Monday, January 12, 2015

Have A Non-Paleo But Grain-Free Meatless-Monday Recipe

Well that was a lot of hyphens.  Anyway, I moved to a different city a few weeks ago, to a beautiful neighborhood with lots of opportunities for good food and self-improvement, which was one of the points of moving anyway.  My last living situation was one that practically guaranteed I'd have a hard time eating good food, because the building itself was depressing, living there was wasteful, I was isolated from friends due to distance, and my father was constantly pressuring me to eat things that I'm addicted to but was trying to avoid.  Obviously things are still really difficult for me, but the move has made things a hell of a lot better.

Anyway, I probably have mentioned before (if not here then definitely elsewhere) that I try to keep on hand the ingredients and knowledge necessary to throw a vegetarian dish together that won't make me feel like I've swallowed a key at three in the morning*.  They're not always paleo or primal but they're also not terrible and meet the requirements of any vegetarian or vegan friends I may have over.

I've also just been trying to eat less meat in general, which is a sin among some paleo enthusiasts but which I have chosen to do for the environmental benefits, as getting meat with a lower environmental footprint is difficult and expensive.

This recipe is one I've done a lot of times before when I don't want to spend a lot of time cooking but I nonetheless would like something resembling curry.  Alright: I didn't do very well at all capturing the measurements used for this recipe.  But it's really something that I probably vary from day to day anyway.

Tofu and Broccoli Quick Curry


Ingredients:
  • 1 pound frozen broccoli florets, thawed
  • 1 pound firm tofu, drained and cubed
  • about a teaspoon or two curry powder
  • 2-3 tablespoons green curry paste
  • coconut milk
  • cayenne pepper
  • black pepper
  • coconut oil, ghee, or a mix of both
  • salt
Melt the oil and/or ghee in a frying pan and add the tofu.  Add the curry powder and brown on at least two sides (all sides would be preferable but I'm often lazy).  When I cook tofu I tend to leave it on the heat for a really long time, like I'll go do some cleaning if I'm impatient, because I do not like the taste of raw tofu.  This will depend on your personal tastes.

Add the broccoli, stir a bit, and then add coconut milk until you get a ratio of solid-to-liquid that strikes you as appropriate (One of the reasons I've never gotten an accurate measurement here is because for me that varies from meal to meal.  Sometimes I want a lot of liquid, sometimes I don't.).  Add curry paste in the same manner (taste it periodically until you get an amount that doesn't taste bland) and a few sprinkles of black and cayenne pepper.

At this point, since all of the stuff in the dish was already cooked, you really only need to warm the coconut milk.  If you want to cook it longer so the flavors all marry together, that's certainly fine.  Add the salt at the end, to taste.

Some Recipe Notes and Variations
  • You could un-vegetarianize this recipe by replacing the tofu with chicken or pork.
  • If you want it to stay vegetarian but want it to be paleo, you can omit the tofu entirely.
  • You can put practically any vegetables in this.  California blend vegetables--with carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli florets--work great.
  • You can also use red curry paste, I just typically use green.


* - I know I mentioned that I am allergic to wheat, but I don't think I mentioned that the weirdest fucking symptom ever that I get from eating wheat is that I wake up at unnatural hours convinced I have swallowed something that isn't food, like a pen or a fork or a key.  One time I was convinced I swallowed my cell phone.  Fucking weird.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Paleo Diet: The Worst Diet? Well, no.

It's that time of year again.  People are getting into their (likely short lived) New Year Resolutions, and for a significant amount of the population that means attempts at weight loss.  It's also the time of year that people keep passing around this list of "top rated diets" on which paleo consistently ranks near the bottom.  Much like the appalling article claiming gluten-free diets are dangerous if you don't have celiac disease, this gets tossed around by people who have vendettas against specific diets for whatever reason.

This year the paleo diet ranked #35--dead last.  Diets that this list inexplicably thinks are better than paleo include the raw food diet and the macrobiotic diet.  Wait... paleo is worse than the raw food diet?  I might have snorted when I read that.  Anyway, because anybody who actually takes even half a second to look at what a paleo eater actually eats--perhaps without putting the label "paleo" on it--will recognize that it's a diet rich in whole, real foods... I couldn't fathom why paleo was somehow beaten out by the raw food diet of all things.  So I decided to look at the standards they're using for ranking these diets as well as what they specifically say about paleo.

And unshockingly, this is a pretty goddamn useless list.

Weight Loss, Short Term and Long Term

I should reiterate that for many people paleo is not a weight loss diet.  In my own case, although I want to lose weight, I'm largely satisfied if I even so much as eliminate the symptoms of my wheat allergy and odd reactions to brown rice.  Still, weight loss is a huge factor in why people diet, so it's important to look at.  They gave paleo a score of 2.1 for short-term weight loss and 1.7 for long-term weight loss.  With such specific figures you know they must have a reason, right?

Looking at the dedicated page for the paleo diet on the site, though, you learn that research on both short- and long-term weight loss among paleo dieters is practically non-existent.  This is extremely disconcerting, because until you look at the data and specifically click on these diets it's pretty much marketed as a definitive list of good vs. bad diets.  To quote the website's "Will You Lose Weight" header:

No way to tell. Paleo diets haven’t yet drawn the attention of many researchers. One tiny study that looked at weight loss found that 14 participants lost an average of about 5 pounds after three weeks on a Paleo regimen. (But even the researchers called their study “underpowered.”) Still, if you build a “calorie deficit” into your Paleo plan – eating fewer calories than your daily recommended max, or burning off extra by exercising – you should shed some pounds. How quickly and whether you keep them off is up to you.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to state that the paleo diet doesn't have enough empirical data supporting whether or not it's really a good weight-loss diet.  The problem is that not knowing if a diet is effective isn't the same as the diet being documentedly ineffective.  So basically, two of the criteria they use are already useless.

My favorite part is their "no shit Sherlock" statement that a calorie deficit will help you lose weight.

Nutrition

They give paleo a score of 2.0.   For some context, they give the vegan diet--a diet that if unsupplemented is life-threatening--a 2.8.  Looking again at the specific page for the paleo diet, it's easy to see why they gave it such a low score, which is that they are using USDA guidelines as their only standard.  This is actually a flaw in the entire idea of being able to rank diets on a simple scale and not just with the people who created the list.  They needed a simple way of gauging whether or not the diets are nutritionally adequate and used the RDA guidelines because, well, it seems pretty obvious... without mentioning even once on their whole page that practically every major paleo advocate has issues with these guidelines.

Their issues with paleo are the same ones you'll see trotted out by anybody else who hasn't really looked into the subject.  "There's too much fat!"  "There's too much protein!"  "Carbs!  You need more caaaarbs!"  I think it would be reasonable for a site like this to mention that paleo does not meet these guidelines, but it's disingenuous to do that without also explaining that we have arguments for why this is.

Some nutrients they mention as possibly being lacking include calcium and vitamin D.  I've found that calcium in the paleo diet is a highly variable thing, especially considering how many of us consume dairy products.  The problem is that calcium is only one of the minerals responsible for bone health, and it's greatly overemphasized.  Paleo in some respects does better due to these other minerals.  And vitamin D is something hard to get on most diets.

They also make a big deal about giving up grains.  This is in the same vein of thought as those articles making a fuss about how giving up gluten is "dangerous" if you don't have celiac disease... look at the lack of some token nutrients found in wheat products--usually in fortified or enriched forms, not whole forms--and then ignore the other sources of those nutrients.

Cardiovascular Health

They give a 2.0 for heart health, because of the fat levels.  This is the second lowest score after the Dukan diet, even though they mention there are studies showing improved cardiovascular markers like blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides.  They don't mention any studies that show lowered cardiovascular health, they are basing the score entirely on fat.

Diabetes

The page says that we don't know whether or not paleo is good for diabetes, yet they still gave it a score of 2.1.  Based on what?

Ease of Use

They gave paleo a score of 1.7 for ease... and then entirely contradicted that on the page.   This score is based entirely on the fact that paleo cuts out some food groups, but they acknowledged that it has a high satiety level and that there is a really high support level through cookbooks and Internet communities.

I actually take some issue with this category, though, because so much of "ease of use" has to do with lack of proper accommodation.  Eating well should be easy, but food corporations and people you associate with can make it difficult with false advertising, stubbornness, addition of weird-ass filler foods, and so forth.  The word "paleo" can now be found emblazoned on stuff with soy, sugar, and other non-paleo ingredients.  A lot of the difficulty is due to this.

A big chunk of the rest of the difficulty has to do with things like addiction, habit, and ubiquity.  In cases like mine, it's legitimately difficult to avoid wheat--despite a confirmed allergy and a lot of horrible side effects--because eating a little sends me into an addicted haze where I eat every cookie in a five mile radius.

Paleo eaters a lot of times croon about how easy paleo is.  I disagree.  I also disagree that it has to be easy to be worthwhile.

Safety

How nice of them, they added a whole category just to tell us if our diets are dangerous.  Paleo got a 2.3.  Veganism--which again I must mention has a life-threatening vitamin deficit if unsupplemented, something paleo does not have--got a 3.0.

We were beat out by... raw foodism?!

Raw foodism beat out paleo, largely because on a raw food diet you are heavily likely to get too few calories.

I've been picking on their vegan page a bit, but there's a reason for that:  I'm an ex-vegan and have a pretty good idea of what veganism entails.  You know what's really interesting is what doesn't show up on the vegan page.

It doesn't mention that you have to supplement B-12.  It says you can rely on fortified foods.  This isn't true and that's like the first thing any vegan learns.

It says that you might need to supplement vitamin D if you don't get enough sun, because vitamin D is found mostly in animal foods.  But didn't it say on the paleo page that paleo eaters will get little to none?  Even though most of us eat fatty fish.  Hmmm.

Their remarks that veganism is satiety-inducing, but being hungry all-the-fucking-time is a pretty well-known problem among vegans (when I was a vegan I felt hungry even when I was packed full of food).

It also says it should be easy for vegans to stay under 2300 milligrams of sodium, which is a serious fucking joke.  Whoever wrote that has probably never been vegan, or if so is some sort of vegan superhero.


Conclusion

People diet for a lot of reasons and as far as I'm concerned if you want to try any of these that's entirely up to you.  That doesn't change the fact that this list is extremely shady, assigns numeric values contrary to what evidence we have or more likely in the absence of evidence, and oversimplifies human nutrition.

Monday, January 5, 2015

My Worst-Cooks Knockoff Dish

I have been obsessed with the show "Worst Cooks in America" lately.  I don't actually believe these are real people.  They are robots programmed to be terrible at cooking.  But anyway, last night I watched an episode that had a really goddamn good looking rib eye and I decided to rip it off using what I already had in my fridge.

Alright, for some transparency, this isn't even close to pure paleo.  It could easily be morphed into something much more purely paleo, though, if you desire.  Its main "paleo sins" are the use of dairy and some added sugar from in the pre-made spice mix I used.  If you don't do tubers you can replace the sweet potato with butternut squash, the butter can be omitted, the milk can be replaced with cream or coconut milk, and you can certainly omit the maple syrup.

I mean, obviously you can do all those things.  I'm merely giving some suggestions should you choose to go this path.

Buttered Chuck Eye Steak with Sweet Potato Puree

Steak Ingredients (per steak):
  • 1 chuck eye steak
  • Grill Mates Fiery 5 Pepper Seasoning or a comparable dry rub
  • 1 tablespoon refined coconut oil (you can go with unrefined if you don't mind everything tasting like coconut)
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • a sprig of rosemary
  • salt (I used Fleur de Sel because I'm a hipster like that) to taste
Puree Ingredients:
  • 1 sweet potato
  • 1/4 cup whole milk or cream
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • maple syrup to taste
  • salt to taste

Steak Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Put a cast iron pan on the stove and put the coconut oil in it.  Allow it to heat so it's very hot (I have an induction stovetop and a cast iron pan, I set it on the highest setting).  While the pan is heating, coat each side of the steak with the spice mix and really push it in.  Sear each side until the spice mix is crusted onto it.  The steak itself will still be raw; that's fine, it's supposed to be like that.

Take the pan off the heat so the oil doesn't start to burn and take the steak out of the pan (if you're using cast iron per my instructions it'll stay pretty hot anyway).  Slice it at 3/4 inch to 1 inch intervals depending on what you're into.  Put it back into the pan, place the rosemary sprig on top, and put the tablespoon of butter over that (the butter should sink between the slices of steak, the rosemary will get crispy and serve as both a garnish and something tasty to nibble on).  Put it in the oven for about ten minutes.  This is a good time to make the sweet potato puree described below (unless you decide to be fancy and not use the microwave; in this case you would pre-make it).  Plate the puree by spooning it onto a plate in an area about the size of your steak (unless you decide to be fancy again and use a piping bag or something).

Avoid touching the pan with your bare hands when you take it out (I only remind you of this because I burned myself pretty awful while cooking this because I biffed it and tried grabbing the handle).  Using a chef's knife or flipper, pick the steak up as a whole unit and place it on the puree.

Put a fancy-looking salt on it, like I said I used Fleur de Sel which is a particularly salty variety of salt that looks pretty.  It's hard to see it in the picture but it really added to the plating.

Puree Instructions

I should mention that I made the sweet potato as kind of an afterthought while the steak was cooking.  I just peeled it, sliced it, and microwaved it on high for about six minutes to soften it.  Take an electric hand mixer and puree together the sweet potato, milk, butter, syrup, and salt.  This is really easy stuff.  No worries.