My wife and I have been eating a relatively Paleolithic diet regimen for nearly a year now. Personally, I’ve felt as though I was slipping a little. Having more ice cream treats here, chocolate moose there. Maybe it would be time to recommit to this diet regimen.
After a somewhat Mardi Gras experience Sunday night, I started this morning in earnest with a 14-hour fast, some resistance training, and then bacon and eggs. I snacked a little on sunflower seeds and various other nuts. Then my wife and I had a fun dinner with friends at Pigalle. They were having a sausage fest (ha!) so we partook.
Now, some Paleo aficionados might point out that sausages aren’t quite orthodox Paleo but this was a previous existing engagement so I was obliged to engage. Unfortunately, having had a nap beforehand I was a bit groggy when I arrived at the restaurant so I didn’t quite read the menu thoroughly. I ended up with a dish happily filled with two types of sausage, duck confit, and pork confit, all of it baked in a dish of beans. Beans are definitely verboten! But it was quite good and I mostly ate around the beans. Either way, since our dinner mates were in the Paleo way (and one of them suggested the Paleo 2.0 Challenge of which I am loosely participating) we talked a little shop.
After some talk I realized that Lisa and I are actually pretty strict with our Paleo diet. We don’t eat any grains including rice and corn (though we are willing to make some concessions with them since they don’t contain gluten). We don’t eat beans or other legumes. We also don’t eat sugar, artificial sweeteners, or high fructose corn syrup. We source our meat as best we can going up to farms for meat shares, Whole Foods or farmers markets for grass-finished beef and other ranged farm animals. We eat organ meats on occasion. We recently stopped eating veggies from the nightshade family (a staggeringly large and ubiquitous family of arguably edible plants). In fact, the only thing we do eat regularly that orthodox Paleo adherents don’t eat is dairy.
And there is the rub. We actually do keep a very strict Paleo diet regimen. Even when we treat ourselves we stay within fairly strict guidelines. Our deserts are usually made of coconut milk, cream, or eggs with some sweetening. This is usually once or twice a week and a small serving. Which makes me wonder, am I already doing the Paleo Challenge? Am I needlessly inconveniencing myself by further limiting my food choices in an extremely urban setting like New York City when one or two treats will probably not do any long term damage? What about quality of life? I made compromises this evening eating out with friends that would have sent an orthodox Paleo Dieter reeling, and I was eating with fairly strict Paleo adherents!
I’m going to have to say, yes. I am already a very strict Paleo dieter. The benefits of dairy are very well known (despite the noted objections of PETA, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or Dr. T. Colin Campbell) and I generally limit myself to fermented dairies like full fat yogurt and cheeses and some cream.
But, at the request of some interested parties I’m going to keep this daily log as a way of tracking how much my wife and I spend eating this way. It can seem very extravagant, but I think most people will find they get their full compliment of vitamins and minerals with this diet which saves on expensive supplements. General health and wellbeing will improve which will limit medical expenses and other so-called natural remedies like oils and herbs. The most expensive part of any grocer is the natural supplement section (and Whole Foods is the most expensive!). I haven’t been to that section in nearly a year. I also find that while it seemed I used to spend around $100 per grocery visit now I spend somewhere between $50-70 per visit.
So I am going to do a month long cost assessment. I hope it will be informative.
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I heard a statistic that whatever you save by skipping healthy food, you spend 3x that later on in health costs. Definitely something that I try to think about during the purchase decision.
I’d love to see some documentation, though. It’s all well and good to call out numbers but I wonder if there is some hard data.
I would love to see a real cost/benefit analysis that takes into account lifelong healthcare expenses v. the cost of higher quality foods. I think the conventional wisdom is that a healthy lifestyle with proper whole foods is cheaper than crap plus expensive healthcare costs. My focus will be on the short term since I have some younger friends who don’t make a lot of money but would like to eat more paleo. Tom Naughton of Fathead the Movie seems to think that low quality meats won’t make that much of a difference healthwise. That goes against the Paleo philosophy but he may have some interesting science to back it up.