One of the odd results of living with the Paleo Diet is the sense of wonder at what people eat! Honestly I’m used to this. I started studing natural healing in my teens and in my early twenties started my first herbalist shop. My life has been a nutritional experiment, something that many people can relate to. As far as I can recall I’ve never survived on the SAD diet, as in Standard American Diet.
Like many twenty year olds I was briefly a vegetarian. 90% of vegetarians are still in their 20’s. Being a big athletic guy it didn’t sit well with me. Later on I realized that there are no ‘old’ vegetarian societies, the deficiency of the amino acid l-Carnitine, so important to the heart and other muscles, creates a nutritional hole that wears down the vegetarian vitality at an early age. L-Carnitine is only found in abundance in animal or fish. The lack makes vegetarians wrinkly.
Over the years my diet has been quite good and supplemented by high potency herbs and other nutritional products. Early on in my 20’s I steered away from soy products. This was something Jethro Kloss in his book ‘Back to Eden’ espoused, but my body never liked the results it yielded. I still consider it too estrogenic, and like most beans it blocks the absorption of minerals. Every time I hear someone ordering a soy latte I gather my resolve to knock it out of their hand and save them from themselves, but I rarely do.
Not surprisingly I’ve spent years watching people eat things that I don’t even consider food, but as we’ve adopted the Paleo Diet that experience has escalated. We used to eat rice pasta, so when I saw someone having a bowl of wheat pasta as least the illusion was there, it might be rice. But then we gave up rice along with the other grains and now it just looks like a bowl of paste to me, sticky white paste. Real appetizing! The other day clients asked me for a cheese suggestion to go with wine. After telling them that I don’t eat dairy and haven’t for years I suggested a nice Fontina. I remember what it tastes like; I just don’t want to feel the way it makes me fill, stuffy and sluggish.
Do other people go through this, looking in wonder and mild disbelief at what people eat? Feel free to share. I’m going to write an open letter to Whole Foods and explain that I don’t need such a big store. Just leave the produce section, including the frozen, the meat and fish section, condiments and oils, spices, coffee and wine, the prepared food section because we get busy and the sparkling water section.
You can include the chips because sometimes you need a little crunch in your life. Oh yeah, don’t forget the coffee section because that’s where I get my Sunday San Francisco Chronicle. If they shrunk the store imagine how much they would save on electricity. Opps! I forgot the books, keep the books too because knowledge is the key to improving the quality of life! Drs. Ralph & Lahni de Amicis are Master Herbalists and Naturopathic Physicians. They run a Paleo Herbalist support group conference call/webinar for those who share those combined interests. For more information and join the group email Lahni at Lahni@spaceandtime.com. You can find more information about their books at www.SpaceAndTime.com.