The Low Down

The human body is a metabolic marvel comprised of dozens of little systems connecting to create one complex system. Food is the fuel, the input, for the systems. Our metabolic machinery evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to function optimally on select fuels. These fuels were the original, Primal foods of the human organism. Over these hundreds of thousands of years our Big Game Hunting, small prey capturing, scavenging, foraging, gathering, opportunistic ancestors accumulated experience and wisdom about nourishing themselves. The learned to preserve and predigest foods to maximize the quality of their metabolic fuel. Eventually they learned to cook foods without destroying the important nourishing properties of the food, and then they learned to heal the human body with food. Only recently in the human evolutionary experience, have we abandoned all these hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated epicurean genius. Now we fuel our marvelous, complex metabolic machinery with crap invented to create profits for agribusiness. We have become dumb eaters. As we regain our eating intelligence it doesn't make sense to move back to the savannah and put out our fires or climb into our cave and pretend there is a glacier next door. It makes sense to fuel our bodies with all the primal human foodstuffs, prepared and preserved with accumulated ancestral wisdom and served up for the undeniable desires of the human taste buds. Primal, paleolithic food choices, handled according to ancient food ways resulting in outrageously good food.
PRIMAL. SMART. DELECTABLE.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Red Palm Oil







Red palm oil has not had the rebirth that coconut oil has been fortunate enough to experience. It may be that the taste is more unfamiliar to westerners and a little stronger. Red palm oil is a nutrient dense fat. It is loaded with beta-carotene (hence the color) as well as coenzyme Q10 and other benefits. You can read the story of red palm oil here.

There is a legitimate concern amongst folks who take environmental stability and sustainability into account when they chose their food supply that the Paleo diet is not an earth-friendly diet. In its correct form, the Paleo diet should be the MOST sustainable diet. Including a variety of foods that are produced in marginal ecological zones where conventional agriculture is not possible should be a desire we all have as Paleo eaters. Red palm oil needs to be on our radar. You can read more about it here. I think that African cooking is not on our radar at all! It doesn't have the cache of Asian cooking or the popularity of other ethnic cuisines. We miss out on some very Paleo food concepts if we don't look at many of the food traditions of African nations. I purchase my red palm oil at our international grocery store in Tucson and it is very affordable. In the pictures is the brand I found, and the nutrition label.

A study from right here in our own home state, looked at the dietary intake of red palm oil and its effect on the nutrient intake of breastfed babies: "Dr. Canefield of the University of Arizona in the US discovered that mothers who nursed their babies provided their babies with more vitamin A and carotenes by pre- paring their food with red palm oil than the control group which took beta-carotene capsules."

For a recipe that includes red palm oil and is derived from several African traditions sign up for the mailing list at www.paleofoodlist.com!! This month's recipes coming soon...
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