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Meal prep is a lifesaver for busy people who want to eat home-cooked meals without spending all day in the kitchen. The basic concept is simple: whatever needs cooking, cook it all in one big batch at the beginning of the week, pack it out into individual serving containers, and then just grab and go Monday-Friday.

Making your food in batches saves you time and energy on hectic weeknights. But here’s the real draw: you’ll only have to wash one single set of cooking dishes. Any Paleo cook can attest that reducing the pile of dirty dishes in the sink is huge for overall chef satisfaction!

When it comes to a keto-style Paleo diet, meal prep can be a bit different, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not bad. Here’s a look at the basics: how to get enough fat in without drowning every salad in oil, how to add variety without adding a lot of prep time, and how to make delicious keto meals that travel and reheat well (or go down well cold).

Getting the macros right

Traditional non-keto meal prep focuses on protein + starch (Chicken + brown rice. Salmon + sweet potatoes. You get the idea). Of course, this isn’t going to work for keto - way too many carbs, not nearly enough fat.

One way to make all these plans keto is to just swap the starch for low-carb vegetables and call it a day (Chicken + spinach! Salmon + cauliflower!). But depending on your protein, you might not actually get enough fat - or enough food - that way. Skinless chicken breast with steamed vegetables and no fat just isn’t enough food for a grown adult for lunch; you’ll be hungry again by 3 and that’s no way to live.

The obvious answer is to swap out the carbs for vegetables...and then add fat. Lots of fat!

• If you have access to a microwave, use a bed of vegetables to soak up a fatty sauce or dressing - cook a nice fatty roast and use some broccoli or cauliflower rice to catch the juices.
• If you don’t have a microwave at work, it can be challenging to get your meals fatty enough without feeling like you’re eating cold grease. Try avocados as an easy fat source that tastes great even at room temperatures. Bonus: they don’t need to be refrigerated either! You can just bring the whole avocado and then cut it and eat it right out of its own skin.
• Eggs are also surprisingly high in fat and low in protein, and they’re good hot or cold.
• Use salad dressings to add lots of healthy fat and get some more variety at the same time. Try Asian-inspired almond butter dressings for a break from the classic oil and vinegar or whip up a batch of homemade ranch (hint: dressings can also go on roasted vegetables - they’re not just for leaves!)

How-Tos and logistical variations

A few quick logistical tips for newbies:

Get high-quality containers - nobody likes opening their bag and finding their lunch all over their laptop! There is a time to spring for the name brand; this is that time.

Consider a Dutch oven or slow cooker for making big batches of protein conveniently.

You might not need breakfast at all on keto - one less meal to pack! Intermittent fasting is a common keto tweak that solves at least one of your meal-prep problems: just don’t eat breakfast at all and compress your eating time into a short window between lunch and dinner. Some people don’t have any calories before noon; other folks prefer coffee with cream or coconut oil. (You could also skip dinner and have your eating window between breakfast and mid-afternoon, but this is less popular).

Keep a few keto-friendly snacks at your desk. In case you encounter a lunch disaster, you won’t be totally up the creek. Try macadamia nuts, fat bombs, or squeeze packs of nut butter.

Sample keto cook-ups: breakfast

For the menu-impaired, a few simple meal prep ideas, with macros:

With eggs

The simplest way to batch-cook eggs for breakfast: beat a dozen eggs together and pour them into a greased pan. Add some roasted vegetables, spices, cheese, bacon bits, and/or other fixings as desired and cook until it’s almost done in the middle (the recipe takes a while to cool down, so it will keep “cooking” itself for a few minutes after you take it out of the oven). This is good cold or reheated.

Variations:

• Mediterranean: eggplant (2 cups raw), onions (1 whole), garlic (3-4 cloves), and bell peppers (1 whole), fried in 2 tbsp. butter before adding them to the eggs: makes 5 servings at 5 grams net carbs per serving.
• Indian: garlic (3-4 cloves) okra (1 cup raw, fried or roasted in butter), spinach (1 cup raw), and garam masala to taste, assuming 2 tbsp. butter for cooking: makes 5 servings at 3.1 grams net carbs per serving.
• German: cabbage (2 cups raw, shredded), mustard (3 tbsp.), onion (1 whole), and bacon: 5 servings at 4.4 grams net carbs per serving
• Fat-tastic deluxe keto domination: use 6 duck eggs instead of 12 chicken eggs + 3 slices of bacon with all the drippings: 5 servings at 1.44 grams net carbs per serving.

No eggs

For the egg haters, a few other ideas:

• Sheet pan sausages and vegetables: 4 servings at 6 grams net carbs per serving, although you could just use more sausages for more servings.
• Breakfast pork sausages: close to 0 grams net carbs per serving and good hot or cold.

Sample keto cook-ups: lunch and/or dinner

For the office workers or the just plain run-off-their-feet-busy people, some batch cooking menus for lunch or dinner:

Protein option 1: pork shoulder

Roast up a nice piece of pork shoulder (use this recipe or any other low-carb pork shoulder recipe)

Dead simple option: also roast up a tray or three of low-carb vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower…) with lots of olive oil or butter. Divide the pork and vegetables into containers. Assuming 1 cup of broccoli + 1 tbsp. fat per serving, on top of 3-4 ounces of cooked pork shoulder with all the fat left on, that gives you about 6 grams of net carbs per serving.

Variety options for the same protein: cook the pork shoulder in one fell swoop, and then give yourself some variation in your meals with...

• Salad: shredded or chopped pork on spinach (2 cups) with walnuts (0.5oz) and red onions (1 tbsp); mustard + balsamic + olive oil for dressing: 6 grams net carbs per serving.
• Shredded pork: shred the pork shoulder and pack it with keto coleslaw (add lots of mayo!): 4 grams net carbs per serving
• Stuffed peppers: cut a green pepper in half and bake the halves until lightly charred. Stuff each half with shredded pork shoulder and wilted spinach. Top with cheese for the cheese eaters: 3.3 grams net carbs per half pepper without cheese; with cheese will depend on the cheese.

Protein option 2: meatballs

Use the fattiest beef or lamb you can find - try this recipe without the honey or any other meatball recipe you like.

Dead simple option: meatball kebabs (also spelled kabobs): skewer the meatballs with your favorite low-carb vegetables and go nuts! You can add variety to this very easily just by putting different vegetables on each skewer. Carbs will vary depending on the vegetables but typically they’ll be low.

Variety options for the same protein: make all your meatballs and then...

• Put the meatballs over a bed of mashed cauliflower (8 grams net carbs) and drizzle with garlic butter
• Use different dipping sauces. Add tzatziki sauce for Greek flavor, sriracha mayo for a spicy kick, garlic aioli, fresh pesto, or whatever other fatty condiments your heart desires!
• Pack the meatballs over a bed of zucchini noodles (3.4 grams net carbs)

What’s your favorite keto meal prep idea?

Got a great recipe? Tips and tricks? Share with the crowd on Facebook or Twitter!

Did you resolve to start Paleo or keto on January 1? If you’re still going strong - fantastic! But if you’ve been struggling lately or if you’ve already taken a fall off the proverbial wagon, this post is for you.

Here’s some perspective on “failure” when it comes to resolutions, plus a practical problem-solving guide with simple, actionable steps to help you address whatever tripped you up in the first place. It's fine to slip up sometimes; the trick is not to let one setback throw you totally off track. So if you're feeling guilty about messing up already, put on your problem-solving hat and get ready to recommit like a pro.

Everyone slips up and it’s not a big deal at all.

This study tracked people making New Year’s resolutions (most commonly related to food and smoking). They divided people into “successful” and “unsuccessful” groups based on whether they were still following their resolutions 2 years later. Here’s what they found:

Fifty-three percent of the successful group experienced at least one slip, and the mean number of slips over the 2-year interval was 14. Slips were typically precipitated by a lack of personal control, excessive stress, and negative emotion.

In other words, even people who end up successfully keeping their New Year’s Resolutions tend to slip up once every 2 months, on average. This is what resolution success stories look like: sticking with it most of the time, with unavoidable occasional slips. If you're experiencing your very first slip up right now, then buckle in for the ride because statistically you've got a bunch more to go and that's totally fine.

What time is it? Perspective time!

Let’s say you’ve been off the Paleo straight and narrow for a week at this point. That week is probably looming pretty large in your mind because it’s so recent and the memories are all fresh. That’s normal! But zoom out for a second and imagine what would happen if you get back on track right now - by January 1, 2019, that one week will just be a tiny blip on the horizon.

1 week out of 52 is about 2% of the year. So if you get back into Paleo after a 1-week detour, you can still have a 98% Paleo year. Even if you took 2 weeks of pizza and beer, you can still have a 96% Paleo year - which, overachievers take note, is still a solid A. So let go of self-recrimination, give yourself a pat on the back for doing something really hard, and focus on what specific things you can do to take a better shot at it, starting now.

If you think all this gushy self-compassion stuff is nonsense and you really just want to be harder on yourself, think of it like this: have the guts and discipline to do the un-glamorous, un-Instagrammable thing that really works in the long term. Real self-discipline isn't about impulsively careening from unrealistically "perfect" diet/exercise plans to wild guilt/shame spirals when life happens and your commitment to eat 100% Paleo and spend an hour at the gym every day runs headfirst into the real world. There's an addictive motivational "high" that comes in the first flush of absolute and extreme commitment to a new plan: if you really want to be hard on yourself, give that up and get down to the grown-up work of making realistic plans, including plans for the inevitable times when you'll get thrown off course. Instead of letting yourself just descend into a shame spiral, have the discipline and impulse control to get a handle on your own emotions and get back to work at your goals.

The trick isn’t to never stumble. It’s to learn from your stumbles and adapt so you don’t keep hitting the same roadblock again and again.

New Year’s resolution stumbles: a Paleo get-back-on-track guide

Look down to find your problem and see a couple of simple actions you can take immediately to address it so you can get back on the Paleo train right away.

Hunger & Cravings

Problem: I started craving something really badly and just couldn't resist.

• If possible, get rid of any non-Paleo food in the house so it's not there when the cravings hit.
• Pick any enjoyable non-food activity that will pull your mind away from cravings (an episode of TV, rereading a favorite poem, your favorite dumb mobile game, a walk around the block, anything). Make a note that says “Do [alternate thing] first!” and put it on any junk food left in the house + your wallet. Often the craving will go away if you can just redirect your attention for 10 minutes.
• Take your credit card information out of any online food delivery sites so you get a second chance to rethink before you order.

Problem: I was so hungry all the time and it was too miserable to keep up with, so I quit/caved and grabbed a bunch of junk.

• If you're calorie-counting, stop.
• Follow the basic Paleo meal template and eat as much Paleo food as you want. Eat until your appetite is satisfied and then the next time you're hungry, eat again until you're not hungry any longer. Do this for 6 weeks. By that point, your basic Paleo habits will be pretty established and if you’re not losing weight by then, you can reconsider more restrictions.

Problem: I got really hungry and the only food around was junk food, so I had to eat it.

• Channel your inner squirrel: stash at least one Paleo-friendly snack in EVERY place you usually spend time. Backpack, purse, gym bag, office desk, car, bike bag...everything. Physical hunger is a reason to eat, but it's not a reason to eat junk. Good portable snacks include: trail mix, mixed nuts, beef/pork/salmon jerky, packs or cans of tuna, and squeeze packs of nut butter.

More useful links:

• 8 more strategies to beat cravings
• How to stop craving comfort food
• Why am I so hungry on Paleo?
• 4 practical strategies for hunger-based eating

Emotions

Problem: I was having an exhausting/stressful day, so I cracked and reached for the comfort food.

• Make a list of 5 non-food things that will make you feel better. Tape it to any junk food in the house and to your wallet/credit cards.
• If this is a problem that happens regularly or chronically, forget about Paleo for the moment (really!) and think about one single thing you could do to reduce stress in your life. Stress can be just as awful for your health as any amount of junk food, and if stress is preventing you from eating well, then stress is the logical first step in improving your health.

Problem: I felt too tired/depressed/low to put in all the effort of shopping and cooking, so I just ordered pizza.

• Search for grocery delivery services in your area: they make grocery shopping almost as easy as ordering pizza.
• Collect 4 or 5 Paleo-friendly freezer meals for emergencies. You can make freezer friendly meals (like soup or chili) yourself, or buy them from most fancier grocery stores.

More useful links:

• Escaping the emotional eating trap with Paleo
• Boredom eating
• Important nutrients for stress management
• Sugar, stress, and your brain

Logistics

Problem: Shopping/cooking/cleaning took too long - who has time for that?

• Buy or order a slow cooker to save time and reduce pot-washing. You can find slow-cooker recipes here.
• Look up 1-2 batch cooking recipes and pencil in a time to make one. Check out more leftover-friendly recipes here.
• Try a grocery delivery service - it’s worth the $10 for delivery if it saves you $20 on takeout pizza!

Problem: Paleo food was way too expensive so I went back to pasta and rice.

• If you stocked up on a bunch of staples (spices, coconut oil, etc.), remember that those are a start-up cost and won’t be part of your regular grocery bill.
• Remove these relatively pricey treats from your shopping list: bacon, nuts/seeds, nut flours, dried fruit, and any Paleo-labeled processed food (Paleo cookies, Paleo pancake mix, etc.)

Problem: I didn’t know what to cook.

• Check out these 10 beginner-friendly recipes
• Try a 2-week meal plan for beginners

Problem: I didn't really understand what I was allowed to eat and what I wasn't.

• Check out this intro to the very basics.
• Go through this “am I doing it right?” checklist for beginners.
• Let go of the need to do Paleo perfectly right away. Think of the first few weeks as a Paleo apprenticeship: make a good-faith effort to buy/eat the right things, Google afterwards if you’re not sure, and if you find out that peanuts/quinoa/whatever you ate isn’t actually Paleo well, no big deal, lesson learned for next time.

Problem: I was expected to eat cake/cookies/brownies for a social event (e.g. coworker's birthday, catering for the office)

• Here’s a magic incantation for exactly this problem: “No, thank you. [topic change]” - repeat as necessary. Don’t give any justification: you just don’t want any right now, and then change the subject.
• Next time there’s a birthday or similar, bring a Paleo-friendly treat or plan a really great dinner when you get home so you don’t feel deprived.

More useful links:

• Money-saving tips and even more tips
• Your first Paleo grocery trip
• Paleo grocery shopping 101 and 201

How’s your New Year’s Resolution going?

Did you even make one? What did you resolve to do? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

It’s natural to be a little nervous when you’re thinking about starting Paleo - and it’s also completely normal to mess it up a little bit at the beginning. Some people spend the first month eating lentils (which aren’t actually Paleo) or unnecessarily avoiding foods like coffee and butter. Little goofs like that aren’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But other beginner mistakes can be more serious - they can make Paleo a miserable experience, or even remove essential nutritional content from the diet.

To help prevent those types of mistakes, here are 4 beginner tips to set yourself up for success. They’ll help you avoid nutritional deficiencies, meal planning disasters, analysis paralysis, and getting stuck in a rut that just isn’t working for you.

1. Let Go of the Food Pyramid.

One common newbie blunder is eat a “Paleo” diet that also conforms to the standard low-fat dietary guidelines. It’s very understandable why people do this: they’re starting Paleo to improve their health, but they come into it with a reflexive negative reaction to fat and cholesterol-rich foods like egg yolks and fatty meats. If you don’t question that reaction, it’s easy to assume that Paleo obviously wouldn’t encourage those foods, since it’s supposed to be healthy, right?

This line of thinking leads to a “Paleo” diet that basically looks like the Food Pyramid but with the grains and dairy cut out: egg white omelettes, salad with skinless chicken breast, and steamed vegetables with no dressing.

This type of diet might work for some people who are deliberately planning on a period of extreme effort. But for most newbies, it’s not necessary and it’s so miserable that it understandably makes people want to quit. Paleo isn’t just cutting out grains and legumes. It’s also about adding more nutrient-dense whole foods that have been unfairly demonized because of their fat and cholesterol content. Coconut oil, egg yolks, avocados, and liver won’t make you fat, and the evidence suggests that saturated fat from whole foods isn’t dangerous. The high-fat foods that cause heart disease are Big Macs and pizza, not eggs.

If you don’t accept the science behind this, maybe Paleo isn’t the right diet for you. But if you’re going to do Paleo, let go of the Food Pyramid. Don’t try to combine two sets of incompatible guidelines into one uber-restrictive diet of only vegetables and protein: it’s miserable, it’s unsustainable, and it’s definitely not Paleo.

2. If you care about a specific nutrient, don't guess: look it up!

<em>If you're targeting specific ranges for one or more nutrients</em> (e.g. you want to stay below a certain number of carbs), knowing the nutrient content of your staple foods can save you from a lot of terrible diet advice and unnecessary restriction. Gut instincts and fuzzy assumptions about the nutrient content of different foods can be completely off-base.

Here’s a pop quiz: the average person eating Paleo will typically eat 50-300 grams of carbs per day, with 50-150 being “low-carb” and 150-300 or so being “medium-carb” (These are all ballpark numbers, but they’re close enough for now). Without looking anything up, how do the following foods fit into that daily carb intake?

• 1 cup of beets
• 1 cupof broccoli
• 6 ounces (approximately 1 medium potato) of white potatoes
• 6 ounces of sweet potatoes

If you don’t know and if you’re planning to target a specific carb range on Paleo, you might want to look up the numbers. For example, a lot of people might say that white potatoes have a lot more carbs than sweet potatoes, and that neither would fit into a diet with 150 grams of carbs per day. But those people would be wrong:

• White potatoes and sweet potatoes are more or less equivalent in carbs. 1 medium baked potato, (about 6 ounces) has ~37 grams of carbs. The same amount of sweet potato has ~36 grams of carbs.
• If you’re eating 150 grams of carbs a day, 36-37 grams of carbs from potatoes (white or sweet) could easily fit under your limit.

If a specific nutrient really matters to you, look up a few of foods you plan to eat or avoid. Here is the USDA nutrient database: use it to check the nutrient content of different foods. You can save yourself a lot of pain just by knowing simple facts about the nutrient content of different foods. Don’t rely on vague gut feelings about which foods are “high” or “low” in different nutrients: they tend to be wrong.

On the other hand, there’s no need to quantify everything down to the milligram. If you have a specific reason to track a particular nutrient, then look up the numbers and know-don't-guess how much you're eating. But for everything else, the Paleo template should set you up just fine without a lot of number-crunching.

3. Before you start, do a shadow week.

A shadow week can help you prevent a lot of shopping, meal planning, cooking, and meal prep crises before they ever happen.

To do a shadow week, keep eating the way you normally do, but every time you eat something, write down (a) what it was, and (b) a Paleo alternative that you could have eaten instead. For example, if you had a PB&J for lunch, you could write that down, and then note that a Paleo option would be salad with chicken, avocado, and olive oil/vinegar.

This will help you get a bead on how much you need to buy at the grocery store, and it can double as a starter meal plan. It’s a good way to avoid under-shopping, over-shopping, or meal-planning disasters like forgetting to plan for breakfast. And unlike actual grocery shopping, it’s totally free and takes almost no time.

Bonus: Plan/Preview your Cooking and Prep Time

If you’re coming from a diet of takeout or prepackaged meals, it might be a shock at first to spend so much time cooking (not to mention grocery shopping, washing dishes, finding recipes…). During your shadow week, think about when you’d make all this food. Will you do bulk cooking on the weekend for the entire work week? Invest in a slow cooker? Is there anything you need to buy or dust off?

4. Make a Flexible Commitment

Making a “flexible commitment” to Paleo helps avoid the extremes of analysis paralysis on the one hand and blind dogmatism on the other.

A flexible commitment means that you're committed to eating Paleo (as opposed to, say, falling off the wagon into a pile of donuts), but you're not married to any one specific version or variation of Paleo.

This helps you avoid two common beginner problems:

• Analysis paralysis There's so much information out there that it's easy to get bogged down in the infodump and end up never doing anything because you’re too busy looking for information and trying to figure out in advance what’s “optimal.”
• Dogmatic persistence past the point of usefulness. A lot of people get confused by the information overload, so they just pick one particular approach or program and treat it as gospel. They stay fixated on that specific version of "Paleo" as the “true Paleo” approach, even if it's clearly not working for them and something else might work way better.

To avoid both of these problems at once, pick one version of Paleo that looks good enough to be getting on with and commit to it for a week or two, recognizing that you might change it up in the future. Do that until you can clearly see that it is or isn’t working. Then re-evaluate, research 1-2 things that might not be working for you, and adjust your diet as necessary.

This approach lets you just get started without getting tied down in endless nutrition research. But at the same time, it gives you flexibility to change your approach if you find that it's just not optimal for you. After all, the whole point of Paleo is that it helps improve your health. If it doesn’t help you, it’s not working and it’s time to change things up!

Experienced Paleo eater, what tips helped you as a beginner? Any advice for newbies? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Wouldn’t we all like to have sirloin steak and prime rib every night for dinner? Unfortunately though, in the real world, grocery budgets exist. One option is to go for generally cheaper meats, like chicken or pork, but beef has so much nutritional value that it’s best to have at least a little bit of it in your diet.

You don’t have to be shelling out for flank steak and filet mignon to get some beef in, though! Here’s a guide to finding and cooking budget-friendly cuts that provide the nutritional benefits with a much lower price tag.

What Makes Cuts Cheap?

Just to start off with, it’s important to look at the problem of “getting what you pay for.” Sure, you could absolutely save money by going for the bargain-basement quality food, but you’d also miss out on a lot of the nutrition you were hoping for in the first place!

There are two kinds of cheap food:

• Food that’s actually lower in quality (e.g. supermarket meat is cheaper than grass-fed, because it’s actually less nutritious). This is the kind of “cheap” you want to avoid.
• Food that’s not lower in quality, but for some other reason, it’s not in demand, making the price low. This is the kind of “cheap” you want to snap up.

When it comes to beef, a cut can be “not in demand” for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with quality or tastiness. That’s what this article is about: cuts of meat that are perfectly nutritious and taste just fine, but for some unrelated reason aren’t in demand, so the price is low. These are the cuts that give the savvy cook a chance to save big, even on grass-fed, high-quality meat.

Cuts that are Cheap Because…They’re Needy.

First on the list of “cuts that aren’t in demand” are cuts that take a long time to cook. Putting something in the oven for a whole day doesn’t fit very well with the hectically busy go-go-go of the modern life, so it lowers demand because everyone is looking for something they can get ready in half an hour.

But where modern technology causes problems, it can also solve them! One way to solve the “long cooking time” problem is a slow-cooker: just “set and forget” the roast while you’re doing other things all day and come home to dinner ready to go. Alternately, use a pressure cooker to dramatically shorten the cooking time with the magic of steam pressure. You can get that "low and slow" effect and appropriately baby your pot roast without having to sacrifice your whole day!

Cuts to look for:

• Chuck roast
• Brisket
• Rump roast
• Round roast (or “________ round roast,” e.g. bottom round roast, eye round roast, top round roast)
• London broil
• Pot roast (or “______ pot roast,” e.g. “chuck pot roast”)

Recipe Inspiration

And just to top it all off, here’s some Paleo gravy to go with any roast that calls for it!

Cuts that are Cheap Because…They’re “Weird”

Another way to find cuts that aren’t in demand is to look for anything that most people consider “weird.” If you think of it, “weird” is a totally arbitrary standard (in many parts of Asia, it’s totally normal to eat insects, and you’d be the weird one for being grossed out), but the fact remains that most people only buy things they’re already familiar with, so anything perceived as “weird” gets left off the list.

But who cares what other people think? Low demand = low price for you! Snap up those “weird” parts and enjoy all the delicious things you can do with them. Some weird parts that you can get for substantially less than steaks and ribs:

Oxtail

As the name implies, oxtail is the tail of the cow – and a cow is so big that the tail actually has a substantial amount of meat on it. Oxtail is particularly delicious in soups and stews because the marrow in the bones gives the broth a wonderful flavor without you having to do anything at all.

Recipe inspiration

• Slow cooker oxtail soup (Healing and Eating)
• French onion oxtail stew (Jan’s Sushi Bar) (oven)
• Slow cooker Caribbean oxtails (Stupid Easy Paleo)
• Braised oxtail (Primal Palate) (oven)

Neck

Your neck probably wouldn’t offer much meat, but a cow is big enough that there’s quite a lot of good stuff on the neck. The meat here is best braised or stewed to coax out the flavor and tenderness – and don’t forget to save the bones for stock!

Recipe inspiration:

• Stewed beef neck tacos (Serious Eats) (oven)
• Pressure braised beef necks with mushroom gravy (The Paleo Review) (pressure cooker)
• Braised beef neck (Taste of Divine) (oven)

Tongue

Tongue is a muscle like any other muscle, and it tastes just the same. Beef tongue is essentially a lean roast – same taste, same cooking methods. It’s delicious, especially in tacos. The only reason people are squeamish about it is because it’s a tongue, but once you take off the skin and slice it to serve, you can’t even tell what it is.

Recipe Inspiration

• Pickled beef tongue (The Healthy Foodie)
• Slow-cooked beef tongue (Of Goats and Greens)

Heart

Just like tongue, heart is a muscle and tastes just the same as any other muscle. If you make beef heart and tell people it’s a roast, they’ll believe it. You (and the grocery bill) are the only one who will ever know!

Recipe inspiration

• Sweet beef heart curry (oven) (Almost Bananas)
• Grilled beef heart with lemon and cracked pepper marinade (The Not-so-Desperate Housewife) (grill)
• Beef heart with chimichurri sauce (Phoenix Helix) (stovetop)

Liver

Tongue and heart might taste just like muscle meat, but liver definitely doesn’t. It has a very distinct, metallic flavor, thanks to its incredibly high mineral content. That’s an indication of health benefits, but it can also be a little tough for some people to swallow.

One way to get around this is to use liver as an “extender.” Just the same way that meatloaf recipes use rice or oats to stretch out the meat, you can use liver to “stretch” the pricier ground beef in just about anything from chili to meatballs. For example, instead of buying 3 pounds of ground, you could buy 2 pounds of ground and 1 pound of liver, and save a few dollars every time. It definitely adds up!

Recipe Inspiration

• Egg-free, nightshade-free hidden liver meatloaf (The Paleo Mom) (oven)
• Beef liver pistachio terrine (Christian Jax) (oven)
• Rosemary liver burgers (Paleo Magazine) (grill or stovetop)

Summing it Up

Bargain-hunting doesn’t have to mean settling for a lower-quality dinner or foregoing ethically raised meat in favor of the grain-fed variety. Sometimes, it just means knowing where to look: if you hunt for cuts that aren’t in demand, you can usually get significant savings because you’re one of the few people actually interested.

Two great ways to make that happen are to go for cuts that require long and slow cooking (like chuck or pot roast) and cuts that most people consider “weird,” like tongue. They’ve got all the nutritional benefits of beef, but with a much more affordable price tag, even grass-fed!

Wouldn’t it be so nice if we all had the leisure time to cook a three-course breakfast every morning and then linger in some idyllic breakfast nook to savor it? Well, probably, but that’s not how the real world works most of the time: barring weekends and holidays, breakfast is usually a bit more of a rush.

The grain-based answer to this is typically granola bars, cold cereal, or freezer waffles, which leaves many people wondering what on earth they’re supposed to do when they go Paleo.

But here’s the good news: you don’t have to cook every morning – or any morning, if you don’t want to! Instead, the trick is to make a big batch of something on the weekend, and then slowly eat your way through it all week. So here are some make-ahead breakfasts that aren’t too hard to put together, taste good hot or cold, and give you the energy you need to make it through the morning!

1. Frittatas (and other baked egg dishes)

Eggs are a perfect source of healthy fat and protein, not to mention all kinds of micronutrients – and with a frittata, you’ve got your vegetables conveniently included in one finger-friendly package. Bake up a frittata or two on the weekend and store them in the fridge: they’ll keep all week, and you can just carve off a slice for breakfast every day. Some recipes to get the oven fired up:

• Zucchini and Sweet Potato Frittata (Paleo Leap)
• Prosciutto-Wrapped Mini Frittata Muffins (Nom Nom Paleo)
• Zucchini Pizza Frittata (Almost Bananas)
• Bacon and Jalapeno Frittata (Paleo Network)
• Chicken Bacon Ranch Frittata (The Freckled Foodie)
• Easy Spicy Salmon Frittata (Grass-Fed Girl)

Hint: you could make any of these into frittata mini-muffins just by baking them in a muffin tin instead of a big skillet.

 2. Meatballs

Meatballs are a great breakfast food: they’re portable, easy to eat, good hot or cold, and endlessly versatile so you don’t get bored. Here’s a recipe for meatballs in tomato sauce, but if the typical beef, tomato, and oregano-style meatballs sound too heavy, why not try a lighter, more summery version with ground chicken or turkey, maybe with some coconut milk, fresh herbs, or green onions? Some ideas:

• Greek-Style Meatballs (Paleo Leap)
• Seasoned Turkey Meatballs (Amazing Paleo)
• Bacon, Blueberry, & Ginger Meatballs (Cook like a Cavewoman)
• Simple Apple Meatballs (Live Healtheasy)
• Tangy Turkey Meatballs (Silly Little Cavegirl)

3. Hard-boiled Eggs

Hard-boiled eggs might be the most dead-simple breakfast you could come up with. Boil a dozen at a time and grab 3 or 4 for breakfast every day with a piece of fruit or some leftover vegetables, or a cold baked sweet potato if you like a little more starch in the morning. Or if you have a bigger appetite, try Scotch eggs: hard-boiled eggs wrapped in a savory sausage coating. Some delicious variations:

• Scotch Eggs (The Clothes Make the Girl)
• Maple Breakfast Scotch Eggs (What Jessi Eats)
• Asian Scotch Eggs (The Paleo Mama)
• Sundried Turkey Scotch Eggs (Paleo in Practice)

4. Breakfast Peppers

Stuffing anything inside a pepper makes it so much easier to haul around with you, and the pepper “shell” helps you get in a serving of vegetables, to boot! You could go with a classic stuffed pepper recipe and just eat it for breakfast, or scramble some eggs with fresh herbs and onions and pour them inside instead. Add a pinch of chili powder if you’re feeling spicy! Some other ideas:

• Juicy Stuffed Peppers with Cinnamon Butternut Squash (Paleo Magazine)
• Paleo Sausage and Apple Stuffed Breakfast Bell Peppers (What I Gather)

5. Breakfast Meatloaf

The classic meatloaf recipe involves a lot of heavy beef and ketchup, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not always what you want for breakfast. Instead, why not try one of these slightly lighter, more breakfast-oriented variations:

• Keto Mini Cheeseburger Meatloaves (Paleo Leap; beef and bacon)
• Bacon-wrapped mini-meatloaves (Paleo Leap; beef and bacon)
• Slow-cooker breakfast meatloaf (Meatified; pork)
• Turkey meatloaf (Primal Palate; turkey)
• Summer Breakfast Meatloaf (PaleOMG; beef, pork, and bacon)

6. Breakfast Carnitas

Bacon is not your only option for starting the morning with a big plate of delicious fatty pork! Carnitas also hit that crispy sweet spot, and they’re great reheated. Some possibilities…

• Smoky Pork Carnitas (Conscious Eatery; crock-pot recipe)
• Crispy Carnitas (My Heart Beets; crock-pot and stovetop)
• Crock-pot Chicken Carnitas (The Black Peppercorn)

Just a tip: for recipes that call for pan-frying the meat after you take it out of the slow-cooker, this is a perfect opportunity to toss in some vegetables, too!

7. Breakfast Casserole

If you read “casserole” and your mind went straight to noodles and bread crumbs, it’s time to rethink. Casseroles can be perfectly healthy, and they’re great for baking in advance and then stashing in the fridge for quick meals later. Some ideas:

• Primal Breakfast Casserole (Mark’s Daily Apple)
• Paleo Sausage and Sweet Potato Casserole (Plaid and Paleo)

8. Chicken Drumsticks

You won't see them on the menu at IHOP, but chicken drumsticks are actually perfect for breakfast. They’re good hot or cold, they’re easy to grab and eat, and you can do almost anything with them in terms of flavor. Why not try…

• Thyme, Honey, and Dijon Glazed Chicken Drumsticks (My Little Jar of Spices)
• Slow Cooker Lemongras and Coconut Chicken Drumsticks (Nom Nom Paleo)
• Simple Grilled Chicken Drumsticks (The Domestic Man)

Just make sure to pack a napkin or two if you’re going for anything in a sticky sauce.

What Else?

What’s your favorite cook-ahead breakfast? Share it on Facebook or Google+!

As a new set of college grads prepares to leave the dorms for the first time, it’s time to talk kitchen gear on a budget. The right kitchen equipment will make your meal prep and clean up dramatically easier – but most of us don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on Le Creuset and Japanese-forged chef’s knives.

To help you prioritize, here’s a list of 10 bare essentials. You won’t be able to open your own restaurant with just these 10 tools, but you will be able to put good food on the table without spending your whole life in front of the stove. As you grow into your own cooking style, you’ll figure out what else you want, and what you can skip.

1. Knives

A lousy knife is the most dangerous kitchen tool you’ll ever own. When even cutting an onion takes a lot of elbow grease, it’s easy to forget that even dull knives can take your finger off when they slip. But everyone respects a sharp knife, and you don’t need to jerk it around anyway since it slides right through whatever you’re cutting.

You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money on your kitchen knives (unless you want to). And you definitely don’t have to start out with one of those “knife blocks” that includes every blade pattern under the sun. In fact, skip those: they just make you pay for a bunch of junk you don’t need.

What you really need is one reasonably decent chef’s knife (you can get these for around $30) and a serviceable paring knife or two (cut corners on these rather than your chef’s knife if you have to). You won’t be able to shuck oysters or butcher a hog, but you’ll be able to cut just about anything else – with the important exception of your fingers!

2. Cast-iron skillet

A cast-iron skillet has a naturally non-stick bottom, heats evenly, adds a nice iron supplement to everything you cook, and will probably last longer than you do. For quick stir-fries, sautéing vegetables, searing meat, and cooking almost any kind of eggs, you'll want one of these.

To tempt you into buying one, have a look at this recipe for baked eggs with asparagus and leeks, where a cast-iron skillet lets you shuffle your eggs from stovetop to oven without getting another pan dirty. Can a cheapo rubber-handled frying pan do that?

3. Slow cooker

Slow-cookers are time-saving magic for busy cooks. Just throw in some chili, ribs, or stew when you head out in the morning, and come back to a house that smells delicious and a perfectly cooked dinner. Using very low heat over a long period of time, the slow-cooker is perfect for breaking down tougher cuts of meat like brisket or chuck roast.

With superpowers like that, you’d think a slow-cooker would cost an arm and a leg, but actually, you can buy a basic model for $25 or so.

Need some recipe inspiration? What about a big plate of fall-apart tender balsamic roast beef?

4. Roasting pans

A pan of roast vegetables is one of the fastest and easiest Paleo side dishes to make, and it tastes delicious every time. To make it happen, all you’ll need is a roasting pan: you can repurpose an old cookie sheet, or just go out and spend $5 on a big pan of your own (the bigger, the better).

Want a recipe for that? How about roasted cauliflower with bacon?

5. Cutting board

A good cutting board doesn’t just protect your counter from your shiny new chef’s knife. It also protects your knife from the counter. Plastic and wood are easiest on your knives; if you want to throw it in the dishwasher, get plastic. And make sure to get one big enough for your knife – no mini boards!

6. All-purpose pot (with lid)

Depending on how big your family is, your all-purpose pot could be big or small. Single cooks only really need a saucepan: the giant stockpots are overkill (especially if you also have a slow cooker for making bone broth).

This is where you’ll simmer soup, hard-boil eggs, render fat, blend sauces, and do a hundred different miscellaneous jobs. You don't need a fancy or expensive one; you just need something watertight that won't melt on the stove.

7. Oven-safe glass containers

These kitchen multitaskers do triple duty. Most obviously, they’re good for food storage: save your leftovers and avoid wasting anything by keeping it all organized for another day. You can reheat anything in them without worrying about plastics leaching into the food, and they’re even tough enough to travel with.

But that’s not all: you can also use them as cooking dishes. A deep rectangular Pyrex dish will work just fine for casseroles or for braising meats – and then you can just store any leftovers in the same container.

Circular bowls will also work second shift as mixing bowls: if you need to whisk together a sauce or mix a chicken salad, just haul them out.

Glass containers do cost more than the cheap plastic ones, but you get what you pay for, and the investment is definitely worth your money.

8. Utensils

Maybe it’s cheating to group a spatula and a ladle together as “utensils,” but then again, a lot of stores sell them as a set, so you might end up buying them together anyway. Here’s what you’ll need:

• A spatula: for flipping vegetables or eggs or stirring anything in the skillet.
• A ladle or wooden spoon: for stirring and serving soups or other liquid dishes.

Other utensils that are nice to have (and typically very cheap) include: a whisk, a slotted spoon, a pair of tongs, a vegetable peeler, and a grater. You can get by without them, but they’re typically helpful.

9. Measuring cup/prep bowl

A solid glass measuring cup doesn’t just measure. It also doubles as a small prep bowl – say, for scrambling eggs, or mixing up spice blends, sauces, and marinades. And in a budget-crunched kitchen, multitasking is always a plus.

Two cups is plenty for most single people; if you’re cooking for a family, you might prefer to get 3 or more.

10. Cloth towels

Even in the era of all things disposable, cloth towels are still worth their place in the kitchen, and not just for nostalgia’s sake. Cloth towels save you a bunch of money in the long run, since you don’t have to keep buying paper ones. And they do double duty as oven mitts (just fold the towel up several times). Plus, they never tear in the middle of mopping up a tough spill. If you’re trying to save time and money, paper towels are a false economy; pay upfront for the cloth ones, and you’ll save more in the long run.

Honorable Mention: a Blender

You can squeak by without this if you’re really that strapped for cash, but a blender is incredibly helpful for making smoothies, salad dressings, and pureed soups, and they’re pretty cheap (you can get a basic model for $20-25). If you’re into soup, an immersion blender might be more your style; if you’re more on the smoothie side of the spectrum, a traditional blender is probably a more useful tool.

What’s Yours?

Again, this list was a bare-bones guide to just the basics, for those times when the budget is tight. It’s not a comprehensive guide to everything you need in a three-star Michelin kitchen!

If you’re reading this far, and you’ve been cooking your own meals for a while, you’re probably bursting with the one crucial thing we forgot. So, spill the beans: what’s your must-have kitchen tool? The first thing you pick up and the last thing you put down? Let us know on Facebook or Google+!

Picture this: you’re standing at the kitchen counter, gazing fondly at the bright red stems and rich green-purple leaves of a fresh bunch of Swiss chard straight from the farmer’s market. You can practically still feel the warmth of the sunshine radiating up from your cutting board. You smile, thinking of all that nutritional goodness wrapped up in such a beautiful and tasty package.

But then the thought occurs to you: how shall I cook it? Will boiling or frying destroy the valuable phytonutrients? What about the microwave – am I irradiating my food into toxic nuclear goop? But on the other hand, if I eat it raw, what about the goitrogens? And juicing just concentrates the sugar! Help!

It’s tempting to rush to Google Scholar and drive yourself even crazier with the conflicting results of 20 different studies, but here’s the most important truth about cooking vegetables: the best way to cook them is the way you’ll actually eat them. If you want some new ideas for changing up your side dishes, or if you tend to rely exclusively on one cooking method only, read on for an analysis of all the different ways of getting your greens ready for your dinner plate. But at the end of the day, vegetables cooked using any method are better than no vegetables at all. And there’s a lot to be said for the method you find tastiest, whatever it might be.

Skip to a Cooking Method:

• Raw vs. Cooked
• Boiling
• Frying/sautéing
• Roasting/baking
• Slow-Cooking
• Steaming
• Microwaving
• Fermenting

Raw vs. Cooked

Before even getting into the topic of how to cook vegetables, it’s important to touch on the subject of whether you should be cooking them at all. If any kind of cooking method destroys some of the nutrients, wouldn’t it be better to eat everything raw?

Cooking does destroy some nutrients, but it makes others much more bioavailable. For example, cooking reduces the levels of some antioxidants in broccoli, but increases others. It reduces the antioxidant content of kale, but increases it in tomatoes. A 2009 study of antioxidants found that each of the cooking methods tested decreased antioxidant levels in some vegetables but increased it in others.

Fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) tend to hold up better than their water-soluble cousins (C and some B vitamins). Vitamin C tends to be the most unstable of all, and minerals are largely unaffected, since heating doesn’t affect mineral levels.

Notably, cooking also reduces the water content of a food, decreasing its overall volume. Fill a 2-cup measuring cup with spinach, then boil the spinach and measure it again: you can fit a lot more of the cooked version onto the same “plate space.” This means that even if the nutrient content is slightly less per gram of food, the number of total grams in your meal will probably be higher. So cooking your vegetables might actually help you consume more nutrients overall.

Cooking is also an effective way to destroy some antinutrients that might otherwise prevent the absorption of vitamins and minerals. For example, one study found that blanching (briefly dropping vegetables into boiling water and pulling them out as soon as they change color) significantly reduced the tannic acid and phytic acid of vegetables. And cooked vegetables can also be easier on the stomach, since the fiber content of raw vegetables sometimes makes them more difficult to digest, especially for high-FODMAPs foods.

Clearly, it’s a little more complicated than “cooking destroys nutrients; raw food is best.” It’s better to think of cooked vegetables and raw vegetables as two different but equally valuable additions to your plate, and eat a mix of both every day. As a general rule, cooking methods that minimize temperature, time, and liquid will maximize the nutrients in the vegetables themselves. But as the detailed breakdown of cooking methods shows, each method has its pros and cons.

Boiling

Overall, boiling is the most intensive cooking method around. It results in the greatest loss of everything, but that’s not actually all bad. For one thing, not all chemical compounds in plants are nutritious, and boiling is just as destructive to antinutrients as it is to everything else. Boiling is the best way to reduce the goitrogen content of cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli and kale. Goitrogens are a group of chemicals that aren’t dangerous at all for most people, but can make an existing thyroid disorder worse, so many people with thyroid symptoms try to avoid them. When you boil cruciferous vegetables, the goitrogens are not only destroyed by the heat, but also leached out into the water, a double whammy of antinutrient removal. Similarly, boiling is also most effective at reducing oxalates, a vegetable antinutrient that can contribute to kidney stones.

In some foods, boiling can even increase the nutrient content. In one 2008 study, carrots had higher concentrations of antioxidants after boiling than before, and boiling did a better job of preserving the nutrients than frying or steaming. Boiling also preserves Vitamin A better than frying, fermenting, or sun-drying.

Even though some nutrients are preserved, the downside of boiling vegetables is that if you drain the water, many of the vitamins (on average 10-25%) are lost along with the antinutrients. Unlike other cooking methods, boiling also reduces mineral content, not because the minerals are destroyed by the heat, but because they’re lost to the water. So for soups and stews, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you routinely boil vegetables you don’t intend to use in soup (like cauliflower for Paleo “rice”), you could be losing out.

Frying/sautéing

On the plus side, frying is an excellent way to get some fat in with your vegetables, making the fat-soluble vitamins more absorbable. There isn’t any water to drain off, so all you really have to worry about is the vitamins that can break down from the heat (C and B Vitamins). One study found that, since frying takes such a short time, it might actually be quite effective at retaining these vitamins: potatoes, for example, didn’t seem to lose any Vitamin C in the process of making them into French fries, and the fiber content actually increased thanks to the production of resistant starch.

One big drawback to frying is that unhealthy oils (like commercial deep-frying) turn an otherwise innocent vegetable into a vehicle for inflammatory junk fats and oxidative stress, especially if the oil has been re-used several times, as it always is in commercial foodservice operations. This is easily avoided, though; just use a Paleo cooking fat.

Roasting/baking

The good news about roasting is that it doesn’t require any added water, so the mineral content of the vegetables is entirely safe. And roasting also appears to be easy on the vitamins. One study found that roasting was a good way to preserve the B vitamins in various types of vegetables.

On the flip side, even though roasting is fairly gentle, some vitamins will inevitably be destroyed in the process. Critics of oven-roasting also point to the increased formation of AGEs (Advanced Glycation End-products, infamous for creating oxidative stress and accelerating the aging process), but since the AGEs your own body produces are far and away more significant than anything you get from your diet, it’s not clear how important this really is.

Slow-Cooking

Slow-cooking is a very gentle method, since it uses low temperatures compared to frying or boiling. There haven’t been a lot of studies on the nutrient content of vegetables prepared in a slow-cooker, but since the temperature is typically below the boiling point of water, it’s reasonable to assume that nutrient losses would be slightly less than for boiling.

On the other hand, like boiling, slow-cooking can leach minerals from the food if you don’t also eat the water. Realistically, soups and stews are what most people use slow-cookers for anyway (nobody makes a quick spinach side dish in a slow-cooker!), so it shouldn’t be a big problem. The other problem with slow cookers is that they expose the food to heat for a very long time, but this can usually be prevented by adding the vegetables in right at the end of the process: leave the meat in all day, come home at 5, add the vegetables, and sit down to dinner at 6.

Steaming

The favorite of the low-fat crowd, steaming is a very gentle cooking method, and doesn’t involve any water loss, which in general tends to maximize nutrient content. In one study, even the notoriously fragile Vitamin C in broccoli wasn’t degraded by steaming – and the total antioxidant content of the broccoli actually increased. For this reason, steaming is the method recommended by the World’s Healthiest Foods database as the best way to retain nutrients overall.

On the other hand, Paleo dieters know that low-fat food isn’t actually a benefit. Steaming doesn’t use any fat, so the fat-soluble vitamins in steamed vegetables won’t be as bioavailable. So toss your steamed vegetables with olive or coconut oil, or eat them alongside a big plate of fatty meat.

Microwaving

Microwaves allow for shorter cooking times, with less water than many other methods, maximizing nutrient content. For example, one study found that microwaving peppers did not reduce their polyphenol or Vitamin C content, while boiling did. Another study compared turnip greens blanched either in boiling water or in the microwave; the microwaved greens kept much more of their Vitamin C and various B vitamins. In the 2009 antioxidant study, microwaving was one of the best methods for consistently preserving antioxidant levels across all the vegetables tested. Levels of one kind of cancer-fighting chemical in red cabbage were actually increased after microwaving.

It’s also worth mentioning that frozen vegetables (the kind most people cook in microwaves) are usually picked at the peak of their freshness, so they may have more nutrients to begin with.

Interestingly, the vegetable that seems to be most negatively affected by microwave cooking is cauliflower, which loses over 50% of its antioxidant capacity. Another downside of microwaves is that they don’t always cook food evenly, they can get your vegetables unpleasantly dry, rubbery, or soggy, and they make it hard to cook meat and vegetables in the same pan. But as for the myth that microwave radiation somehow poisons your food or gives you cancer, there’s nothing to it.

Fermenting

It’s not technically a cooking method, since fermented food hasn’t been exposed to heat, but since it still changes the health profile of the vegetables, it’s worth a mention. The biggest upside to fermentation is the probiotic bacteria. These friendly additions to your kimchi or sauerkraut can help repopulate your gut flora and keep your entire digestive system humming along smoothly.

The probiotic benefits are great, but on the negative side, fermentation can dramatically raise the levels of histamines in a dish. If you’re not sensitive to histamines, this makes no difference whatsoever, but if you are sensitive, foods with high concentrations of histamines can cause the symptoms of an allergic reaction. And even the probiotic benefits might not be so great for someone suffering from a bacterial overgrowth (rather than a scarcity of bacteria), so fermented vegetables aren’t necessarily great for everyone.

Conclusion

You can go on forever dredging up different studies that prove one cooking method to be slightly superior to another regarding one specific antioxidant in one specific vegetable. But what this article should really show is that you can “prove” anything this way, and then “disprove” it by cherry-picking different studies. The moral of the story is that there is no “healthiest” cooking method; all of them have their upsides and downsides. Eat plenty of vegetables of every color; cook some of them, and have a salad once in a while. There are more important ways to improve your diet and health than stressing over whether or not you should boil your spinach.

Introduction: What Is IBS?

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

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

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

Causes of IBS: Gut Flora Imbalances

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

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

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

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

Causes of IBS: Inflammation

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

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

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

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

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

Treating IBS Symptoms: Diet Recommendations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Treating IBS Symptoms: Healing the Gut

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

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

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

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

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

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

Treating IBS Symptoms: Mental Health

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

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

IBS-Friendly Recipes

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

Do you eat Paleo or keto and still want to have a social life where you get to throw parties like everyone else? With food that everyone likes and you can also eat joyfully without any autoimmune flare-ups or blood sugar issues?

Or are you not Paleo/keto yourself and trying to find something you can serve at your party for a friend?

Welcome to your one-stop resource guide for Paleo and keto party snacks!

Lightning-quick guide to Paleo and Keto for confused friends and family

(Paleo eaters can skip this part)

Thanks for being awesome and considerate! If the Paleo/keto person in your life hasn’t told you exactly what they eat, here’s a very quick and admittedly oversimplified quick-start guide:

• If they don’t eat carbs and are always concerned with carb counting, but they will eat soy sauce, they’re probably keto.
• If they don’t eat grains, beans, or soy sauce, but they will eat bananas and sweet potatoes, they’re probably Paleo.
• If they don’t eat carbs AND they don’t eat soy sauce, they’re probably keto and Paleo.

All the options listed below are foods that most Paleo eaters would be OK eating at a party or special event (not necessarily for every day, but fine for a special occasion). Many of them are also keto-friendly, and the ones that aren’t are clearly marked. To help the extremely tolerant and lovely souls managing multiple food preferences, we’ve also noted which treats are vegetarian and vegan.

1. Deviled eggs [PALEO, KETO, VEGETARIAN]

Most people don’t want to spend a ton of time cooking little finger foods for their party, but deviled eggs are quick to make, easy to store, and simple to serve - plus they’re a big hit with anyone who might be actually hungry and looking for some more substantial food to snack on.

Pick from a delicious recipe with bacon, with guacamole, or with crab and tarragon, if you want to get really fancy.

2. Fruit, cheese, and pork tray [OPTIONS FOR PALEO AND KETO]

Depending on how committed your grocery store is to delicious pork products, you might find multiple types of salami, prosciutto, speck, and other tasty cured meats to choose from. Try to choose varieties with a minimum of unpronounceable ingredients - no bologna, no cheapo pepperoni, no “meat snack sticks.”

Make up a platter with the cured meat, some dried fruit (apricots, mango, apple, anything you like), some cheese, and some pork rinds as a crunchy alternative to crackers (we reviewed some pork rinds here, if you need help picking a brand). Maybe add some grapes if you're feeling really fancy.

This type of setup lets everyone browse for what fits with their own diet, with a range of Paleo (fruit, meat, possibly cheese) and keto (meat, cheese) choices.

3. Crunchy nuts [PALEO, KETO, VEGETARIAN, VEGAN]

These are the original Paleo snack, and so easy to make at home - it’s probably easier to quickly roast a batch of nuts in Paleo-friendly oil than it is to find one that’s Paleo at the store.

Homemade option: Cayenne-Rosemary roasted nuts - you can adapt this recipe to use more or less any combination of herbs, spices, and nuts, so have fun with it!

Store-bought option: For keto eaters who don’t care that much about Paleo, any kind of savory roasted nuts will probably be fine - just make sure you aren’t getting something like praline pecans that are covered in sugar. For the strict Paleo folks, the big challenge will be getting nuts roasted in a Paleo-friendly oil. The Royal Hawaiian brand of macadamia nuts is available at most grocery stores and uses macadamia nut oil for the roasting. Failing that, look for “dry roasted” nuts without any kind of oil in the ingredients.

4. [NOT KETO] Dairy-free chocolate treats [PALEO, VEGETARIAN, VEGAN]

Dairy is a gray area on Paleo - some folks love it, others won’t touch it. Play it safe with dairy-free chocolate and any vegans or lactose intolerant folks can also join in!

Homemade option: Chocolate coconut bites. (These are low-carb but not keto.)

Semi-homemade option: Sweet and salty chocolate bark. This recipe uses store-bought dark chocolate and peps it up a bit with some dried fruit and sea salt on top.

Store-bought option: any kind of dairy-free chocolate - preferably one with a minimal sugar content.

5. Fat Bomb Peppermint Coffee [PALEO, KETO, VEGETARIAN]

This can be made either with butter or coconut oil (for vegans and folks who totally eschew all dairy). If you use coconut oil, make sure it’s refined, NOT extra virgin, unless you want a coconut taste in the coffee.

The basic recipe: combine 16 ounces of brewed hot coffee (that’s a Grande at Starbucks, for reference) with 1-2 tbsp. of butter or coconut oil and a few drops of peppermint extract. Start very light on the peppermint - you can always add more, but an over-pepperminted cup of coffee is both disgusting and very difficult to salvage. Put it all in a blender (or use an immersion blender in a larger pot/bowl) and blend until the coffee and fat are combined. Taste and add more peppermint as desired.

6. [NOT KETO] Paleo cookies [PALEO, VEGETARIAN]

Paleo cookies are either going to be a time investment or a money investment, but they definitely can be either made or bought if you have the inclination. It can even be fun to try cooking with alternative flours if you've never done it before. This would also be a great option for Paleo eaters to bring to an otherwise non-Paleo party - they travel well and aren't fussy to set up once you're there.

Homemade options: Chocolate-drizzled shortbread cookies, flourless gingersnap cookies, or Coconut macaroons with lemon curd.

Store-bought options: Some of the Hail Merry brand bites and some Simple Mills brand cookies are Paleo-friendly - although these all have added sugar.

7. [NOT KETO] Plantain Chips with guac and salsa [PALEO, VEGETARIAN, VEGAN]

This is a great low-effort dish that you can throw together in a hurry and easily scale up for a bigger crowd.

Plantains are like bananas, but bigger and starchier. They make deliciously crunchy chips that you can buy in almost any grocery store - look for a brand that’s cooked in coconut oil, not “vegetable oil” or peanut oil. The taste is more like tortilla chips than regular potato chips. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to make these at home unless you have a dehydrator, so it’s probably best to just buy them.

Serve them with guacamole (store-bought or homemade) and homemade salsa for easy snacking!

8. [NOT KETO] Hot apple cider

Piping hot apple cider makes a delicious late-night treat for cold winter evenings. And for those more adult parties, it can be doctored up with some rum as desired.

Here’s a recipe for hot spiced apple cider made in the slow-cooker with minimal fuss. If your slow-cooker has a "keep warm" setting, you could even leave it in there during the party.

BONUS: For friends and family, defend people if/when they choose to eat nothing [Suitable for literally all people on every diet]

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for a friend with dietary restrictions is just to make a space where they’re comfortable eating nothing and defend them to rude weirdos who get on their case about it.

If you’re not eating Paleo yourself, this might sound weird, but sometimes Paleo eaters go to parties and plan to eat nothing, or meet friends at bars and plan to drink only seltzer water. Simply accepting this and not making it a big deal can go further than the most complicated home-made snack dish.

What's your favorite Paleo or keto-friendly party snack? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Got a friend or loved one who’s really into Paleo or trying keto for the first time? Don’t know what to get them? We’re here to help, even if you don’t eat this way yourself.

If you already eat Paleo or keto, then the holiday gift-giving is a little bit easier. If your recipient says something like “I’m low-FODMAP HFLC and experimenting with OMAD right now but I’m off AIP,” it actually makes sense to you. But if you’re not already Paleo, that’s just fine. You’re an awesome friend/spouse/sibling for supporting your recipient! Just don’t buy them food if you’re not sure what they eat. Don’t rely on labels like “gluten-free” or even “Paleo-friendly.” Every Paleo eater tweaks the diet to their own exact needs, so if you’re not sure about your recipient specifically, just buy non-food gifts that still support their Paleo/keto goals.

Non-food gifts that require absolutely 0 nutritional knowledge on your part and work for even the most restrictive diets are marked with a triple asterisk (***) in this list.

Paleo is about more than food: it’s also about sleep, stress management, and healthy movement. So these gift ideas also include tools for the whole lifestyle.

Under $20

***Stretchy resizeable silicone lids. Prepping, storing, and hauling around home-cooked food to work and school takes a lot of containers, and that’s before you even think about managing leftovers. One-size-fits-all airtight silicone lids basically turn every container into a Tupperware. They reduce dirty dishes (because you can store your food right in the same bowl you served it out of) and save time spent hunting for matching lids.

A new spice blend or sauce. Order online or pick up something at your local farmer’s market/co-op/ health food store. Then look up some Paleo recipe suggestions that would be good with the spice/sauce, print them out, and package it all together. For example, to go with a za’atar blend, you could give them the recipe for za’atar grilled chicken.

***Travel-friendly salad dressing containers. A lot of Paleo folks either make their own dressing at home or buy specialty brands that don’t offer dressing in single-use pouches. So if they want to pack salad for lunch, they’ll need a single serving of salad dressing to go with it. Get them a set of serving-sized dressing containers so they never have to tote around a full-sized bottle again.

Take a logistical load off their back. Do they struggle to get to the grocery store? If so, can you help out by paying for delivery service, babysitting for a few hours, or making the trip for them once a month? Are they always rushed for time doing meal prep? If so, can you look up recipes, make shopping lists for them, and come over for meal prep help/social catch-up? What logistical thing do they struggle with and how can you organize it on their behalf?

The actual present you’re giving them here is stress relief via application of your time and/or money - sometimes that’s more valuable than any physical “thing” you could buy. Whatever you’ll do for them, print up a nice certificate - that’s your physical present.

With some thoughtful planning, this can be an amazing gift even if you don’t have a lot of money to spend.

$20-50

***Window blackout curtains. To get a really good night of sleep, it helps to have a completely dark room. No streetlight blaring in through the window, no stray ambulance lights, no headlights. Blackout curtains are the best way to make that happen, and yet a lot of people never get around to buying them.

***A vegetable spiralizer. These make Paleo-friendly spiral noodles out of any vegetable. Zucchini, carrots, sweet potatoes, butternut squash...all of them turn into the perfect base for meatballs and marinara sauce after a few turns in the spiralizer!

A travel sleep kit. Got a friend who travels a lot? Make them a travel sleep kit. Fill with any/all of the following:

• A sleep mask
• Melatonin, if they use it.
• Magnesium supplements (Natural Calm comes in travel-friendly single packets!)
• A box of herbal tea
• A few notecards with hand-written quotes or peaceful poetry
• Essential oils
• Nice lotion
• Makeup removal/cleansing cloths

Pack it all up in a zipper pouch for a travel-ready gift.

***A slow-cooker. These incredibly handy little gadgets cook soup, bone broth, chili, roasts, vegetables, and more while you leave the house and do whatever you want. If your recipient doesn’t already have one, this is a great time and labor-saver.

A Paleo/keto snack bag. Grab-and-go packaged Paleo snacks are so convenient and can save someone from a food decision they’ll regret later. Treat your recipient to a collection of Paleo-friendly snacks in a funny or pretty container. Some ideas:

• Box of fancy tea
• Snack packs of nuts/seeds
• Paleo or keto nutrition bars (see our Paleo bar taste-tests)
• Collagen powder (collagen powder taste-tests)
• Non-nut Paleo snacks (Paleo snack taste-tests)
• Jerky or meat-based snack sticks

A cookbook or two. Sure, your recipient can Google a recipe for anything they want, but what if they’re not really sure what they want? You can’t just Google “something I haven’t eaten” and get a list of recipe ideas. What if they want to branch out into recipes they don’t know about or cuisines they’ve never tried? Or what if they want to write notes? And add post-its? There’s a lot to be said for a really good physical cookbook.

$50-100

***An indoor air purifier. Let’s face it - humans make a lot of weird smells, especially when we’re trapped inside with the windows shut all winter. Also, spending time inside exposes you to cleaning fumes, any chemicals released by your bed or furniture, and lots of other indoor air pollutants. The temptation is to buy tons of chemical air fresheners that spew “garden lilac” or “fresh linen breeze” - but that just masks the smell without actually taking out odors at the source. Get your recipient a real air purifier that actually improves air quality while dealing with the smells. The EPA has some helpful guidance on choosing residential air purifiers here.

Grass-Fed Meat. If possible, Paleo encourages pasture-raised and grass-fed meat - it’s more nutritious and also avoids our cruel and environmentally disastrous factory farm system. There are lots of online stores where you can order really good, grass-fed meat for your recipient. Paleo Leap doesn’t endorse any particular option, but US Wellness Meats is a popular option, or Butcher Box if you prefer the subscription box style. For someone who can’t normally afford grass-fed or pastured meat, this can be a huge relief to their grocery budget and a big bump in food quality.

***Personal training or fitness experiences. Paying for a session with a personal trainer is a great gift for gym rats. Or if they’re not big on traditional gyms, what about day passes to go rock climbing, skiing, or kayaking? Or yoga, barre, spin, aqua aerobics, martial arts - anything that they might not have tried before. Pick something that fits your budget and go for it. (Optionally, if you still have cash to spend, add something they might need for the experience, like climbing chalk, a yoga mat, or a gym bag.)

***A nice massage. One of the “lifestyle” parts of Paleo is about relieving chronic stress (that’s stuff like a commute that sends your blood pressure through the roof every day). A really good massage is amazing stress relief, not just because it feels nice but also because it’s an hour totally away from the social media comparison game. If your recipient is into athletics at all, try to find a sports massage for them. Whatever body part they have that’s always aching and injured, it will thank you!

A subscription to Costco or an online marketplace. With this gift, you’re basically giving your recipient a discount on groceries for the year. For families with kids, Costco is a big money saver and great for Paleo staples like nuts, organic meat, and frozen food. For people with smaller households, try a gift subscription to an online health-food market. Paleo Leap doesn’t endorse any particular marketplace, but one option with a lot of Paleo and Keto choices is Thrive Market (about $60/year).

What's your favorite Paleo or keto gift?

What Paleo or keto gift did you give that the recipient loved? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

At least one study has shown that people tend to gain weight on vacations - and that’s adults who take a vacation from work, not kids out of school for the summer. Even though people often walk around more on vacation, that doesn’t make up for all the extra food they eat. Other research confirms that people don’t compensate well for occasional splurges: most of us assume that the extra food will just kind of disappear on its own and they expect post-vacation weight loss to happen way faster than it actually does.

It’s not like a few days or a week of overeating has a huge impact on lifetime weight gain or loss - but a splurge vacation twice or three times a year can start adding up. And even worse, it's pretty common for people to go crazy on vacation and then never get back to their Paleo routine afterwards. The vacation splurge just derails all their progress and sets them way back.

For people who can just enjoy a “cheat vacation” and then get right back into it - if that works for you, go ahead and do it! But for people who do better with some diet structure while on vacation, this one’s for you. Check out these 5 tips for staying Paleo, or Paleo-ish on vacation:

1. Plan some amazing Paleo meals in advance.

It’s easier to turn down junk food if you already know you’re having something amazing for dinner. Before you leave, check out some Paleo-friendly restaurants or local dishes and make some plans for something really delicious that you want to eat. Or if you’re doing something like visiting relatives, plan for some Paleo foods that you want to make and share.

The key here is to focus on what you can have and are excited about, not what you can’t have. Don’t just go in thinking about all of the foods you need to resist - go in with specific plans that you’re excited and happy about. It’s a vacation; it’s supposed to be fun! The only difference on Paleo is that you have to put in a little more effort to make your own fun. A few minutes of planning beforehand can yield a surprising number of delicious things just about anywhere.

If you want to indulge in some non-Paleo treats, it can be helpful to plan those too, just to make sure the amount of non-Paleo food is still consistent with your goals and within the limits that you're comfortable with.

2. Bring your own snacks

It’s not always easy to plan mealtimes in a strange place, especially if you’re totally thrown off your normal schedule, and double especially if you’re in a hotel room without access to a kitchen. Don’t let logistical problems throw you off your Paleo game: bring lots of snacks (or stock up as soon as you get to your destination) and stash them everywhere. Channel your inner squirrel. Think: nuts, trail mix, dried fruit, Paleo bars, jerky (beef or turkey), hard-boiled eggs if you have a fridge, snack packs of salami, cheese sticks if you do dairy, etc.

Even if you do want to sample some non-Paleo local delicacies, don't waste those on random snacks you eat on the subway because it's still an hour and a half until dinner. Bring healthy Paleo snacks for those hunger emergencies and enjoy the non-Paleo treats when you have time to savor them.

3. Challenge yourself to find non-food activities.

Think about what you’re excited to do on vacation - what are all the really neat things you can’t wait to see or try? Can you find some other really cool hidden gems that you never would have discovered otherwise? Make it into a challenge for yourself - what can you discover that you might never have found otherwise?

Having activities that don’t involve food at all gives you a little mental break because you’re physically removed from any temptation, so no need to expend any mental energy resisting it or negotiating with it. Out of sight, out of mind!

There are endless things to do that aren’t food-oriented; just a couple of ideas:

• Go for a walk somewhere pretty (in big cities, think: public gardens, architecture tours, etc.)
• Tour a museum or historical site - weird local museums can be amazing.
• See a concert or a play.
• Get your hair/nails done.
• Go shopping or window-shopping

Anything that’s engaging and exciting and not food-related is a great way to focus on the fun parts of the vacation and keep your mind off food-related temptation.

4. Keep working out

This is not because workouts burn a lot of calories that make up for eating all the pasta in Florence. Exercise really doesn’t burn that many calories, unfortunately - it’s a lot easier to eat 1,000 calories for dinner than to burn 1,000 calories in the gym.

But what exercise can do is…

• Put you in a better mood - it’s actually backed by research that feeling down or depressed is a huge factor in bad food choices. If you’re feeling energized and strong, it’s just easier to stay at the top of your game with eating well.
• Help control sugar cravings - always super helpful.
• Improve metabolic health - just in case a plate of waffles or a piece of chocolate cake is irresistibly calling your name, it’s good to have your carb metabolism up to speed

If you need inspiration for vacation workouts, why not try…

• In cities: parkrun (free 5k runs), November Project workouts (free public workouts), running groups (usually free, mileage varies), day passes for local gyms (cost varies), bikeshare or rental bike services (cost varies). Or just go for a run or bike ride around the city and see the sights from a new perspective.
• In rural areas: hiking, trail running, swimming, canoeing/kayaking, bike rides - anything that gets you outside in a new and exciting environment

There are also hundreds of free online workouts that you can do in a hotel room or anywhere else, but it’s always nice to get out and see the place you’re visiting while you get your workout in!

5. Leave some freezer meals at home before you go

If you ended up not eating exactly the way you wanted to eat on vacation, the best time to break that pattern and get back into your routine is the minute you get back home. And if you did everything right and made great choices the whole time, the best time to keep up that momentum is...the minute you get back home!

One very simple step you can take to make this happen: leave a few frozen meals at home. Don’t come home to an empty fridge! If you get home exhausted from your vacation, and then you have to shop and cook right away, chances are HUGE that you’ll just be too exhausted, too stressed, or too busy to do it. This is a recipe for more takeout and/or restaurant meals, and probably not the healthiest options, since nobody makes their best choices when they’re tired and stressed.

If you have food in your freezer all ready to go, then the easy, lazy, “too-stressed-to-make good choices” choice is just shoving it in the microwave and heating it up. This really bumps up your chances of jumping right back into nutritious, Paleo meals as soon as you get back.

Here’s a super quick freezer-meal menu to prep before you leave. Choose from the below depending what you need:

• Easy post-travel meal: chili. Freeze in individual servings OR in larger containers that will feed the whole household.
• Breakfast the next day: try this frittata (keto version here)
• Lunch to pack for work/school the next day: slow-cooker curry chicken (keto version here)
• Random snacks, midnight munchies, etc. - just grab some Paleo-friendly trail mix or bars from the store and leave them on the counter. Packing for a trip is already hectic enough; no need to stress about homemade snack food unless you want to.

What’s your best tip?

Again - nobody is saying that anyone has to be 100% Paleo on vacation. Some people want to stay totally strict so they can feel healthy and enjoy their vacation more. Other people make planned indulgences and mostly stick to Paleo. Other folks just go hog wild and get right back into it when they get home. But that approach doesn’t work for everyone. Some people actually have a better time on vacation if they do pay attention to their diet

Got a favorite technique for staying healthy through a vacation? Do you give yourself a break or try your best to keep up with your normal Paleo way of eating? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Dairy can be keto-friendly and it’s a Paleo gray area, but there are a lot of people who just feel better without it. For those folks, coconut milk is often the first choice of substitutes - but if you’ve never cooked with it, coconut milk can be confusing.

Nutrition basics

Coconut milk is mostly fat, with a little bit of protein and a few carbs. It's pretty keto-friendly in reasonable amounts (unless you’re getting a sweetened type, which you shouldn’t).

Unlike cow’s milk, coconut milk has almost no calcium. If you’re hunting for a calcium source, check out these Paleo-friendly, non-dairy meals.

Types of coconut milk (have this part open on your phone at the store)

Just like cow’s milk, coconut milk has options. Not quite as many options, luckily for all of our sanity, but there are a couple choices to make.

The short version: get unsweetened, regular (not lite), canned coconut milk unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise.

• Sweetened vs. unsweetened - always get unsweetened. If you need a sweetener, you can add a Paleo one at home.
• Regular vs. lite - always get regular. Lite coconut milk is just regular coconut milk that’s been diluted with water. Usually, it’s the same price per can or only a few cents cheaper, so you’re actually getting less coconut milk for your dollar. If you need your coconut milk diluted, you can add water for free at home. If you don't use the whole can of full-fat coconut milk, you can just freeze whatever's left and then thaw and use it as necessary.
• Canned vs. boxed - in principle, it doesn’t really matter, but in practice, the coconut milk in boxes often have a lot of gross stabilizers and preservatives to make them shelf-stable at room temperature. Check the ingredients list carefully: if the ingredients are all right, then either canned or boxed is equally good, but in practice, you’re more likely to get decent ingredients with the canned.
• Coconut cream vs. coconut milk - get coconut cream if you want more of a whipped cream/heavy cream experience. Usually this would be for a dessert. Get coconut milk for anything else. (e.g., curries, stews, soups, hot chocolate)

Canned coconut milk should be in the middle aisles, sometimes with the powdered/canned milk and sometimes with the Asian food.

Now, how do you cook with it?

Cooking with coconut milk

Unfortunately, you can’t just substitute coconut milk 1:1 for “regular” milk in all recipes. It doesn’t have the same proteins and sugars as cow’s milk, so for finicky things like baking, it just won’t work in exactly the same way. Also, in some applications, it doesn’t taste quite right - you wouldn’t sit down and drink a big glass of it, and most people wouldn’t pour it over cereal. But once you know how to work with it, it’s pretty low-maintenance and extremely delicious.

What can you cook with coconut milk?

Soups, curries, and stews - coconut milk is an amazing base liquid for all kinds of soups - if you want a warmer, richer, creamier taste, just throw in a can of coconut milk and enjoy! Try it in...

• Curries - like this keto-friendly chicken curry or curried cauliflower and kale soup. Or try this coconut curry soup.
• Pureed soups - where you might normally use cream or milk, just throw in coconut milk instead. Try it in this zucchini soup with sweet potato scoops of creamy asparagus soup.
• "Cream of _____ soup” - if you’re missing cream of broccoli or cream of spinach soup, go right ahead and make some, no dairy required.

Coconut milk has a mild, creamy flavor that adds a rich undertone to any kind of soup or stew you put it in. And it’s super easy to use.

Almost any cut of meat - coconut milk is a great cooking liquid for meat because it adds a great flavor and goes with almost any type of seasoning. Try using it to braise lean cuts like pork loin. Or use coconut milk as a combination cooking liquid and flavor delivery vehicle for chicken drumsticks, coconut cajun pork chops, slow-cooker coconut-ginger chicken, or even coconut curry shrimp.

Sauces and dressings - it’s easy to under-appreciate the dressings aisle of the grocery store until you go Paleo and suddenly your options narrow down dramatically. Even with the explosion of “real food” condiments in recent years, it’s still sometimes hard to find what you need, especially at an affordable price.

Coconut milk can substitute for dairy ingredients in all kinds of sauces and dressings. Check out some recipes:

• This grilled chicken recipe, featuring a buttermilk dressing made with coconut milk
• Chicken with coconut-mango sauce
• AIP grilled salmon with avocado-coconut sauce
• Mediterranean-style chicken with coconut dill sauce
• The coconut dressing for this chicken butternut salad

Desserts - who doesn’t love a good Paleo dessert. Paleo baking doesn’t use coconut milk the same way that “regular” baking uses cow’s milk, but there’s no reason to miss out on that delicious richness in all kinds of desserts, like...

• Coconut milk hot chocolate
• Coconut tapioca pudding
• Paleo eggnog
• Paleo carrot cake (for this one, you’d want to buy coconut cream instead of coconut milk).
• Caramel apple chia parfaits

Coconut cream also makes a great topping for Paleo cake, scones, or other delicacies.

Miscellaneous cooking notes

A few extra tips and tricks:

• It's normal for coconut milk to separate into two layers, with a thicker layer of cream at the top of the can and a thinner layer of watery coconut milk below. If you want the cream separately, this is perfect; if you don't, just shake the can before opening or stir it after opening to re-mix the two halves.
• Coconut milk freezes well. If you only use half a can, go ahead and freeze the leftovers.
• Not everyone reacts well to coconut milk. Some people are allergic to coconut; other people just don't tolerate it. If you're in this camp, check out other dairy alternatives like almond milk - no point in forcing the coconut issue if your body isn't happy with it.

How do you use coconut milk?

Got a favorite recipe? A tip for cooking with coconut milk/coconut cream? Share on Facebook or Twitter!

Paleo is already a lot of cooking - who wants to cook twice? But what else can you do if your spouse or kids refuse to eat your “weird diet food” and won’t give up on bread and sugar?

Here are 6 meals that keep everyone happy without double-cooking: you can swap different components of the meal in and out so everyone gets what they want - and only what they want. We’ve also separated out the Paleo-friendly starches, so if low-carb or keto Paleo is your thing, you can easily skip them.

None of these suggestions involve expecting non-Paleo spouses or kids to enjoy cauliflower “rice,” chicken breast as a pizza crust, or vegetables in any other place where they’d normally have grains. If your family will go for that type of substitution, great! But a lot of people just won’t do it: with these recipes, your non-Paleo loved ones can eat “normal” food that they’re used to eating, while you enjoy a Paleo meal, and maybe even get them curious about this new way of eating...

1. Burgers On the Grill

Summer is just around the corner, and those long, warm evenings along with it - what’s more fun on a beautiful night than heading outside to cook on the grill?

Protein (Paleo and keto-friendly): Keto kafta burgers - these Greek-style burgers take just a few minutes on the grill

Vegetable (Paleo): Creamy cucumber and chive salad - crunchy cucumbers and radishes make this a great complement to a fat-heavy kafta burger, plus you can prep it ahead and leave it in the fridge until you’re ready to eat. As an alternative, if you want vegetables off the grill as well, here’s a recipe for grilled mixed vegetables that’s easily adaptable to any family’s preferences.

Starch (Paleo): Mustard and bacon potato salad - another make-ahead recipe that will wait happily in the fridge until dinner time.

Non-Paleo Add-On: Grilled sweet corn with plenty of butter. This takes almost no extra time or effort to prepare, and it’s a whole lot healthier than most kinds of grain-based sides your family could be eating. Sure, the grain part isn’t ideal, but at least it’s pretty unprocessed and not full of added sugars.

You can also grab a package of "normal" buns for the kafta burgers - just let your non-Paleo loved ones take them as they want them. At least it doesn’t add anything to your total cooking time.

2. Breakfast Buffet

For an ordinary breakfast, the dining experience usually takes a back seat to the scramble to get everyone fed and out the door on time. But then there are your Easter Sundays. Your birthday brunches. Your Mother’s Days and Father’s Days and just general special occasions when we all slow down a bit and really enjoy the meal. Here’s a suggestion for those days:

Protein (Paleo and keto-friendly): Fancy deviled eggs or Eggs Benedict in ham cups.

Vegetable (Paleo): Dijon and pecan asparagus, or this light recipe for baked asparagus with strawberries and raspberries. If you’re eating with non-Paleo companions who aren’t used to the vegetables-at-breakfast idea, fresh fruit or fruit salad is a more “normal” alternative to get more nutrient-dense plant foods into the meal.

Starch (Paleo): Paleo bread - make some toast and throw some butter and honey on top, or even try some homemade jam. Special breakfasts are exactly the kind of occasion that Paleo bread was made for - you can indulge in a treat and share a meal with loved ones in the spirit of eating together, without worrying about the health consequences.

Non-Paleo Add-On: If you personally aren’t into the Paleo bread gig, you could just offer “regular” bread or English muffins here, to save the effort of baking special Paleo bread for people who would be just as happy with a bag off the shelf. Biscuits with gravy would be nice if you really like your fellow eaters and want to indulge their non-Paleo appetites. Alternately, some kind of sweet lemon dessert goes well with a special brunch, and you can save time again by buying one at a bakery instead of cooking yourself.

3. Slow-Cooker Weeknight Dinner

A slow-cooker is an invaluable tool for any time-strapped cook, but a lot of slow-cooker meals involve noodles or rice thrown right in with everything else, so there's no opportunity to pick out the Paleo parts. Instead, try using the slow-cooker to make just the part that everyone eats, and then lean on sides and add-ons that you can make ahead or buy pre-made.

Protein (Paleo): Slow-cooker barbecue ribs - a big crowd-pleaser, especially with kids, and easy to throw in and forget about until it’s dinner time.

Vegetable (Paleo): Coleslaw with apples and poppy seeds - make it ahead and refrigerate as long as you like before it’s time to eat. If you need something lower-carb, try this keto coleslaw recipe instead!

Starch (Paleo): Sweet potato hash browns or Chipotle glazed sweet potato fries

Non-Paleo Add-On: Fresh cornbread - if you can get fresh-baked cornbread from a good bakery, it makes a great starchy side for barbecue anything and doesn’t add a lot of cooking time/effort. Hush puppies are another option if you want to put in the work to make them.

4. Spaghetti and Meatballs

Protein (Paleo and keto-friendly): Meatballs with marinara sauce (chicken version or classic beef/pork version)

Vegetable (Paleo and keto-friendly): Sauteed garlic broccolini - this vegetable can be tossed with spaghetti noodles for those who eat them, but for those who don’t, it works great as a side for the meatballs. The garlic flavor goes perfectly with meatballs and marinara!

Starch (Paleo): Garlic and herb roasted butternut squash (or replace with any other squash of your choice; you can also substitute carrots or parsnips if squash isn’t in season).

Non-Paleo Add-On: Wheat pasta - it takes only a couple of minutes on the stovetop to make a big pot of “normal” spaghetti for those who insist on it - toss some broccolini with it for a bit of extra nutritional content.

5. Steak Dinner Extraordinaire

This one is a bit higher-budget, but it just goes to show: a lot of the food we think of as luxury food is actually pretty Paleo-friendly. This dinner would be totally complete without the non-Paleo side, and it’s something most of us would expect as a treat!

Protein & Vegetable (Paleo and keto-friendly): Peppercorn steaks with roasted asparagus & shiitake mushrooms - this recipe delivers a lot of flavor in just a few minutes of cook time. As written, it does use both the oven and the grill, but you could also use a stovetop grill or cook your steaks in a skillet using your favorite method.

Starch (Paleo): Olive oil baked potatoes - for extra delicious skin, rub olive oil over the outside of each potato before baking. Toppings are your choice! White potatoes are perfectly Paleo-friendly, but you can also substitute sweet potatoes if you prefer them.

Non-Paleo Add-On: If you even need anything else, nice crusty dinner rolls, steaming hot, with lots of butter.

6. Asian-Inspired Better-Than-Takeout

The temptation to order takeout after a long day can be strong, especially if you’re staring down the prospect of cooking one meal for yourself and one for everyone else.

Protein & Vegetable (Paleo and keto-friendly): Simple Asian beef stir-fry - this super-fast meal gives you meat and vegetables all in one pan. Want more veg? How about some ginger bok choy as well?

Starch (Paleo): Bake some Okinawan sweet potatoes (these are purple on the outside and creamy pale yellow or white on the inside - you can get them at Whole Foods and similarly fancy grocery stores). Substitute boniato if that’s easier, or just roast regular sweet potatoes with some five-spice powder or chili pepper flakes.

Non-Paleo Add-On: White rice is the classic choice here - it barely takes any time to whip up a pot. Jazz it up with some rice vinegar, ginger, green onions, and soy sauce (or coconut aminos if your non-Paleo eaters are still gluten free).

How do you swing it?

What’s your favorite dinner to cook for a mixed group - without cooking two whole separate dinners? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Not all people on keto diets eat cheese - and that’s totally fine! If you can’t tolerate dairy, here are some dairy-free cheese substitutes to consider. But if dairy sits well with you, then it can add some variety and nutrition to an otherwise restrictive keto diet. And one of the most beloved forms of dairy is cheese.

Cheese is the all-purpose keto replacement for crunchy-salty snacks. You can make it into puffy snack bites, crisps, pizza crust, ooey-gooey dip, and all-purpose high-fat deliciousness. But not all cheese is keto-approved - some kinds of cheese actually do have a significant number of carbs. And there are a few really great kinds with very few carbs that many people aren't aware of.

Here are 8 kinds of cheese that work great in keto or low-carb diets. Note that all the carb counts are both total carbs and net carbs, since none of these cheeses have any fiber.

1. Halloumi

Claim to fame: Halloumi is known as “grilling cheese” because...you can grill it! It’s pretty hard and it doesn’t melt as easily as softer cheeses like mozzarella and brie. That means you can use it a lot like meat in a culinary sense, to add some variety to the summer menu.

Carbs per serving: 0-1 grams of carbs per 1 ounce, along with about 6 grams of protein and 7 grams of fat.

Use it in… grilled skewers, along with meat and low-carb vegetables. You can also grill slices of halloumi and toss them over salad, maybe with some nice olive oil and fresh tomatoes.

2. Feta Cheese

Claim to fame: Feta is made of goat’s milk, which can make it easier on the stomach even for people who have trouble with cow’s milk cheese.

Carbs per serving: Per ¼ cup of crumbled feta cheese, 1.5 grams of carbs (none of that is fiber, so it’s 1.5 grams net). Per ¼ cup, you’ll also get 4 grams of protein and 6 grams of fat.

Use it in… These Greek-style burgers - or any Mediterranean-inspired salad, like this one.

3. Brie Cheese

Claim to fame: Brie cheese is really high in fat, and also melty and delicious on just about anything.

Carbs per serving: Per 1 ounce, 0.1 grams of carbs, along with 6 grams of protein and 8 grams of fat.

Use it in… eat brie with slices of hard sausage as a snack or appetizer - or melt it over a frittata or other baked egg dish.

If you’re not doing keto, you could also eat brie with apple slices, or with gluten-free/Paleo crackers.

4. Gruyere Cheese

Claim to fame: Delicious with eggs; very close to 0 grams of carbs. What more could you want in a cheese?

Carbs per serving: Per 1 ounce, 0.1 grams of carbs, along with 8.5 grams of protein and 9 grams of fat.

Use it in… Oven omelets, egg bakes, frittatas, and other egg dishes. For example, toss it in these!

5. Cream cheese

Claim to fame: Cream cheese has an almost sweet flavor to it, which makes it ideal for low-carb, high-fat desserts. It’s the star in a lot of keto dessert recipes.

Carbs per serving: Per 2 tbsp. 1.6 grams of carbs, along with 2 grams of protein and 10 grams of fat.

Use it in… Keto baking (as the main ingredient in keto cheesecake, or to add heaviness/moistness to other keto treats). You can also use it to make savory foods - like breakfast pinwheels with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and arugula.

6. Romano cheese

Claim to fame: Romano cheese is tasty in a lot of the same places you’d use Parmesan - it’s a hard, grater-friendly cheese that tastes delicious over Italian food and in salads. In fact, you’ll often see Parmesan/Romano (or Parmesan/Romano/Asiago) blends available with the Parmesan. But Romano is lower in carbs, making it preferable for keto diets where every carb counts.

Carbs per serving: Per ¼ cup of shredded Romano, about 1 gram of carbs, along with about 9 grams of protein and 7 grams of fat. That makes Romano slightly easier on the carb limits than Parmesan, which has about 3.5 grams of carbs (along with 7 grams of protein and 7 grams of fat) for the same amount of cheese. If you’re sticking to a strict, 20-gram net carb limit for keto, cutting down by even 2.5 grams can help a surprising amount!

Use it in… low-carb “pasta” made with spaghetti squash - like this recipe or this one. Or sprinkle it over Paleo pizza for that special finishing touch.

7. Paneer

Claim to fame: Paneer is a staple cheese in Indian food - if you head out to an Indian restaurant, you’ll probably see saag paneer (spinach with fried paneer), mattar paneer (peas and paneer with a tomato sauce), and paneer tikka masala (paneer in a spicy curry sauce).

Carbs per serving: Per roughly a 1-inch cube, 1 gram of carbs, along with 6 grams of protein and 7 grams of fat.

Use it in… Curry, and all kinds of other delicious Indian/southeast Asian dishes. Fry it and serve on top of curry vegetables - yum!

8. Cheese Curds

Claim to fame: Cheese curds might be familiar as one part of poutine, but they’re tasty low-carb snacks in their own right (although you’ll have to hold the fries).

Carbs per serving: 0-1, depending on the brand - but note that this is for the plain curds only. If you pour gravy on top of them, that’s extra, and sadly the curds in a big plate of poutine have no power to suck all the carbs out of the fries. Also beware of packaged flavored cheese curds in the store: the flavorings probably add some carbs.

Use them in...Make a keto-friendly breading out of almond meal and some egg, coat them, and fry them. Or throw them in at the very end of the cooking period with any kind of roasted vegetables, like broccoli or cauliflower. Once the vegetables are basically done, transfer them to a casserole dish, add the curds on top, put it all back in the oven just until the cheese gets melty, and dig in!

Higher-carb cheeses: use caution with these

We’re not saying don’t eat them, but be aware of how much you’re eating when you dig into some higher-carb cheeses like…

• Labneh and similar yogurt cheeses: they can often have 4-5 grams per serving, depending on the brand and exact style.
• Cottage cheese: per half a cup, this can have 5-6 grams of carbs.

As a general rule, go for full-fat versions of cheeses where possible, and watch out for packaged shredded cheeses: some of them have anti-caking agents that add carbs to the total. If in doubt, it’s safer to shred your cheese yourself at home.

What kinds of cheese do you like in your low-carb/keto diet? How do you use them? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!