November 26, 2013

Our new meal plan: gluten-free and paleo are being tested.


Posted by Ethne~

Hey everyone – this is going to be abridged because the post I wrote up somehow got deleted. 

What I wanted to tell you is that I’ve put our family on a diet.  Not a ‘lose weight’ type of diet, since we’re all ok in that aspect, but a ‘let’s eat better’ type of meal plan.  Plus, I’ve heard good things about gluten-free and the paleo diets (GF in particular) as they pertain to ADHD and behavior type issues in kids.

After some research, I do not plan on, probably, doing 100% gluten free because I envision that to be nearly impossible.  I also do not plan to be 100% paleo because that seems too far for me (I get the idea – eat like our cave man ‘hunter-gatherer’ ancestors because that’s what our bodies evolved to handle – and therefore since evolution takes longer than the time since then and now, our bodies haven’t caught up with farming and highly-processed foods, hence the problems people are having with their health today).  Both seem more restrictive than my family needs to be.

But, what the people on these GF and paleo diets are doing right, in my opinion, is 1) eating in a way that suits their own needs and 2) they’re eating really thoughtfully, healthily and minimally-processed.  That, I can get.  For my family, #1 and #2 mean breaking the junk food cycle.  I try my very best to keep it out of their lives and the kids would still eat it as their only sustenance if allowed.

So for us, this means eating really minimal gluten.  I’ve tried to take it out of the house entirely but first of all, that cannot happen overnight because it’s everywhere, and second, figuring out what’s got gluten in it is gonna take a while.  We’re going to eat as minimally processed foods as we can though.  That has got to be good for us!  And then I’m going to utilize a couple of good cookbooks (to get me started) Thrifty Nana found at Costco (one thanks to a recent tip from Carmel at Our Fifth House, who does strict GF and paleo):

Against all Grain by Danielle Walker (she write a nice blog too - the book note is on the right) and


Wish us luck…Shaun says he can’t be 100% GF, what with beer having gluten in it.  But he assures me not to worry, seeing as beer is prehistoric too.  Almost. 

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