After my raw food/quasi-Paleo adventure week I got a very nice email from a die-hard Paleolithic diet guy, Don Wiss from PaleloFoodMall.com. We had been eating granola and oats because they don't have gluten, but he let me know that's not Paleolithic. He said it was ok to quote him, and I will because it was informative and his meals are interesting.

"Oats are a grain, and definitely not paleo. The traces of wheat come in as all commerical oats are contaminated with a small amount of wheat. This is why celiacs that want to eat oats will only eat oats that have been specially grown and processed. This includes walking the fields and making sure there is no volunteer wheat from the seeds.

Molasses are sugar, and not paleo. Flax seeds are debatable. Personally I don't consider them paleo. I can't imagine my ancestors collecting and eating the little things. And if you don't grind them are they even digested? For Omega 3s I eat fish several times a week. Usually flounder as it is a small fish, inexpensive and there are no bones.

On my PaleoFoodMall.com page I have collected what I can find for paleo snacks. They are heavy on the fruit. For snack bars I eat some of the Larabars. I have made pemmican in the past to use when traveling. I need to make it again. I live near a bunch of Pakistani take out places and I keep a supply of their chicken kabobs on hand to eat as a snack. And of course nuts, with organic walnuts being a favorite. And dried apricots.

Here is my breakfast (which I'm copying and pasting below):

I make a large breakfast and then only eat most of it, with the rest eaten later. It consists of:

1 1/2 Pakistani kabobs
4 eggs (bought from the farmer)
.15 lb of freshly ground organic walnuts (using oval Krups coffee grinder)
1 cup homemade applesauce
6 oz frozen raspberries (Dole or Wymans)
5 oz frozen Wymans wild blueberries
1 plain coconut yogurt:
http://www.turtlemountain.com/products/coconut_yogurt.html

All in a big pile layered as listed above. (Berries defrosted either partially in the refrigerator overnight, or entirely in the microwave. I use a scale to split the bags of berries up evenly, and knowing the weight allows me to learn the microwave times.)

He also added:

I've been paleo (not raw) for almost 14 years. I do believe fruit should be raw, though my applesauce is of course cooked. And my red meat I barely sear the outside.

Right now Pathmark (in the Metro NYC area) has Australian grass-fed tenderloin beef on sale for $4.88/lb with a club card. Or they did for the sale week ending yesterday. If not this week the sale comes and goes. That is wonderful just barely seared.

I think for all technical purposes the diet we have fallen into our second week around is more Paleo than raw, since we are eating eggs and some meat. But everything other than those things are eaten raw. We feel better than ever and the cravings for sugars and breads and processed foods is starting to subside. We are starting to crave fruit all the time. The next phase of this experiment is to make sure we try to eat seasonally, which is much more difficult when you have lots of kids and you can't rely on potatoes.

I found this really neat pie chart, and I wish I knew the source, but it illustrates the principle behind the whole thing fairly well.