Meat Heads

I read a lot of paleo blogs, and I find them all really interesting. However, I've noticed two things 1) most people approach paleo from the fitness and athletics perspective and 2) most paleo bloggers are married, live in the burbs, and often have kids. I don't know a lot of poor artists, metalheads, or long-haired hippies doing paleo, or at least none that are blogging about it. More importantly, I don't know a lot of chefs who are openly paleo.

I came to paleo after a few years of researching nutrition in order to avoid becoming diabetic like my father, but I've never been much of a health nut. I have never been a gym rat, I'm not by any stretch of the imagination an athlete, and my preferred exercise is long walks, lifting amps, and bike rides. I also pride myself on being a really great cook. I respect culinary traditions and the identity and values bound up within a culture's cuisine. My reverence for food is what drives my passion for paleo as much as my belief that it is the healthiest nutritional paradigm.

I will never ever ever be a raw foodist or do the 80/10/10 thing except maybe at some point as an experiment on myself because I love cooking. I think there is a lot to be learned from culinary traditions, and I find cooking to be therapeutic and meditative. I also believe that cooking developed for a good reason, that our ancestors weren't idiots, and that some foods need to be cooked to make their nutrients fully absorbable. Cooking is also like alchemy, it creates such wonderful fragrances and tastes, and I can't possibly give that up.

Aside from the paleo reasons for doing so, I largely eschew grains and legumes because I view them as filler, as nutritionally worthless dry goods that people use to pad out a meal when they're too cheap to eat or serve real food. I avoid sugar, not simply because of the diabetes thing, but also because I think it's a way for a cook to cheat, to disguise certain flavors, to get sweetness without proper caramelization, and to make a food more palatable without putting in the work to bring out the real flavors of the ingredients. I respect a cook who can take ingredients and make them delicious without adding too much to them. A good cook is patient, attentive, and trusts her ingredients. I often don't use any seasonings other than salt and pepper, maybe some lemon juice.

I think this culinary perspective is missing from the paleo movement. I saw Eric Ripert on some show the other night where he made market vegetables over a bed of cauliflower "couscous" - he had made faux couscous out of a head of cauliflower. I did this the other night, and it was incredible, almost like the real thing, except for the (duh) cauliflower flavor. His recipe was almost completely paleo (minus some canola oil which you can easily substitute with olive), fresh, simple, and vegan to boot! I'm not saying I'm going vegan, but it's odd that a celebrity chef accidentally (or not?) has created a mostly paleo dish, and the fact that it excited me, an enthusiastic carnivore, means a lot. It means that no matter your preferences and restrictions - vegan, raw, low-carb, etc - you can and should eat really exciting, fresh, well-made food that also happens to be paleo.

It also means that you don't have to be a power-lifter, a cross-fitter, and endurance athlete, or even go to the gym to enjoy and benefit from paleo. We aren't all meat heads.