Even before we had a baby I was interested in how ancestral nutrition influences fertility and fetal and child development.
It struck me as crazy that, in accordance with conventional “nutrition” advice and mainstream marketing, babies are often fed things like rice cereal, cheerios and little cookie biscuit things as their first foods. (It says “for baby” on the package so isn’t it good??)
And then we wonder why toddlers (and then kids and teens) are grumpy, tired, have dark circles under their eyes and behavior issues, just to mention a few…
So when our daughter Isla was around 4 months I started researching what we should feed her when she starts solid foods. This was especially of interest because I’d never really made enough breastmilk for her, and we had been relying on donor milk to help her grow.
I didn’t want to give her conventional formula considering I wouldn’t eat most of those ingredients myself. Luckily I found out about the Weston A. Price Foundation baby formula, which is designed to provide similar nutrition to breastmilk but with whole foods. We make the formula with high-quality milk that we get from a farm nearby.
The WAPF formula and pumped breastmilk make up the majority of her diet, and then I wanted to make sure we were introducing the right foods for her. I had heard of people feeding babies things like avocado, banana and sweet potato.
Although WAPF recommends root vegetables such as sweet potato, carrot and beet as first foods, other research indicates that root vegetables and leafy greens are higher in nitrates, which should be avoided until 6 months and should make up a smaller part of baby’s diet to start.
Best First Foods for a Primal Baby
soft-cooked egg yolk (from free-range eggs, with a pinch of real salt)
avocado
broth
pureed meat and liver
butternut or acorn squash with butter
banana
Foods That Should Wait Until Later (ie After 1-Year)
cooked leafy green vegetables
raw salad vegetables
citrus fruit
whole egg
grains
nuts and seeds
Should you do baby-led weaning?
I assumed baby-led weaning would be our approach, as it seemed to be what most crunchy parents do. Then I read this article by Sally Fallon from Weston A. Price and changed my approach a bit.
In a nutshell she says that the foods most people prepare for baby to eat by themselves are not actually the foods that baby needs most (ie little sticks of soft vegetables, most of which don’t actually end up in baby’s mouth anyway).
Since the most important nutrients for a baby to get from 4-6 months are iron and zinc, we need to ensure they actually consume some of these important foods.
I get the idea behind baby-led weaning, and definitely do want Isla to feel exploratory and independent in the way she interacts with food, but I also agree with the WAPF commentary linked above.
I learned that:
Food before One is NOT just for fun
As a result we do a mix of spoon-feeding (without ever forcing or even encouraging her to eat more than she’s interested in – I find it’s VERY obvious when she wants more, she opens her mouth and slaps her hands up and down) and also letting her explore food on her own.
Although at this point, she nearly 6 months and doesn’t actually put food in her mouth at all. I think it’s very important to do at least some spoon-feeding to ensure she’s getting that iron.
I believe with this approach we are setting her up to enjoy whole foods and have a nourished body for life.
Fact: a person can never be happy without cake in their life. Few people would disagree, and those few would, whether they recognize it or not, be quite unhappy.
So as I found myself edging towards the 1 month mark of a 3 month autoimmune protocol (AIP), I discovered my life lacked substance. For 30 days, I had gone without cake, and the time had come to rectify the situation.
The problem was, the Paleo autoimmune protocol is one of the strictest, perhaps the strictest, diets on the planet. For those of you unfamiliar with it’s dictates, AIP means cutting out any foods which might be potential allergens. That means all nightshades (potatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, etc), nuts, seeds, dairy, grains (of course!), eggs, chocolate, and probably plenty of other food staples that have just now slipped my mind.
The AIP, while undoubtedly effective in identifying problem foods, doesn’t leave a person with a whole lot of foods that they can eat. This meant that I had been subsisting on a diet of meat and vege for as far back as my troubled mind could remember, and it was starting to get a bit old.
You see, I love meat and (to a lesser degree) vegetables as much as the next person. Probably more than the next person, if I’m honest. But there’s only so many times a man can have meat and vegetables for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert without starting to get a bit grumpy.
And so I found myself wondering whether there was a way to piece together what few ingredients I could eat to form some semblance of a cake.
Luckily, there was. Funnily enough, it’s called the Paleo AIP Spiced Apple Cake.
Easy Recipe: Paleo AIP Spiced Apple Cake
Before we begin, a disclaimer: every time I make this cake, it varies considerably. A little more apple, a little less banana, a little more coconut oil, a little less raisins….but every time it’s come out utterly delicious. I’d even substitute desiccated coconut instead of coconut butter if I didn’t have any to hand (just whizz it in the blender and it comes out a similar consistency to coconut butter).
So don’t be afraid to deviate a little from the recipe – that’s what I did, and everything worked out just dandy!
1/2 cup rice flour (technically not necessarily AIP, so can substitute same amount arrowroot flour)
1/2 cup raisins (optional, but delicious!)
2 tbsp coconut milk (ONLY if you add in the optional raisins)
1 tbsp water
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp clove powder
Instructions
Throw a banana and a cored, roughly chopped apple (don’t bother peeling) into a blender with around a tablespoon of water to make it easier for the blades to do their thang. Blend on high until a smooth paste has formed. If your blender is having trouble, force the apple bits down towards the blades (when it’s off, of course!) and add in a little more water.
Set the oven to 350 Fahrenheit (180 celsius), and melt your coconut oil in the warming oven if it’s below room temperature (and therefore hard!). If you coconut butter is also hard, put it in the oven for a minute or two to soften it as well.
Line a 9×13 inch baking pan with baking paper (aka parchment paper in other parts of the world!).
Mix the wet ingredients (coconut oil, banana and apple paste, lemon juice, vanilla, honey/maple syrup, and coconut butter) together in a bowl until combined.
In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients (the flours, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and clove) and mix to ensure consistent. Then add to the wet ingredients and stir until everything is perfectly amalgamated. At this point, if you’re feeling a bit racy, add in 1/2 cup of raisins and see whether the consistency of the batter is still wet but sticky. If it seems a bit dry, add in a tablespoon or two of coconut milk. If it’s still too wet, add in some desiccated coconut or rice flour. Play around with it until it looks right to you – it should be thick enough to hold its shape for a while, but wet enough that you could (technically) pour the batter into the cake tin if you stood there for like ten minutes. You get my drift, right?
Next, spread the mixture into the pan. If you’re having guests over and want the cake to look fancy schmancy, slice another apple in half, core it, then slice thin strips of apple and place them lightly on top of the batter to create a rustic apple pie-type effect. Add a sprinkle of cinnamon to complete the aesthetic ensemble.
Cook for around 25 minutes. When it gets close to the 25 minute mark, start checking to see whether it looks cooked. Really depends how moist you like your cake – I like it to be still ever so slightly gooey inside, so I take it out just before it gets to the point where it springs back when you press your finger into the top. It should be golden around the edges and smell ah-may-zing!
Lift the cake out of the pan using the baking paper, and place on a cooling rack for 15-20 minutes. The longer you wait, the easier it’ll be to cut and less likely to crumble.
Cut a healthy slab, pour over a little coconut yoghurt and (if you’ve got a serious sweet tooth) a bit more honey, and enjoy! Liivi isn’t on the AIP but she still eats this cake and swears it’s better than any of the Paleo cakes she’s made lately – she just slathers on a slab of grass-fed butter instead of the yoghurt! I’m only slightly jealous.
Have you tried the recipe? How’d it go? Got any variations you’d like to suggest? Tell us about it in the comments below!
It’s a question I’ve been asked time and again since becoming something of a health authority: is fruit paleo? An excellent question, and one which I usually don’t have enough hours in the day to answer in sufficient detail. This, in case you’re wondering, is not one of those times.
Can you eat fruit on a Paleo diet?
The short answer is: yes! While many “hardcore” Paleo punters wouldn’t be caught dead beside a bowl of fruit, it’s totally unreasonable, and in many cases unhealthy, to completely remove fruit from your life. Phew! Am I right?
But that affirmative isn’t your one-way ticket to a daily fruit binge. We know that our Paleolithic ancestors certainly ate fruit – the berries or drupes that they came across in the wild would have provided valuable nutrients and minerals to fill in the nutritional gaps of their predominantly protein-based diets. But what we also know is that those fruits were not the same as those we find on our supermarket shelves today.
If you’ve ever walked through a forest glade and noticed a patch of wild strawberries growing in the sunshine, you’ll know what I mean. Wild strawberries have almost no resemblance to their monstrous cultivated counterparts, and this is due to thousands of years of genetic selection. Some time after the agricultural revolution, around 10,000 years ago, humans began to alter those “wild” fruit species that our Paleolithic forebears foraged. People realized that by only selecting and growing those fruit variants that were larger, sweeter, or more edible, they could develop a whole new “species” of superfruit. This selective style of cultivation continued throughout the millennia, to give us the fruits we are sold today. Yes, even the organic, non-GMO fruit!
In many cases, this was an essential part of allowing humans to eat and enjoy a certain kind of fruit in the first place. For example, the uncultivated, wild version of bananas are actually virtually inedible. Their seed to flesh ratio is so high that it’s almost not worth bothering to eat them, but every now and then a sterile banana is produced that doesn’t have any seeds. It was those sterile bananas that people loved to eat, and they therefore started taking cuttings of the sterile plants and reproducing banana trees without all the seeds. Because they’re all sterile, the only way these trees can be reproduced is by vegetative propagation – taking part of the original tree to create an exact genetic copy of it.
I happen to love bananas, so I’m not going to begrudge those enterprising farmers for playing around with nature. But what these genetic selections means is that cultivated fruit is completely different to the wild fruit our ancestors ate. It’s generally sweeter (so far higher in fructose), less nutritionally dense…and there’s a whole lot more available today than there was 10,000+ years ago!
With this in mind, for the Paleo eater, fruit should become less of a “health food” and more of a nutritious treat. That orange juice with breakfast or fruit smoothie for lunch, by the way, is not what the doctor ordered.
Not all fruits were created equal, however, so if you’re going to get your daily dose of fruit, which is best for your health?
Which fruit is best to eat on a Paleo diet?
There’s a few ways you can approach the healthiest fruit:
how much sugar does it contain?
how nutritious is it?
how much chemical residue does it contain?
Ideally, you’d only eat those fruits that are low in sugar, high in beneficial nutrients, and low in pesticides and herbicides. Often it’s hard to tick all three boxes, but here’s a short overview to get you heading in the right direction.
Sugar content of popular fruit
Generally speaking, your berries and sour citrus fruits have the lowest fructose content, while things like apples, grapes and mangoes have the most. Probably no great surprise – fruit that makes your face pucker up is generally low in sugar!
Avocado (yup, it’s a fruit!): 1 g sugar/cup
Lime: 1 g sugar/medium
Lemon: 2 g sugar/medium
Raspberries: 5 g sugar/cup
Kiwi: 6 g sugar/medium
Strawberries: 7 g sugar/cup
Grapefruit: 9 g sugar/medium
Watermelon: 9 g sugar/cup
Orange: 13 g sugar/medium
Banana: 14 g sugar/medium
Blueberries: 15 g sugar/cup
Dates: 16 g sugar/medium
Apple: 19 g sugar/medium
Mango: 23 g sugar/cup
Grapes: 23 g sugar/cup
Raisins: 86 g sugar/cup
This is just to give you an idea of which fruits are better than others on the fructose scale. On any given day, you’re better off sticking to berries like raspberries, strawberries, cranberries and blackberries, citrus fruit, and maybe the odd kiwi, plum, or watermelon. Fructose is highly inflammatory, and can contribute to conditions like fatty liver disease and diabetes. Generally the less fructose you consume per day, the better.
How nutritious is your fruit?
This is probably the most difficult aspect of prioritizing your fruit. Different fruits contain different ratios of various nutrients, making direct comparison rather difficult. If you’re suffering from cramps or headaches, you could be lacking in potassium, meaning from a nutrient standpoint a potassium-rich banana might be a good choice. If you’re worried about cancer, however, dark-colored fruits like blueberries or strawberries might be a better choice as they have more antioxidants. It really comes down to what your body is lacking. For fruit-specific nutritional content, you might want to check out this database.
Otherwise, a very committed researcher from William Paterson University ranked 47 fruits and vegetables based on 17 different nutrients considered critical for fighting heart disease and cancer. You can check out their handy ranking system in this article. You’ll notice that there’s far more vegetables on the list than fruit. That’s not a coincidence. I’ve stressed time and again that vegetables should form the backbone of produce in your diet, as they’re generally more nutritionally dense and lower in sugar than most fruit.
Those fruit that did make the nutritional cut are tomato (yep, also a fruit!), lemon, strawberry, orange, lime, grapefruit and blackberry. I’d also be inclined to add avocado to that list – it’s certainly a nutritional powerhouse.
All these fruits also happen to have relatively low sugar content. How convenient!
Is your fruit doused in chemicals?
I’ve written about this very topic in my guide to shopping for fruit and vegetables. Based on comprehensive data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, the Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen lists tell you which produce is best to buy based on potential for chemical residue, and which is worst. Based on their findings, avocados, pineapples, mangoes, papayas, kiwi, honeydew melon, grapefruit and cantaloupe have the lowest risk of chemical pesticide, herbicide or insecticide residue. Unfortunately, lots of your favorite fruits didn’t make the cut, including strawberries, cherries, apples, nectarines, peaches, grapes and tomatoes.
You’ll notice that those fruits which made the Clean 15 all have thick skins which you don’t typically eat. Those that were included in the Dirty Dozen have thin skins that blemish easily and are almost always consumed (except for the oddballs who don’t like apple skin!). With this in mind, I have three recommendations: firstly, always buy organic when you can, as this sidesteps any risk of chemical residue. Secondly, if you can’t buy organic, go for those fruits with the thicker (inedible) skins. And finally, if you must eat your non-organic strawberries and other Dirty Dozen fruit, be sure to give them a good soak first.
Recipe: Paleo fruit salad
Personally, I take great pleasure in eating fruit. It adds a whole lot more flavor and color to my day, so I’m not willing to completely throw in the fructose towel! And when you take into consideration the above factors, there’s no reason why you should give up fruit either.
To rekindle your love of fruit, here’s a great recipe for a Paleo fruit salad I’ve honed over the years. Its filled with fruits that have lower fructose content and higher nutritional value, so it’s not only a tasty treat, but a healthy one too! Just be sure to limit your fruit intake to around 2 servings (a couple of handfuls) per day.
Ingredients:
3 plums, cut into wedges
1 peach, cut into wedges (organic or soaked is best)
1 orange, cut or pulled apart into segments
1/2 cup strawberries, chopped in half (organic or soaked is best)
1/2 cup blackberries
1/2 cup raspberries
1 banana, sliced
3 limes, squeezed
1 sprig mint, finely diced
Instructions:
Using a lemon squeezer or your own trusty hands, squeeze the juice from your 3 limes into a small bowl. Remove the mint leaves from the stem, and dice the leaves relatively finely. Add to the bowl of lime juice, and allow to sit for at least 2 hours so that the mint infuses the lime juice.
Next, cut your plums, peach and oranges into wedges, adding to a large serving bowl. Chop up your banana and throw it in, along with your halved strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Peel the orange and add in the segments – if it’s a particularly big orange, you can cut each segment in half to ensure it doesn’t “steal the show”.
When you’re ready to serve, drizzle your lime and mint dressing over the salad, give it a gentle toss to ensure all the fruit is covered and well-mixed, and sprinkle over a garnish of mint leaves if you have any left over. The lime and mint dressing provides a refreshing counterpoint to the sweetness of the other fruits, and has the added benefit of helping to preserve your fruit salad for longer.
Thanks for reading, everyone! Let me know whether you’ve tried the recipe, or if you have your own Paleo-tastic fruit salad to share with the world!
As health-savvy humans, we have the ability to take our digestive wellness into our own hands. We can consciously think about what we eat, knowing the choices we make will affect not only our digestion, but our overall health. Unfortunately, your dog is not so lucky. As utterly loyal and trusting companions, they’ll eat almost any food you give them, whether it’s good for them or not.
I’ve lost count of the amount of people I’ve met who are in tip-top shape themselves, but who own dogs that appear to have serious health issues. While those people might have made a commitment to stay away from the doctor by eating well and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, they don’t think twice about taking their pet into the vet whenever their beloved pooch falls ill.
The fact is, you are responsible for ensuring that your dog receives the best possible food you can get your hands on. Combined with a suitable exercise routine and plenty of TLC, cleaning up their diet will ensure they can achieve optimum health, and you’ll ultimately save big on vet bills and worries. Not a bad tradeoff, when you think about it!
Your dog’s ancestors hold the key
Today’s everyday pooch has had about as much time as we humans to adapt to the typical “modern” diet. For most people (and most dogs), that means lots of grains, lots processed foods, and all manner of additives, coloring agents, and synthetic who-knows what. And like us, all of these ingredients are doing them far more harm than good.
Most canine experts now believe that humans began to domesticate dogs around 30,000 years ago. Around the same time that the agricultural revolution was taking place, as it happens. From this point on, the diet of your dog’s ancestors began to slowly but surely change, as those dogs began to eat whatever was available in and around human settlements. Dogs are opportunistic foragers, after all – they’ll eat almost anything, especially if they’re hungry.
The problem is, the digestive systems of domesticated dogs haven’t been able to evolve at the same rate that their diets have changed. Evolution just doesn’t work that quickly, unfortunately! If it did, gluten wouldn’t be an issue for our gut (which would make an estimated 18 million gluten-sensitive Americans very happy), and we could chow down on sugary treats without any ill-effects. The point is, the digestive system of your dog is still designed to process the foods it’s ancestors ate in the wild, rather than the humanized diet he or she receives today.
How to simulate a wild diet for your dog
Obviously, short of removing your dog’s collar, giving it a slap on the rump and watching it grudgingly trot into the mountains, it’d be rather difficult to exactly simulate the diet that your dog’s ancestors ate. There’s plenty of other factors to consider as well, such as different lineages, cross-breeding, and slight digestive adaptations that are bound to have occurred over 30 millennia or so. With that in mind, you need to work with the tools you’ve got, and as usual paleo is definitely best.
Before we dive in, I’d still advise discussing any planned major dietary changes with your vet. They’ll at least be able to tell you whether any of the foods you plan to give your dog are recognized as unsafe for their digestive systems. Best to play it safe, people!
After doing a whole heap of research and examining the eating habits and responses of my own family’s border collie, I was able to get a good idea of what a modern version of that ancestral wild dog diet might look like. Here’s some of the foods that make up the staples of our pup’s paleo diet:
raw meat (beef, lamb, venison, chicken…basically whatever. Grass fed/pastured and organic is best. This should comprise the bulk of your dog’s diet)
bone broth (usually around 1/4 to 1/2 cup per day, to maintain healthy bones, joints and skin)
raw, uncooked bones (beef, lamb and venison bones are best, as they provide a lot more chewing capacity and don’t run the risk of breaking off into sharp pieces like chicken bones tend to do)
organ meats (liver, kidney, heart, brain, etc. Similar to us humans, eating organ meats once or twice a week can make a big difference to your dog’s health)
eggs (only occasionally, however. Dogs are foragers, and there’s no doubt that they would have wolfed down the occasional egg when it fell out of a tree. Again, make sure the egg is at least free range, if not organic)
certain vegetables and fruit (this one is a little controversial, and experts continue to argue about whether dogs should eat vegetables or not. We occasionally give our pooch the ends of carrots, the odd blueberry, and the odd apple core (seeds removed!). She loves vegetables and fruit, and has never had any digestive issues from eating them)
probiotics (this is purely optional, but it may make a big difference to your pooch’s digestive health – especially if they’ve ever been put on antibiotics)
Keep in mind that the digestive system of your dog is designed to thrive on meat, organs and bones – basically everything they could tear off an animal they hunted down or carrion they came across in the wild. They would, however, have supplemented this primarily meat-based diet with other things, which is where your vegetables, fruit and eggs come in. Once again, put anything wacky past your vet before you give it to your furry friend!
Another thing to remember is that your dog’s stomach might get a little bit upset if you suddenly switch it from a lifetime of processed kibble to just raw food. Start slowly, introducing raw meat into his or her diet a few times a week, then daily, then make the full transition when you think they’re ready. Don’t rush, unless you want to have your carpet ruined!
For more information on this, I’ve examined the issue in further detail on our sister blog, Healthy Paleo Pets. Check out the post here!
When in doubt, observe
While we may not be able to ever really know EXACTLY what it was that your dog’s ancestors ate in the wild, we have a fairly good idea. And for any grey areas, there is always the power of observation! I make a point of closely monitoring my dog when she’s sniffing around outside, how she acts in the kitchen when I’m preparing food for myself, and how she reacts to the food I give her. If she runs outside with violent diarrhea after eating something, it’s obviously not good for her to eat. And if she actively seeks a certain type of food out, and makes considerable effort to eat it, that food should probably make an appearance on her weekly food rotation.
A couple of examples:
we took our dog around to a friend’s place a couple of weeks ago, and she was off like a rocket in the back yard. I followed her over and she’d found a large walnut tree. She then proceeded to sniff out walnuts that had fallen on the ground, artfully crack the shells and eat the walnut flesh inside. Clearly, this was a desirable food for her, and she didn’t seem to react badly to eating them.
my parents have something of a rabbit infestation on their property. Our dog occasionally manages to catch a rabbit (or find a dead one) and wastes no time in chewing it to smithereens. The only parts she seems to leave are the legs and the ears….she even eats the guts! This to give you an idea of just how much of an animal your dog’s digestive system is designed to eat. Each different part (organ, muscle, bone, skin, etc) would provide different vitamins and nutrients essential to the dog’s health.
Keep a notepad handy, and start watching your dog’s every move when it comes to food. He or she won’t get creeped out, I promise.
Foods your dog should stay away from
Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list…once again, if you’re unsure of anything, run it past your vet!
Here’s a list of some of the more common foods that your dog shouldn’t eat. The thing to remember is that their digestive system is very different to ours, so what is safe for us to eat may not be safe for them.
chocolate (everyone knows that one!)
caffeine
onions
garlic
avocado (I’m on the fence about this one. Some experts say dogs should stay away from avocados altogether, and others say the flesh might be fine for them to eat. For more on the matter, check out this article.)
macadamia nuts
milk and dairy products
xylitol
grapes and anything containing grapes (including raisins!)
salt (apparently they get all the sodium they need from raw meat etc)
yeast
Do your research, and know the limitations of your dog’s stomach. It just might save you a costly emergency visit to the vet.
Making your own dog food at home
There’s two ways you can go about ensuring your dog gets the best nutrition: thoroughly researching each manufacturer to determine whether their products cuts the mustard, or making it yourself. For buying dog food, we’ve compiled a selection of paleo-friendly dog foods and treats here. For making your own, it’s up to you what you put in their food – just make sure it is primarily meat-based.
You can also throw a whole lot of ingredients in a blender, then pour the mixture into molds and freeze for later use. Doing it this way, you can prepare as much as a whole month of meals for your dog, and just take them out of the freezer the night before. Here’s a few of the things you could consider throwing in the mix, ordered from most to least:
raw meat – try to get a mix of at least one red meat (i.e. beef) and one white (i.e. chicken). Don’t be afraid to buy the cheapest, weirdest cuts of meat at the supermarket or butcher – they’re often healthier than the typical steak, breast and ground meat you get for yourself anyway!
organ meats – again, raw. A little goes a long way here, and try to put a range of different organs in, as each contains different levels of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.
bone broth
raw eggs
Each time you feed your dog, observe how they react – and if necessary, change up the ingredients to better suit their digestion. Good luck!
Do you have a super-healthy dog food recipe that you’d like to share? Are there any foods your dog has eaten that didn’t go down so smooth? Comment away, we’d love to hear from you!
Bone broth has recently taken the paleo, primal, and ancestral dieting worlds by storm, and thats no coincidence. Not only is bone broth an excellent way to make use of all those leftover bones and carcasses you’d otherwise throw out post-roast, it’s also one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet.
Bone broth benefits
If you’ve arrived at this article looking for a quick, easy recipe: you’ve come to the right place! So if you’re keen to just get stuck in and make some fine-ass broth, scroll down to the next section. But if you’d like to amp yourself up with some fun facts about why bone broth is just so darn good, lets dive right in.
As we explained in yet another ultra-informative Thrive Primal article, bone broth is a must-eat for just about anyone. It’s loaded with a wide range of essential minerals, many of which the typical Western diet is seriously lacking in. These include calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and potassium. Our friend bone broth, also known in certain circles as stock, is chocka block with glycine and proline, two amino acids which are just the bees knees for your overall health and, well…your knees!
Bone broth also contains plenty of collagen, condroitin and glucosamine, all of which you need to maintain a healthy, fully-functioning body. Put together, all of these minerals and nutrients mean bone broth is an excellent way to improve your bone and tissue healing rates, keep your skin looking young and firm, revitalize your hair and nails, keep your joints supple, heal your gut lining, and improve detoxification.
Excited yet? You should be. Well, without further ado, let’s get broth making!
How to make bone broth the paleo way
There’s two ways you can make bone broth: the slow way, and the fast way. Because the fast way requires a pressure cooker, and we haven’t yet invested in one of those, we stick to the slow way. It’s no less effective, but it just take a few hours longer.
Equipment:
Slow cooker or crock pot (they’re essentially the same thing)
large glass jar or multiple smaller jars
Instructions:
Whenever you cook up a roast, lamb chops, or any meat with bones, set the bones aside and store them in a container in your freezer.
Once the pones have piled up to about two thirds the size of your slow cooker (less is fine, too!), you’re ready to go.
Throw the bones in your slow cooker, completely cover with cold water, and set the temperature to a low heat. The mixture should remain at a simmer the whole time, and should never boil over.
Add one to two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or white vinegar to the bone and water mixture. This helps to draw the nutrients out of the bones.
Leave the bones to do their thing, topping up water as necessary to ensure they remain submerged the whole time. We leave beef and lamb bones simmering for 18 to 24 hours to ensure all the nutrients are extracted into the water, and chicken bones for around 12 to 16 hours. The longer you cook them, the more nutrient-dense your broth will be.
After the allotted time, remove from heat, cover, and leave to cool down. Before the mixture cools completely, remove the bones from the bottom of the mixture and pour the rest into a large glass jar and keep in the fridge. It will keep for around 1 to 2 weeks – if you don’t think you’ll use it all within this timeframe, just place some of it in an appropriate container and freeze it!
Note that if you don’t have a slow-cooker or crockpot, you can also just use a large stock pot. Just make sure it’s big enough, and that it’s ok to leave simmering unattended for a long period of time.
Paleo bone broth recipe using pressure cooker
As we explained earlier, there’s a much faster way to fulfill your bone broth needs: the pressure cooker! If you’ve got one of these bad boys, you can whip out a decent batch of bone broth in 2-3 hours. Impressive!
Large glass jar or collection of smaller widemouth jars
Instructions:
Place your bones in the bottom of your pressure cooker. Make sure the bones don’t reach past the two thirds mark of the cooker, otherwise you’ll be dealing with a pressure cooker overload!
Cover with water, and add in 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or distilled white vinegar. Any old vinegar will do, really.
Set your cooker to high pressure and leave for three hours. After this time, turn off the heat and leave to depressurize naturally.
Allow the mixture to cool to just above room temperature, then strain the liquid from the bones. Store in glass mason jars in the fridge, or place in the freezer for longer term storage.
That’s it! Pretty easy, right? You can also get snazzy by doing things like roasting the bones first (to give your broth a darker, more intense flavor) or adding in vegetables like leaks and carrots. But I like to keep things nice and simple, and knock back half a cup or so of broth each day to reap the health rewards. Enjoy!
And p.s. if you’re worried about lead toxicity issues, don’t be: according to Chris Kresser, the lead found in bone broth is nothing to be worried about.
The popularity of probiotics in the past 10 years has skyrocketed. A decade ago, most people would probably have given you a bit of a weird look if you asked them whether they were supplementing with probiotics. But now, with the scientific community increasingly proving that your gut health is critical to your overall health, probiotics are a hot topic.
Now, there’s all sorts of words like “good bacteria”, “bad bacteria”, “microbiome”, and “gut flora” bandied about. They sound important, but what the heck do they actually mean? And for that matter, why do you even need to know what they mean? Can’t you just grab any old probiotic product from your supermarket or health store shelves, knock a capsule back once a day, and move on with your life?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are plenty of probiotic products out there which will provide absolutely no benefit for your gut health, and others that may even do you harm. In order to get the most from your probiotic supplement, you first need to get inside your gut. Metaphorically, not literally – that would be pretty darn gross.
Why do I need to take a probiotic supplement?
Your gastrointestinal tract, henceforth referred to as your gut, is home to over 500 different species of microorganisms. This number of species is likely much higher, as scientists are still funding hundreds of new gut microflora strains every year. These microorganisms number in their billions. Billions, people!
Far from your gut being an incestuous infestation of disgusting microscopic bugs, we rely on these billions of microorganisms for our very existence. A 2012 study published in the Journal of Nutrition in Clinical Practice found that the bacteria in your gut form an intricate, living fabric of natural controls that affect body weight, energy, and nutrition. Another 2012 study, this time published in the Journal of Nature Reviews Neuroscience, noted that the gut microbiotia plays a pivotal role “in the regulation of anxiety, mood, cognition and pain.”
The take away from all these emerging studies is that the microorganisms that live in your gut are far more important than you think. They have the potential to influence almost every aspect of your health, so if things are unbalanced down there (and they probably are!), there’s no way you can ever be fully healthy.
Your gut is probably lacking in good bacteria
The reason I say that your gut microbiome (the “living community” of bacteria and yeast which resides in your gastrointestinal tract) is probably a bit sad is because modern society has it in for these useful little guys. For starters, evidence shows that a natural birth is critical for exposing newborn babies to certain beneficial bacterial strains which then go on to colonize their gut. As this article from Science Daily puts it:
Each individual’s community of gut microbes is unique and profoundly sensitive to environmental conditions, beginning at birth. Indeed, the mode of delivery during the birthing process has been shown to affect an infant’s microbial profile.
Communities of vaginal microbes change during pregnancy in preparation for birth, delivering beneficial microbes to the newborn. At the time of delivery, the vagina is dominated by a pair of bacterial species, Lactobacillus and Prevotella. In contrast, infants delivered by caesarean section typically show microbial communities associated with the skin, including Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, and Propionibacterium. While the full implications of these distinctions are still murky, evidence suggests they may affect an infant’s subsequent development and health, particularly in terms of susceptibility to pathogens.
Essentially, if you had a cesarean birth, your gut is off to a very bad start. The next great blow to your gut health comes with antibiotics. Every time your doctor prescribed a round of antibiotics to kill of some pathogen in your body, it also killed off the good bacteria in your gut. Antibiotics are not selective, meaning they kill everything in your gut – good and bad.
Finally, there’s all sorts of other environmental toxins, prescription meds, and oral contraceptives which have been shown to take their toll on your gut health. Suffice to say that your population of beneficial bacteria is not what it should be.
Are the probiotics in fermented foods enough?
This one is a little more difficult to answer. For some people, the probiotics they receive from fermented foods may be sufficient to keep their gut happy and healthy, but only if they work hard at it. These people would need to have an already healthy gut biome, and they’d need to be eating a variety fermented foods per day. Examples of fermented foods include:
sauerkraut
kimchi
kombucha
kefir
kvass
All of which need to be raw and unpasteurized. These foods can be very expensive to buy, and are time consuming (but highly rewarding!) to make. Most people don’t want that kind of commitment. If you do, check out our easy DIY sauerkraut recipe.
If you’re not prepared to eat a range of different fermented foods every day, or if you have been exposed to a cesarean birth, antibiotics, or have serious digestive issues, you NEED to get your hands on a quality probiotic supplement. Here’s how.
Finding the best quality probiotic supplement
If you find the right probiotic supplement for your needs, your gut will flourish. Quality probiotic supplements provide billions of beneficial bacteria which actually re-colonize your gut and make it a happy place once more. If you’ve been suffering from digestive issues (diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, gas, nausea, etc), you’ll likely notice the difference within a few days, if not immediately!
Cheap or poor-quality probiotics, on the other hand, use the wrong bacterial species or don’t allow those bacteria to actually take up residence in your gut. A classic example of this is acidophilus yoghurt – it might help your digestion when you eat it, but it’s effects are only temporary, simply because those bacteria aren’t designed to actually live in your gut.
This probiotic easily gets the thumbs-up from us, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s endorsed by Chris Kresser, a key figure in the health industry who I have a lot of respect for due to his obsession for reviewing the scientific literature and really knowing his stuff. If Chris says its good, its probably good.
Next, Prescript-Assist sources it’s beneficial bacteria from soil-based organisms – bacteria and other microorganisms which we would commonly have been exposed to before humanity developed a repulsion for getting dirt on its hands. These bacteria have been scientifically proven to live in the human gastrointestinal tract, meaning this supplement helps you to rebuild you gut population, rather than just temporarily bolstering it (as with many other probiotics).
Finally, Prescript-Assist also contains a humic/fulvic acid prebiotic which helps those good bacteria to thrive and flourish within their new home (your gut!). Essentially, it plants your seedlings, and gives them a healthy dose of organic fertilizer at the same time.
These potent little babies pack a serious punch, and are endorsed by another of our health heroes, Mark Sisson. I like these probiotics as they’ve gone for high-potency, high-quality bacterial strains rather than just a vast number of low-return bacterial species. That’s what a lot of companies rely on to sell their probiotic product – “contains 150 billion trillion CFU’s!”, when really it’s about quality, not quantity. What’s the point in sending hundreds of billions of bacterial strains through your gut, if they don’t actually want to live there?
Primal Probiotics come with excellent reviews and plenty of information regarding their effectiveness and why they’ve selected certain strains. They’re also designed to survive the harsh environment of your stomach and make it through to your gut intact, which can’t be said for many other probiotic supplements.
Different strokes for different folks
While the above two probiotic supplements are a great start, everyone is different. With this in mind, if your body doesn’t respond well to them after the initial “adjustment” period (usually around a week), shop around and find a probiotic which is also well-respected and which suits your needs better.
Do you have a go-to probiotic supplement which you love? Tell us the difference that it’s made in your life!
If you’ve been doing your research, chances are you’ve figured out that conventional deodorant and anti-perspirants are highly toxic. Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking – where does the mayhem end? Well, it certainly doesn’t end here, as these babies typically contain a heady concoction of chemicals which can do some serious harm in your body.
Common toxins found in deodorants and antiperspirants
Just to get you all riled up, here’s a quick list of toxic compounds commonly found in your average stick or spray-can of deodorant:
Aluminum: Used to block the sweat glands and keep sweat from reaching the surface of your skin. Preliminary research suggests that these aluminum compounds can be absorbed through the skin and cause changes to estrogen receptors in breast cells. The result, according researchers, is a higher risk of breast cancer with continued use of deodorants which contain aluminum.
Parabens: Used as a preservative to stop fungus or bacteria growing on your goods. Parabens are currently in the scientific hotseat for suspicions of contributing to breast cancer, due to their estrogen-simulating effect in the body
Propylene glycol: Keeps products from drying out. This nasty stuff was originally developed as a type of antifreeze, but is now being used in many deodorants and antiperspirants. There is no shortage of studies out there showing how propylene glycol is poison to our bodies, including this 2003 study and this 2007 study. Propylene glycol can cause dermatitis, kidney damage, liver damage, eye and skin irritation, gastrointestinal irritation, nausea, headaches, and central nervous depression. Seems like a great ingredient for your deodorant, right?
Triclosan: A synthetic compound used to kill bacteria on the skin (and inside your pits!). Triclosan has been shown to cause contact dermatitis, and has also been found to disrupt thyroid function.
The list goes on. Other nasty numbers found in your deodorant or antiperspirant include TEA and DEA, artificial colors and perfumes, and talc. Suffice to say that you need to throw those sweet-smelling cancer sticks out, ASAP.
Make your own healthy deodorant with doTERRA essential oils
You could shop around for hours, even days, trying to find a mass-produced deodorant that doesn’t contain any of these harmful chemicals. And even when you did, they’d probably have something else in them which is detrimental to your health. Admittedly, there are certain products out there which are legitimately clean, like this excellent natural deodorant stick from Green Tidings, but the cost of these products can add up over time.
When it comes down to it, your best solution is to make your own deodorant. Here’s a quick, easy set of steps to do just that. If you want to make your own deodorant bar, rather than just a paste that you rub on with your hands, add in some beeswax to harden things up.
Remember, you can buy doTERRA oils for much cheaper, wholesale prices if you sign up through our Thrive Primal doTERRA portal. More more information on how to get started buying cheaper essential oils, check out this article.
Also note that the Whisper blend is marketed “for women”, but the smell is definitely kosher for both men and women. As a man, I can confirm that it smells awesome and certainly doesn’t detract from my manliness!
Natural doTERRA deodorant instructions
There’s two ways you can do this recipe: the quick way and the fancy way. In our house, most of the time we opt for the “quick way” as we’re busy little bees. Essentially, this just involves leaving a jar of coconut oil somewhere warm (outside in the sun or beside the fireplace for a few minutes) and then mixing everything together in a glass jar. We don’t always use shea butter or cacao butter, but it’s nice to add them if you have the chance as they help to moisturize your pits. The “fancy way”, which admittedly will give you a better end product, is as follows:
Combine the coconut oil, shea or cacao butter in a double boiler, or simply a large mason jar inside a saucepan filled with 1 inch of water in the bottom. If you’re making a deodorant stick, add in the beeswax as well. I like simply melting everything in the mason jar, as it saves you having to clean hardened oils off a bowl at the end.
Bring the water to a boil, stirring ingredients constantly until they’re fully melted.
Remove oil mixture from heat and immediately add in the baking soda, arrowroot, and essential oils.
Give the mixture a good stir to ensure everything is fully incorporated. You need to make sure your oils are evenly spread throughout.
If you added beeswax for a deodorant stick, allow the mixture to cool for around 10-15 minutes at room temp. Once it hardens to a thick consistency, kind of like thick honey, carefully pour/scoop the mixture into an empty deodorant tube (you can literally just scoop out the old, nasty deodorant then rinse out with hot water) and leave overnight to fully harden. It’s better to wait until your deodorant mixture is thicker, so that you can make a mound inside the stick for ease of use.
That’s it! This should keep you and your family going for at least a few weeks, and sometimes a lot longer. If you didn’t make the deodorant stick, just scoop out a little with your fingers and massage gently into your pits.
It’s important to note that this isn’t an antiperspirant, so you will still sweat. But sweating is a healthy, natural bodily process – you need to sweat! And the good news that the longer you use this natural deodorant, the less you’ll sweat. Plus your sweat won’t smell bad, so you’re welcome.
If you start to develop a rash after a few days or weeks, don’t worry – if you’ve been using conventional, toxic deodorants for a long time this can sometimes happen. Doing an armpit detox like this one once a week until the rash goes away can make a big difference.
How did it go? Do you have your own special DIY deodorant blend? Tell us all about it!
In a perfect world, you’d only be eating organic produce. Heck, in a perfect world, there’d be no such thing as “non-organic” produce, period. I’ve always found the term “non-organic” a little hard to wrap my head around anyway, seeing as produce is, by definition, organic in nature.
Literary conundrums aside, there’s a bigger dilemma at play here: you can’t always buy organic. It could be the crippling price of organic fruit or vegetables which has you passing them by at high speed, headed for the considerably cheaper chemical-enriched produce aisles. It could also be that your local supermarket simply doesn’t have the incentive or resources to source a good range of organic produce.
Whatever the reason, there’s a good chance that you’ll be munching on a non-organic apple one afternoon, or steaming up some non-organic broccoli for the family dinner one evening. And while you’d be commended for at least eating whole foods in the first place, you’re still ingesting a heady concoction of toxins. These toxins are largely due to pesticides sprayed onto the surface of those fruits and vegetables to protect them from insect and animal attack, and keep them looking blemish-free.
While the reasoning behind such an action is perhaps understandable, the result is not: the chemicals in these pesticides remain in the skin and flesh of the produce, and when ingested they pass into our digestive system and pollute our bodies. The result is a higher risk of developing a wide range of diseases and health conditions, from hormonal imbalance, to neurological disorders and even cancer.
As we recommended in our article on buying the healthiest fruit and vegetables, the logical first step is to turn to the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists. These are an excellent starting point for paleo, primal and simply health-conscious shoppers, as they give an indication of which produce is ok to buy non-organic, and which fruit and veggies you should be prepared to fork out the big bucks for and buy organic. I also just stumbled across this consumer reports guideline, which lists 48 conventional fruits and vegetables available in the US and guides you through which varieties to go for, and which countries have the lowest-risk produce.
But despite all these efforts, you’re probably still going to end up with some non-organic bits and bobs. This is when a good DIY pesticide wash comes in handy. And it doesn’t have to be a super fancy-schmancy thing you buy from some online health food stores for a million bucks. All it takes is some water, vinegar, and a little bit of patience. Doesn’t seem so bad, considering your health is at stake, right?
Fill a large stainless steel, ceramic or glass bowl with 4 parts water to 1 part white vinegar.
Submerge any fruit, vegetables or other produce that you'd like to clean within the solution. Use a plate or something heavy to keep the items below the water, and leave for 20 minutes.
Take out your fruit or vege, rinse well with tap water, and you're good to go! Simple as that. Make sure you discard your cleaning solution each time.
This recipe was created by Liivi Hess, ThrivePrimal.com
You’d think that after dunking your fresh produce in vinegar for 20 minutes, it’d taste pretty strong. But surprisingly, there’s very little hint of vinegar on the food afterwards, and often what vinegary aftertaste does make it through actually complements the native taste of the produce quite nicely.
While you aren’t going to rid your fruit and vegetables of every molecule of pesticide with this vinegar wash, you’ll banish most of it. And in my opinion, less chemicals, no matter how much less, is definitely a good thing.
