Fish and shellfish are a big part of diets throughout the world, and it is also a potential big source of nutrition in a Paleo diet.  There is no real prescription on the types of fish to eat in the diet in general.  As with the eggs it’s preferable that in most cases you go to a wild caught source of your fish versus farm raised.  There are some types of shellfish you can eat farm raised that may not have any difference in nutrition, like oysters and mussels.  However fish like salmon and tilapia often have a very different nutritional profile when you buy farm raised over wild caught.

I saved the most obvious for last, but probably also the first one everyone thinks of when it comes to the Paleo diets: meat.  With almost Pavlovian like repetition the one thing that I see about the Paleo diet, but both supporters and detractors alike, is the bacon orgy marketing message.  After years of being scared away from eating full fat bacon the simplified Paleo message that resonates the loudest is often the “You Can’t Eat Too Much Bacon” message.  That’s both overly simplified and not exactly correct either.

This is the first of a series of articles about the dos and don’ts of Paleo eating, as is commonly pitched in the Paleo Community at the time of my experiment.  I’ve been over the general principles in the past, but for those that want a really quick introduction to the foundation of the diet, I would recommend the Food Guide over at Paleo Plan. To start things off on a positive note, I figured we’d talk about what we can eat versus what we can’t.

The last two weeks has had me rounding out my testing of additional food types as I finish up my Virgin Diet.  Now that I’ve tried corn and peanuts all that is left is to summarize my results and prepare for my entry into the Paleo world for the next three months.  While I have had no ground breaking sensitivities to report, it’s good to know that there may be some minor effects I’m pretty much good to go on any of the foods I’d be considering trying in any of the diets.

When I was younger I used to see grand schemes in everything.  I don’t mean that in a conspiracy theory sense.  I mean it in the “there’s a reason for everything in life” sense.  I no longer subscribe to that philosophy.  My current philosophy is that stuff just happens; sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes fair, sometimes unfair.  There is no grand scheme in anything at all.  Yet when coincidences do happen I do feel that twinge of nostalgia for my old thought process.  That happened just the other day with respect to this very diet experiment.

I’m surprised at how fast the months of the experiment are flying by.  It seems like I just started the Virgin Diet a couple weeks ago, yet I’m now almost through with the testing phase and getting ready to move onto the first real diet phase, The Paleo Diet.  While life got in the way of some of the process, I mostly adhered to what I was trying to do with the testing and did get some interesting results.

Yesterday was supposed to be the first day of me testing soy in my diet.  Instead it turned into a bit of a binge on junk food literally containing almost everything I’m supposed to be avoiding.  Everything started off okay, with my usual (compliant) shake.  I then had sushi for lunch with soy sauce, which went fine.  The rest of the day was a devolving train wreck.

Another test week down, another example of how things that I thought may be bothering me really aren’t.  Granted I didn’t think I was having any major adverse reactions to any of these seven foods, but I did keep an open mind to the possibility.  In the end though, I think eggs passed without a doubt but I also think it is proving that the minor gluten issues were just that, issues and not being caused by something else.

As with the dairy test week, this is unfortunately probably tainted by the medicines and recovering from the surgery.  That probably means I should do a second round of test week later in this experiment, but from what I’ve found so far I think that I at least have some adverse reactions to the consumption of gluten.

I’ve seen this article a few times now, but never felt the urge to comment on it until now.  Perhaps it was because I just segued from the “Biggest Loser” article, or perhaps it was because I’m getting claustrophobic from not being plowed out yet.  The big question we can ask ourselves is “what composition are we?”