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I recently read an article on an NPR blog by biological anthropologist Barbara King called “The Paleo-Diet: Not The Way To A Healthy Future“. While I disagree with what she references about the diet from a health standpoint (she references this US News article which has an excellent rebuttal by Dr. Loren Cordain), I do appreciate that she recognizes that many proponents of the paleo-diet think hard about lifestyle and fitness choices in addition to food:
“When I’ve interacted online with paleo-diet fans, though, I’ve found the great majority to be measured and thoughtful.”
This has largely been my experience with the paleo community as well. King then touches on something that I really agree with, and I think is central to the core idea of this blog. She goes on to say:
“With them (paleo-dieters), I worried aloud about the consequences of urging even more carnivory than we’ve already got. Largely, but not 100 percent, a vegetarian, I don’t tell others what to eat. But the paleo-movement seems to doom (even if unintentionally) more animals to life and death in factory farms. A greater percentage of grain crops would also be diverted to rich countries’ animals and away from poor countries’ people.
What I learned is that some paleo-dieters reject the eating of animals from factory farms. Some don’t eat much meat at all, focusing instead on avoiding grains and sugary foods. So no one should dismiss these people as blind fanatics…”
This is an excellent point. Being on the paleo-diet does not mean a licence to eat as much crappy meat or as many bacon-wrapped things as we can imagine. I think that most of us, regardless of our thoughtfulness or intentions about food, fall victim to that sentiment from time to time. Remember that foods that are high in fat are energy-dense. It’s also about making sure that foods we eat are high-quality. This means eating local pasture-raised meats as much as possible. For most people, because of the higher price, this means eating less meat. That’s okay. Don’t be afraid to round out meat dishes with a double-serving of vegetables. As the paleo-diet becomes more and more mainstream, it is especially important to keep this all in mind when spreading the word.
That all being said, it lead me to wonder, how much meat is too much meat? That’s probably a tough question to answer. It maybe more appropriate to ask myself, how much meat is too little meat? To try to answer that, I’ve decided to become a “paleo-vegetarian” for a week. I know a week isn’t very long, but what I hope to be able to get a hint of in this amount of time is:
- Are my protein requirements easily met? This is many people’s, including my own biggest concern especially as someone who does frequent weightlifting.
- How does my energy consumption (carbohydrate and total) differ from my typical paleo diet?
- How does my fat consumption/breakdown differ from my typical paleo diet?
- Is this a sustainable long-term lifestyle?
Some of the ground-rules:
- I will try to follow a typical paleo-diet, avoiding meat and fish.
- I will avoid soy, beans and quinoa. I only mention this in addition to 1. because many vegetarians acquire protein from these specific sources.
- I will allow eggs.
- I will allow a small amount of dairy in the form of raw cheese and grass-fed butter.
- I will not take supplements of any kind, including protein (soy, whey or otherwise).
- I will eat dinner leftovers for lunch as I usually do, but I will not repeat any dinner meal more than once.
Sunday May 6, 2012
What I have learned so far is that planning my meals for a week in advance took me about three times as long as it usually does. I will not even try to consider a “paleo-vegan” experiment. There are a few, but not a lot resources on the internet for paleo-vegetarians. It seems that many people and almost all “paleo-vegans” have to make a compromise somewhere (eating soy, legumes, quinoa, etc…).
Fennel and Orange Salad
Roasted Tomato and Fennel Soup
Breakfast: Spinach and veggie omelette (2 eggs).
Lunch: Steamed artichoke with grass-fed butter.
Dinner: Fennel and orange salad and roasted fennel soup.
Other: Small piece of 85% dark chocolate and 2 glasses of red wine.
Total Calorie Estimate: 1400
Total Fat Estimate (g): 95
Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): 70
Total Protein Estimate (g): 40
Monday May 7, 2012
Did CrossFit today. PR’d on a 20 rep max back squat. Felt pretty good today and the thai veggie curry was awesome. Saved some leftover veggies sautéed in coconut oil for an omelette later on in the week.
Thai Veggie Curry
Breakfast: Spinach and ricotta omelette (2 eggs).
Lunch: Fennel and orange salad and roasted fennel soup.
Dinner: Thai veggie curry.
Other:
Total Calorie Estimate: 1250
Total Fat Estimate (g): 80
Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): 90
Total Protein Estimate (g): 50
Tuesday May 8, 2012
Worked from home today. I was really excited to do CrossFit today but I ended up getting on a roll with writing and missed out. Felt pretty good all day but was tired a little earlier than normally.
Breakfast: Berry smoothie.
Lunch: Baked sweet potato with sautéed spinach and fried egg.
Dinner: Fresh mozzarella and tomato salad with spinach walnut pesto and roasted tomato and fennel soup.
Other:
Total Calorie Estimate: 1500
Total Fat Estimate (g): 90
Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): 110
Total Protein Estimate (g): 60
Wednesday May 9, 2012
Okay so today I felt pretty terrible all day. Maybe it’s the lack of human interaction. My whole research group (including Jacquie) are at a meeting and it’s just me and Morley this week. Maybe it’s the weather. It has been stormy all day. Maybe it’s the diet.
I got up at about 6:30 to get Morley a walk to get into work. The breakfast smoothie lasted me until about 9:30 when I got painfully hungry. To be fair, this breakfast makes me feel this way most of the time. I feel worse mid-morning than if I had nothing at all. The only modification I made is that I usually put a bit of whey powder in which I left out this week. I ate my lunch around 10:30 and was pretty hungry again around 3:00 (not surprisingly). I went ahead and had a boiled egg and some raw cashews. That helped but I still had to drag myself to CrossFit. At the beginning of the workout I felt pretty good but by the time I left I was wiped again (more lethargic though and not the normal kind of post-WOD feeling). Maybe just an off day but I also realize I’ve been a bit low on calories, especially for workout days and definitely low on protein. Most of the protein has been from eggs and cheese. I’ll have to work on increasing high-quality protein and energy intake for the rest of the week.
Breakfast: Berry smoothie.
Lunch: Fresh mozzarella and tomato salad with spinach walnut pesto and roasted tomato and fennel soup.
Dinner: Salad with blue cheese, avocado, boiled egg, tomato and raw sunflower seeds.
Other: Boiled egg and raw cashews.
Total Calorie Estimate: 1700
Total Fat Estimate (g): 120
Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): 110
Total Protein Estimate (g): 70
Thursday May 10, 2012
Beautiful sunny day today. I took a full 30 minutes off at lunch time to go sit in the sun at eat lunch.
After work I went out for a few beers and sat in the sun for longer. Talk about dehydration… not good. Anyway, I ended up skipping dinner for tonight… also not good. For that reason I’m giving the nutrition facts of the day a N/A so the totals don’t get screwed up.
Breakfast: Omelette with leftover veggies from veggie curry (before adding the sauce).
Lunch: Thai veggie curry.
Dinner:
Other: Beer.
Total Calorie Estimate: N/A
Total Fat Estimate (g): N/A
Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): N/A
Total Protein Estimate (g): N/A
Friday May 11, 2012
I was really excited about these grilled mushrooms and I was not disappointed. I marinated them in a bit of melted grass-fed butter, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic. I meant to eat one and save one for lunch tomorrow but I ended up eating them both. The problem with mushrooms, even something as hearty as a portobello is that they have almost no nutritional content. 20 calories, 0 g fat and 3 g protein per mushroom. Hit the spot for dinner but I found myself to be hungry pretty soon after.
Breakfast: Omelette with spinach and ricotta.
Lunch: Spinach salad with steamed beets, goat cheese and raw sunflower seeds.
Dinner: Grilled portobello mushrooms with “paleo creamed spinach” (made with coconut milk and a little grass-fed irish cheese).
Other:
Total Calorie Estimate: 1100
Total Fat Estimate (g): 80
Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): 40
Total Protein Estimate (g): 50
Saturday May 13, 2012
So today is the last day of the veg-paleo experiment. I felt pretty awful all day again today, kind of like Wednesday. I did have plenty of sleep. I didn’t get out to exercise today which probably didn’t help.
I felt so bad around dinner time that I contemplated grabbing a 5-hour energy so see if a whack of caffeine and B-vitamins would help put my head in a better place. I didn’t do that though. I ended up working until about midnight tonight while Jacquie was out with some friends and felt a little better after dinner as the night progressed.
I ended up with a couple of significant paleo cheats today worth noting. For lunch I made some spinach and artichoke dip to finally finish up all of our spinach from the CSA (1.5# in the past two weeks and I pretty much took it down solo). I added sour cream, mayo and cream cheese (all full fat) to the dip. I served that with dried zucchini/squash chips I made yesterday but also grabbed a bag of Tostitos to go with it.
Ratatouille for dinner tonight. Jacquie recommended this recipe, which we have made before, that comes from The New Moosewood Cookbook, a collection of a vegetarian/vegan recipes from a wonderful restaurant in Ithica, NY. Many of the recipes are not paleo of course in there is a lot of soy and grain but this one seemed to fit the bill perfectly.
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs and a fresh orange.
Lunch: Spinach and artichoke dip.
Dinner: Ratatouille.
Other:
Total Calorie Estimate: 1900
Total Fat Estimate (g): 120
Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): 170
Total Protein Estimate (g): 50
Nutritional Breakdown
Average Daily Calorie Estimate : 1500
This was significantly below my target of about 2200/day.
Average Daily Total Fat Estimate (g): 100
This was about my target assuming about 40% of calories come from fat in a typical paleo diet (fat = 9 cal/g).
Average Daily Total Carbohydrate Estimate (g): 100
This was a bit less than my target assuming about 25% of calories come from carbohydrate in a paleo diet (carb = 4 cal/g).
Average Daily Total Protein Estimate (g): 50
This was significantly below my target of about 150 g/day.
Conclusions
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not going to reach any concrete scientific verdict on the nutritionally superior diet based on changing my habits for a single week. I’m also extremely biased in that I have generally chosen to eat a paleo diet over a vegetarian (or any other) diet because I am convinced of the nutritional advantages. I also realize that the feasibility will differ from person-to-person.
Returning to the questions that I did hope to answer:
Are my protein requirements easily met?
Clearly not. The correct amounts of protein do vary but assuming someone who does significant weight-training would require ~0.75-1 g/lb of bodyweight/day I fell short by a factor of 3-4 over the course of the week. At a conservative 0.5 g/lb of bodyweight /day I still only came it at about 50%. Even at that, most of my protein was from eggs and cheese leaving me with serious concerns about how a vegan-paleo or even a strict paleo-vegetarian (no dairy) would meet these requirements. Or perhaps more appropriately it answers the question of why there are not many out there.
How does my energy consumption (carbohydrate and total) differ from my typical paleo diet?
My total energy consumption was well below my usual goals. This is obviously because my choices for main dishes mainly comprised less energy-dense foods than normal, while still keeping carbohydrate intake low. I think this is a problem that could fairly easily be remedied by modifying the diet to increase fruit slightly and including a high-quality mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack to curb hunger.
How does my fat consumption/breakdown differ from my typical paleo diet?
Pretty good. This week was right around the paleo diet target. I probably eat a bit more fat when meat is included and for that reason my typical diet could probably stand to cut down on that a little bit. Most of my fat this week came from coconut/olive oil, grass-fed butter and cheese.
Is this a sustainable long-term lifestyle?
Restrictive diets are not sustainable long-term because they allow so little flexibility. Combining them even for a week kind of sucked. Paleo is restrictive in its own sense, but allowing for some flexibility (80/20) makes it sustainable. On the other hand, you don’t hear of many vegetarians who occasionally eat a burger or chicken wings. The fact that I did not feel well for two of the days was also probably not a coincidence. If I had to do it, I would certainly consider adding some other forms of protein (soy, quinoa, high-quality protein powder, etc) as well as experimenting with some supplementation; both of which I have felt to be unnecessary when following a paleo diet. Going back to the original question, how much meat is too little meat? For me, the answer still seems to be greater than zero, although it is not unreasonable to consider some hybrid of paleo and general vegetarian, keeping with some important tenets of a primal diet (local food, little processed food, no sugar, etc) while decreasing meat. For my lifestyle, it seems that some version of the primal diet still is the best way meet nutritional requirements and feel good for the long-term.
