Paleo Diet

Results are in for least and most paleo-friendly ethnic cuisines.  Lots of votes -- thank you.

No surprise for the clear winner of least paleo: Italian.  With all that pasta, bread, bread sticks, pizza, and breaded meats, it's hard to avoid grain, gluten, and a big insulin spike.  Maybe I shouldn't have chosen Olive Garden for our next paleo meetup.  Chinese and Mexican aren't far behind.  Favorite write-in: Tasmanian.  

There are really two winners for most paleo ethnic cuisine: Barbeque and Brazilian.  More proof that the ideal paleo meal is meat on a stick.  Greek and Japanese are runners up.  Have a look at the results, and then I'll give you my observations below.  

• Observe that Italian and Greek are heavily divergent on the rankings, which is odd considering they are two nearby Mediterranean countries who share so much classical culture.  Italian food is very grain heavy, Greek not so much.  I'll speculate that part of it is because Greece is more mountainous, so it's much harder to grow grain there than in Italy.  Grain-products can't be a staple of your cuisine if it's hard to get hold of.  This allows us to make some hypotheses: ethnic cuisines that are paleo-friendly will be found in countries where it is harder to grow grain relative to other sources of food -- mountainous locations or regions near the sea.  Flat, land-locked regions and countries will have developed the least paleo-friendly cuisine.
• Clearly, as commenter Alicia points out, there is a difference between Americanized ethnic food, the type of ethnic food available in NYC/LA or anywhere with sizable immigrant populations, and traditional/indigenous ethnic cuisine as it is made in the home country.  For example, Italian gets slammed, but real southern Italian food has lots of seafood and is less grain-heavy than northern Italian, as you can see from Richard Nikoley's recent trip.  
• Barbeque got the most votes for most paleo, but I don't think it merits the highest honor.  First, while the grilled meat is very paleo (and the act of grilling it), most of the typical sides are not: tons of sweet barbeque sauce, ketchup, macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and baked beans.  But the act of barbequing is about as paleo as it gets.
• Brazilian is a great choice if you've ever been to a Brazilian steakhouse (churrascaria).  However, the standard Brazilian diet is very heavy in rice and beans -- so when we say Brazilian, it's actually the churrascaria format that is most paleo.  That said, having been to Rio de Janeiro in the last couple years, standard lunch places have awesome paleo choices (minus the rice and beans).
• Korean is more paleo than it gets credit for in this tally.  I've been to Korean BBQs that didn't even serve rice...the only breaded item were a few dumplings. 
• One commenter pointed out Filipino food as particularly friendly to paleo.  Forget the rice.  There's Sisig (spicy pork cheeks and brain), Dinuguan (innards and blood stew), Kinilaw (like ceviche), and Inasal baboy or lechon (whole pig roast).  Lots of coconut milk, and no vegetarian dishes.  What's not to like?  A true blue Filipina is taking me to a Filipino restaurant this week, so I'll report back.

Keep your eyes posted for future posts where I'll give tips and tricks for how to eat paleo at Italian/Mexican/Chinese/Indian/ethnic restaurants.

Say you're going to kiss someone.  But that someone has just eaten a bag of strongly flavored grains or grain-products.  Namely, Ranch Doritos.  What do you do?

• The Context: You've never kissed this girl before tonight.  She's cute, likes dogs, and eats meat -- what's not to like?  However, you did kiss her earlier in the evening, right before leaving the venue -- just to remove the tension, avoid the awkwardness around needlessly splitting a cab (Here, let me get in this taxi with you that is going in the exact opposite direction I am going), being forced to make a move on the busy sidewalk, or having to sit it out until next time.  So kissing right now isn't an imperative.  It's all gravy.  Cool Ranch flavored gravy.

• Timing: You're not catching her mid-bite, so it's not as if she still has any substantial amount of grains or grain-products in her mouth.   That said, you can bet you're gonna taste that zesty Doritos boldness, so there's technically still some there, right?  (Note: The Mid-Bite Kiss would be a highly unconventional, but nonetheless interesting move -- so clearly doomed to fail at getting a kiss that it would almost certainly succeed at getting a laugh.  Requires high levels of confidence and a good sense of humor.  Not ideal for first kiss.)

• Health Concerns: Due to the negligible amount of Doritos that you will likely ingest, it should not provoke a strong glycemic response from your body.  You don't count calories, but they would be minimal, and may even be net negative when you factor in your increased heart rate and interval training (roving hands repeatedly getting slapped away).  You aren't celiac, so trace amounts of gluten aren't an issue.  On the plus side, kissing is good for your health, right?  There must be a study that says that somewhere.

Note: If you are allergic to the food item eaten by the person you are going to kiss, you should abstain, or politely ask them to brush their teeth.  You could even carry a spare toothbrush, depending on how desperate you are to kiss someone.  (My cousin is allergic to peanuts, and couldn't kiss her boyfriend if he had eaten peanuts recently.  She's now married to a guy who is also allergic to peanuts.  Never has that dude been so happy to have a food allergy.)

• Long-Term Implications: Should you really be kissing girls that don't share you core, fundamental values?  Isn't the foundation of a healthy relationship a set of common beliefs on things like snack foods and what to have for dinner?  Shouldn't we strive to be like those vegansexuals who only have sex with other vegans?  Would it not be a grand statement and inducement to eat paleo if I were only to kiss girls who also ate paleo?

No, no, no, and definitely not.  But don't expect to see me neckin' with some vegan.  Even you, Natalie Portman.

I took biology during my freshman year of high school.  The class came right after lunch, and I struggled to stay awake.  It should have been easy.  Our teacher, Mr. Otto, was a rock star.  He had studied gorillas in Africa (Lesotho), rocked a pony tail (and pulled it off), and was just one of those cool teachers.  But day after day, I'd nod off in class.  I just accepted it as normal -- people get sleepy after lunch.  No different than people getting sleepy at night.

It didn't help that I couldn't see the blackboard.  It was a large, lab-style classroom and I sat near the back.  As I would squint at the board trying to take notes, I thought, "Huh, it's a little odd that they would build a classroom so long that you couldn't see the blackboard from the back."  As if the classroom were defective, not my eyes.  (My delusions of grandeur started at a young age.)  I asked the girl sitting next to me if she could see the blackboard.  She said no, it's fuzzy for me too.  So we both continued squinting, confirming each other's belief that we each had normal eyesight.  Turns out, of course, that both of us needed glasses.

The moral is simple.  Don't define "normal" by looking at the people around you.  We understand this concept in the case of the girl with bad eyesight sitting next to me in class, but we forget it elsewhere.  We think that if everybody in our family has bad eyesight, then it's normal to have bad eyesight.  Or if everybody in the country is overweight, then it's normal to be overweight.  Or if all the kids in class fall asleep after lunch, then it's normal to be tired after eating.

But when you widen your frame of reference to include other people (like other cultures) and periods of time (like our hunter-gatherer ancestors), you see normal in a whole new light.  The body's natural condition is to be healthy.  That is normal.  And to be overweight is abnormal, to have acne is abnormal, to have flat feet is abnormal, to have allergies is abnormal, to get sick every month is abnormal, to fall asleep after every meal is abnormal, to be weak is abnormal, to be depressed is abnormal, to be unhealthy is abnormal.

Well, it's time to take back normal.  Healthy is the new normal.

We all face decisions when to make exceptions.  Here's one scenario.  Say that it's Friday night and, as a fun, young social person in Manhattan, you're holed up at a coffee shop doing some writing.  The very sweet girl who works there asks you out, giving you two cookies and her phone number.  The question is: Do you eat the cookies?

The epidemiological studies give conflicting results, but my review of the anthropological record indicates that every hunter-gatherer male would, in fact, have eaten the cookies.  I ate the cookies.

Ever since I attended Robb Wolf's seminar in Brooklyn a few months ago, I've been excited for his book to come out.  Well, just a few days ago he released the new cover, and The Paleo Solution is up on Amazon.  Pre-order this book.

If you know Robb, read his blog, listen to his podcasts, or have attended one of his health seminars, then his book is self-recommending.

Two thoughts on why he chose a great title:

• I love that he uses the world solution (The Paleo Solution).  This evolutionary approach to health really is about solving problems.  We do this because it works, not because of ideology.  Plus, the word solution conveys that paleo can help a wide variety of health problems (osteoporosis, acne, IBS), it's not just about a diet to lose weight. 
• Okay, okay, the word DIET is in big red bold letters just below.  I'm quite sure the publisher insisted on it.  Even so, the usage is brilliant if you see what Robb has done.  He's used the word diet as part of the phrase "The Original Human Diet".  I've always liked "The Human Diet" because this usage of diet is actually the proper way to use the term -- the types of foods that a person or species eats, not necessarily for weight loss.

So Robb gets a title that doesn't use the word diet, he still puts DIET on the cover, and he actually uses diet in the proper sense of the term.  Love it.

Buy the book.  

Robb Wolf seminar at CrossFit South Brooklyn