Recipes

Slanker's "Contemporay Caveman Cuisine" Approach

There seem to be as many dietary approaches as there are people in the world.  While most of them tout their specific health benefits and follow specific dietary guidelines, we have not found any single blanket approach that seems to satisfy all the basic needs for creating good health and building a strong immune system.  What we do instead of blindly following any "conventional" approace is to evaluate each food on its own merits to decide what to eat or what to avoid.

The number one thing we avoid is sugar (in any form) and high-glycemic foods (this eliminates many fruits).  When we need a bit of sweetener, we use Stevia.  One must choose Stevia carefully as the commercial Stevia products found in major retail stores are not any improvement over traditional sugar!

Next in importance is the balance of essential Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids.  The optimum balance should be 1:1 but, in fact, most foods in our conventional system are closer to 20:1.   This imbalance leaves a gapping lack of Omega-3s that results in ill-health for many Americans. Notice how "Omega-3" is now highly advertised because finally people are taking notice of the imbalance.  We contend that it is not smart to simply pop some Omega-3 capsules because the rest of what one eats will skew the balance too far one way or the other.  The best way to get any nutrients is always through food, not pills, anyway.

Next we look at how many nutrients are present in a food and we try to eat foods that are high in nutrient value rather than empty, "filler" foods with little nutritional value.

Some Paleo and Caveman diets restrict all dairy.  While we don't ever drink milk, we sometimes include a small amount of dairy in moderation, mostly grass-fed butter, grass-fed cheese, and yogurt (although finding grass-fed yogurt is more of a challenge).  We don't consider any of these dairy products as a food staple.  The amounts of cheese, yogurt and butter we consume on occasion are small and don't seem to have any negative impact on our systems.

Beans are usually prohibited on Paleo diets, mostly because they must be cooked to be safe.  While we don't eat beans very often, we do on occasion fix a pot or make some baked beans, mostly to add variety to our menus.  Even then, we check the type of bean (see Food Analysis) so we know which kind to eat or not.

Our regular diet consists of:

    Breakfast: sausage, bacon and eggs with coffee (may sweeten with Stevia; no cream or commercial creamer)
    Lunch: lunch meat or whatever was leftover from dinner the night before
    Dinner: a larger portion of meat (steak, roast, meatloaf, burgers, fish, etc.) and a vegetable (either a salad or a cooked vegetable)

We sometimes enjoy a glass of wine or a mixed drink with dinner.  When we have company, we usually offer a "caveman" dessert.  Otherwise, we mostly eat meat and vegetables.

Some of our friends think that it must be really bland to eat like we do but that is very far from the truth.  Our taste buds are nearly always happy and we don't have to deal with guilt or the negative results of eating food not fit for human consumption!