Last week a friend had a group over for a stir-fry dinner and the subject of what oils are best for stir frying came up. While you likely won’t find these in any Chinese restaurant, the healthiest ones are light/refined olive oil, refined avocado oil, and refined coconut oil.
 
What determines whether one of the Paleo oils is a good candidate for stir-frying is its smoke point and the flavor it imparts. The ones most commonly used by Chinese restaurants are peanut oil, vegetable oil, soybean oil, and canola oil, and none of these are included on the Paleo Diet.

​A friend of mine recently asked me to make a nut-free version of my chocolate chip muffins. She said she likes my almond flour ones but she needs snacks that she can send to school with her kids, and snacks taken to school can’t contain nuts.
 
While I make a number of items that are nut-free, I discovered when I went through my recipes that all my muffins are made with almond flour and small amounts of other flours such as tapioca, arrowroot and coconut.

In my last post, I said that the most Paleo friendly alcohol was tequila made from 100% agave (a cactus). This may have led people to think that agave nectar (syrup) is Paleo. There has always been a lot of confusion about agave nectar and I’ve even seen Paleo recipes that call for it, but it definitely is not Paleo.

​After the juice of the agave plant is extracted, it is so highly processed that its sugar is as much as 90% fructose, which is even greater than high fructose corn syrup. Yet it often shows up in health foods and is marketed as a healthy, natural sweetener that won’t spike blood sugar levels because its glycemic index is lower than that of table sugar.

Another popular question is in regards to what Paleo has to say about alcohol. First of all, the Paleo diet doesn’t really approve of alcohol since it’s both a processed food and a toxin. But with that said, some types of alcohols are considered more Paleo-friendly than others.
 
In the case of spirits, the preferred one is 100% agave (a desert succulent) tequila, meaning it has no additives such as corn syrup, cane sugar, molasses or alcohol made from other sources used in many less expensive tequila.
 
Another spirit made from a plant without gluten and allowed on the Paleo diet is potato vodka, which is more Paleo-friendly than the majority of vodkas that are made from grain or corn, which aren’t allowed on the Paleo diet whether they contain gluten or not.

I would often get asked at the market if I thought it really was important to eat breakfast in the morning. My response was it’s not important when you eat your first meal of the day, but it’s very important as to what you eat. It’s called “breakfast” because you are breaking the fast you started the previous day.
 
Eating protein, healthy fat and complex carbs high in fiber make for a perfect breakfast, and when you choose to eat that depends on when you get hungry. For me, it’s usually a couple hours after I get up. But I know people who are ravenous when they wake up while others aren’t hungry till noon.

On Nov 12, 2020, I posted an in-depth look at the differences between gluten-free and Paleo’s position on grains. There are some grains that do not contain gluten such as oats, rice, buckwheat, corn, quinoa, amaranth and a few others. But no grains are permitted on Paleo because they are simple carbohydrates and quickly break down into sugar causing a spike in blood sugar level. This prevents the body from burning fat since it needs to convert the excess glucose in the bloodstream into energy while storing the rest as fat. 

One of the most popular topics at my market stall was what was the best diet for losing weight. I believe there is no such thing as the best diet for everyone. The best diet for someone is one that provides healthy results and is one that can be adhered to for the rest of one’s life. You might decide to modify it, especially once you reach your target weight, and allows you to occasionally cheat. If you go on vacation and gain a little weight, you don’t come home and become depressed after stepping on the scale because you know what you need to do to easily take the weight off.
 
I discovered firsthand a few years ago that the best diet for one person may not be the best one for someone else. Even though the Paleo products I sold at markets weren’t Whole30 I had a Whole30 cookbook at my stall because I liked talking about it. If you’re not familiar with Whole30, please do a web search. There are many sites about it, and thousands of Whole30 recipes on the web. In a nutshell, it’s the strictest form of Paleo.

No discussion of diets would be complete without talking about the Ketogenic (Keto) Diet. I talked to many people at the market who were over the moon with this diet. After trying many diets they were finally losing weight and had so much energy. They loved making fat bombs and couldn’t believe they could eat so much cheese and peanut butter and quickly lose weight. They were sure they could stay on this diet indefinitely.

When an orthopedic doctor put me on the Paleo Diet in 2016 to help me heal from injuries I sustained in a car accident in 2015 and said I should stay on it for life, I took him seriously. I knew very little about the diet so I bought several books about it and several Paleo cookbooks and started doing my research.

​Nearly every author had discovered the diet on their journey to manage living with a debilitating disease. Several suffered from one or more autoimmune diseases or extreme food sensitivities. In my case, I was looking for a way to alleviate the residual pain I had from the accident and see if there was a way to participate in activities I could no longer do. This is what led me to this non-surgical orthopedic doctor. 

I often get asked about the difference between Paleo and Gluten-free. While the Paleo Diet is gluten-free, it goes far beyond this and eliminates all grains for several reasons.
 
What is Gluten?
Gluten refers to a family of proteins found in some grains such as wheat, barley, rye, spelt, graham, malt, etc. There are three categories of people who have serious reactions if they consume gluten.