April 7, 2013

Thoughts About Ancestral Eating

Note: I read and enjoy every single comment. At the moment, though, the darn blog isn't letting me reply. My comments disappear into thin air--maybe the universe is trying to tell me something?

I've been somewhat philosophical this weekend, pondering what I/we mean when we say we practice ancestral eating. There are many iterations out there, after all.

I was reading a great blog post over at Paleo for Women and her comments were centered around the recent paleo conference, paleo fx.

Two of her comments caught my eye: eating lots of fruit, and being ashamed of it, and "I suspect the paleo diet’s infatuation with fat with some day be debunked." She wasn't saying fat was bad, by the way, but questioning the assumption that it's somehow holy and the only good body fuel.

Anyhow, I had to laugh when she said she "came out" about loving fruit but still shaded her confessed intake downward--I did that just yesterday! When I wrote my Saturday Brunch post I described my fruit dish as "banana and a mineola orange" rather than "2 bananas and a mineola orange." I definitely eat more fruit than many paleos if their online comments are accurate.

Her other comment, about paleo infatuation with fat, also struck a chord because I'm convinced it's healthy, for me at least, to avoid meals that consist only of high-fat/starch foods. My gut, brain and muscles all perform much better after meals if I eat a combination of food types and densities. On a daily basis, that means my main dish may be meat and/or tubers but the total meal includes greens, low-starch vegetables and/or fruit. If I eat just the meat/tubers my brain and gut just aren't satisfied enough to leave me alone until the next day. I love fatty meat, but it's a bit much without the salad. I enjoy tubers, but I enjoy them more paired with colorful low-starch veggies.

This morning I was not in a mood to cook; I spent my time outside enjoying our beautiful cool Nevada morning. So, I popped 2 nice potatoes into my toaster oven, one sweet and one white, and went back outside.

Since I wanted to go low-prep, I completed my meal plan with banana (just 1 this time) and an orange. When I dished out the sweet potato, which was ready before the white one, I rinsed and added canned green beans. The beans have a pleasant flavor with the yam and make a decent substitute for greens when I'm too lazy busy to make a salad. I might have added broccoli, asparagus or something else low starch instead. Low-starch plants add a nice amount of food volume while diluting the intensity of the tubers/meat. I didn't bother heating the beans; I just put a little butter on the yam, waited for it to melt, then dumped on the beans. I flipped them over after a minute or so and they were nicely warm when I ate them.

When I finished my potatoes--the white one was simply buttered with salt and pepper--I had the banana/orange dish as my dessert.

What works for you? Do you also eat meals of mixed food densities, or do you strongly favor density vs. volume?

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