Foodpornography= Primal way of life

Many of you have noticed I have been posting several pictures of food on Instagram and Facebook lately and some of you have asked me why, while others just tell me how much I make them salivate.  So the real reason behind all the foodpornography photography, is because two years ago, my husband and I began working towards a primal way of life in regard to diet.  The primal diet aka paleo diet, is often described as the caveman's diet.  For us, and for most followers, the paleo diet looks at what our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have thrived on and sticks to that, avoiding grains, eating very minimal to no sugars or dairy.  So I often get the question, well what do you eat? And I think honestly that is what I find so appealing about cooking now, my cooking is more simplified, yet, for so many who see my foodporn photos, they say to me it is looks so good, but I could never make it.  It really isn't that complicated.  At first, we ate really blah and boring, sticking mostly to sweet potatoes and really simple meals.  Which if any of you have tried to do any sort of diet know, that once it gets boring you are over it. 

Well that is not an option for us, we embraced primal living and intend to keep it that way.  I know for my husband, Kyle this came from listening to Angelo Coppola's podcast Latest in Paleo and Mark Sisson's Mark's Daily Apple. For Kyle it clicked right away, made sense and he was working on living primal.  Myself, on the other hand am a researcher, in college I took a course on food and culture, so I am very aware of fad diets and latest crazes and how often they can hurt your body and health.  So I wanted too investigate, and I haven't stopped. I have jumped on board, because after reading Nora Gedgaudas' Primal Body, Primal Mind, so many things made sense.  I think certain things have clicked for me more because I had just been reading so many books on prepregnancy, pregnancy, and child development.  And what I am getting at here is so often we hear in the Western Diet to avoid fat, eat chicken, avoid butter, use margarine, eat egg whites, no bacon, etc.  Well let me share this quote with you from George Bernard Shaw, "No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.  Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office".  Now, with that said, I will explain why this quote, which Gedgaudas uses in a chapter about dietary fats, got my wheels spinning in my head...you see, all those pregnancy books and child development books, not to mention, the OB-GYN and the pediatrician all stated how important breast milk was for a child's development. You see and this is the Ding, Ding, Ding or Ah-ha! moment...babies/toddlers need a high amount of dietary fat for proper brain development, now, "breast milk" is also said to help the child's immune system, but breast milk is also known for its' fat too. Then there is this thought, if our society has perfected this "low-fat Western diet" then why do we have the highest diabetes, obesity and heart disease.  Does the low-fat diet make sense? We could go on and on about this topic, I encourage you to read Gedgaudas' book, as well as, take a moment and look at the industrialization of food, you will start to make our own correlations. But in a nut shell this is what made me understand primal living. "The fact is that all natural fat has a role to play in our health, and what matters in the end is proper balance.  Artificial, overly processed, or rancid fats, however, are the ones that need be avoided altogether.  Those are the real bad guys"- Nora Gedgaudas.

So for our family, primal living makes sense.  Now, what I will say is that we are still working at it, it is not something that happens over night and it takes time, but we have discovered some amazing foods that until now, never even knew about like, spaghetti squash and celery root.  And once you try spaghetti squash, you will know, its much like the age old question which came first the chicken or the egg?  You will see that "spaghetti" grain noodles had to be inspired by this veggie.

So continue to enjoy the foodpornography photography and recipes and I hope that you are at least inspired to get a little creative in your own kitchen, there is a simple and pure joy in cooking!!! Embrace the journey!

"Your foods shall be your remedies, and your remedies shall be your foods"-Hippocrates