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If you’ve been around the Paleo world for any length of time, you’ve probably heard the advice to limit or avoid Omega-6 PUFA. The big reason is that it causes inflammation, which is involved in all kinds of chronic diseases. But there are a few other interesting tidbits about Omega-6 fats that you might not know.

What’s Omega-6 PUFA?

To start with, a quick refresher on Omega-6 fats. (If you already know this stuff, just scroll down to #1)

Omega-6 PUFA is a type of fat. It’s fairly rare in whole, natural foods. We didn’t get a lot of it in our ancestral diets, but that changed around the middle of the 20^th century, when “vegetable oils” like soybean oil, peanut oil, and canola oil started getting big. Today, most people get a whole lot of Omega-6 fat – it’s in almost every kind of processed food you can imagine.

Unfortunately, that’s just more Omega-6 fat than our bodies are built to handle. A little bit of Omega-6 is totally fine – in fact, we need some of the stuff, or we’ll die. But a huge overdose isn’t healthy. (That's why Paleo eliminates industrial oils. They just have too much Omega-6 PUFA).

Very often, that overdose also comes along with an underdose of Omega-3 fats. If Omega-6 fats are the evil twin, Omega-3 fats are the good twin. Omega-3s are the anti-inflammatory, heart-healthy, all-around champs that you find in fish oil and seafood – you know, that stuff barely anyone eats enough of. You’ll see Omega-3s pop up a lot in this article because the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 matters. If you raise or lower Omega-6s, you’re changing the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3. So it’s hard to talk about Omega-6 without at least mentioning Omega-3 as well.

We’ve already covered here how a diet high in Omega-6 PUFA (and low in Omega-3s) contributes to inflammation. That’s the Big Bad, the problem everyone knows about. But what about the Little Bads? Here are four lesser-known problems with a diet high in Omega-6 fats:

1. Reduced Absorption of Omega-3 Fats

The modern diet is too high in Omega-6 and too low in Omega-3. But in reality, the situation is even worse than it looks on the Nutrition Facts labels, because the more Omega-6s you eat, the fewer Omega-3s you can absorb.

In this study, researchers gave people either a diet high in saturated fat or a diet high in Omega-6 PUFA. Then they studied how well the people absorbed Omega-3 fats. Substituting saturated fat with Omega-6 PUFA reduced the absorption of Omega-3 fats and stopped people from incorporating the Omega-3s into their own fat tissue. Not good!

More Omega-6 fats don’t just contribute to inflammation; they also stop anti-inflammatory Omega-3s from getting in the door. It’s a double whammy.

2. Headaches

This study looked at the ways that changing dietary Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats can affect headache pain. The authors found that when people ate more Omega-3s and fewer Omega-6s, they had lower headache pain.

The explanation was basically that Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats are precursors for different types of endocannabinoids, chemicals in the brain that affect your ability to feel pain. The enocannabinoids derived from Omega-3 fats reduce physical pain perception, so they make headaches (and other types of pain) less awful. But there’s no equivalent benefit from Omega-6 fats. Remember from above that a diet high in Omega-6 fats reduces absorption of Omega-3s? That’s a whole lot of potential pain relief you’re not getting.

To put that in plain English, a diet low in Omega-6s but high in Omega-3s might help manage headaches, and the opposite (high in Omega-6s, low in Omega-3s) might be useless or worse.

3. Mental Health

A few different studies have looked at the effect of Omega-6 fats on mood and mental health, and most of them aren’t very encouraging.

• This study looked at women over time. The study found that women who ate fewer Omega-6 fats had a lower risk of developing symptoms of depression over 4.5 years.
• This study found a three-way tangle among depressive symptoms, inflammation, and diets high in Omega-6 PUFA (and low in Omega-3). Basically, the more depressed the subjects were, the more inflammation a high-O6 diet caused. The researchers concluded that “Diets with high n-6:n-3 PUFA ratios may enhance the risk for both depression and inflammatory diseases.” Ouch.
• This study found that pregnant women who ate more Omega-6 fats (and fewer Omega-3 fats) had higher levels of anxiety before birth.

Again, this is all tied up with Omega-3s – higher levels of Omega-3s have shown benefit for everything from Alzheimer’s disease to depression. But again, more Omega-6 fats reduce absorption of Omega-3s, so it’s all related. Even if you’re eating enough Omega-3 fats, it’s pretty clear from these studies that cutting down on Omega-6 could also be a good idea.

4. Asthma

In this study, researchers tested the relationship between dietary Omega-6 fats and asthma symptoms in 174 people with asthma. They found that people who ate a lot of Omega-6 PUFA had worse control of their asthma symptoms. Conversely, people who ate more Omega-3s and fewer Omega-6s had better control of their asthma symptoms.

This makes perfect sense: one of the big players in asthma is inflammation in the airway. That’s what causes asthma attacks. So it’s very logical that eating inflammatory Omega-6 fats would make asthma symptoms worse, and eating anti-inflammatory Omega-3 fats would reduce symptoms. But it’s nice to have a study directly corroborating that, even if it is still an association and it can’t directly prove a causal relationship.

If asthma and allergic diseases are interesting to you, you might also want to take a look at this study. It was done in mice, so all the usual mouse-study caveats apply, but it’s still pretty neat. The researchers found that a diet high in Omega-6 fats increased allergy symptoms in the mice and prevented them from developing a tolerance to their allergen.

5. (If You’re Pregnant) Your Baby’s Health

A mother’s diet during pregnancy affects her baby, and the fat quality is no exception.

• This study found that mothers who ate a diet high in Omega-6 fats (and low in Omega-3 fats) gave birth to babies with higher body fat percentage.
• This study found that mothers who ate a diet low in Omega-6 fats (and high in Omega-3 fats) and fewer Omega-6 fats had babies with lower systolic blood pressure.

These are association studies, because you can’t deliberately give pregnant women a high-Omega-6 diet just to see how badly it hurts the baby – that’s totally unethical. So we’re stuck with associations, and associations can’t prove causation. But in this case, they’re pretty suggestive and they fit with other relationships between obesity and inflammation.

Diet Guidelines: The Short Version

Just to repeat: nobody is calling to totally eliminate Omega-6 fats from your diet. Almost all foods have at least a little bit of Omega-6 fat, even vegetables! The trick is to avoid foods that make easy to eat too much Omega-6 PUFA, not to go crazy trying to get rid of it all.

• The worst culprits are industrial oils (corn oil, soy oil, peanut oil, “vegetable oil,” canola oil, etc.). Avoid these as much as possible.
• Be cautious with nuts and seeds. A sprinkle of walnuts on your salad to add crunch is fine, but don't treat them as a staple fod.

It’s also helpful to eat plenty of fish and seafood, especially fatty fish like salmon. Fish has lots of Omega-3 fats, which help to balance out the effects of Omega-6s.

As for Omega-3 supplements like fish oil: you probably don’t need them (unless you can’t eat fish for some reason). The ideal diet would be higher in Omega-3 than the typical American diet, but low in total PUFA content (Omega-3 + Omega-6). You can accomplish this very easily with food by avoiding industrial oils limiting nuts, and eating plenty of fish. Unless you have a specific reason to take fish oil, just leave it. (Learn more about fish oil here)

It’s the eternal Paleo dilemma: how many carbs? Some people feel fantastic on a nearly 0-carb diet; other people feel awful on that same diet but feel great eating starchy vegetables at every meal. And unfortunately there’s no secret Paleo palm reading you can do to figure out the answer the first time: trial and error is really the only way to go.

So instead of prescribing one carb level for everyone, here are 5 signs that whatever you’re doing carb-wise right now, it might need some tweaking. (This is assuming that you’re already eating Paleo to start with – if you’re totally new to the whole Paleo thing, go here for a quick overview)

1. Sugar Cravings

It’s normal to have sugar cravings in the first couple weeks of eating Paleo no matter what you do. So if you’re totally new, don’t worry about it. But if you’ve been doing this for a while and it still takes Herculean efforts to walk past a donut shop without going in, you might have a problem.

If you’re eating a carb-heavy breakfast (dried fruit, honey, maple syrup, smoothies…) without much protein and fat, you might be hopping on the blood sugar roller coaster early, which could be setting up cravings down the line. Try reducing those carbs or putting them later in the evening. Focus on protein and fat at breakfast.

If your carbs are more spread out through the day but you’re still having a lot of sugar cravings, then it might actually help to reduce total carbs. This study found that subjects on a low-carb diet had fewer sugar cravings than subjects on a low-fat diet. The low-carb diet started at 20 grams/day (basically just a few salad vegetables at each meal) and slowly worked up to a level that worked for each individual subject. This suggests that if you're constantly craving sugar, cutting carbs down to quite a low level might actually be helpful.

It's worth noting that sugar cravings can also come from all kinds of things unrelated to carbs, like sleep debt, stress, and low mood. They can also just be a sign of hunger (sugar = quick energy, which your body is trying to get you to eat because it’s hungry), and you can sometimes get rid of them just by eating more food in general. So if tweaking your carb intake doesn’t solve the problem, try looking somewhere else.

2. Flagging Workouts

This is the absolutely classic case of “taking Paleo too far:” Joe Paleo wants to lose weight fast, so he cuts out almost all carbs to the point where he feels almost guilty about his “high-carb” blueberries and avocados. A week later, he starts noticing that his legs feel like lead whenever he goes to the gym, and there’s no more bounce in his step when he runs. He powers through for the next two weeks, but the feeling doesn’t go away. What happened?

Joe probably needs to add some sweet potatoes back in after his workouts and stop stressing over the totally insignificant number of carbs in a handful of blueberries! It’s true that some athletes do fine on a low-carb diet, but many people don’t. (If you want to read more about carbs, low-carb diets, and exercise, check out this)

If your workouts have taken a nosedive, try adding carbs after each workout and see if it helps. A post-workout serving of starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes should be at least the size of your fist, possibly more.

3. Insomnia or Unrefreshing Sleep

If you have insomnia, you probably know it, but you can have sleep problems even if you’re technically unconscious for enough hours. If you sleep for 8 hours but still wake up tired, permanently groggy, or just unrefreshed, then your sleep might be low in quality even if the quantity is perfectly adequate.

If you have trouble falling asleep, pre-bed carbohydrates might help. Several studies (like this one and this one) have found that simple carbs effectively reduce the time it takes to fall asleep. This is probably because the carbs release insulin, which ultimately makes helps your body make more serotonin and melatonin (you can read about this in more detail here).

On the other hand, if you fall asleep fine but get chronically lousy sleep, then reducing carbs and adding fat might help. This study found that a high-fat diet significantly improved sleep compared to a high-carb or high-protein diet. This study found that a ketogenic diet increased the amount of slow-wave sleep (deep sleep, the most refreshing and healing kind). This study found that just one high-fat meal could increase slow-wave sleep the next night, compared to a high-carb meal. This study found that a higher percent of energy from carbohydrates and/or sugar was associated with “arousals” (waking up at night).

4. Bloating and Gas

Bloating and gas can come from all kinds of causes, but one of the big players is dietary carbohydrates.

• If you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, the problem might be fiber. Fiber is technically a type of carbohydrate, even though it isn’t digestible to humans so it adds very few calories to your diet. Some types of fiber, called FODMAPs, can cause bloating and gas; here’s an overview.
• If you eat a lot of fruit, the problem might be fructose. Fructose is a type of carbohydrates found mostly in fruit, dried fruit, and fruit-based sweeteners. Some people have fructose intolerance – when they eat fructose, it gives them digestive problems like boating and gas. In this case, you can usually solve the problem just by switching to lower-fructose carbohydrates, like white potatoes (yes, white potatoes are fine to eat). It’s a problem of carbohydrate type, not carbohydrate amount.

If you’re constantly feeling bloated and gassy, it might help to adjust your carb sources, either to reduce FODMAPs or to reduce fructose, or both. Some people may be so sensitive to fiber that even a very small amount of vegetables can make them feel gassy and bloated. But in that case, it might be worth seeing a doctor to work on your gut health and hopefully get back to a state where salad is no longer off-limits!

5. Weight Loss Stalls or Weight Regains

This one is tricky. If you ask some corners of the internet, they’ll say that every weight-loss problem can be solved by reducing carbs. This isn’t supported by the available scientific evidence, or by common sense. Many traditional hunter-gatherer diets are high in carbs, and plenty of people can eat high-carb diets and stay healthy their whole lives.

Then again, most people in traditional hunter-gatherer societies don’t start out with metabolic problems. For people in the modern world, especially people who had diabetes or blood sugar problems to start with, lowering carbs can be one easy and manageable shortcut to an effective weight-loss diet. If you’re significantly overweight or obese, and/or insulin resistant, lowering carbs might be a useful tool for weight loss.

On the other hand, some people actually benefit from increasing carbs for weight loss. How many of the following apply to you?

• You’re trying to lose the “last 10 (or fewer) pounds” – in other words, you’re quite close to your ideal weight and you don’t have a huge amount of extra body fat to spare.
• You’re exercising a lot, especially intense exercise.
• You’ve been low-carb for a while.
• You’re female (add another point if you’re pre-menopausal).
• You’re constantly tired, hungry, craving, and/or cold all the time.

If this is you, then a low-carb diet might be putting unnecessary hormonal stress on your body, especially your thyroid. And that can actually stall or slow down weight loss. The human body will always fight back against weight loss to some extent, but there’s no need to turn that resistance up to 11. It might actually be helpful to add in some more carbs, especially after tough workouts.

Basically, a weight-loss stall is a sign to double-check your carb intake, but the adjustment might go in either direction. And just like sugar cravings, there are all kinds of carb-unrelated problems that might be going on here, so don’t get too fixated on carbs as the One True Answer.

What level of carbs works for you? How did you find it? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

This post was NOT sponsored by Trader Joe's, or by the manufacturer of any of the products pictured. Paleo Leap has never taken money from Trader Joe's for anything else, either. Everything here is pure opinion.

After the Whole Foods walkthrough, a lot of readers wanted a sequel with Trader Joe's - but unfortunately, Trader Joe's doesn't allow photography in their stores. It's a pretty silly policy to have in the social media age, but that's the policy they're sticking with. So here's the next-best thing: a guide to Paleo-friendly edibles from Trader Joe's, with pictures of some selected items that we took home and photographed there.

Just like the Whole Foods post, this one focuses on things that are unique to Trader Joe's. You can get fresh vegetables, ground beef, and olive oil anywhere - those things are the staples of a Paleo diet, but they're not unique or special to any one chain. So here's a look at the things that might tempt you specifically to Trader Joe's.

The big picture: Trader Joe's is a reasonable place to get some Paleo-friendly specialty foods, but some of their products require a little compromise on added sugar and citric acid.

• Sugar: added sugar isn't good for you, mostly because it makes overeating sugar very easy. There's no significant nutritional difference between table sugar and the sugar in Paleo foods like honey. The difference is all in the amount. That's why Paleo discourages using a lot of sweeteners and dried fruit, but allows fresh fruit: you can eat a lot more sugar from Coke than from strawberries or apples, plus the whole foods have actual nutrients in them. Some otherwise-nutritious foods from Trader Joe's have very small amounts of added sugar - less than the amount of sugar in a single grape. If you're doing an absolute sugar elimination challenge, those foods would be out, but if you're just trying to eat well, such a tiny amount of sugar is very unlikely to cause any noticeable problems, so they're on this list as "Paleo enough to be getting on with," in the spirit of making reasonable compromises and not being extreme over nutritionally irrelevant ingredients.
• Citric acid: this is in most canned foods, and Trader Joe's canned foods aren't exceptions. Some kinds of citric acid may be a problem for people who are extremely sensitive to MSG. But citric acid is so harmless for the vast majority of people that even the Whole30 allows it - unless you have an extreme MSG problem, then it's almost certainly fine.

Part 1: Meat

The meat section has a pretty good selection, especially of Paleo-friendly convenience meats.

If you're looking for pre-cooked convenience protein, Trader Joe's is the place to be. They also had some Paleo-friendly pre-grilled chicken strips (look for the ones labeled "just chicken").

But as always, be very careful about anything with a sauce or marinade: most of them have junk oils or sugar or both.

There were also some Paleo-friendly sausages, but if you're avoiding absolutely all sugar, be careful. Here are two different packages of Trader Joe's brand chicken sausages with sun-dried tomatoes. Only one has sugar on the ingredients list. Can you guess which?

Choice A:

Choice B:

A is the one with the sugar.

[one_half]

Ingredients for package A:

Skinless chicken meat, water, salt, turbinado sugar, spices, tomato powder, dehydrated onion, dehydrated garlic, paprika, basil, parsley, diced tomatoes, sundried tomatoes (unsulfured).

[/one_half]

[one_half_last]

Ingredients for package B:

Chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, water, salt, roasted garlic, paprika, dehydrated garlic, dehydrated onion, red pepper, white pepper, black pepper, chili pepper, coriander, extractive of paprika, in a natural pork casing.

[/one_half_last]

The amount of sugar in package A is quite small, and probably not enough to affect anyone's health. Package A would still be a decent Paleo compromise choice in a pinch - one sausage from Package A has about as much sugar per serving as a single grape. But if you're trying to eliminate added sugar completely, you'd want to go for B.

There was also some decent salami, by Paleo standards, but again with a very small amount of added sugar:

The ingredients list says sugar, but if you look at the Nutrition Facts panel, it says "Sugars: 0 g." Labels are legally allowed to round down to 0 if there's less than half a gram, so this means that there's only a very minimal amount of sugar per serving. The amount is so extremely low that it's probably not an issue health-wise (again, you'd get more sugar from one single grape), but if you're absolutely eliminating added sugar, read the ingredients, not the Nutrition Facts!

One last thing from the meat section:

This is a cool thing that Trader Joe's does: they sell "pieces" of some meats. This is exactly the same fish as the more expensive cuts of cod; it's just the weirdly-shaped bits that don't look very pretty. But it tastes the same and it's just as nutritious so the pieces are an easy way to cut down on the grocery bill.

You can also get "ends and pieces" of their bacon (sadly, not sugar free), and "pieces" of smoked salmon.

Part 2: Plants

Just like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's carries pre-grated cauliflower, which is very convenient for all kinds of recipes:

They also have a nice selection of pre-cut and bagged greens.

Unfortunately, every single one of the prepackaged salads (at least at this particular store) had some kind of junk in it. Canola oil in the dressing would be one thing (you can just leave the dressing off to avoid it), but even ingredients like "chicken" aren't just "chicken." If you look carefully, the ingredient listed as "chicken" often includes junk like canola oil and sugar that the chicken was cooked in.

There was also a decent house-brand salsa without any corn in it:

Again, the citric acid is there, but for most people that shouldn't be a huge deal.

Once again, if you're eating Paleo, the majority of your cart space should be full of fresh produce, but you can get that at any store so there's no real point dwelling on pictures of Trader Joe's spinach and cabbage in particular. It's there; it's fresh; eat a lot of it in all different colors.

Part 3: The Center Aisles

The center aisles are fruitful if you know where to look! Starting with the nuts and dried fruit aisle, the bad news is that every single one of the pre-packaged trail mixes had some kind of junk in it. Even if the front only listed nuts and fruit, the actual ingredients inevitably include canola oil or sugar somewhere - and not in the "tiny and unnoticeable amount" sense of sugar. These trail mixes actually had significant sugar content. Any dried fruit was typically dried in canola oil, and usually sweetened.

But if you're looking for unsweetened dried fruit to put on top of a salad...

The only ingredient in this is "cherries." Like all dried fruit, these are high in sugar - this particular package listed 19 grams of sugar per ¼ cup serving, which is a significant amount. That's why dried fruit is better saved as a salad topping or an occasional treat, not an everyday staple snack! But if you're specifically looking for something with absolutely no added sugar, these might be a nice break from cranberries.

Moving on to the canned goods:

Mmmmm, spice! Again, the citric acid is here, but that's really nothing to worry about for the vast majority of people.

And then there's this:

This is not coconut milk. This is coconut cream - it's basically like heavy whipping cream, but the coconut version. It's thicker and fattier. You can use it to make coconut "whipped cream" for treats like these or just for putting on top of berries. (You can also DIY coconut cream by putting a jar of regular coconut milk in the fridge overnight, and then scooping out the thick white stuff at the top and throwing away the water).

Most of the jarred pasta sauces had either canola oil, added sugar, or both. But there was a canned version that was A-OK:

If you look up in the corner of the can at that little red banner - yes, that does say "Low Fat." This might go down in history as the first time a Paleo site has advised eating anything labeled "low fat," but apparently at Trader Joe's, "low fat" means "we took the canola oil out," and that's a kind of low-fat even the Paleo crowd can get behind. Plus, you can easily fix the lack of fat with an extra drizzle of your own olive oil!

Continuing through the center aisles, the broth is another master class in reading the nutrition labels.

Just like the salame, the Nutrition Facts said 0 grams of sugar per 1 cup serving, so the total amount of sugar is very low and probably nutritionally insignificant. But it's still really annoying that they needed to put it in there in the first place: why does chicken broth need sugar? Chicken broth isn't supposed to be sweet!

Trader Joe's also had a brand of Paleo-friendly potato chips. White potatoes always stir up controversy, but they're just as nutritious as sweet potatoes, they don't cause autoimmune disease in people who don't have one already, and they're basically fine if you tolerate them. Not everyone does. Nobody has to eat white potatoes, and some people feel better avoiding them. But if they're fine for you, here's another snack:

And one last hidden gem from the center aisles:

Real live pre-made Paleo-friendly salad dressing. Now combine that with some of the kale from above with some crispy broiled pork belly on the side - sounds like dinner!

What are your favorite treasures from Trader Joe's? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Even with the recent news that plant sources of Omega-3 fats might be more powerful than we previously thought, chia seeds still aren’t a “superfood.” That’s OK. Not every food has to be a superfood. And there’s a reason you might want to look into them even though they don’t (as far as we know) cure cancer or diabetes or anything else: they’re fun to play with and they can add some variety and options for people with various food sensitivities.

Just for example, chia seeds can be useful for people with egg sensitivities or intolerances - this is typically a “vegan baking” area of expertise, but there’s no reason why it can’t apply to Paleo cooking as well. It’s just a handy tool to have up your sleeve for the days when it feels like every recipe has something you can’t eat.

Here’s a look at the nutritional benefits and how you can use chia seeds to experiment and keep your meals interesting.

Nutritional Basics

In terms of protein, carbs, and fat, here’s what you’ll get in 1 ounce of chia seeds:

• 9 grams of fat. 1 gram is saturated, 1 is monounsaturated, and 7 are PUFA. Of the PUFA, 5 grams are Omega-3 and 2 are Omega-6. Like fish, chia seeds have more Omega-3s than Omega-6s.
• 12 grams of carbs (11 of those grams are from fiber)
• 5 grams of protein

If you work that out, you’ll get calories coming primarily from fat, with a little bit of carbs and protein (there are more grams of carbs than grams of fat, but fat has more calories per gram, so the total calories are primarily fat). The fat quality is pretty good, especially the Omega-3:Omega-6 ratio. The carbs are low enough that it should fit into everything but the most extreme of zero-carb diets, especially since most of them are from fiber.

Speaking of that fiber - for the low-FODMAP crowd or anyone with a sensitive digestive system, 11 grams of fiber all at once is really a lot. To get that much from vegetables, you’d have to eat…

• 11 cups of raw spinach
• 2 cups of cooked broccoli
• 3 cups of raw chopped carrots
• 4 cups of cooked zucchini

About ⅙ of the fiber is soluble, and about ⅚ is insoluble. Chia is low in FODMAPs but the sheer amount of fiber may be problematic for people with digestive problems anyway, so play it by ear if you react badly to fiber.

It’s worth stressing that chia doesn’t have enough protein to make a meal. Ideally, a Paleo meal should have around 30 grams of protein. If you ate 6 ounces of chia, you could get that, but that’s really a huge amount of chia and most people just wouldn’t want to eat that much. Don’t buy into the vegan “fact” that chia is a “protein-rich” food - even the most cursory look at the actual nutrition facts will tell you otherwise.

In terms of micronutrients, chia has a respectable amount of…

• Calcium: 18% DV per ounce
• Phosphorus (27%)
• Manganese (30%)

As for the “superfood” claims, they’re just not well-supported. A 2015 systematic review found that “most of the studies did not demonstrate statistically significant results in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors.” Most studies did find that eating chia seeds increased serum levels of Omega-3 fats, which is what you’d expect, but effects on blood pressure, inflammatory markers, and BMI ranged from underwhelming to nonexistent.

The bottom line is that chia seeds are a perfectly fine food; there’s nothing wrong with them, but there’s also nothing magical or miraculous about them. Their real value is their culinary properties: not all foods have to be superfoods, and chia seeds can be a fun and interesting way to add some variety to your meals. They’re especially good for non-nut-based desserts, or people who have an intolerance to eggs.

How to Use Chia Seeds in Paleo Cooking

Chia seeds look totally unimpressive, but if you let them hang out in a glass of water for a while, you’ll see their secret superpower: they swell up into a pudding-like “gel” with a texture a little bit like tapioca pudding, if tapioca pearls were crunchier.

That makes them great for...

Snacks and Desserts

Chia seeds are a nice snack/dessert option because they don’t come with the Omega-6 load of nuts and nut flours, or the sugar content of fruit, but they still give you an interesting texture and a fun "treat" with all kinds of options. And chia pudding is actually even easier to make than traditional gelatin-based puddings because you don’t need to heat it up; you can just mix everything together and leave it in the fridge all day to do its swelling-up magic.

Plus, it’s easy to use coconut milk + cocoa powder to get a completely dairy-free dark chocolate effect in these recipes, so if you can’t compromise even a little bit on the dairy, this could be a Paleo-friendly way to get your chocolate fix with just the healthy parts (antioxidant-rich cocoa powder) and none of the junk.

Some recipe inspiration:

• A very basic chia pudding with vanilla and chocolate options (Paleo Parents)
• Pumpkin pie chia pudding (Low Carb Yum)
• Make it with coffee or tea for a caffeine boost.

You can basically do any combination of flavors (the chia seeds don’t taste like anything by themselves, so they go with everything), and if you can imagine it, someone on Pinterest has probably already come up with a recipe.

For a topper, it’s also pretty easy to make chia jam (strawberry, blueberry) - no fussing with pectin or worrying about canning safety.

Non-Desserts

Not huge on the pudding texture? Have some other options:

Salad: extra crunch or dressing enhancement. Add chia seeds immediately before serving for crunch, or let the dressing sit for a while before serving to add a thick, creamy, Caesar-dressing type of texture without a bunch of commercial additives and thickeners.

Meatloaf, meatballs, and burgers: egg replacement. Chia seeds are also a good egg replacer for people with egg sensitivities - an omelet is expecting a bit much, but you can use chia gel, for example, as an egg-free thickener or binder in foods like meatloaf and burgers without an issue. Replace one egg with 1 tbsp. chia seeds + 3 tbsp. water. Just mix them together and let the mixture sit until it turns into a thick gel. Or you can just put them right in the recipe, like these meatballs do.

Chia seeds are also a popular ingredient in low-carb breads: they help give the bread that flexible “springiness” that gluten would normally provide. Here’s a Paleo bread recipe with chia seeds, but remember that Paleo isn’t about re-creating junk food with technically-Paleo ingredients, and “Paleo bread” shouldn’t be a staple food in your daily meal rotation no matter what it’s made out of.

And by the way, if you love the gelatinous texture of chia seeds, you should look into all the delights of offal if you haven’t already. A lot of the “odd bits” have a similar texture, and tons of nutrient benefits to boot.

One last suggestion: if you want to buy chia seeds, get them online. It’s so much cheaper. They’re not heavy enough to make shipping ridiculous, and they’re not perishable so there’s no reason to pay inflated prices.

Chia seeds aren't anything totally special nutritionally (although they're a nice non-fish supplement to your Omega-3 consumption). But there's something to say for ingredients that are fun and easy to experiment with, especially for quick desserts that don't take up hours baking with gluten-free flours. Give them a try and see what you can make!

Celiac Disease is an autoimmune reaction to the protein gluten. It's pretty rare in the general population, but surprisingly common among people who eat Paleo. Maybe that’s just because Paleo is gluten-free anyway, so all the recipes are Celiac-friendly by default. But Paleo also has benefits for Celiac Disease above and beyond just eliminating gluten.

A surprising number of people with Celiac eliminate gluten but don’t actually heal just from that. A gluten-free diet can prevent further damage to the gut, but a Paleo approach might help treat pre-existing gut damage nutrient malabsorption problems, and really encourage total healing.

Celiac Disease vs. Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity

First of all, a bit of definition. Celiac Disease is an autoimmune reaction to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye. The numbers vary, but only a small percentage of people have Celiac Disease - the usual figure is around 1-3% of the population. The only way to diagnose Celiac Disease with any accuracy is to go to a doctor.

You can’t diagnose yourself with it, and just “having a bad reaction to gluten” doesn’t mean you have Celiac Disease. There are many other reasons why someone might react to wheat and/or gluten. Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity is a thing. So is wheat allergy. So is FODMAP sensitivity. All three of those could give someone a bad reaction from eating wheat, but none of them are the same thing as Celiac Disease.

Celiac Disease can cause all kinds of horrible symptoms if it’s not treated. To name a few: dangerous weight loss, horrible diarrhea or abdominal pain, skin rashes for no obvious reason, brain fog and/or headaches, and nutritional deficiencies. But the good news is that it’s basically manageable and most people who have it can live a normal life. The treatment is total gluten elimination - for most people who can actually manage to stick with it, it works pretty well. Except that...

Gluten Elimination Doesn’t Fix Everything

If a person with Celiac Disease completely eliminates gluten, then they won’t be doing any additional damage to their gut. But just giving up gluten doesn’t actually fix the pre-existing damage from however many years of eating gluten before.

Just for example, this study followed adults after they were diagnosed with Celiac Disease and put on a gluten-free diet. After 2 years of the diet, 66% of the patients still had some kind of injury to the lining of their gut. After 5 years, 34% of the patients still had injury to the gut lining. The patients who were more compliant with their gluten-free diet did a lot better (obviously), but even the compliant patients still had persistent gut problems. In general, the patients who had the worst symptoms had the hardest time recovering.

There’s also such a thing as non-responsive Celiac Disease, which could affect up to 30% of Celiac patients. As the name suggests, non-responsive Celiac Disease is when symptoms of Celiac Disease don’t respond to gluten elimination. Either the patient doesn’t improve on a gluten-free diet, or they do improve, but then relapse even though they were eating the gluten-free diet the whole time.

The most common cause is accidental gluten exposure (hidden in soy sauce, restaurant food, salad dressing, etc. etc.) but that doesn’t account for all cases. Other causes include Irritable Bowel Syndrome, lactose intolerance, SIBO, and other digestive system disorders.

(As a side note, if you’ve heard of “gluten cross-reactive foods,” read this before you eliminate anything from your diet. Of course, it’s very possible that a person could have Celiac Disease and also, unrelatedly, be sensitive to any number of these foods, but there’s no convincing evidence that any of them “act like gluten” or “trick your body into thinking you’re eating gluten.”)

In other words, Celiac Disease can coexist (and contribute to!) many other different types of gut problems. And just getting rid of gluten doesn’t actually solve all the non-Celiac problems that might be causing similar symptoms. That’s where Paleo comes in.

Paleo is all about gut health in general, not just gluten as the Big Bad Guy. So eating Paleo can help heal the pre-existing damage from years of living with Celiac Disease, and help address other, non-Celiac problems that might be exacerbating the Celiac symptoms.

Fix your gut; don’t just stop injuring it.

Paleo is designed as a gut-healing diet out of the box: the point is to start by removing potential gut irritants like sugar and industrial seed oils that cause inflammation, and then support healthy gut function with foods that help you heal, like fermented foods, bone broth and antioxidant-rich vegetables. (If you're totally new to Paleo, start here.for an overview of the diet, and here to explore how Paleo can help with gut health). All of this is built into the basic Paleo template, so there's no need to specifically worry about tweaking Paleo for gut healing. Paleo is already pre-tweaked for gut healing!

For even more of a boost, try...

Probiotics. The gut microbiome gets completely out of whack in people with Celiac Disease and gut flora problems may even contribute to symptoms. This review went over some therapies for Celiac Disease that aren’t a gluten-free diet. Some of these are experimental or still in the works, but the review did touch on a few things that you could do right now, especially taking probiotics. We don’t have enough studies to show which particular bacteria are best, but Bifidobacterium infantis and Bifidobacterium longum have both shown good results in human studies.

(Maybe) Prebiotics. Prebiotics are fibers that feed your gut flora. A gluten-free diet is low in some prebiotics, notably fructans and inulin. For some people, this could be starving bacteria that they need, and causing gut flora problems. Adding fructans and inulin from non-wheat sources (like prebiotic supplements) might be helpful.

But for other people, it could be just the opposite. Fructans and inulin are both FODMAPs, and if you’re suffering from something like Irritable Bowel Syndrome or SIBO on top of Celiac Disease, putting more FODMAPs into your diet could be totally unhelpful.

Recovering from Nutrient Malabsorption

Another way Paleo can be helpful is by giving you a leg up with absorption issues. Nutrient deficiencies are very common in patients with Celiac Disease, not necessarily because the patients’ diets are bad, but because they’re not absorbing the nutrients they eat. Regardless of how much iron you put in your mouth, if you can’t absorb it, it’s just going out the other end without doing you any good.

The obvious first strategy is to fix the underlying gut problem. But even after that, your body has a lot of playing catch-up to do. Just like a gut damage, nutrient deficiencies often persist even after a person starts eating a gluten-free diet.

Nutrient-dense foods to the rescue! Here’s a list of the most common nutrient deficiencies in Celiac Disease, with Paleo foods that supply those nutrients and tips for increasing nutrient absorption:

• Iron and Vitamin B12: liver, red meat, egg yolks, shellfish. Absorption tip: eat these foods with fruits and vegetables: the carotenoids (in red/orange foods like tomatoes and carrots) and Vitamin C can help with absorption.
• Vitamin D: sunshine. A distant second is wild-caught salmon or other fatty cold-water fish. Wild-caught salmon is much richer in Vitamin D than farm-raised salmon.
• Calcium: collard greens, other dark green leafy vegetables, bone-in fish, and dairy if you can tolerate it. Here’s more on Paleo sources of calcium, including why collard greens are particularly good. Absorption tip: cook your vegetables in grass-fed butter for the Vitamin K2. Only grass-fed butter contains Vitamin K2; grain-fed butter has none.
• Folate (aka Vitamin B9): liver (again!), spinach and other dark green leafy vegetables. Try to get at least some of these raw, since folate is pretty fragile and breaks down easily with cooking.

Summing it Up

Healing from Celiac Disease is more than just eliminating gluten. Other Paleo-based strategies can help - try probiotics, possibly prebiotics, and nutrient-dense foods with an eye on absorption. Of course, none of this is any substitute for a doctor, but if your symptoms just won’t go away even on a strict gluten-free diet, it might be a place to start.

We created this infographic in three sections to help you understand the construction of a typical and balanced Paleo meal. In the first section, you'll see a plate with the major constituents of Paleo meals along with the volume that these should usually take on a plate. In the second section, You'll see more concrete examples with a salad, a soup and a frittata. Finally, in the third section, you'll be able to compare actual recipes that you can find on the website. Use the three tabs below to navigate through the different sections:

• Basic Template
• See it in Action
• Try it Yourself

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Basic Template

Paleo meals should balance hunger signals and energy needs so you can just eat to satisfy your hunger without counting calories. Here’s a basic template that you can use and modify, click on the different groups for details:

Can't view the infographic after 15 seconds? Click here for an alternate version.

See it in Action

Try it yourself

Here’s how some of our recipes fit different parts of the meal template. Mix and match to build a meal! On mobile you can flip your phone to the horizontal side for a larger recipe thumbnail.

 

If you want to make a wine taste sour and kind of gross, an easy way to do that is to add a chemical called tartaric acid. Taste-testers will pick up on it right away...unless you label it as expensive foreign wine. Then they’ll report that it tastes great, because they were expecting it to.

Expectations can shape your reality, but most people's expectations of food tend to tempt them into making unhealthy decisions. Here's how it works, and some practical tips for re-shaping your own expectations about food in a healthy direction.

Expectations Determine Reality

What we expect our food to taste like has a huge effect on what we eat and how much we like it. When people are primed to like or dislike a food, their perception tends to match.

Where our Expectations about Food Come From

Sometimes, we hear about food from other people and base our expectations on that. In one study, just giving subjects a positive flavor description (e.g. “rich and hearty”) made them enjoy a food more than a neutral description: they were expecting to taste something good, and so they did. Think about reading a restaurant review or asking your friend how he liked a recipe: people do this all the time.

People can even be primed to "taste" things that are objectively wrong. In this study, people who were told that two different-colored candies tasted the same were much more likely to say that they did, even if the candies tasted different. If they were told that the different colors represented different flavors, they were much more likely to say that the different colors tasted different, even if they tasted exactly the same. “Reduced-salt” labels make people rate a soup as less tasty than a regular soup, even though they didn’t perceive it as any less tasty in a blind taste-test.

Packaging can also influence what we expect to taste. Think about the wine above: plenty of other studies have backed up the finding that given two packages of food with different price tags, people tend to prefer the food in the more expensive package and rate it as tastier, even if it’s the exact same food in both packages. They expect to like the fancy food more, and so they do.

Expectations based on packaging are important for all kinds of foods and drinks. This review of 78 studies found that branding and labeling of a food or drink has a clear effect on the way it tastes to the subjects who eat it.

Other studies have shown that the color of a food affects flavor perception. Foods with brighter colors are perceived as tasting more intense. Color contrast (including contrast between a plate and the food on it) also makes the food taste stronger. That’s why so many Kool-Aid-type drinks are so neon-colored: the color actually makes us perceive the drink as tasting better.

Expecting "Healthy" Food to Taste Bad

Now think about what people expect from healthy food. A lot of people expect it to taste bad, or be unsatisfying. They go on a “diet” and expect to feel hungry and deprived. So guess how they feel? Hungry and deprived! And guess how much they want to stick to that hungry, tasteless, pleasureless diet? Yeah, not so much.

So now we have a problem: most people can’t stick to a diet they think is tasteless and/or unsatisfying, at least not for any length of time. And nobody should have to do that. Health isn’t about Puritanical willpower and the ability to power through life feeling constantly hungry and bored with your food. Health is about eating food that tastes good and satisfies your body’s needs for energy. But most people are psychologically primed to expect that food can either taste good or be healthy, but not both. That expectation makes them more likely to perceive healthy food a boring or unsatisfying, because they expect it to taste that way.

Managing your Own Expectations

It would be really great if we could all just magically wave our hands and start honestly expecting lettuce and sweet potatoes to taste as good as chocolate cake and cookie dough ice cream. And actually, after a few months of eating well, most people do start to appreciate the taste of healthy foods more (even if they never quite compete with the foods deliberately designed to completely overwhelm our perception of “delicious”).

But even a few solid months of Paleo don’t undo years of cultural programming. So here are some practical tips for priming your brain to expect good things from healthy food.

• Openness Beats Forced Positivity. If you expect vegetables to taste bad, forcing yourself to expect deliciousness is unrealistic.

But try this: instead of forcing yourself into the completely opposite expectation, just consider that you might be wrong (you might also be right, and that's fine too). Maybe you haven't tried vegetables with enough butter and salt. Maybe it's just Brussels sprouts that you hate and other vegetables are fine. Instead of trying to browbeat yourself into the "right" expectation, just leave your expectations open and give each food a couple of chances.

• DIY brand familiarity. A lot of research in the reviews above showed that brand familiarity was huge in influencing expectations. People expect Coke to taste good because it’s familiar and we get so barraged with messages about how good it tastes all the time. You can do the same thing with healthy foods; you just have to be your own marketing department. When you have a good experience with something healthy, dwell on it so it sticks in your memory. Rave to someone about the great new recipe you found. Pay attention to those memories, so the associations will be at the forefront of your brain. You’re basically marketing healthy food to yourself the same way Coke markets sugar water to you, and setting up that expectation of pleasure for healthy food.
• Eat with your Eyes. Use packaging and labeling cues to signal to yourself that your food is going to be tasty. Tupperware rarely shows off anything in its best light. Get plates that you like and make your table a nice place to be. Eat a lot of colorful foods, like salads with all different kinds of vegetables (remember from the studies above that color = flavor to your brain).
• Focus on things that you’re adding and emphasizing in your diet, not what you’re taking out. Negative labels (like “reduced-salt”) tend to make people expect that they’re missing out on something and about to eat tasteless food, while positive labels (like “organic”) have the opposite effect. "Focus" is really vague, so here's a practical guideline: when you talk to people about your diet, mention two things that you emphasize for every one thing that you avoid.
• Don’t dwell on the negative. If you honestly want to eat pizza, it’s probably going to feel fake and stupid to try to force yourself into thinking about how delicious your salad is going to be. Don’t force the positive thoughts, but at least distract yourself from the negative - think about something else entirely. If you can’t set up a positive expectation, at least you can avoid reinforcing a negative one.

Summing it Up

What we get out of our food depends a lot on what we expect to get out of it. If you expect bland or flavorless food, your meal will probably taste worse. If you expect something good, your meal will probably taste better.

Getting over negative expectations about vegetables and other “healthy” foods can make healthy eating more pleasurable, and pleasure is key to making it actually stick in the long run. It takes time and exposure. Make your healthy food beautiful and colorful (so it cues your brain to think “this has a lot of flavor!”). Focus on what you’re adding, not what you’re taking away, and reinforce positive associations with healthy food so your brain knows to expect more of the same taste next time.

Humans don't eat logically. We don't sit down to a meal, consciously decide how much food will meet our nutritional needs, eat that much, and then stop. We do make subconscious and quasi-conscious decisions about how much to eat based on...

• Who we’re eating with. For example, women eat less when they’re eating with a man, compared to eating with other women.
• The weight of the waiter who served us our food.
• Whether or not we're distracted (e.g. eating in front of the TV)
• How full we expect to be at the end of the meal.
• How healthy we think the food is. (this can overlap with how full we expect to be, because research also shows that people expect “healthy” foods to be less filling, and so they eat more of them)

Sure, we can try to count calories and regulate our diet based on that, but we're almost universally horrible at estimating the number of calories we eat. Just for example, when we see multiple foods on the same plate, we tend to guesstimate the number of calories based primarily on the volume of food, without accounting for differences in calorie density.

The “solution” is to go through all the laborious work of weighing and measuring and counting, but our brains just aren’t built to operate that way. And unless you've been part of a metabolic ward study, you have no idea what your particular energy needs actually are, anyway - population averages based on height and weight could be totally off.

One of the oldest tricks in the book for getting around this is to simply use smaller plates, cups, and bowls. If you use a smaller plate, the same amount of food looks bigger, so you're basically tricking your brain into feeling fuller with less total food, without having to do all that hard (and realistically speaking, unsustainable) cognitive work of counting calories. Great! But does it really work?

Do Smaller Serving Vessels Really Work?

A Cochrane review found overall moderate-quality evidence supporting a reduction in serving vessel size. The researchers estimated that if an average adult living in the UK switched to smaller serving plates and bowls, she would significantly reduce her energy intake.

How much “smaller” is “smaller”? Here’s where the math comes in and the percentages get complicated. Most of the studies used a “normal” plate size and a “big” plate size, and specified how much they increased “normal” to get “big.” Most of the studies used one of two increases:

• Small increase: something between 120 and 159% of “normal” (on average increased energy intake by 7.7%)
• Big increase: precisely 200% of “normal.” (on average increased energy intake by 15.6%)

But most people aren’t interested in increasing their servings. Most people want to go the opposite direction. So here’s a handy conversion chart to do that backwards: assuming your current plates are “big,” how much would you have to reduce to get to “small” and get the energy reductions in the study?

(This is using the average data from the Cochrane review only; if you look up any one individual study, the results could vary significantly).

For reference, 12 inches is a typical American dinner plate. 8-9 inches in diameter is pretty typical for a children’s plate (as in, the ones you can get covered in ladybugs and cute cartoon characters and construction vehicles and stuff). If you’re not huge on the cartoon-animal melamine aesthetic, perfectly grown-up salad plates sometimes go as small as 7”.

A Few Caveats

The researchers noted some interesting trends and patterns that should give you pause for thought if you’re thinking of trying this. If you dig into the details of the study (it’s free full-text, so anyone can read it) you’ll find that…

Effect sizes were larger with less nutrient-dense foods. This is actually really telling, because it hints at the problem of self-regulation with hyperpalatable modern junk foods. If people are more susceptible to external portion size cues with junk food than with nutrient-dense foods, it could be because these foods are actually designed to suppress our natural “stop eating” cues, so we need some outside help in determining how much to eat.

More relevantly, it also suggests that the effect sizes may be smaller if you’re eating Paleo already. So if you’re switching from big-plate Paleo to small-plate Paleo, the benefit could be significantly less than you’d expect from the table above.

Effect sizes were larger when all the food in the study was manipulated. So you’d want to change all your serving dishes, not just change (for example) your dinner plates and leave your soup bowls alone.

Adults were more susceptible than children. That makes sense: by the time most of us reach adulthood, we’ve had years of trying to override our body’s hunger and fullness cues in various ways, and years of exposure to advertising and other factors that try to do it for us.

The Big “But” About This Study

But all those things are minor quibbles, compared to the huge catch buried down in the full text of this study. Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:

it is important to highlight that these findings were derived from studies that typically investigated exposures that were one-off, or if repeated at all, were repeated over relatively short time periods, often under highly controlled experimental conditions. The longer-term sustainability of the effects of prolonged or repeated exposures, and effects under free-living conditions, therefore remain to be established.

So in other words, they have no idea how well this works in actual humans living in the real world for long periods of time. It might work for the first week and then become completely ineffective, and you’d be out the cost of a second set of dinner plates for no reason.

They also have no idea whether it works if you try doing it to yourself, instead of having a researcher do it to you. Remember from above that a lot of human eating behavior is based on expected fullness, not actual physical signals of fullness from our digestive system. It’s possible that knowing that you’re using a smaller plate in an attempt to eat less could completely cancel out the effect, and you’d just end up piling the food higher to compensate, or still feeling hungry at the end of the meal (which is  what you were trying to avoid in the first place).

So Does it Work?

In the most important sense of the question - does it work for actual free-living humans - we just don’t know. It might be really great in a lab, but you don’t care what works in a lab if it doesn’t work in real life.

If you can afford new dinner plates, or if you have smaller plates lying around, it’s certainly worth a try and it probably couldn’t hurt anything. But just bear in mind the limitations of the evidence we have: we don’t know whether or not it works in the real world, and even if it does, the effect size for people already eating healthy food could be quite small.

When it comes to flexible grocery staples, we all know ground beef and eggs and onions and coconut milk. All those foods really do live up to their reputation as versatile staples that go well with almost anything, and you can do dozens of things with every one of them. But here are 6 lesser-known foods you might want to consider for their power to become anything you like.

1. Unsweetened Coconut Flakes

Coconut flakes can be crunchy or chewy, and work in sweet or savory recipes. They’re good in everything from breaded chicken tenders to Paleo cookies, and they’re particularly noteworthy for adding some nut-free crunch to just about anything.

Recipe inspiration:

• Crispy Coconut Shrimp with Mango Sauce (use the shredded coconut to make a crispy crunch on these shrimp)
• Banana Raisin Cookies (coconut can be chewy as well as crunchy - here it gives you the traditional oatmeal texture with no grains required)
• Coconut Macaroons with Lemon Curd (a little involved, but so worth it)

2. Cauliflower

Cauliflower is white and reasonably mild-tasting, which makes it a Paleo stand-in for all kinds of other white and mild-tasting foods that might not be the very healthiest foods around (pizza crust? Bagels? Rice? You got it).

Recipe inspiration:

• 8 creative cauliflower substitutions for unhealthy foods (from bagels to pizza crust, cauliflower is a good sub for all your bland-white-carb needs)
• Beef and Winter Vegetable Soup (use the cauliflower to add a rice-like texture to the soup)
• Cauliflower Chowder (the cauliflower gives you that thick, creamy texture)

3. Ground Not-Beef

Ground beef is a Paleo staple because you can make it into anything, but what about all the other ground meat? Ground chicken or pork can add something new to your recipes. Sick of chili? What about white chili? Done with meatballs? What about an Asian-inspired version with pork instead of beef? Ground anything-but-beef is an easy way to dramatically increase your recipe possibilities and keep the old favorites interesting.

Recipe inspiration:

• Buffalo Chicken Meatballs (or try them with turkey)
• Beef-Stuffed Butternut Squash (would also be great with ground pork for a change)
• Greek-Style Meatballs (the recipe calls for lamb, but these would also be good with chicken or turkey)

4. Cocoa Powder

It’s not everyone’s first thought when it comes to versatility, but if you know how to use it, cocoa powder is actually good for all kinds of recipes, including the savory ones. Throw it into chili or a steak rub to add a deep, warm flavor (and no, your steak won’t taste like dessert). Or keep it on hand so you can always make an instant Paleo treat.

Recipe inspiration:

• Chocolate-Coconut Bites (completely dairy-free; it’s basically an easy way to make your own, high-fat/low-carb chocolate)
• Frozen Chocolate Smoothie (another quick and easy treat, or try coconut milk hot chocolate for the warm version)
• Grilled Chicken with Lime Butter (use chocolate to give this recipe an extra base of flavor)

5. Avocados

Avocados are another grocery staple that easily go from sweet to savory and back again. Cool avocado is great for temperature contrast on top of soups or chilis, and a few slices or cubes add some flavor (and nutrients!) to almost any salad. On the sweet side, try them in smoothies or even chocolate mousse.

Recipe inspiration:

• Cranberry Avocado Salad (the avocado here is a pleasant contrast to the tart cranberries).
• Chocolate Avocado Strawberry Smoothie (it’s not just for savory recipes: avocado is also mild enough to go in desserts)
• Chicken Enchilada Casserole (this recipe uses avocado as a garnish for temperature and texture contrast)
• Chicken Tenders with Avocado-Cilantro Dipping Sauce (the avocado and herbs in this sauce give it a smooth texture and a nice richness)

6. Eggplant

Stuff it! Slice it! Use it as a pasta substitute, or just cut it into cubes and roast it with curry powder and paprika. Eggplant is good for a lot more than just lasagna and grossing out children under 10. Because it’s both large and flexible, it gives you a lot of options for shapes and presentations, and it’s particularly good with anything Italian.

Recipe inspiration:

• Shrimp-Stuffed Eggplant (eggplant halves make a beautiful edible “bowl” for a shrimp curry)
• Eggplant Cannelloni (who needs pasta when you could have this?)
• Baba Ghanoush (a savory Middle Eastern dipping sauce, with eggplant standing in for the chickpeas)

What's your most versatile pantry staple? Let us know on Facebook or Google+!

Energy drinks have been in the news lately, and none of the press has been good. Mostly, the criticism is about how much caffeine they contain, and especially how they’re marketed to kids and teenagers who want to look cool, encouraging younger and younger kids to drink extreme amounts of caffeine.

If you ask most people to compare Red Bull to coffee without letting them read the labels, most people would probably say that Red Bull has a lot more caffeine. It’s just a gut instinct that these weird energy drinks have giant doses of caffeine. They’re always in the news for it! It feels so logical you almost don’t have to think about it. But actually…

8 ounces of coffee contain between 100 and 200 milligrams of caffeine. The smallest size at Starbucks is 12 ounces (150-300mg caffeine), and a typical coffee mug is 16 ounces (200-400mg caffeine). 1 can of Monster energy drink has 140 milligrams of caffeine. 1 can of Rockstar has 160. 1 can of Red Bull has 80.

Compared to coffee, energy drinks have a comparable or lower amount of caffeine. The gut instinct telling most people that they must have an extreme caffeine content isn't based in reality. It's a product of marketing (neon colors, branding that looks extreme, names like Monster) and your brain taking shortcuts based on media hype.

That’s the problem with gut instincts: we make a lot of decisions based on them every day because they feel logical and obviously right, but sometimes they’re wrong. The same thing applies to the gut instincts we use to make decisions about food. Sometimes, they're very useful - your gut instincts will tell you to pick a salad over a double cheeseburger, and (in most cases) your gut instincts will be right. But sometimes, they're wrong.

Here are 5 common gut instincts about food that simply aren’t backed up by actual scientific evidence.

1. High-Fructose Corn Syrup is Different From/Worse Than Sugar

Actually, they’re chemically almost identical. Sugar has 50% fructose and 50% glucose. High-fructose corn syrup has 42-55% fructose and the rest glucose. Fructose in large quantities is bad for you, but high-fructose corn syrup doesn't have significantly more fructose than ordinary sugar. The vast majority of studies have failed to find any significant difference between the two in terms of human (or rat, for that matter) health.

High-fructose corn syrup isn’t unhealthy because it’s worse than sugar. It’s unhealthy because it is sugar – and because it’s usually found in forms that encourage overeating it (like soft drinks). A  healthy diet will be low high-fructose corn syrup just like every other form of sugar, because sugar is bad enough all on its own. Overeating any kind of sugar is dangerous. Focusing on high-fructose corn syrup as somehow especially dangerous or bad just takes the pressure off sugar in general, and lets soft drink companies trick people into thinking that "naturally sweetened" soda is somehow healthier than regular soda (it's not, because it's all sugar).

2. Nuts are High in Protein

Vegetarians love to describe nuts as a protein source – and it’s true that nuts have some protein in them. But when you really break it down, the majority of calories in most nuts come from fat, not protein:

A typical Paleo meal should involve around 30 grams of protein (there are exceptions, but that's the out-of-the-box protein range that works well for most people). A handful of nuts typically contains around 4-6 grams of protein. Nuts are simply not a good protein source.

3. Funding From Sugar/Soft Drink/Junk Food Companies is Skewing Research.

In one sense, that’s true. Coke in particular is a master at this, from sponsoring dieticians’ conferences to sponsoring research that frames physical inactivity (rather than…eating huge amounts of sugar) as the real problem with obesity.

It’s true that funding from sugar and junk food interests is affecting research. The myth is that sugar and junk food interests are the only ones. Consider…

Effects of egg consumption on carotenoid absorption from co-consumed, raw vegetables (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2015)

• Industry sponsor: the American Egg Board-Egg Nutrition Center.
• Conclusion: “co-consuming cooked whole eggs is an effective way to enhance carotenoid absorption from other carotenoid-rich foods such as a raw mixed-vegetable salad.” (Translation: eggs make your salad more nutritious)

Inclusion of red meat in healthful dietary patterns (Meat Science, 2014)

• Industry sponsor: the author is associated with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and a contractor to the Beef Checkoff Program.
• Conclusion: “Several studies have shown that lean red meat can be successfully included in recommended heart-healthy dietary patterns without detriment to blood lipids. Furthermore, increased dietary protein has been shown to promote healthy body weight and composition, in part by increasing satiety, and to improve vitality and stamina.”

Supplementation with eicosapentaenoic acid-rich fish oil improves exercise economy and reduces perceived exertion during submaximal steady-state exercise in normal healthy untrained men. (Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry, 2014)

• Industry sponsor: one of the authors is a current employee of a company that makes fish oil supplements for athletes; another is a former employee.
• Conclusion: “Supplementation with fish oil for 8 weeks improved exercise economy and reduced perceived exertion during exercise in normal healthy untrained men.”

Paleo-friendly studies do this too. Bad science isn’t limited to one side of the debate. There’s a powerful meat and egg lobby just like there’s a powerful sugar lobby, and both sides are trying to skew the data in their own favor.

It’s hypocritical to blindly accept studies from industry sponsors we agree with while criticizing studies from everyone else. Either industry funding is wrong, or it’s acceptable, but it can’t be wrong when we don’t like the results and perfectly fine when we do.

4. White Potatoes are Not Nutritious.

Yes, they are. Usually the statement that white potatoes aren't nutritious comes along with a comparison to sweet potatoes, with sweet potatoes appearing as the nutrient-dense alternative. Here’s a chart comparing 100 grams of raw sweet potato to 100 grams of raw white potato:

*Technically, this is in the form of pro-Vitamin A, which your body has to convert to actual Vitamin A. The conversion is pretty inefficient, so overall you'd be getting less than 284% of your daily needs.

Sweet potatoes and white potatoes have different nutrients, as you would expect from two completely different foods. But sweet potatoes are not nutritionally flawless angels, and white potatoes are not nutritionally bankrupt junk food, and on the whole, they’re roughly equally nutritious, just in different ways.

If you’re concerned about the glycemic index, the types of carbs found in each, or the autoimmune protocol, here’s an explanation of how those things matter in real life.

5. “Lean Protein” is Best.

Even in the Paleo world, a lot of people love to tout the virtues of “lean protein,” by which they mean protein without much fat attached (like chicken breast and tuna). It’s basically a euphemism that the diet industry dreamed up to mean “low-calorie animal foods without all that artery-clogging saturated fat.”

The only problem with this is that saturated fat doesn’t actually clog arteries, and fat is an essential nutrient. If you only eat lean protein, you’re depriving your body of a crucial source of fuel.

There’s nothing wrong with chicken breast or tuna, provided your meal also includes another source of fat (e.g. an avocado). But there’s also nothing extra-special about it. Paleo is all about not being afraid of animal fat! The skin on a chicken breast or the marbling on a nice piece of steak is a natural source of fat that occurs as part of a whole food; it’s not something to be afraid of. There’s no need to go crazy over “lean protein.”

Have you ever had a gut instinct that got challenged by a new piece of research or information? What was it? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Canned fish: it's more than an emergency dinner when you don't have any other protein in the house. It doesn't get a lot of attention in recipes, maybe because it's just not very photogenic - fresh fish is more impressive to look at. But if you're more interested in eating your food than taking pictures of it, canned fish is hard to beat as a source of affordable, convenient, and nutrient-dense Paleo protein. And yes, it can even be tasty!

On the other hand, don’t just grab the first can you see on the shelf. The canned fish aisle is a minefield of industrial seed oils and hidden soy products, so it’s important to read the labels to make sure your “Paleo” protein isn't hiding anything gross. Here’s what to look for, what to avoid, and what to do with your fish once you’ve got it.

Best and Worst Choices

Not all canned fish is created equal! Obviously, if you’re eating Paleo, you’ll want to avoid the snack packs with tuna and crackers in them. But even a can of plain fish can have some problems.

First of all, here’s what to avoid:

• Industrial oils. Take a very close look at the ingredients list, not the front of the package. Sometimes, the front of the package will say “olive oil,” but the inside actually contains some olive oil mixed with some canola or soybean oil.
• Hidden soy. Look at the allergy statement on the nutrition label (the line that says “contains egg, milk, and soy ingredients” or whatever list of major allergens the product contains). Soy can sometimes hide inside “broth” or other items on the ingredients, so if you’re sensitive to it, check the allergen warning.
• Other junk. Be very cautious about fish canned in mustard or tomato sauce or anything else – sometimes it’s OK, but often it involves a whole pile of junk ingredients. If you want mustard or tomato sauce on your fish, you can always put it on yourself.

Now here’s what to go for, if possible.

• Bone-in fish. Sardines, bone-in salmon, and bone-in mackerel are all common examples. Bone-in fish is a great Paleo source of calcium.
• Wild-caught, sustainably-harvested fish. It’s not just more sustainable; it’s also more nutritious. Canned salmon is almost always wild-caught.
• Fatty fish. Fatty fish includes salmon, mackerel, and sardines. These species are more flavorful than very lean fish like tuna, and they’re also more nutritious because you get a bigger dose of Omega-3s and Vitamin D.
• BPA-free cans (or pouches).

The above is a list of nice-to-haves. You don’t need any of those things for your fish to be Paleo. For some people, paying extra for sustainably-raised fish just isn’t an option, and that’s OK. You can still do Paleo with the $0.75 cans of tuna in water from Wal-Mart. But there are several different brands of canned fish that address those concerns and they’re worth checking out.

What About Mercury?

With tuna, the question of mercury is always lingering on the sidelines, so here it is, brought out into the light. It’s debatable whether mercury in fish is really a huge issue – here’s an explanation of why nutrients in the fish might make it a moot point – but a lot of people are concerned about it anyway. According to a Scientific American Report, if you want tuna that's low in mercury...

Here's what to look for:

• Light tuna
• Skipjack tuna
• Tuna from the United States or Asia

Here's what to avoid:

• White tuna
• Albacore tuna
• Tuna from Latin America

Basically the difference is in the species. Some species of tuna are bigger than others. The bigger the fish, the higher it is on the food chain, and the more chance it has to accumulate mercury from all the other fish it eats. On the other hand, smaller fish are lower on the foot chain, so they don’t accumulate as much mercury. That’s also why sardines and shrimp and other small fish rarely present mercury problems. Canned salmon is rarely high in mercury.

If you go through a lot of fish, it might be worth it to order online – it’s easier to look up information about packaging and ingredients, and there’s a bigger selection than most people have locally. And if you’re interested, it’s actually pretty easy to can fish yourself at home.

But What do I Do With It?

The big problem with canned fish – especially fish canned in plain water – is how to make it taste good. Some people are happy to eat it straight out of the can, with nothing or just with a little salt and pepper, but it's perfectly reasonable to prefer something slightly more sophisticated. Here are some ideas.

Salads

You can add canned fish to almost any combination of greens and dressing that you like. In fact, canned fish is a great lunchbox salad topper because you can keep it separate from the greens until you’re ready to eat and then just throw it on – no need to worry about refrigerating your protein or the greens getting slimy.

Some people are totally happy to eat a room-temperature can of sardines just dumped over some salad greens with a drizzle of mustard, but if you want some extra tips on making salads delicious, take a look at this list of ways to jazz them up, or try…

• Keto Tuna Salad (with canned tuna)
• Spinach, Strawberry, and Avocado Salad (with canned salmon)
• Salmon and Beet Salad with Spicy Dressing
• Nicoise Salad (with canned tuna)
• Tuna Avocado Boats

Hot Recipes

These recipes make canned fish into a “real” main course for dinner, so you don’t feel like you’re just eating out of the can.

• Tuna casserole – no noodles, but you can make Paleo variations in a variety of different ways. Try this one with zucchini “noodles” (Primal bliss Nutrition) or this one with spaghetti squash (Primal Dish).
• Curry – canned fish is an easy way to add some protein to a curry. You could use this recipe for curried shrimp and spinach, and just replace the shrimp with any kind of canned fish that you like.
• Burgers, cakes, and patties – here’s one for salmon cakes (Primal Palate), and here’s one for spicy tuna cakes (Nom Nom Paleo)
• With eggs – you can cook any kind of canned fish into an omelet or frittata, and it gives the whole dish a nice flavor boost. Sardines with eggs are also great for breakfast – try poaching both in a pot of tomato sauce.

What's your favorite recipe for canned fish? Got one to share? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

People dislike vegetables for all kinds of reasons. Some of them are supertasters, so they actually taste a bitterness that their vegetable-loving friends don’t experience. Some of them are literally toddlers, and naturally skeptical of new foods. Some of them are grown adults but acting like toddlers. Some of them have texture issues, or other concerns.

But some of them are victims of Boiled Cauliflower Trauma. If you think of vegetables and immediately imagine a tasteless, mushy, amorphous mass of…stuff that you were forced to eat because it was “good for you,” then this is you.

Here’s the thing: not all vegetables are like that. It’s all in how you make them. You can cook vegetables in a way that makes them disgusting, but you can also cook them in a way that makes them good. And this is not a method that needs a lot of arcane knowledge and secret cooking skills to pull off.

Here’s a versatile and almost foolproof way to make vegetables delicious, even if you’re cooking them for the first time: roasting.

Roasting = Vegetable Magic

Roasted vegetables aren’t mushy, bland, or bitter. In fact, there are scientific reasons why most people find them very delicious.

• The Maillard Reaction. In the Maillard reaction, the heat from the oven causes proteins in the vegetables to react with carbohydrates and form that delicious golden-brown outside (it’s also the reason why searing a piece of meat makes it darker). This brings out a complex but slightly sweet flavor in the vegetables.

The Maillard reaction doesn’t start happening until the temperature reaches around 300 F or above. It doesn’t happen when you boil vegetables because covering a pot of boiling water keeps the temperature of the water at the boiling point (212 F) which is too low a temperature for the Maillard reaction to occur. In the oven, the temperature can get higher.

• Dehydration intensifies flavor. Roasting in a hot oven causes some of the water in the vegetables to evaporate. With the water gone, the flavors get concentrated and more intense. This is another reason why roasted vegetables are so much better than boiled.
• Crispiness. As well as intensifying the flavor of the vegetables, dehydration also makes them crispy, especially when it’s combined with the fat from the roasting pan.
• Fat and salt. Fat doesn’t make you fat, and the relationship between eating a normal amount of salt and blood pressure problems is tenuous at best. Both of these ingredients give your vegetables a delicious flavor.

Between the sweetness from the Maillard reaction, the crispiness, the fat, and the salt, you have a winning combination of things that most humans find very delicious. If you’ve read the book Fat, Sugar, Salt, Michael moss argues that these are the exact flavors that food companies use to make processed foods irresistible.

Taste is obviously subjective – there’s probably someone in the world who actually likes the taste of over-boiled cauliflower with no salt. But the vast majority of people like their food to have an actual flavor, and for that, roasted vegetables are a really great bet.

Roasting Vegetables: The How-To

If you’ve never done this before, don’t worry: it’s easy.

What should I roast?

Leafy greens don’t hold up to roasting, but almost any other type of vegetable is good. Squash is a good choice if you’re particularly bothered by bitterness, since it tends to be sweeter to start with and less bitter than something like broccoli or eggplant.

You can roast frozen vegetables as well as fresh. You don’t have to defrost them first; just cut open the bag and spill everything out onto the roasting pan. Just make sure they aren’t crowded on the tray so that there’s enough space for the water to evaporate.

How do I do it?

Here’s the basic method:

• Turn on the oven and set it to around 400 degrees.
• Grease a baking sheet with some kind of Paleo cooking fat.
• Cut the vegetables into bite-sized pieces or a little bigger, and put them on the baking sheet.
• Sprinkle salt and any spices you like (see below) over the vegetables.
• Put the vegetables in the oven until the bottoms are browned (usually 15-30 minutes). Then flip them over or just stir them around and put them back in for the same amount of time.
• Eat and enjoy!

Once you get the hang of this, it takes about 10 minutes of actual work, and the rest of the time you can read a book, cook something else, clean the kitchen, or do whatever.

Spices can be as simple as salt and pepper. Cinnamon is good on squash; Italian seasoning is good on most things if you like it. Chili powder is fun if you like spicy things. You can dramatically change the final result by changing the type of cooking fat or the seasonings that you use, or by adding an acid (e.g. balsamic vinegar on roasted Brussels sprouts, lime juice on roasted cauliflower).

If you prefer following a particular recipe, here are a few very simple ones that all follow this pattern:

• Roasted Mushrooms with Thyme
• Garlic-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
• Oven-Roasted Garlic Cabbage
• Roasted Acorn Squash and Shallots

Once you’ve got that down (or if you’re looking for a challenge), here are some recipes that add some additional elements or deviate a little from the very basic idea:

• Roasted Ambercup Squash (with sage butter)
• Roasted Cauliflower with Bacon
• Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic and Cranberries

It can get a little more complex if you want to do something like cooking meat and roasted vegetables in the same pan, or roasting vegetables with bacon, but once you have the basic process figured out, those recipes aren’t much of a stretch.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to make delicious vegetables. This isn’t a knock on pan-frying, vegetable soup, cooking them into omelets, raw salads, or anything else. But it’s one simple, easy-to-learn method that a lot of people really like, probably because it hits a nice combination of tastes that most humans prefer.

You don’t actually have to choose between “healthy food” and “food that tastes good.” All food should taste good, otherwise it’s just not worth eating. Grimly doing your duty to a plate of grainy, mushy cauliflower isn’t a sustainable way to live, and it’s simply not necessary. Roasting vegetables with salt and fat to taste is one way to make them delicious as well as healthy. There are other ways, but everyone has to start somewhere, so if you’re wondering where to go post-Boiled Cauliflower Trauma, roasting is a great place to start.

Maybe you’re on the Autoimmune Protocol and you can’t eat eggs. Maybe you’re allergic. Maybe you’re just sick of all the flipping eggs you’ve been eating and ready for a change. But with eggs off the menu, the question of Paleo breakfast can get a little fraught.

There’s actually no reason why your breakfast needs to be any different from any other meal. The idea that some foods are “breakfast foods” and other foods are not is basically something we all made up, and the definition of “breakfast” has varied from country to country and from time to time. There’s certainly no good nutritional justification for most typical American breakfast foods (cereal, bagels, donuts, cinnamon rolls, muffins, croissants, toast with jam…). If anything, those are perfect examples of how not to start your day: with a big pile of refined carbohydrates and sugar.

Nutritionally, any Paleo meal (protein, fat, vegetables, and carbs to your personal needs) is a perfectly fine way to start the day. Many people choose to just eat whatever they have left over from dinner the night before: it’s easy, it’s fast, and it doesn’t require any pre-coffee handling of fire and sharp objects.

But adjusting to the idea that breakfast isn’t special can take a while. Especially when you first go Paleo, giving up all the junk food is enough of a shock – there’s no need to suddenly flip your cultural expectations of all your meals on their heads as well. Or maybe you’re entertaining guests and you want to make them feel welcomed and comfortable, not put off by a “weird” breakfast.

Here’s how to make a breakfast that feels “breakfast-y” by North American standards, without eggs, and also without relying on a bunch of Paleoified junk food like Paleo muffins and Paleo waffles. Those foods aren’t bad, but they’re special-occasion treats, not something to eat every day.

To fit the bill, a proper breakfast should have…

• A solid serving of protein. A banana is not breakfast. Fruit salad is not breakfast. Avocado on Paleo bread is not breakfast. All those things can be part of breakfast, but they don’t have nearly enough protein to be a meal.
• A solid serving of healthy fats.
• Vegetables

Protein: More Options Than you Thought

The big problem with egg-free breakfasts is the protein. But you might actually have more options than you thought.

Sausages

It’s not always easy to find Paleo-friendly sausages at the store. If you can find one or two brands that you like, they’re great for emergencies, but there’s an easier and cheaper way to do it: DIY.

You can make sausages yourself to get a huge variety of different flavors and seasonings – it’s actually really easy. You only need to futz around with sausage casings if you’re married to the idea of sausages in a particular shape; if you’re fine with sausage patties (like what you get in breakfast sandwiches), there’s no equipment or casings necessary. You can use regular ground meat to make sausage; you don’t need to grind it yourself unless you really want to get artisanal about it.

Homemade sausages can run from spicy to sweet and fruity to mild and savory. You can make them with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, or any combination you like. They freeze well, so they’re great for bulk cooking because you can just pull a couple out of the freezer when you need to eat them.

Some recipes for homemade breakfast sausages (recipes with a * are AIP-friendly)

• Breakfast Sausages (Primal Palate)
• Autoimmune Paleo Breakfast Sausage* (Gutsy By Nature)
• Smoky Maple Sage Breakfast Sausage* (The Curious Coconut)

Of course, spicy sausage like chorizo can also be great for breakfast; pick your favorite type and enjoy!

Other Protein Options

If you’re not huge on sausages or just want some other options, here are some other ideas.

Homemade bacon. Bacon is obviously a classic. It’s good to not go overboard with it, especially if you have a lot of inflammation that might not play nicely with the Omega-6 fats, but there’s nothing wrong with it sometimes.

Homemade ham. It’s healthier than what you can get at the store, and you can make a big batch to last for a while.

Smoked salmon. Serve it with apple slices instead of bagels for a sweet-salty breakfast treat.

(If you do Dairy) Full-fat Yogurt. Obviously, this isn’t an option on the AIP, but if you’re just dealing with an egg allergy, then dairy might very well be on the table, maybe with some berries and honey.

Intermittent Fasting/Coffee. Intermittent fasting isn’t right for everyone, especially people on the AIP or other healing diets who might not need an extra stress, but some people love it and it certainly eliminates the problem of what to eat for breakfast.

From Protein to a Meal

One protein source does not a breakfast make. Your other choices for the meal can help make it feel really “breakfast-y.” This is also where you add those all-important vegetables and fat.

Here are just a few potential side options:

• Fruit: citrus fruit and melons are traditional, but berries are also delicious.
• Fruit Salad (here’s one with watermelon and raspberries; here’s another with grapefruit, melons, and oranges).
• Omelet vegetables (mushrooms, red peppers, onions…) fried up in coconut oil or bacon fat.
• Breakfast potatoes (if you’re not on the AIP, potatoes are fine), or white sweet potatoes prepared the same way. For a lower-carb option, try jicama or cauliflower instead.
• Bright and cheerful yellow or orange foods (yellow/orange bell peppers, sweet potatoes, squash, spices like turmeric, plantains)
• Avocado

The Art of the Hash

One very easy way to combine protein and vegetable options is in a hash. The concept is simple: combine vegetables, spices, and protein in a frying pan with some fat, and stir around until everything is cooked. Some ideas…

• Cubes of ham, green and red bell peppers, onions, and potatoes
• Spicy sausage, cauliflower, and onions
• Sweet/mild sausage, sweet potatoes, and spinach
• Cauliflower and bacon hash (the picture has an egg, but the egg is on top of the hash for extra protein; there is no egg in the hash itself. If you don't eat eggs, just eat the hash with sausage or some other protein.)

It Doesn’t Have to be Complicated

Egg-free breakfasts don’t have to rely on a bunch of Paleo junk-food imitations to feel “breakfast-y” – you do have options! The protein + vegetable + fat model is usually less time-consuming than constructing a masterpiece with three different kinds of nut flours and Paleo sweeteners, and it’s better for you, too.

Depending on what kind of diet you’re used to, switching to Paleo can be a little rough on your digestion. Some people get constipated; other people get nausea or bloating, or sometimes diarrhea.

It doesn’t happen to everyone – it depends a lot on your individual gut and also what you’d been eating before you went Paleo. If you were already eating a diet fairly high in vegetables, then going Paleo might not be such a shock. On the other hand, if you were eating a lot of refined carbs without much fiber, then the sudden pile of greenery may take a little adjustment. Here's a quick look at what causes the problem and what you can do to feel better.

Why is this Happening? Help!

There are all kinds of reasons why Paleo might be causing digestive problems when you first take it up. Here are some of them:

Your gut flora need time to adapt.

Gut flora are the friendly bacteria that live in your digestive system. Different species of gut flora thrive on different diets, especially diets with different amounts of fiber, because fiber is what the bacteria eat. Just like human populations, gut flora populations can only grow if they have enough food. You’ll get more of whatever bacterial species you feed (by giving them the particular type of fiber they like to eat), while the ones you don't feed will be less abundant. That’s why there are such dramatic differences in gut flora between people eating different diets.

So if you’ve been eating a fiber-poor diet, then your gut flora are adapted to that kind of diet. You don’t have the species you need to digest a lot of fiber, because you haven’t been giving them enough food to support large numbers of them. If you dump a whole lot of fiber onto a bunch of bacteria that aren’t prepared to digest it, it can cause gastrointestinal symptoms until your body adjusts. That’s especially true if the fiber includes a lot of FODMAP carbohydrates, a type of fiber that can be especially hard to digest.

It’s possible to change the composition of the gut flora with diet changes (and by other means, like antibiotics, exercise, sleep, stress management, and probiotic supplements), but this takes time, and in the meanwhile, overloading your gut with types of fiber that it isn’t prepared to digest can be uncomfortable.

Your enzymes need time to adapt.

Just like your gut flora, digestive enzymes are a use-it-or-lose-it resource. Several studies have shown that when people stop eating meat, their pancreas make less of several enzymes necessary to digest animal protein. That’s why people often feel uncomfortable if they switch from a vegan diet to an omnivorous diet: their bodies just aren’t used to producing the necessary digestive tools.

It’s very possible to start that process up again, and plenty of ex-vegans do exactly that, but it’s initially uncomfortable while your body figures out that oh wait, you actually do need that chymotrypsin now. If you switched to Paleo from a vegetarian or vegan diet, this may be why you feel lousy.

You're eating a lot more coconut oil.

Coconut oil is notorious for speeding things up – if you eat too much of it, it can cause diarrhea or simply very urgent stools. When some people go Paleo, they get really coconut oil-happy and start slathering it on everything, which isn’t necessarily bad once you’re used to it, but if you start it all up at once without a chance to adjust, it can be pretty rough.

These are just a few of the most common possible reasons – there are certainly also others that might be affecting you.

Managing Digestive Symptoms During the Transition

OK, so you know why the problem might be happening. Now what to do about it?

If you’re having really bad symptoms, consider slowing your roll a little. Paleo will always be here when your body is ready for it. It’s perfectly OK to go step by step and let your body get used to everything slowly.

It may be helpful to start with a small serving of vegetables at every meal, and try low-FODMAP vegetables, like zucchini (or any other type of squash), carrots, spinach, and salad greens. Gradually scaling up instead of dumping a huge salad on your plate every day can make a big difference.

Probiotics and probiotic foods can also be very helpful – here are some pointers on choosing a probiotic for your particular needs.

Another overall great strategy is to pay attention to lifestyle. How are your stress levels lately? How’s your sleep? Most people tend to look for digestive problems in food, but there’s strong evidence that sleep and stress can noticeably affect digestion regardless of what you’re eating.

Partly, that’s because they modify the composition of those all-important gut flora, and partly it’s because human beings have two big-picture hormonal settings: “fight or flight” and “rest and digest.” If you’re stuck in stressed-out, sleep-deprived “fight or flight” mode, all the physiological processes that you need for digestion (like a lot of blood flowing to your stomach) get turned off.

As for dietary tweaks, here are some pointers for different problems:

If you’re constipated…

• Coffee is a classic for a reason. Caffeine is a mild laxative, although go carefully with it if you’re also working on stress.
• If you’re not into coffee, try tea. In one study (admittedly in mice), Pu-erh tea helped alleviate constipation, and the researchers suggested that the active components of the tea may be found in green tea as well.
• If you’re still eating butter, try eliminating it. Some studies have found that one symptom of cow’s milk allergy can be constipation. While you’re at it, you might as well switch to coconut oil, which has a laxative effect in a lot of people thanks to the particular types of fat it contains.
• Try magnesium supplements. Magnesium draws more water into your colon, which makes your stools softer and easier to pass. You can read more about this here.

For diarrhea…

• Try getting rid of coconut oil and using another healthy cooking fat, like olive oil or animal fat. Because of the particular type of fat in coconut oil, it often has a laxative effect.

• Try cutting down on fruit, especially dried fruit, if you’re eating a huge amount of it. The sugar in fruit draws water into your intestine, which can cause diarrhea. 1-2 pieces of fruit per day is unlikely to cause any problems, but if you’re eating several handfuls of raisins or huge amounts of apples or something, you might be suffering from fructose-related diarrhea.

For bloating or feeling like there’s a “brick in your stomach,” try digestive enzymes. While your own digestive enzymes are ramping back up, taking a supplement might help bridge the gap.

Summing it Up

One of the coolest things about the human digestive system is how well it adapts to so many different diets. Whatever you’ve been eating, your gut flora and digestive enzyme production are finely tuned in to digest that. This even shows up on an evolutionary scale: different populations have evolved different adaptations to their diet, with the best-known example being people in Northern Europe developing lactose tolerance.

The down side is that drastically changing your diet can be a really big shock to your digestive system, and the symptoms can be uncomfortable. Most people do eventually adapt to the new routine, but there’s no reason why this has to involve two weeks of suffering.

It’s OK to go slow and transition gradually. It’s OK to start with small servings of vegetables and gradually work up to the full Paleo template with a huge pile of greens at every meal. There are also plenty of other strategies you can try, like experimenting with probiotics, digestive enzymes, and other supplements depending on what your particular problem is.

If you’ve been looking into Paleo for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with a basic plate template that looks something like this:

• ½ to ⅓ of the plate full of vegetables
• ¼ to ⅓ of the plate full of meat (sometimes measured in palm sizes, as in “1-2 palm-sized servings of meat)
• Smaller amounts of fruit, nuts, and starchy vegetables.
• Healthy fats included somewhere.

It’s a very basic template, and it’s repeated all over the place with minor adaptations. Some people throw in a little more or less starch; other people add dairy foods like cheese and yogurt; other people restrict specific vegetables or other types of foods. But the basic concept of filling a large amount of plate space with vegetables and then adding smaller amounts of protein and fat is popular for a very simple reason: it works.

But why does it work? Because it very nicely balances calorie density and nutritional quality in a way that lets you lose weight by listening to your own hunger signals, not by counting calories.

A Quick Calorie Review

In a very limited and mathematical sense, calories ultimately determine weight gain and loss. But that doesn’t make calorie-counting a good weight-loss strategy, partly because calories in and calories out aren’t completely under your control.

For example, “calories in” depends on how many calories your digestive system absorbs from the food you eat. You can change that indirectly through modifying your gut flora, but as soon as you start talking about food quality and effects on the gut flora, you’ve already proven how incomplete the idea of “just eat less and move more” is.

More relevantly, calorie-counting doesn’t work because it’s a bizarre way to approach food, nobody can do it with any accuracy anyway, and it actually raises the level of stress hormones that make it harder to lose weight.

So please don’t take any of this as an argument either that what you eat is the only factor determining calories in (it isn’t) or that calorie-counting is normal human eating behavior (it isn’t). But with that clear, calories that you eat account for a large fraction of your total calories in, and most successful weight-loss eating plans will involve some way of reducing them. The problem is reducing them without (a) having to count them, or (b) being hungry all the time.

That’s exactly what the Paleo plate template accomplishes, via calorie density.

Calorie Density and Fullness

Calorie density is how many calories a food contains for a given amount of that food. Here’s a chart showing the calorie densities of some common foods:

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Some of the 1-cup numbers are a little rough, but the point is that different foods have very different calorie contents for the same amount of weight and bulk.

That’s important because the physical presence of a lot of food in your stomach helps to send the “I’m full” signal to your brain. Technically, this is called gastric distention. Your stomach stretches when you eat a meal, and when it stretches a certain amount, most people stop wanting more food not because they've counted up the calories, but because it's just unpleasant to eat any more. But this is about the physical space the food takes up in your stomach, not how many calories it has. If you eat a cup of peanut M&Ms or a cup of baked potatoes, the amount of gastric distention will be roughly the same, but the M&Ms supply almost 10 times as many calories.

If you replace calorie-dense foods with the same physical amount of vegetables, you’ll end up with a net reduction in calories for the same amount of food displacement in your stomach, which achieves our two goals: reducing calories (a) without having to count them, and (b) without being hungry all the time.

But Meat and Fat are Calorie-Dense!

From all of the above, you might think that the way to go for weight loss would be eating only vegetables – they’re the least calorie-dense foods around. But that’s actually a bad plan. Most importantly, calories aren’t evil; humans do need some of them to survive, and unlike gorillas, our large intestines aren’t efficient enough at extracting fat from fiber to let us eat only vegetables for our calorie needs.

If you ate only vegetables, you’d also miss out on a lot of really important nutrients found only or mostly in animal foods – a lot of calorie-dense animal foods are also very nourishing. Vegetables are nutritious, but they don’t give you everything.

And eating only low-calorie-density vegetables isn’t even ideal from a hunger perspective. In the short term, you can fill up on vegetables, but in the long term, fullness signals don’t come only from the physical bulk of food in your stomach. If you’ve ever been really, honestly, stomach-hungry and tried to “fill up” on a huge pile of salad vegetables with no dressing, and then eaten to the point where you were kind of bloated but still felt hungry, then you’ve experienced this firsthand. (If you’ve never done that and don’t understand why anyone would, then congratulations: you’ve dodged one of the bullets of crash dieting).

Fat is an important regulator of fullness for several different reasons, and it works even better when combined with fiber. Protein is also important. And at least one theory of obesity holds that certain nutrients are also necessary for fullness – that is, if you’re deficient in nutrients, your body will keep making you hungry in order to get all its nutrient needs met, even if that means you overshoot your calorie needs. You could theoretically die from complications of severe obesity, but you’ll die from scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency) a whole lot faster.

The problem with super-calorie dense modern foods isn’t that they contain calories – you need calories to live. The problem is that junk food provides calories out of proportion to its appetite-suppressing power. (In fact, it’s been deliberately designed to do that, to make you eat more of it, because that’s profitable to the companies that make it). If you eat enough to hit the “food bulk” signals, you’ve probably overshot your caloric needs, but if you eat to your calorie needs, you won’t ever hit the physical amount of food most people need to stop feeling hungry. So your choices are either obesity or thinness, but with calorie restriction and hunger.

A meal based on the Paleo plate – with most of the plate space taken up by vegetables, but most of the calories from animal foods and fats – automatically gives you the best of both worlds:

• Address all the “bulk” signals with nutrient-dense but calorie-poor foods that you can eat as much of as you want without worrying. Eat until your stomach signals that it's full (which is a different amount for everyone; some people like more bulk and others like less) and don't sweat it because vegetables have almost no calories.
• Address other satiety signals with nutrient-dense animal protein and healthy fats that taste delicious but don’t drive overeating the way processed carbs do.
• Add healthy carb-dense foods as necessary for athletic performance or overall health.
• No need to count calories, because the composition of the meal makes it possible for your own body’s hunger and fullness signals to regulate your food intake. You don’t have to choose between weight loss and feeling full. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and maintain a healthy weight all at the same time.

Of course, you can easily recreate the problems of junk foods with foods that are technically Paleo. This is the “nut-based granola for breakfast, Paleo cookie for a snack, almond-flour bread with sunbutter for lunch, Paleo brownie for dessert” model of completely missing the point. People who treat Paleo like this often struggle very hard to lose any weight on it – they might address other problems like gluten sensitivity or food allergies, but as a weight-loss diet, it’s not great.

That’s why the basic food template works so much better than Paleo recreations of grain-based foods. It’s a basic meal pattern that aligns with the signals your body is expecting to receive from food, so you can reduce overall calories in by manipulating calorie density, but keep the nutritional benefits of calorie-rich foods like fatty meats - and all without counting calories at all.

Maybe you’ve seen a pile of jicama in the grocery store by the potatoes and not known what it is. Or maybe you’ve found it in Paleo recipes but assumed this was some weird food that you’d have to go to a Mexican grocery store to get and moved past it.

Well, you’re about to learn exactly what it is, and you don’t actually have to anywhere out of the way to find it. It's available in most grocery stores, and you can even get it at Wal-Mart if your area has a Wal-Mart with a grocery section.

So what is it and why would you want to buy it? Jicama is a root vegetable native to South America, and it has a great, juicy-crunchy texture that works equally well whether it’s raw or cooked. It’s good on its own merits regardless of what your diet is like, and if you’re trying to find low-carb substitutions for fruit or potatoes, it’s a very convenient solution.

Nutritional Highlights

A persistent myth about jicama is that it’s a kind of legume, probably because it’s also called “yam bean.” It’s true that jicama root does come from a plant that also produces beans, but the part most people eat isn’t actually the bean; it’s the tuberous root. The root itself is not a bean, and it’s perfectly Paleo-friendly.

Nutritionally, Jicama is high in Vitamin C and has a small amount of B vitamins and some minerals. But the really interesting thing about it is its high inulin content. Inulin is a prebiotic type of fiber – it helps feed your gut flora, which has all kinds of other health benefits down the line.

Finding and Cooking Jicama

Finding a jicama should be easy; most large grocery stores have them. Jicama is very roughly round, but it can also be a little more turnip-shaped (with a point at one end), pumpkin-shaped (a little flattened out), or have some bumps. The skin is smooth and medium-brown: lighter than a coconut, darker than a potato.

You can usually find it around the onions and potatoes and other root vegetables, although it may also be randomly stuck somewhere else in the store.

Bring home your prize, and remove the outer two layers. Jicama has three layers: first, there’s an outer layer of darker brown skin; then there’s a middle layer which is off-white in color and very fibrous and stringy. Finally, you’ll get to the inner layer, which is the same color and texture as the inside of an apple.

You’ll want to take off the outer two layers, because they’re not very pleasant to eat. Use a paring knife, or cut off the top and bottom of the jicama just like you would for a pineapple, and peel away the outsides (they typically peel off pretty easily).

Now you’re ready to cook it – either as a replacement for more carb-dense foods, or just on its own merits because it’s crunchy and tasty and fun to experiment with.

As a Replacement for Carb-Dense Foods

Functionally, jicama is a great replacement for other foods that you might be trying to limit on a lower-carb version of Paleo, particularly potatoes and fruit.

In terms of sugar and carb content, here’s how jicama stacks up against some other Paleo foods. All quantities are per 100 grams of food, measured raw (about 3.5 ounces, or very roughly 1 cup)

You can see that Jicama has a lot fewer total carbohydrates than other root vegetables, and a lot less sugar than an apple. And if you know how to cook it, it can make a pretty good substitute either for a hot pan full of potatoes or for a crunchy piece of fruit:

• For a potato substitute, cut the peeled root into whatever shape you want (cubes for home fries, longer and thinner rectangles for a more traditional fry shape) and sprinkle with salt and any other seasonings you like. Bake on a greased baking pan until the bottom sides of the jicama pieces are nicely browned; then turn them over and repeat.

This won’t taste exactly like potatoes – it’s a little bit sweeter, and the texture is slightly crunchier with less of that starchy, pillowy-soft effect – but it’s a great substitute side dish for times you might ordinarily use potatoes.

• For a juicy-crunchy snack, just peel and eat raw. Optionally, you can chill it a little in the fridge (this is really great on a hot day).

Also try dressing it up with seasonings – if you’re missing tortilla chips, squeeze some fresh lime juice over it. Or try a quick sprinkle of chili powder for a spicier flavor.

Your resulting dish won’t taste exactly like whatever you’re replacing – substitutes very rarely do. But it’s a nice tool to have in your bag of Paleo tricks.

On its own merits

Even if you aren’t worried about carbs or sugar at all, you could still use the recipes above just because you like the taste, for a change, or for the fun of cooking something new. But here are some other recipes that might pique your interest:

• Jicama slaw: here’s a variation with carrots from Stupid Easy Paleo, but you could also just add a little bit of grated jicama to your favorite coleslaw recipe for a slightly different crunch. It works really well with Asian-inspired dressings, too.
• Other salads: Throw it on for some extra texture, the same way you might use matchstick carrots or apples.
• Jicama “oatmeal:” if you have time to make it, this is a delicious weekend breakfast. (Stuff I Make My Husband)
• Taco shells: if you slice a jicama thin enough, it gets bendy, and you can use it as a taco shell in place of a corn tortilla. (Primal Palate)

It’s pretty cheap, it’s easy to find, and it’s a nice way to perk up your vegetable rotation with something juicy and refreshing during the last hot days of the summer. Why not give it a try?

Here’s a couple of comments you might be familiar with, especially if you’ve experienced noticeable physical changes since starting Paleo:

• “Why can’t you just eat pizza like a normal person? This Paleo thing is so extreme. Just eat in moderation." (5 minutes later) "Why are you taking the croutons off your salad? Stop being so weird; it’s not going to kill you." [Rinse and repeat for every single thing you eat]
• (While you’re still nowhere near your weight goal) “You’ve lost enough weight already. You should stop now. You’ll get too thin and waste away!”
• “You’re already skinny; just shut up and eat it” [puts junk food on your plate or pushes it towards you]
• “You know Paleo is just a fad diet; you’ll never lose weight that way. You really need to count calories like my nutritionist says.”
• “Ooooh, look who’s got a ~Paleo~ lunch today! How’s the mammoth steak?”

Of course, not all comments about your food or diet are intended to put you down or control you. Some people are casually curious; some people are impressed by your progress and want to know how you did it; some people are just making conversation on the first topic that comes to mind. But if the comments are obviously invasive or rude, or if the person just won’t let it drop after you ask them to, you’re probably dealing with a Food Jerk.

It’s Not About You

Food Jerks are (unfortunately) talking to you, but their comments really have nothing to do with you. Everything a Food Jerk says is all about the jerk.

Emotionally secure and well-adjusted adults do not make intrusive comments about other people’s food or bodies. They don’t harass people about their food, give uninvited critiques of their diet, or try to push them to eat things after an initial refusal. They can accept that what works for them might not work for you, and vice versa, and they don’t feel the need to control your weight or diet, because they recognize that it’s really none of their business.

On the other hand, people who are insecure will try to control you or bully you into agreeing with them so they can feel validated. Maybe they feel guilty about eating something they think is unhealthy, so they’re trying to get you to eat it too because that gives them “permission” to eat it. Maybe they’re jealous of the healthy changes you’re making, because it makes them feel inadequate for not doing the same, and it’s easier to tear you down than build themselves up.

Maybe they feel insecure in their relationship, and you represent the theoretical “hot other man/woman” who might “steal” their partner if you get more attractive. Maybe they’re just miserable for some reason, so they put you down or try to control you as a power trip so they can feel good about themselves.

Whatever the reason, a Food Jerk’s behavior is all about them. It has nothing to do with you.

If You Didn’t Cause it, You Can’t Fix It

The natural response to a Food Jerk is to argue with them. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work, because the root cause of their behavior is insecurity, and you can’t fix their insecurity with an argument about Paleo nutrition.

It doesn’t matter how good your arguments are. If they have a compelling psychological need to believe the way they do, you can’t change their mind with facts. They will always find a way to refuse to believe you.

What to do instead? Disengage. You’re not responsible for their feelings or food issues. If they’re going to be nasty, controlling, or cruel as a result of their insecurity, you can’t change that. Your job is simply to protect yourself from their behavior.

Refuse to engage on their terms.

A Food Jerk wants to engage with you on the premise that they have some kind of legitimate say in what you eat. But they don’t. It’s your absolute right as an adult to eat whatever you want, for whatever reasons you want. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s healthy by anyone’s definition. You don’t need to justify your dietary choices to anyone but yourself. If you want to get involved in a nutritional debate, that’s fine, but you never have to.

Unfortunately, if they’re making controlling or intrusive comments in the first place, they probably don’t understand that, so here are some tips on Jerk Management:

Deflect with I-Statements

Start by phrasing everything in terms of how you feel and what works for you (also called “I statements”).

Don’t say “Paleo is healthy” (even though it is). Say “You might love whole-wheat toast and that’s totally fine, but it makes me feel sick and I feel better without it.” This cuts down on their defensiveness (since you’re very clearly not threatening their right to eat whatever they want), and it’s very hard to argue with that without sounding insane.

For extreme busybodies who just won’t accept “I would rather not eat that food,” hint at traumatic gastrointestinal consequences. Nobody wants to hear about your bloody diarrhea, particularly at the dinner table.

Change the Subject

Another great skill to have when you’re dealing with a Food Jerk is the ability to change the subject. They don’t understand that your food is none of their business, and they won't ever understand it, so just refuse to talk about food.

Remember that this is already after you've tried the "I'd rather not talk about my diet" line once (if they're fine with that and move on to other topics, they're not a Food Jerk to start with), so it's OK to be a little blunt about it.

• If they think they know the One True Way to Eat, use…the appeal to authority: “Thanks, but my health/weight/diet is between me and my doctor” [change the subject]
• For an all-purpose response to comments on the healthiness of your diet, use…the noncommittal subject change: “That’s interesting.” [change the subject] If they call you out on the obvious subject change: "I just told you that I'd really rather not argue about diet." [change the subject again]
• For food you don’t want to eat, use…the polite but non-negotiable refusal: “No, thank you.” [Change the subject]
• For repeat offenders, use…the dog-training method: give them positive attention and enthusiastically engage when they talk about anything else; be brusque to the point of rudeness when they talk about food. Is it offensive to “train” a person like a dog? Possibly. But you know what else is offensive? Constantly making rude and invasive comments about your food.

Again, don’t justify anything you eat for any other reason than “I’m an adult; I eat what I want.” Nothing else is relevant. Refuse to engage on their terms.

If you can’t disengage, make specific requests.

With very determined bullies or busybodies, changing the subject doesn’t always work. And sometimes you can’t escape (you can’t just quit your job because your coworker is a Food Jerk). Here are some tips for getting even more direct.

• Make specific requests for them to stop a specific behavior, phrased in neutral language. Don’t say “Stop being a jerk about my diet.” Instead, say “Please stop commenting on my lunch.”
• Keep using I-statements. “I would appreciate it if you…” is not something they can argue with.

Sometimes, even that doesn’t work. If you really can’t escape, remember that your success is the best revenge you could ever get on a Food Jerk, and surround yourself with other people who support you. Minimize your contact with them and get the support you need to focus on your goals and keep the negativity out of your life as much as you can.

Summing it Up

Making positive changes in your own diet often brings out other people’s weird fears and insecurities about food in the form of intrusive comments, weird and controlling behavior, or even attempts to sabotage your way of eating.

This is all about the other person's insecurity, and you can’t change that by arguing on their terms - refuse to let them suck you into an argument based on the premise that they have any say in what you eat. You're an adult; you get to eat what you want. Use I-statements like “this works for me” to make it hard to argue with you. Then change the subject and just refuse to engage. If they don’t get it, ask them politely but directly to change a specific behavior. Describe the behavior in neutral language to give them fewer reasons to get defensive, and then minimize your exposure to that person as much as possible.

Teaching kids to cook is one of the best things you can do for their health in the long run. You might not be able to keep them on the Paleo straight and narrow as they get older and start making more and more of their own food choices, but if they know how to cook, they have the most important tool to get back to healthy eating as soon as they realize how valuable it is. At 16, they might only be interested in eating as much pizza as their allowance can buy, but when they grow out of that, they’ll have all the know-how to jump back into cooking their own healthy meals from scratch.

It’s basically the same principle as that old parable about giving someone a fish. Feed your kids healthy home-cooked meals when they’re young, and you’ll feed them for a few years, but if you teach them how to make those meals, you’ll be supplying them with the ability to eat healthy food for their whole life.

So why do so many adults never teach their kids to cook? Sometimes, it’s time. It’s hard enough getting healthy food on the table without kids underfoot – now you’re supposed to be making dinner every night with "helpers" running around spilling things for you to clean up and interrupting you with questions? You’re supposed to not only find the energy to cook, but also to round up kids in various stages of willingness and keep them in the kitchen the whole time? Really?

It’s true that while kids are first learning to help, they do make more work for the parent supervising. But you don’t have to get the kids into the kitchen at every meal. Start with one or two on the weekend. Get them to the point where they can actually do one or two things in an actually helpful way; then let them loose on the weekday dinners.

But even for a hypothetical parent who had unlimited time on their hands (maybe this parent is also a magician), there’s another objection that looks even more serious on the surface: safety.

"But it’s Dangerous!"

You can hurt yourself a thousand ways in a kitchen. There are slippery surfaces, knives, scissors, pointy thermometers, sharp forks, hot water, hot ovens, hot stoves, heavy cast-iron pans… Adults understand how dangerous all these things are, and adults still manage to hurt themselves in the kitchen on a very regular basis. How could it possibly be safe for kids, especially younger kids who just don’t understand how dangerous a hot element or a pot of boiling water can be?

It’s true: kitchens contain many things that can hurt you (or your kids). But there are ways to get kids in the kitchen without immediately exposing them to all of these potentially dangerous things - helping with dinner doesn't have to involve using a knife, for example. It's hard to see the danger in ripping up lettuce leaves for a salad or helping put away the dishes after a meal, but doing either of those simple chores can get even young kids involved in making a meal and give them skills they can use later in life.

But even aside from that, compare the potential dangers of the kitchen to the very real dangers of not knowing how to cook. This study found that cooking skills had a measurable effect on diet quality. People who could cook were…

• More likely to eat vegetables
• Less likely to eat convenience foods
• For women, more likely to eat fruits and less likely to drink soft drinks.
• For men, less likely to eat candy and pastries.

Being health-conscious modified these associations a little bit, but the connection between

cooking skills and healthy eating patterns persisted even after controlling for health-consciousness. In other words, eating well is determined by your practical cooking skills just as much as it is by your level of caring about food.

This study is even more dramatic: among young adults, 31% of people with high food preparation skills ate at last 5 servings of fruits and vegetables every day, compared to 3% with low skills. 38% of the low-skills group ate fast food more than three times per week, compared with 17% of the high-skills group.

Not knowing how to cook is dangerous because it tends to keep you stuck eating junk food and convenience food, even if you care about your health. And junk and convenience foods are arguably much more dangerous to your body in the long run than a slight risk of burning or cutting yourself, because they dramatically raise the risk of chronic lifestyle diseases like Type 2 Diabetes. Just to take one example, vegetable consumption is one of the four habits (along with moderate drinking, not smoking, and exercise) that predict health much more accurately than weight.

So yes, cooking does pose a small risk to your kids, no matter how careful everyone is – it’s just an inherent part of being around ovens and knives. But never learning to cook is arguably more dangerous in the long run. People who never learn to cook are risking a diet that weighs them down (sometimes literally) with a higher risk of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, and other chronic health problems.

When you think about the danger of the chronic health problems that junk food tends to cause, the danger of potential kitchen injuries starts looking a lot more like a reasonable risk to take.

Getting Kids in the Kitchen Safely

That doesn’t mean you should throw safety out the window – kitchen safety is important for kids just as well as adults. But “safety” means teaching kids how to respect and use kitchen tools, not blocking off the kitchen entirely.

Most kitchen safety stuff for kids is really common sense: keep an eye on them, and keep it age-appropriate: there's plenty to do in a kitchen that doesn't involve fire and knives. Even very young children can help dry dishes and put them away, mix, pour, put groceries in the proper place, wash food before it’s cooked, and set the table. Older kids are the perfect sous-chefs to do all kinds of chopping work, and by the time they get to high school, they’re more than capable of giving you a break by making a meal with minimal supervision. Along the way, they can slowly learn things like knife safety, stove safety, and how to handle raw meat - take it one step at a time, and you'll gradually train up some increasingly useful kitchen assistants.

Stumped for what to cook? Here are a few recipe ideas for cooking with kids:

• Kale chips (or any kind of raw kale salad): massaging olive oil into the kale is easy and very safe even for young kids.
• Balsamic steak skewers (or any other type of skewer): kids can put the meat and tomatoes on the skewers; just teach them how to hold the skewer so they don't poke themselves.
• Chicken korma with cauliflower rice: if you don’t have a food processor, ask your junior chef to grate the cauliflower by hand. This is a good starter project for handling sharp things, since it's harder to seriously hurt yourself with a grater than with a knife.
• BBQ chicken bacon bites: wrapping the bacon around the chicken and securing it with a toothpick is easy for any kids old enough to understand how to handle raw meat safely.

It doesn’t have to be an overnight revolution. But getting kids into the kitchen, even if it starts with just one meal a week, is one of the best ways to keep them healthy in the long run, and if you take reasonable precautions about basic kitchen safety, the benefits far outweigh the potential dangers.

So, you’re eating Paleo. No grains, no sugar, no junk-food industrial oil; lots of animal protein, vegetables, and healthy fats. Got it.

If you’ve been on the Paleo train for a month or less, stop right here – let yourself get used to the basics before you start adding all kinds of extras. But if you’re a little more experienced, here’s how to make an already-good Paleo diet even better with 5 foods that too many people neglect. (If you're already eating them all, then congratulations: you're a Paleo pro!)

1. Bone-In Fish

Bone-in fish is a category including some kinds of canned salmon (check the can to see whether it includes the bones), sardines, and other small canned fish.

Why it’s neglected: it’s not as popular or flashy as luxury seafood like salmon steaks, and it’s not as cheap as canned tuna, so it occupies a weird middle ground.

Why it’s great: bone-in fish is a fantastic source of highly bioavailable calcium, not to mention protein, anti-inflammatory Omega-3 fats, Vitamin D, iodine, and other minerals (specifics depend on the type of fish). Since small fish are lower on the food chain, they have less opportunity to accumulate any persistent organic pollutants or other bad stuff that might have been floating around in the ocean where they lived.

How to eat it: on top of salad, or try this sardine and roasted garlic spread.

2. Animal fat

Animal fat includes lard (from pigs), tallow (from cows), duck fat, and schmaltz (from chickens).

Why it’s neglected: lard used to be the standard cooking fat, but in the early 20^th century, the marketing team behind Crisco convinced us to stop using it. Now it’s “weird,” so nobody uses it because nobody else uses it, and we’re all missing out.

Why it’s great: animal fat adds a whole new depth of flavor to your food : if you’ve never had anything roasted in duck fat…well, there’s a reason why lines are out the door for restaurants that cook their fries in duck fat. It’s good for you, and it’s super cheap. Many butchers and farmers will sell raw fat for a few dollars per pound or even give it away; render it yourself into a delicious Paleo treat.

How to eat it: use it as a cooking fat, just like you’d use butter or coconut oil.

3. Fermented foods

Fermented foods include raw (not pasteurized!) sauerkraut, kimchi, pickled vegetables, kombucha, and fermented dairy products like yogurt and kefir.

Why they’re neglected: Dairy is a gray area on Paleo and many people don’t tolerate it. The vegetables are seen as weird or out-there, and it’s hard to find the real probiotic varieties since many grocery stores only sell pasteurized versions for convenience.

Why they’re great: fermented foods are delicious once you get to know them, and very good for your gut.

How to eat them: Make your own, or use this post to help you find the good stuff in the grocery store.

4. Organ meats

Organ meats include liver, heart, and any other parts of the animal that aren’t muscles.

Why they’re neglected: if you don’t know how to prepare them properly, the taste can be off-putting; they’re seen as “weird” (are you noticing a pattern here?) and can be hard to get hold of.

Why they’re great: organ meats pack a whole lot of nutrition into a very cheap package. Prepared properly, they aren’t gross – in fact, there are all kinds of ways to slip them into other recipes so you barely know they’re there.

How to eat them: If you’re new, a good starting point is heart or giblets.

5. Cooking Greens (That Aren’t Kale)

Cooking greens include mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens, beet greens, and other leafy green stuff that tastes better cooked (unlike lettuce and leafy green stuff that you eat raw).

Why they’re neglected: this one is pretty baffling. They’re cheap; they’re widely available; they’re very easy to prepare; they don’t have a terribly strong taste…and yet all the others are consistently ignored in favor of spinach and kale.

Why they’re great: nutrition like kale, but much cheaper. They have the same “good stuff,” and sometimes more of it, and you can cook them in basically the same ways. The only difference is that they’re not as “famous” as kale, so they’re less popular, so they’re cheaper.

How to eat them: pan-fry with cooking fat, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Got a must-try recipe for any of the above? Share it on Facebook or Twittter!

If you haven’t read up on what binge eating actually is and what we do and don’t know about it, you can do that here first. If you think that “binge” is just a synonym for “eating too much,” please read that post first. Binging is about being out of control, not how much you ate.

When it comes to Paleo and binge eating, a common assumption is that eating Paleo will at least do some good, if not solve the problem completely. There are several reasons why this is reasonable, and again, most of them are discussed in detail here:

• Binging (and also purging) behavior is strongly tied up with insulin levels. From that perspective, riding the blood sugar rollercoaster of refined carbs and sugar would increase a person’s susceptibility to binging, while eating a Paleo diet low in refined carbs would stabilize their blood sugar and insulin levels, and help reduce the urge to binge.
• For some people, junk food or specific junk foods can act as a “trigger food” that sends them spiraling into a binge. Remove the trigger, and the binges end.
• Binging is often born of restriction. Specifically, calorie restriction. When people go Paleo and start listening to their hunger instead of enforcing some “correct” number of calories (which is often fictional anyway), they remove the restriction and the binges stop.

Okay, great in theory. But then why do so many people still struggle with binges after going Paleo? Why do some people start having trouble with binge eating on Paleo when they never did before? And why do many of those binges revolve around Paleo foods – perfectly insulin-normalizing, non-“trigger food” foods, like almonds or sweet potatoes or grapes?

It’s not a universal experience, but it’s pretty common: the behavior of a binge with Paleo foods.

• Feeling out of control, or getting the weird feeling that you would like to stop eating, but you can’t, and you’re inevitably going to keep eating regardless of what you do.
• Trying to hide how much you ate (e.g. by buying replacement food so nobody knows what you did).
• Continuing to eat even though you felt over-stuffed or even sick.
• Resorting to unusual ways of stemming the tide (e.g. throwing all the food in the house in the trash and pouring a bottle of bleach on top because you know you’ll pick it out of the trash if you don’t).

You can do all those things with any kind of food; processed junk is not required.

Paleo doesn’t “cure” binge eating automatically, because binge eating is a very complicated problem and driven by much more than what you eat. If you have a binge eating disorder (or any other eating disorder), go to a doctor. But not everyone who’s ever binged has a binge eating disorder, just like not everyone who’s ever skipped a meal is anorexic. And there’s a big reason why even people without a “disorder” might be driven to binge on Paleo:

You’re still (Intentionally or Not) starving yourself.

This might be you if one or more of the following is true:

• You never had a problem with these foods until you started eating Paleo – you’ve never binged on anything, or if you did, it was always on junk food.
• You’re used to low-calorie diets based on tiny portions of processed foods (e.g. Special K, Luna Bars, 100-calorie cups of yogurt and oatmeal, 2-cookie servings of Oreos…).
• You’re trying to lose weight and feel nervous that you’ll eat too much if you don’t count calories. You may be trying to combine Paleo with a low-calorie diet, or alternately you may be constantly restricting portion sizes, and avoiding fat and carbs to achieve calorie restriction without counting.

Here’s one of the ways it can play out: Suzy Q. Health Nut hasn’t been happy with her weight lately, so she tries Paleo. For breakfast, she has an egg white omelet with a few strawberries, until she starts skipping it because she read that intermittent fasting will help her lose weight faster. She struggles with finding time to pack lunch and there’s nothing to eat at work, so she sometimes ends up skipping that too, or just snacking on an apple. At dinner, she makes a big green salad with just a little bit of protein on it, and skips the olive oil for a great low-cal dressing she learned to make with mustard and balsamic vinegar.

This is all going great, until Suzy grabs a spoonful of almond butter out of the jar one day for a quick snack. Half an hour later, the jar is empty, her stomach hurts, and she’s not sure what happened. She’s never done anything like this, and she never would have thought that almond butter of all things would sing such an irresistible siren song.

Suzy might conclude that she has a problem with almond butter and needs to keep it out of the house. Of course, that may be true – it’s always possible to have an unhealthy emotional reaction to a particular food, even if your body is well-nourished. That does happen, and it can be a perfectly legitimate reason to avoid certain foods. But if the food just so happens to be one that’s calorically dense and you just so happen to be imposing extreme calorie restriction on your body, it may just be hunger.

Suzy was starving herself – her diet was giving her 1000 calories a day at the absolute maximum, and that’s on the days when she ate breakfast and lunch. Of course she ended up binging on the first calorie-dense food that crossed her lips: she was starving. She doesn’t have an almond-butter problem; she has a hunger problem.

This could explain why some people binge on Paleo foods that well-nourished people don’t find “more-ish” at all. If your body just needs calories in their most convenient form, it’ll be happy to send you running for any sweet (sweet taste is a marker of calorie availability) or calorie-dense food in the house. The extent of the problem will depend on the extent of the hunger. Most people, even people who are hungry, can have raw kale in the fridge without binging on it. Someone who’s extremely hungry may wind up compulsively eating carrot sticks or roast chicken. Someone who’s only a little bit hungry may be fine with those foods, and struggle only with more palatable foods like Paleo cookies, because their urge to eat is less strong

So…What Do I Do?

The important part is that the solution is not “ban all calorie-dense foods from the house so I can continue to chronically starve myself.” The solution is to find a more sustainable way of eating and moving that doesn’t make you chronically starved. If you’re restricting calories (via calorie-counting, fat restriction, carb restriction, or any other method) and this kind of uncontrollable eating keeps popping up, try working on your hunger first:

• If you’re on a low-carb diet, maybe adding some Paleo carbs will help.
• If you’re on a low-fat diet, add more avocado, olive oil, and other Paleo fats.
• If you’re restricting calories, try eating to hunger. No really, try it! Who cares if you eat “too much” by someone else’s standards; your body’s standards are the standards that matter.

You may lose weight more slowly, and if your body isn’t built to be a size 00, you may never get there at all. That’s OK; food should be about health, not shrinking yourself down to the smallest pant size you can squeeze into.

Summing it Up

Paleo is supposed to be a way of eating that helps control binges, and for many people, it is. If you’re having trouble with binging uncontrollably on supposedly-healthy Paleo food, then it’s definitely time for some hard scrutiny to see if your current version of Paleo is really the best diet for you.

If you’ve never felt like this around food before you started Paleo, it’s probably something about Paleo that’s causing the problem. The most likely culprit by far is that you’re undereating and your body is hungry (this can be true even if you don’t feel physically hungry). And that can easily happen if you’re used to “dieting” by reducing portion sizes, if you’re trying to lose weight by severely restricting calories, or if you’re severely restricting one macronutrient (typically carbs or fat).

Once again, if you have, or think you have, a binge eating disorder, go to a doctor. But one binge does not a disorder make. You might just be hungry, and the answer is very simple: eat.