Nell Stephenson's Blog, page 46

What’s Up, Chuck?

“So you do recommend eating fattier meat?”, a blog reader asked me in an email the other day.

Yes, I do.

Sometimes.

I am not a fan of eating only fatty cuts of meat, no more than I am a fan of only eating skinless, boneless chicken breast.  It’s all about the balance.

Sometimes, buy the grass fed chuck roast and make an incredibly decadent dinner and pay about a quarter of the price you’d pay for filet mignon.

Other times, buy the grass fed filet.

If you’ve been scared away from the fatty cut, don’t be. Give it a try.  It’s as easy as cutting it into cubes, browning them, then adding some chopped veggies, broth and sticking them in the oven to slow cook.

You won’t believe how delectable it is… or that you can eat this on your ‘diet’.  (Do we really need to use that word any more?)

Similarly, sometimes, buy the wild salmon that weighs in at $27.99/pound… and sometimes, buy wild cod, which is less expensive and also contains less fat.

Please don’t think for a minute I’m not recommending fish oil, because I believe we should all be eating fish oil every day, but for purposes of this blog, the point is that we should be balancing it all.

Cost.

Fat content.

And so on.

Paleo is not a low fat approach to eating, nor is it an all fat approach to eating.  If you happen to have a day when you eat leaner proteins during the day, add more avocado, more olive oil or more coconut oil to the meals.

And if you find yourself enjoying a lovely grass fed rib eye, some wild King salmon and several eggs, on that day, you may need less fat from other sources.

Balance.. is key.

 

Got Underripe Fruit? Bananas to the Rescue!

You’ve found the most amazing recipe for an avocado-peach salsa, and you found plenty of both fruits but the peaches were hard as a rock!

What to do?  Rethink the entire plan for dinner?

Not at all! Just grab a few bananas and once you get home, place them side by side inside of a paper bag.

Bananas naturally emit ethylene, which expedites ripening.

Of course, large warehouses and distributors of  fruits sometimes follow suit with the same concept, but in an unnatural way,  by spraying hard, green, sour, unripened fruits with ethylene gas.  Not quite the same, but I’m sure it’s oh-so-cost effective for them.

Unless you’re trying to ripe mass quantities of  fruit (not that this case would make the above a good idea, anyway), you should be fine simply by buying a banana.

Natural, easy and you’ll get to make that fantastic salsa recipe before you know it!

Muscle Milk Contains No Milk, Per the Packaging

I try to keep up with the various sports nutrition products that come up in the market, both so that I can discuss them with clients and also for my own knowledge of what the latest trends are.

The Muscle Milk brand has been around for a while, certainly, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I picked up a bottle in the grocery store after I saw something rather interesting on the packaging.

A line, underneath the product name that stated “Contains No Milk”.

But…it’s called Muscle Milk?

Far from Paleo in any sense of the word, but the reason it caught my attention is that it illustrates the disparity between what we can call items we sell as food and how their name really doesn’t mean anything.

Further, the take away from this is that the next time you see a loaf of bread marked ‘Paleo’ or an energy bar with the same classification, be confident that the chances of it really being suitable to True Paleo are slim to none.

Unless it’s a bunch of kale or a raw pastured chicken… in which case there would be no label anyway!

Think ‘unspoken’ (or perhaps I should write ‘unwritten’!) Paleo!

Kale Powder? How About Kale Power Instead?

I thought I’d seen all the possible permutations of kale- in the form of chips of all flavors, that is, but yesterday at Whole Foods, I saw something new:  kale powder.

Freeze-dried and organic and $20.00 for 2 ounces?

A quick peek at the label touted all its benefits:

Supports healthy detoxification and healthy liver function
A cruciferous powerhouse for supporting healthy cells and DNA
Nourishes eye and skin health
Alkaline properties support healthy pH balance
Maintains healthy bones with plant-based calcium
Rich source of antioxidants and phytonutrients for glowing health and wellness

As well as revealed its low processing affirmations:

Absolutely no fillers, sweeteners, carriers or other unwanted additives
Grown in organically rich soil
Peak harvest of whole plant for optimal nutrition and bioactivity
Patented fresh freeze-dried through an exclusive process to retain its wholesome goodness and freshness
Never unduly subjected to heat, solvents, oxygen, or other harsh processing

Looks clean enough and I don’t have a reason to suggest not using it, except…how about just eating kale?   Fresh, raw organic kale with zero processing offers all the health benefits listed above, and then some and is so versatile you can use it in anything from a salad to a smoothie to a wrap to a sauté.

Fresh is always best…and more cost effective!

Go (Raw) Kale Power!

Welcome Back to School with a Healthy Lunch

We all know it’s a sad state of affairs when we think about the state of school lunches.

But when we see ‘healthy lunch’ ideas touted by what we regard as valid sources of information, it doesn’t really help the situation.

Just yesterday, I received an emailed newsletter entitled 5 Tips to Pack the Perfect School lunch, which, although sounding quite promising, was a real disappointment.

Some ideas included a photo of peanut butter and jelly on white bread with raisins on the side, packaged cheese cubes with crackers and the suggestion to skip juice (yes!) in favor of low fat milk (oh, dear).

While the tip about getting your kids involved in the preparation was a great one, it’s not helpful if you’re only teaching them how to shop for juice boxes and “Lunchables“.

What to do?

Pack your kids’ lunch just the way you’d pack for yourself for the office or for a period of time when you’re going to be away from the house for a long time.

Small, portable containers with crunchy fresh veggies drizzled with olive oil, sliced homemade roast turkey or chicken, whole fresh fruit and perhaps some raw nuts, packed in a thermal tote with an ice pack are all very valid options.

Need help?  Check out my Paleoista Kid’s Plan!

Welcome back to school!

If Only We Didn’t Need Adjectives

Organic blueberries.  Grass-fed beef.  Wild Salmon.

Imagine if real food was just food and we didn’t need to use adjectives?

Sadly, the exact opposite is the case today.

If you walk into a grocery store and buy an apple, just an apple without any descriptives, it’s likely going to be conventionally grown somewhere far away with a thick, waxy coating on it to make it shiny and increase the time to spoilage.

Same goes for steak.  If you just buy ‘a steak’, it’s probably corn-fed from a poor animal raised inhumanely on a feed lot, pumped full of antibiotics and weighing in much heavier than it’s grass-fed counterpart.

Even worse, we have to resort to calling certain foods in our markets, ‘health’ food, which begs the question, how should all the rest of the food be classified? And if it’s not healthy, how is it even still really food?

It’s a normal, daily activity to eat things that are truly no longer food, in the truest sense of the word.  No longer fresh, or nourishing or supportive of the body to grow and keep healthy…not by a long shot.

Rather, so much of what is consumed today does just the opposite, making people overweight, diabetic, achey, tired and sad.

Yes, this may be a bit of an oversimplification and certainly it doesn’t happen overnight, but alas, we want the fix to happen that quickly.

Wherever you are in terms of your state of health and however you feel, take a good look at what you’re eating and how you’re feeling and if you cannot honestly look yourself in the mirror and see the picture of health, before you run to the doctor and ask for a battery of tests, and receive three prescriptions, track your food for a day or two.

Be honest; no one has to see it, and the only one who’ll lose out if you don’t fess up is you.

Start with what you’re putting in your body and if you see anything that’s not really food, start to phase out of it.

The better you feel, the more you’ll swap the not so great choices for the better ones and you may end up in a place where you feel better in a very short period of time on your own… no pills needed!

 

Fresh Figs- Another California Treat

Just like my post yesterday about how nice it is to have access to fresh Rosemary, another fruit I’ve missed is fresh figs.

(It’s almost as though being gone for a while gave me an even greater appreciation for all the fresh produce we have here, year round!).

While we often think of the high sugar content of dried figs, as all dried fruit is more concentrated that their fresh counterpart and therefore higher in sugar, fresh figs (fresh anything!) are lower on the glycemic index scale.

A fresh fig has a glycemic load of 4, while a dried fig ranks in at 26!

Adding a few fresh figs from your tree in the backyard to a salad of arugula, avocado, olive oil and raw walnuts creates a lovely way to start a meal, compared to chomping down a handful of dried figs as a snack, the latter of which would be definite grounds for creating a sugar crash!

In addition to tasting great, figs are also a good source of Vitamin K, potassium and magnesium.

Eat ‘em up now while they’re fresh, rather than waiting for the holidays during which they’re featured in a host of baked concoctions from fruitcake to Christmas pudding, both of which are very, very far from True Paleo.

Rosemary, How I’ve Missed You

One of the things I’ve missed quite  bit during our six month stay, thus far, in NYC, is the abundance of herbs and spices that grow au natural right outside our door of our home in LA.

Being back home now, I can’t tell you how much I relish the delicious smell of rosemary, jasmine and eucalyptus that waft through the air when I walk out into the yard.

In particular, I’ve missed being able to open the kitchen door, snap off a brand of rosemary and throw it into whatever culinary preparation I may have decided to embark upon at any given meal.

Stuffed under the skin of a pastured chicken, added to a tray of yams I’ll bake with coconut oil and garlic to prepare for a long weekend of training or even added to a bouquet of wild flowers are just a few ways I like to use this aromatic shrub.

Did you know it also had therapeutic properties, as do most herbs and spices?

Herbal Bath or Soak
Essential Oil
Salve, Ointment or Balm
Liniment
Bug Repellent Spray
Infusion (herbal “tea”)

It’s also said to improve the memory.

From a landscaping perspective, it is drought tolerant,  easy to grow and pest-resistant. Rosemary can grow quite large and retain attractiveness for many years, can be pruned into formal shapes and low hedges and is easily grown in pots. It tends to spread widely, with a dense and durable texture.

Add some to your garden today if you’re in the proper climate.  It’s an easy thing to grow even for someone without a green thumb (that would be me!)

A Paleo Mix?

With the exception of perhaps a dried spice and herb blend called a ‘seasoning mix’, I’d be really hard pressed to believe any mix of any kind could be Paleo.

Especially a bread mix.

A few weeks back, I wrote about a Paleo Bread Machine and this morning in an email newsletter, there was an announcement of a company who is launching a bread mix, made with almond flour, of course and some other ingredients that are also not Paleo including cider vinegar and salt as well as coconut flour.

It’s not to say that this recipe or this product isn’t a far better option than traditional sandwich bread and in fact, eating something like this can help when one is transitioning from Standard American to Paleo.

The issue I have with it is that if one isn’t familiar with the premise of what Paleo really is, one could easily think that by simply switching from wheat based bread to this brand, or others like it which are simply more along the lines of gluten-free bread rather than a Paleo food, they’re following a Paleo regime.

And they’re not.

Eating bread- any kind of bread – regularly is simply a way to keep the body inflamed.

True Paleo helps the body become less inflamed and eventually not inflamed at all.

Nourishing your body with multi colored veggies, wild proteins and a good measure of fat is the best thing you can possibly do for yourself.

Loading up with almond and coconut flours mixed with vinegar and salt…not so much.

If you’re going in phases, do your best to stick to just that, and phase it out completely.

The nutritional benefits you’ll reap from all the veggies you add to take the place of what fillers might offer don’t even compare.

Pile on the greens!

Avocados Galore

Kudos to Livestrong for another home run.   While the entire piece they published a few days back about avocado wasn’t positioned as being Paleo, there was quite a good selection of recipes that completely fit the bill.

They offered some great ideas, some of which I’ve been doing for a while, like using avocado in a smoothie to create a nice thick drink, or removing the pit and using the cavity to serve your choice of your favorite protein, but others were incredibly creative concepts that were new to me that you’ve simply got to check out.

How about using half an avocado in place of a biscuit to make Eggs Benedict?

Or blending it into a tomato-based puree to create an avocado gazpacho?

Click here to check out the full article; even the not so Paleo recipes can be easily revised to make something tasty that totally fits the bill.