What can you and can you not eat on a Paleo diet? Here’s a rundown. This could be your first Paleo shopping list! We will be using all these items to cook your first 3 Paleo meals!

1 dozen pastured or omega-3 or cage-free eggs
1 pack of bacon
1 large pork chop (or fish steak)
1 beef liver
6 beef marrow bones
1 celery
3 big carrots
1 bunch of radishes
1 head of cauliflower
1 plain unsweetened coconut milk (get the diluted beverage one)
1 bottle of olive oil
1 bottle of unrefined Virgin Coconut oil
1 green salad mix
1 raw & unrefined honey
1 bag of walnuts or pecans
1 medium onion
1 garlic head
1 avocado
1 jar of olives
1 tomato
1 box of berries
1 lemon
1 apple
1 peach
1 butter
1 jar of mustard (if you don’t like it buy 1 more lemon)
1 salt with iodine
1 whole black pepper with grinder
1 oregano

If you spend less than 20-30 minutes in the sun daily, consider supplementing with vitamin D at about 1000 IU. Enough Vitamin D (also K2, magnesium & krill oil), along the bone marrow broths, raw coconut oil spoonfuls, and offal consumption 1-2 times a week, is one of the secrets of Paleo’s success.

Here’s how to use these products you just bought:

Breakfast: Fry two eggs in coconut oil with salt & pepper. Remove the eggs when done, add 4 strips of bacon and fry them until crisp. Cut half an avocado, peel it, slice it (reserve the rest in the fridge unpeeled, in plastic wrap). Serve all of that with 1/4 cup of berries, and a glass of coconut milk beverage, or water.

At 9 AM (once a week only): In a big pot (or slow-cooker) fill it with water, and put in there the beef marrow bones, two washed celery talks, 1 washed & chopped carrot, 1 peeled & chopped onion, 2 peeled cloves of garlic, salt & pepper. Cook with the lid closed, until 6 PM in low heat. Let it cool for an hour or so, add two tablespoons olive oil, and then strain the broth into a big glass jar. Drink a glass of that bone broth with your dinner (eat the marrow itself too, but discard the veggies/bones), and keep the rest of the broth in your fridge. Consume it within one week.

Lunch: Wash the 2 carrots and the radishes, and cut them in 1″ pieces. If radishes’ greens are in good shape & they look fresh, wash these up too and chop them. Place them all in a baking dish, and then drizzle 1 tablespoon of honey on them. Place the beef liver in the middle of that same baking dish (make room). Then add two tablespoons coconut oil, salt & pepper, and 1/4 cup water. Bake at 400F (205 C) for 50 minutes until soft, turning the liver a few times in between. In the meantime, wash and slice the tomato, peel and cut the second half of the avocado in pieces. Add these half of the the green salad mix in a salad bowl, and then pour on the salad some olive oil, black pepper, and half of a washed lemon. Toss the salad, and then put the used half-lemon in the still-cooking bone broth. Enjoy your liver with mustard or some lemon. Have a peach for dessert.

Dinner: Cut half of the cauliflower, and wash it (refrigerate back the rest). Boil it in lots of boiling water, until soft (optionally, add a clove of garlic if you like it garlicky). Strain the water out, add 1 tablespoon of butter, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons coconut milk. Mash the cauliflower with a potato-masher, or use a blender, until it’s pureed. Meanwhile, use a frying pan and add two tablespoons coconut oil in it, the pork chop (or fish), salt & pepper, oregano. Fry in medium heat until cooked through. To prepare dinner’s big salad: add the rest of the greens from the salad mix, some walnuts, peel/seed/slice the apple, and add them all in a salad bowl. Juice some lemon on them, and add olive oil, salt, pepper, and then toss well. Enjoy your dinner, with the still-warm bone broth & marrow, a few olives, and water.

After 2-3 hours of dinner, it’s time to sleep now. Always eat enough during meals so you’re never hungry in between, and never skip breakfast (or you WILL be hungry by 10 AM eating random garbage). There’s no snacking after dinner (or ever), and try to keep the food times constant every day. You can have caffeine-free plain herbal tea at any time though, and of course, water. Smoothies as occasional desserts are ok, as long as all the pulp is in there too.

Tomorrow, if you have left overs (e.g. roasted radishes), you can incorporate these in your breakfast instead of the avocado (microwave them to get them hot again). For your future shopping list consider eating all kinds of allowed veggies (some of them will be a new tasting experience for you), meat/fish/offal, and fruits. Mix and match, the sky’s the limit. Forget real desserts, and breads btw. Nobody should be eating 3 cups of almond flour in a bread/cake form, because you wouldn’t be eating as much almond normally (not even within 2-3 days). Overdosing on that stuff is not good for you, and it’s one of the reasons why grains are such a problem today (too much wheat or corn or rice in everything). Learn to live without these kinds of “processed or complex” recipes. Simplicity is key.

Article is updated below.

The vast majority of the reasons people go to the doctors are preventable. 25% of Westerners for example, have gut issues. Possibly another 50% is about conditions ranging from depression (1 in 10 Americans take dangerous drugs for it), to painful period, to acne, to asthma, to cancer. In my (non-scientific) estimation, 75% of all conditions that drive people to visit doctors can be prevented if these people were to go Paleo/Primal, and most importantly, if they were grown up with such a diet (most current adult patients can only be made asymptomatic on such a diet, but they can’t fully heal, while kids can). Think how much cheaper a free healthcare government program then it would be. Republicans wouldn’t even make such a fuss about it.

This is how my worldview changed in this past month, after my switch to Paleo:

Of course, having everyone feasting on game, pastured meat, organic & local veggies/fruits, and completely ditching grains & beans is not sustainable for 7 billion people. But this does not negate the above reasoning, it just says that we need to limit our numbers on this planet, so we can live healthy lives. Quality, not quantity.

More information on the leaky gut, that you most probably have without knowing it, here.

UPDATE: How to reset your leptin resistance (a master hormone that also regulates cortisol & insulin), and gain your health back (based on Dr Jack Kruse‘s protocol). It is what I follow myself. On this regimen, if you’re overweight you’ll lose weight, if you’re underweight you’ll gain weight:
Rule 1: Never miss breakfast, eat protein with some fat. Avoid carbs if you can.
Rule 2: No snacking at all, but especially after dinner. Timing is important. Eat breakfast between 6-8 AM, lunch between 12-2 PM, and dinner between 6-8 PM. If your day falls differently, then adjust. Meals need to be spread out to give the liver time to use gluconeogenesis again.
Rule 3: Follow the Paleolithic diet explained below, for life. Learn to eat all kinds of veggies (including rare ones), and get used to eating offal & bone broths.
Rule 4: Supplement with a good multi-vitamin. The most important vitamins are D3 (the recommended value is apparently too low at 400IU, especially if you’re not going out in the sun much), K2 MK-4, Magnesium, and DHA/EPA. Eat fermented foods, or get a multi-probiotic, especially if you have gut issues.
Rule 5: Walk. Lift some weights occasionally. No need for heavy exercise.

Bonus: Meditation, especially for those with cortisol problems.

Update 2: The Paelo/Primal/SCD diet food list. Do not count calories, do not eat processed foods, read labels! And remember, Paleo is a diet to get your health back, weight loss is just a natural outcome out of it only IF you’re overweight.

- Drink enough water. Between 2 and 3 liters a day, depending on sex, age and activity. Water is good for you.

- ALL kinds of eatable vegetation, from green leaves to roots, herbs, spices, tubers, mushrooms, squashes etc. Starchy tubers (e.g. sweet potatoes) must be eaten in moderation or after workouts. The ones that are NOT ALLOWED are: potatoes (at least not with skin on), all wheat/grains/corn/rice, beans/soy — and all of their by-products (always read labels of products you buy). Regarding flours, you can use almond and coconut flour, tapioca as a thickener, but even these must be used rarely. Eating 2 cups of almond flour for a pizza dough becomes unhealthy pretty fast too.

- Meat, fish, eggs, shellfish, game. Offal (especially liver), and home-made bone marrow broths must be eaten regularly. Try to achieve a 2:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 by purchasing pastured meat and wild-caught fish.

- All fruits, in some loose moderation. Berries, avocados, olives are the most-suggested fruits, the rest of fruits must be thought of only as a “dessert”. Commercial fruit juices are not allowed, but rarely you could make your own fruit juice or smoothie. These must include all of the fruit’s pulp, not just the sugary juice.

- IF you can tolerate dairy, you can have goat or sheep hard cheese and home-made probiotic lactose-free goat or sheep kefir/yoghurt. Unless you can perfectly tolerate it, avoid cow dairy (its casein is problematic), except for grass-fed butter/ghee and possibly sour cream. Unless you can trust your local raw goat milk, avoid animal milk altogether (coconut milk is ok, soy milk is not ok, almond milk is so-so). Note: home-made kefir is a super-food, and an opinion on goat/sheep dairy being tolerable.

- Good fats: Coconut oil, olive oil, butter, red palm oil, ghee, tallow, lard, duck fat, a bit of nut butter. Vegetable/seed oils (PUFA) are not allowed. Mostly cook with coconut oil, and use olive oil raw in salads.

- Nuts, except peanuts and cashews. Peanuts are NOT nuts, they’re dried beans (although opinion is divided on cashews)! All the rest of nuts are allowed, unsalted and preferably raw — in moderation (they contain lots of phytates and PUFA, so take it easy with nuts & seeds). Especially take it easy with nut butter and nut flours!

- Seeds (in moderation). Squash/pumpkin, pine, and dried watermelon seeds are very nutritious. Quinoa & amaranth seeds are grain-like, and so they aren’t allowed (they contain saponins), but their green leaves are good to eat.

- Honey. It must be local, raw & unfiltered when eaten out of the jar, but it can be a cheaper kind for cooking. You can also sweeten foods with home-made no-added-sugar fruit jam. You can use pure maple syrup, but only in small quantities. All other sweeteners, including sugar, stevia, agave, and all artificial ones are NOT allowed.

- 99% cocoa dark chocolate, in moderation. Don’t worry, after 4-5 weeks on this diet, you’ll be eating such a bitter chocolate without a problem. Your taste buds will regrow!

- Herbal Tea of your choice, decaf green tea. Avoid alcohol & caffeine (especially beer, it’s loaded with gluten). Decaf Kombuscha is a great fermented green tea, chamomile a great herbal tea, and the Greek Mountain Tea is another great one for health (if you can find it).

- Salt of your choice (especially sea salt). Eat sea veggies once or twice a week too, in order to get more iodine.

- Modern veggies/fruits are aggressively selected, and the earth has lost minerals after thousands of years of agriculture, so they’re often poor nutritionally. Consider supplementing with a multi-vitamin one day, and alternating to a D3+K2+Mg+Ca mix and Krill Oil the next day. If you’re doing a Paleo-keto version of the diet, also consider eating beet greens occasionally, and sea veggies more often than usual.

Special Note: If you are not doing a Paleo-ketogenic diet, you could eat lentils after 6 months on the diet, sparingly, but only after you wash them, soak them in lots of water for 12 hours, and then you thoroughly scrub them among them, using your palms. This technique can get rid off most of the dangerous lectins found on lentils. Also, green bean & pea pods are ok to eat. Here’s a list with the top-10 Paleo foods.

When I left Greece for UK in late 1996, I got a bit shocked on the kinds of vegetables British were eating. Sure, I could recognize most, but there were some that I couldn’t. Even after reading their names in the super-market labels they didn’t really sound familiar. Parsnip, turnip, rutabaga (sold in abundance in UK) were completely foreign to me. When I married my lovely French husband in 2001 and moved to the US, I learned to eat a few new things (mostly mushrooms), but still not a whole lot.

It wasn’t until I started the SCD/Paleo diet recently, that I kept visiting my local Farmer’s Market, and I started experimenting with more kinds of vegetables, in order to enrich my now-reduced diet. So I have started eating quite a few new kinds of vegetables, and I couldn’t be happier.

However, while searching for the Greek names of these foods (mostly so I could boast to my mom who eats very limited things), I got literally shocked to see that most of these veggies do grow in Greece, and that ancient Greeks ate them in large quantities! It wasn’t until the Ottoman Empire took over the area and some local foods were simply forgotten, as dishes with different ingredients were promoted as fashionable. The biggest dietary catastrophe though came with the introduction of the potato in the early years of the modern Greek State. Its excessively starchy root was so addictive, that Greeks left behind all the other tubers!

Today, foods that were eaten for thousands of years before, not only are not consumed anymore, but Greeks are not even sure what their Greek names are! Some of them use the same name for different species, and some confuse names that belong to different foods! So I decided to put a list here, and I also edited the Greek Wikipedia about it.

- Parsnip: Παστινάκι, δαυκί, κοκοσούλες.
- Kohlrabi: Γογγύλι.
- Turnip: Ρέβα (some times is wrongly called γογγύλι).
- Rutabaga: Γουλί (some times is wrongly called ρέβα or μέγα-γογγύλι).
- Taro: Κολοκάσι.
- Cilantro: Κόλιανδρο (Greeks still use the seeds, but not the leaves anymore).
- Collard Greens: Κράμβη or λαχανίδες.
- Kale: Λαχανίδες.
- Rape: Λαχανίδες.
- Goosefoot or Lamb’s Quarter: Νένες, αγριόβλητο, χηνοπόδιο.
- Sea vegetables: είδη φυκιών θαλάσσης.
- Quince: Κυδώνι.
- Tarragon: Δρακοντιά, αψιθιά, αρτεμισία.
- Nettles: Τσουκνίδα.
- Cardoon: Αγριαγκινάρα.
- Arugula/rocket: Ρόκα.
- Savory: Θρουμπί.
- Garden Cress: Κάρδαμο.
- Watercress: Κάρδαμο.
- Beet Greens: Κοκκινογουλόφυλλα.
- Centaurea: Αλιβάρβαρα.
- Purslane: Αντράκλα or γλυστρίδα.
- Mustard Greens: Βρούβες.
- Hawthorn/thornapple: Μουρτζιά, κονδομηλιά.
- Gooseberry: Φραγκοστάφυλλο.
- Sorrel: Λάπαθο/λάπατα or ξινήθρα.
- Celery root: Σελινόριζα (Greeks only eat the leaves nowdays).
- Chicory: Κιχώριο or ραδίκι.
- Dandelion: Άγριο ραδίκι, αγριομάρουλο, γαλατσίδα, or πικραλίδα.
- Marjoram: Ματζουράνα (mostly used only as ornamental plant now).
- Sage: Φασκόμηλο.
- Mediterranean Hartwort: Καυκαλίθρα.
- Squash: Κολοκύθες (different types don’t have different names in common language).
- Mâche or corn salad or lamb’s lettuce: Βαλεριανέλλα (Valeriana crinii or valeriana olenea). Apparently it grows in the mountains of my home Epirus, and yet no one eats it or knows about it there?
- Many other kinds of berries are also not eaten anymore, while a number of wild greens that villagers would gather for “spinach pie” are close to getting forgotten since the knowledge is not passed down anymore to the younger generation. I don’t think most women younger than 50 years old anymore know what safe wild greens to gather anymore in my village. And we’re talking for at least another 10-15 edible wild species in my village’s area alone!

And of course, mushrooms (μανιτάρια). I really don’t know why, but most Greeks are avoiding mushrooms like the plague. Every time I visit Epirus there’s this collective FEAR of mushrooms. They wouldn’t buy them to cook with them, and most of them would remove on the side any mushrooms that might happen to be on their ready-made pizza.

Other vegetables, like dill (άνηθος), fennel root (μάραθος, φινόκιο), fresh peas (μπιζέλι), endive (αντίδια), asparagus (σπαράγγια), swiss chard (σέσκουλα), radish (Ραπανάκι), and amaranth leaves (βλήτα) are eaten less and less too! This is so disheartening!

Here is a list of new foods (originating away from Europe) that Greeks could learn to eat:
- Yam: Διοσκορέα or Γιαμ.
- Sweet Potato: Γλυκοπατάτα.
- Japanese Radish or Daikon: Ρεπάνι.
- Hearts of palm: Φοινικόκαρδο.
- Prickly Pear: Φραγκόσυκo.
- Jerusalem Artichoke/Sunchoke: Κονδυλώδης Ηλίανθος or Αγγινάρα της Ιερουσαλήμ.
- Jicama: Χίκαμα
- Bok Choy
- Avocado
And at least another 50 more kinds of fruits and veggies from around the world! But before Greeks move to new foods, I wish they RE-learn to eat their ancient foods that they have forsaken for rice, potatoes, and pasta!

Mom, I’m looking at you.

When I was on a very-low-calorie diet in 2006 (which cost me half my hair), I had constant cravings. I wanted chocolate, cakes, and white rice. I was never big on pasta, pizza or bread, but I loved my donuts, milk chocolate and Indian fragrance rice. So when on a diet, I’d go with artificial sugars or small quantities of high-caloric foods. But this was never satisfying. I managed to stay on this diet for 3 months, cheating every few days.

Now that I’m on the Paleo diet, things are different. Since Paleo brought back my health, I haven’t looked back. I do not crave donuts, chocolates, or rice anymore. I don’t give a damn anymore about grains and high amounts of sugar. I educated myself of their bad health effects and addictiveness, and so I now see them as the enemy.

Honestly, I don’t know why I don’t crave them though. I should be, but I don’t. I think that this is a case of mind power over body. I was willing to do anything to get my health back, so when I finally managed to figure it all out and subsequently become symptom-free, not eating certain foods for the rest of my life was a non-issue anymore. I haven’t cheated at all so far, neither I expect me to. If anything, I feel full most of the time just by eating enough. And I’ve lost 7 lbs so far.

Of course, there were times that my body was asking for some sugar (I was trying to deprive it from sugar on purpose, since I suffer from SIBO-style IBS), so these were the times that I’d simply eat a fruit. It worked every time. If instead I’d eat a teaspoon of honey, I’d feel guilty afterwards (even if the diet allows honey in moderation).

I don’t know if I’m the oddball here (or if I have a hypothyroid condition I don’t know about that makes me lose my appetite), but I’m not craving for any food anymore, except some fruit. So it made me MAD when I read two cases recently about two different women (one with diabetes and another one with IBS) who they gave up on their gluten-free diet because it was “too hard”, EVEN if they became asymptomatic with that diet. Here they have an easy, cheap, and healthy way to get out of a bad illness’ effects, and instead they go belly up selling their soul to the pasta devil.

As my husband very well noted the other day: “they’re just not desperate-enough“. I was. And it paid off.

Update, Sept 30 2011: I made some Paleo donuts today. Honestly, they taste more like cake than donuts, but they were actually very good. I had one and I couldn’t eat another. Too filling. In the past, I could have eaten 2 of them in one sitting. I had it with some whipped lactose-free sour cream (with added honey).

* I still can’t get over the fact that this will be the first TV season in many-many years where there won’t be any space-based science fiction show on TV. Even “Blood & Chrome” is now said to only be released online only and not as a TV series! IO9.com has two very interesting articles about this, “Why aren’t we in a golden age of genre television?“, and the incredibly accurate “Why We Need More Space Adventures“.

* I’m pre-ordering the Canon S100 tomorrow at a local store. When I have it, hopefully sometime in October, I will publish a review at FreshDV.com about its video mode.

* On this article is explained how wheat is so addictive: it apparently attaches itself to our opiate receptors in our brain. Sugar is doing similar things too. I have to say that I feel lucky that I haven’t had any withdrawal symptoms for either when I went Paleo/SCD. Most people crave carbs in the first 10-15 days on ketogenic diets, and while I can totally understand why and how this feels, it didn’t happen to me this time. I had cravings while on the very low calorie diet a few years ago, but on Paleo/SCD I feel so healthy that I don’t want to eat anything that can make me sick again (see: gluten, lectins and sugars). This is another great article to read on grains btw.

One of the common arguments against the Paleo diet is that it’s too expensive to maintain. The diet’s preference for grass-fed beef & game, wild-caught fish, local organic plants, eggs, fruits & nuts, and unfiltered raw honey has put a rather high price tag on the diet’s reputation. Things don’t get easier either when lots of Paleo recipes online call for almond flour, or coconut products (exotic products that are not available at all in many rural places, e.g. my hometown in Greece).

The truth is though that you don’t have to go for these types of food if you don’t have the money for it. If you really want to follow the diet’s core you can still buy the cheaper corn-fed meat, farmed fish, veggies and fruits from your local super-market. Even with this lower quality food, you’ll still be miles ahead than with the standard Western diet. And that’s something significant already, if you’re serious about your health. Remember, Paleo is not a weight loss diet, even if overweight people happen to lose weight on it. Paleo is a lifestyle, a return to balance and normalcy.

Since I started Paleo I’ve been swarming to local farmer’s markets. Most of the vegetables & fruits there are cheaper than in super markets, and of much higher quality and freshness. Because I don’t buy sugary/grain products anymore, and since I stopped going out to (starchy) restaurants, I believe we’ve saved money overall. I don’t buy higher quality meat & eggs yet, but I’m thinking of going towards that path too — although my husband still resists to the idea.

One thing that got me thinking is that if Paleo was the prescribing diet for a number of “modern-world” ailments in the Victorian Era, it wouldn’t have been feasible to follow it — unless you were an aristocrat or a rich businessman. While fish, game and good quality farm meat would have been easy to find, plants and fruits were difficult to find in that era. Pretty much, the only mass-produced non-grain plants that grew well in UK were tubers, which are loaded with starch. As for fruits & honey, they would be rare and expensive to find in the market. Just think how good we have it nowdays, where the various foods are easily available.

And this brings me to the Mediterranean diet, which is named by some nutritionists as the “healthiest diet in the world” (especially the Cretan version). The Mediterranean diet is not that healthy actually (especially these days). It’s simply healthier than the standard Western diet because people could produce a lot of different veggies & fruits and nuts and honey on their own — since the weather allowed it. They were blessed to be part of the advanced Europe and maximize their yields. This led to a somewhat balanced diet between fresh produce & wild plants, and starches.

Judging to how my grand parents lived, and how my parents grew up, there was some bread, rice and pasta, but it was overrun with plenty of fresh veggies from their own garden, even more wild greens (e.g. amaranth greens, sorrel), cheese & lactose-free probiotic yogurt from their goats or sheep (they’d go up to the mountain all by themselves and come back alone at night), eggs from their own free range chickens, fish from the river, and some meat occasionally (either from a goat that broke a leg and had to be killed off, a hen getting too old to have eggs… or some game like wild birds, hares, and boars found in the mountain above the village). Sugary products were extremely rare. Even fruits were rather rare, except when in season.

So there was some balance there. I started hearing about uber-modern diseases (e.g. multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia) in these villages in the late ’80s. “Cancer” was a word I didn’t hear before 1985 in respect to my local people. Before that, most people there would just die of natural causes (with stroke and heart-related disease following). In my opinion, the Mediterranean diet only has a positive effect when you live the kind of hard life these people lived, and use that high quality of plants and meat they had. But it’s still not an ideal diet.

If the Mediterranean diet is, let’s say, 25% better than the Standard Western one, then Paleo is many times as good. Paleo is believed to be able to reverse some “incurable” modern diseases, and heal the body after years of grain & sugar abuse. The forums are full of accounts of people who had various conditions reversed (and I’m on that camp too). The few cases of heart-disease or strokes that took down these Mediterranean people before the ’80s (when the Mediterranean diet became Westernized and hence worse), could have been avoided if these people were Paleo- or Primal-dieting (they could have kept their yogurt & cheese). All they had to really do is to say “no” to the tons of grain products that “International Help” gave away to families, especially in mountain villages.

I was extremely surprised when I saw someone this past Summer in Greece taking out of his pantry a large pasta box and a big bag of rice. I took a good look, because I wasn’t accustomed to see such quantity at someone’s home pantry. These were not commercial bags of food. They were sent from the European Union to “poor” Greek families (not that poor btw). I really had no idea that grains were pouring into Greece in these modern times too (despite the financial crisis). I thought that the “international help” of food stopped in the ’80s. But no. They continue raking people’s lives and health with their free non-food foods: “let’s give everyone cheap food. And make them all eventually sick and skyrocket the health system’s costs instead.”

In all truth, grains are easy to produce, and so it does sustain the world’s population in one way or another. Without grains all the 7 billion of us on this planet would be unsustainable. But instead of feeding people undigestable crap, maybe we should rethink about our (exploding) numbers first. I prefer quality, not quantity. And that goes about people too, not just food.

As I wrote in the previous blog post, I’m currently following the SCD diet, in order to kill overgrown bacteria & yeast. After I get even better in 2-3 months, I will move towards a Paleo/Primal combo diet. I plan to follow these diets for life with fanatical adherence (I don’t have a choice), but as time goes I will allow a few more foods in, foods that I believe are not as damaging (time will tell). These are:

1. Olive oil
Some Paleo dieters don’t use olive oil at all, some only use it raw in salads, and some even cook with it. I’m Greek, and I believe in the benefits of olive oil. Before the Paleo diet gained popularity, the best diet in the world was that of Cretans’ in the ’60s. Lots of olive oil, raw artichokes etc. There are too many studies about how good olive oil is, so I don’t think it’s fair to put olive oil in the same bag as the rest of the “vegetable oils” that are forbidden in these diets.

2. Yoghurt and possibly some cheese
I plan to try this lactose-free yoghurt, and see how it goes. I wish they had the same lactose-free product from goat instead, but they don’t. As for cheese, most hard cheeses don’t have lactose in them, so they might be safe. I don’t plan to try dairy until one month in the diet, to make sure I give my gut a chance to have its gut flora rebooted. If I notice that dairy still bloats me, I will cut it down completely and live off of calcium-enriched orange juice, almond milk and vitamin pills.

3. Green beans (pods) & peas
I’ve read that lectins on the young green pods are almost non-existent, so there’s no reason not to eat them. I mean, sure, I do get the bloating from dried beans and lentils, but I’ve been eating green pods all my life and never had problems. Peas seem to be better in that respect than actual dried beans and lentils too. Despite this, I don’t plan to use peas very much, just in case I’m wrong…

4. Sweet potatoes and Parsnips
While these tubers are allowed in the Paleo diet, they are loaded with starch, and since my stomach is fragile atm, I can’t risk eating them. Maybe I will be having them once a month, after 3 months on the diet.

5. Almond/coconut milk/flour
These are allowed in the Paleo diet, and unfortunately I see people using them a lot, to feed off their carb cravings. These should be used sparingly in my opinion, because, let’s face it: would you eat a whole bag of almonds in one sit? Not likely. So why make an almond flour bread then? Makes no sense to me. It’s too much. Nuts can create problems in big quantities, even to people who don’t have nut allergies.

Finally, I don’t plan to eat okras at all. No scientific reason, I just hate their sliminess.

The moon last night, captured by my husband’s telescope and my Canon SX200 IS digicam (shot handheld, through the eyepiece).

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0/US.

I think the last 10 years have been detrimental to Greece’s family values, at least at the parts I’m from. The ’80s were the times where our status from third world country changed to almost-first, the ’90s were the establishment of that new status, and the ’00s was all about the decline of the public ethos. Just like a newly-rich person frantically dives himself into whores and cocaine.

All I hear now over here is about how drugs have taken over the youth. When I was a teen I’ve never seen any hard drugs in my area, and only very few youngsters that we knew smoke a joint every now and then. Now, children as young as 12 are having sex, and stay out partying up to 3 AM. In comparison, I was 16 when I started going out with friends, I was always back by 11:30 PM, and I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 19 (to a fiance no less).

An even more common gossip than the youth pAArtying, are about the adults. I’ve never heard of so many cases of spouse-cheating than I do now. I really don’t think we ever had so many cases of cheating in our town and surrounding villages. There were always some such cases (heck, I always considered my own dad a womanizer, for example), but definitely not to the degree that I hear these days. I hear about teenagers getting into the middle married couples (often with children) and ending up divorcing them. I hear about middle-aged married men with children sleeping with 75 year old women for money or for fun. I hear about previously fine 45-ish year old married women suddenly charging for sex at this age. Not to mention the porn movies some women from a nearby village shot, that I heard about. I’m truly shocked about what’s going on in the last few years over here, and I’m not a person that gets shocked easily.

There were many times in the past when Greeks made fun of the divorce rate in the US. They portrayed the Americans as people without family values. Now, Greece’s divorce rate is as high, if not higher. Sure, I had two failed engagements myself in the ’90s, but I never cheated, and I’d like to think that I wasn’t cheated upon either. In fact, I’m still friends with my second fiance, and there’s no bitterness between us. We just fell out of love, and we took our separate ways. Since then, I got married, happily for over 10 years now, with an amazing French guy. Instead, all the couples I’ve heard that they divorced around my Greek parts in the past few years, were almost all cases of known cheating.

To me, that’s pure and plain declining. People with too much money or time on their hands. Boredom even. I might be sounding “old”, evangelizing the good old days, but it’s not so. I always saw myself as a moderate, so I always try to keep the best parts of each lifestyle: the freedom of the modern lifestyle, but also the family values of the old ways. Besides, the good old days were not that good either, there were constantly problems of money and convenience. But I prefer a whole village in poverty, eating nettle soup & wild amaranth greens and herding goats, than women soliciting and charging 20 Euros for a blow job, just because they find it easier to do just that rather than go and find real work.

Remember, these are lands where everyone knows everyone else. Reputation is everything. It’s your make and your unmake.