Wild-caught salmon and other fatty fish (farm-raised has much less vitamin D)
  • Big mixed salads with some fat in the dressing (olive oil, mayonnaise, etc.)
  • It’s not technically a food, but sunshine is the best source of vitamin D
  • Liver and other organ meats
• Eat foods rich in all the important minerals, not just calcium. Try oysters, bone-in salmon, and other animal foods.
• If you have any malabsorption issues or gut trouble that might prevent you from absorbing all the above good stuff, start working on healing your gut.

It’s true that nobody can completely control the health of their teeth. Genetic variations between individuals may explain why some people eat junk food and never get cavities, while other people get cavities even though their dental hygiene is great. But diet can be a big part of how your particular genetic makeup translates into actual results - eating well can dramatically reduce the risk of tooth decay and cavities, and even help remineralize the enamel to strengthen the “buffer zone” between your teeth and dangerous acid-producing bacteria.

Autoimmune diseases and digestive related problems (Crohn's disease, Celiac disease, ulcerative colitis, IBD, IBS, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, interstitial cystitis, multiple sclerosis) can be very debilitating and can take over your whole life. We think that eating a Paleo diet has the potential to cure a good part of those conditions that are quite new to us. However, for those dealing with problems like that, it might take more time and dedication to be successful and finally heal, but this dedication will pay off at least a thousand-fold.

Even though some more perseverance is involved on your part, we think that you'll agree with us that if you're dealing with any of those problems, you'd be willing to go through anything to regain your health and stamina.

I myself have been dealing with intestinal flora imbalances and leaky gut for a good while now and I've been able to learn lots of things about how to deal with it properly. For me, it has mostly been a journey of trial and error.

It's funny because I almost discovered Paleo this way. My digestive system became so fragile that the only things I could stomach where meats, fats and well-cooked vegetables. I was then easily able to come to the conclusion that the foods that we digest the most easily are meat, fat and cooked vegetables and that focusing on those foods is a good idea for anybody.

Dealing with leaky gut

Leaky gut is a condition where your intestines become permeable and larger particles are able to enter the bloodstream. Our body then sees that those particles are foreign and attacks them while attacking regular healthy cells at the same time and compromising the immune system. This leaky gut situation also causes digestive and intestinal problems. Candida overgrowth, Celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammable bowel disease (IBS), allergies, malabsorption and loads of other autoimmune diseases are all associated with a leaky gut.

I think that dealing with leaky gut is the way to also deal with the other problems that are linked to it. Heal your gut and the rest will follow.

Some of the worst offenders that contribute to the development of a leaky gut in the first place are gluten and grains in general, NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: Advil, Motrin, ibuprofen), dairy products and plain general inflammation, chronic stress and lack of sleep. Never consume grains, dairy, vegetable oils, legumes, sugar, yeast or NSAIDs when trying to heal your gut.

Also try to limit the amount of fruit you eat. Ideally, you'd want to eat no fruits at all. It feeds Candida and if you have a leaky gut, you automatically have Candida problems. Don't worry, you don't really need fruits in your diet and vegetables as your only source of carbs will do just fine. If you want to take things even further, maybe try staying just out of ketosis, which means about 60g of carbs per day or more. You'll see that it doesn't take many vegetables to reach that 60g. Make sure your vegetables are well-cooked and soft. It makes them much easier to digest. Eat lots of leafy green vegetables. Your body needs the precious nutrients in them.

Here are other foods that we would recommend eliminating from your diet until you're 100% healed:

Nuts and seeds

We personally believe that most people would do better without them. They can be somewhat gut irritating and contain small amounts of antinutrients. Our personal opinion on nuts is that they're not supposed to be eaten frequently or in huge quantities. We also read about a lot of people feeling better without them.

Nightshades

This sounds like the name of an underground street fighting group, but it's really the name of a family of vegetables. Nightshades are a family that includes vegetables that are quite new to human consumption and that contain chemicals that are irritating. Night shades include bell peppers, hot peppers, tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes. Eliminate them when dealing with an autoimmune problem.

Eggs

Most living organisms develop ways to protect themselves from being eaten. Animals, for instance, can run or attack, but eggs have to find another way to protect themselves from foreign intruders. Egg whites contain anti-bacterial compounds and have the property to bind to biotin and some other nutrients. Some people will argue that they're fine when cooked, but my experience tells me otherwise. Of course, if you decide to only have the yolks, you can do so without restrictions, yolks are perfectly fine.

But yolks are full of cholesterol and fat, you might say. Your body needs both of those. Cholesterol is a  crucial hormone and if you don't get it in food, your body produces some by itself. It's a high carb diet that leads to high levels of the wrong type of cholesterol.

Sticking to the diet

Let me reiterate that it's really important that you stick to this more strict version of the diet 100% because only one little intruder will tend to mess everything.

Also make sure to get the most sleep you can possibly get and reduce the stress in your life. If you exercise, do it lightly.

If you find the diet to be too restrictive to be followed for any period of time, have a look at any Paleo food list and you'll see that you still have plenty of choices when it comes to meat, fats and vegetables. You can enjoy delicious salads, soups, stews, stir-fries, curries and whatever your imagination can think off.

A good thing to integrate in big quantities is fresh homemade bone stock. Use it in soups and stews. Preparing stock will extract gelatin, collagen and glucosamine from the bones, which are all greatly needed by a healing gut. It will also keep you very well hydrated.

A word on supplements

The main thing you'll want to do is introduce good bacteria (lots of them), reduce inflammation and make sure not to become deficient in any nutrient.

When it comes to probiotics, the subject is a bit tricky. We found that most of them won't do any good if your problem is advanced. The good bacteria, no matter what quantity you take, will either die in your stomach because of the acid or it will be too weak to form colonies in your intestines against the other opportunistic bacteria and yeast. The only thing that we have found that works for severe cases are soil based organisms, which are spore forming and will easily resist much harder environments.

You'll probably hear a lot of hype around prebiotics, a type of indigestible fiber that's supposed to feed the good bacteria, but we found that if your flora is disturbed enough, bad bacteria will start to feed on it.

To reduce inflammation and soothe your whole digestive system, try taking a DGL supplement with either Slippery Elm or marshmallow extract You can also incorporate a glutamine supplement, which is really food to rebuild the intestinal wall.

Finally, we would recommend you take in 4,000 IU of Vitamin D3 every day and a good fish oil. The only mineral that we would consider supplementing is magnesium, because most people are already deficient in magnesium and food sources of it are limited. Halibut is a great source of magnesium if you can have it fresh in season.

In summary, I'm sure that anyone still dealing with autoimmune challenges and digestive problems even when following a 100% Paleo diet will finally find great relief by following this protocol. Also stay reassured that by following a Paleo diet in the first place you're already doing 90% of the work for a perfectly healthy version of you and those little tweaks will finally get you there.

People who make the decision to change their diets and embrace a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle can do so for a number of reasons. Some believe in the sanctity of all life and are against all forms of animal cruelty. They seek to exclude the exploitation of other animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. Some also believe that eating meat is unhealthy and/or that raising beef cattle and dairy cows is bad for the environment and ecologically irresponsible.

Taking each of these points into consideration, let’s take a look at the big picture to clear up any misinformation and save you from compromising your health by becoming an herbivore. We won’t get into a discussion of individual moral ethics. This article will discuss eating animals strictly from a heath perspective.

Animal cruelty

Paleo dietary principles align very well with happy well treated animals so whenever we refer to eating animals, the reference is to grass fed pastured animals. Eating animals that have been well treated, well fed and let free to graze on pastures all day long are healthy. Their fat content will be much higher in Omega-3 and they are without hormones and antibiotics, in strict contrast to CAFO animals that are diseased, distressed, and physically unhealthy.

Unfortunately, in order for one organism to live, another has to die. It’s part of nature’s food chain. Vegans and vegetarians don’t have any problem with big cats killing zebras, gazelles, and giraffes. They’ll also kill livestock if they can. Wolves kill deer, caribou, mountain goats and hares. There are no vegetarian snakes. They eat frogs, rabbits, and eggs. Even predatory ladybugs eat aphids and other pest insects. When it comes to humans, however, some vegetarians believe that killing animals for food is immoral and harmful to the environment that supports them.

• Cultures who have been known to be primarily plant eaters did so because meat was scarce, but they supplemented their diets with grubs, larvae, cicada nymphs, grasshoppers, and other insects, learning what was edible by observing other animals.
• Currently, more than half the world’s population of 7 billion people still favors and farms these excellent sources of protein from dewinged dragonflies to fire roasted tarantulas.

Everyone should feel a moral twinge when it comes to factory farmed animals. Most are indeed treated cruelly beyond what any living thing should be made to endure. Animals raised in CAPOs are often malnourished, hungry and thirsty, in pain, injured or diseased, live in distress, and cannot express their natural behaviors. This has a direct affect on their nutritional density.

That’s one of the reasons our Paleo Dietary Guidelines recommend eating only grass fed animals (or wild animals and seafood) that are free to roam and eat what they choose, living in comfort and contentment every day of their lives. Animals are rarely “stocked”. Calves, for example, are birthed from the existing herd and the rancher knows each animal personally.

Eating meat is unhealthy

Eating plants definitely has its benefits. There are thousands of phytonutrients, and likely many more undiscovered, in all of nature’s colorful bounty. They’re also loaded with major and trace minerals. However, eating a “plants only” diet has its drawbacks.

• Plant-based sources tend to be low in saturated fat, a component of the brain and a macronutrient vital for human health.
• Plants contain both soluble and insoluble fiber, but fiber is not actually digested. Too much of it can cause cramping, bloating, and other abdominal discomforts including constipation. Without sufficient amounts of water to help move the bulk through the system, intestinal blockage can lead to malabsorption and toxic accumulation.
• Many grains and wheat in particular contain insoluble fiber which can add to intestinal discomfort. Our Paleo Dietary Guidelines recommend not eating wheat or other industrialized grains.
• Humans have a much shorter digestive structure than herbivores and don’t have specialized organs to digest cellulose, the main fiber in plants.

Meat contributes greatly to our overall health and contains many nutrients that cannot be obtained in any amount from plants.

• Creatine creates energy reserves in muscle and brain tissue.
• Carnosine is an antioxidant that protects against degeneration.
• DHA and EPA (the active forms of omega-3) convert ALA (plant omega 3) to an active form.
• Vitamin B12 helps make DNA, prevents certain types of anemia, and contributes to the health of nerve cells.
• The myth of saturated fat being bad for health has been debunked. Studies have shown that saturated fat has a greater effect on raising the good cholesterol than it does on the bad (1). There is no conclusive evidence that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease.
• Meat is a complete protein source with a higher biological value.
• Meat is a good source of the difficult to get vitamin D, contains vitamins B1, B2, B6, and the minerals zinc, selenium, and iron.
• Humans are omnivores and thrive best on animal and plant sources combined.

Meat and dairy are bad for the environment

Paleo principles do not condone eating factory farmed cattle or milk cows, industrial poultry, or other animals who do not graze freely. Grass fed animals graze on untreated fields and eat weeds, grasses, shrubs, insects, and grubs which eliminates bowel distress and the accompanying methane gas emissions caused by a grain diet.

• The pervasive use of chemical pesticides in industrial agriculture is poisoning our food and the planet. Most are neurotoxins and endocrine disruptors that destroy the nervous systems of insects or cause them to be unable to reproduce. All the same effects are passed on to humans when we eat these plants, and this is reason enough to be wary of a “plants only” diet.
• Vegan proponents point to grain production for cattle feed as the cause of deforestation, habitat loss and species extinction, but industrial agriculture involves huge mono-cultures like wheat, corn and soy. Virtually all their agricultural systems depend on crude oil, including planting, harvesting, processing, packaging, and transportation. The importance of eating locally produced meat and locally grown vegetables and fruits, when available, is huge.
• Growing crops of corn, wheat or soy (which are currently all genetically modified unless organic) where there would normally be grass destroys animals’ natural feeding grounds.
• Modern industrial agriculture conglomerates destroy the delicate ecosystems surrounding them including topsoil, streams and rivers that are home to worms, frogs, turtles, crustaceans, aquatic vertebrae, beavers, and the birds and animals who feed on them They devastate the earth instead of feeding it.

In the big picture, following our ancestors’ footsteps makes sense. We haven’t evolved to eat only plants or only meat. Hunting and growing your own food is the best option, but not everyone has that luxury.

We’ve long ago changed the natural order of things and we cannot go back. If you were on the fence about eating meat, take hope in the fact that change takes place slowly and restoring the planet is not unthinkable. Complete health for the earth and all its inhabitants means humans must include foods from all natural categories like grass fed animals, wild game, and foods naturally processed by smoke, fermentation, or curing. Exclude industrially processed food of any kind.