This cavewoman ain't going to make it on Paleo

Ok, I am a big believe in the Paleo/Primal lifestyle. I believe grains are third world protein, not as good for you as muscle meat, and of course irritating to the gut.
Problem is, cost is a big factor in Paleo diets. I have one income and I just can't spend every cent of disposable income on food. I eat good, the boxed/canned food was banned from the house over a year ago. I have a CSA starting up next month, I have a good butcher to get meat from. I buy pastured eggs from a local farm. I just can't keep this pace up three meals a day, seven days a week. Today is payday and allready I'm wondering how I'm going to make it to next payday.

I'm going to have to work in limited amounts of grains (ugh! evil word!) I don't mean maul an entire box of cookies, but allow myself some bread with one meal, not all meals. Or pasta some days.

Eating is tough business. Ugh! Cavewoman tired of hunting, need plow!

Anybody else got some thoughts of cost and specialized diets?

I have tried Paleo diet and yes it is much more expensive. I spend around 1300 dollars a month on groceries for family of 5. While trying the Paleo diet my grocery bill was in excess of 2000 a month. When you remove mass produced food, things get more expensive, free ranged meat and eggs are much higher. Fresh Vegatables and Fruit are not cheap if they make up a large portion of your diet, especially in the winter. I can buy 3-5 gallons of Olive oil for the price of one liter of coconut or other special oil. Most article's and people say it's not anymore expensive, but I am guessing they are short cutting and buying just regular meat and veggies from store.

If you can save a few bucks and get a large deep freezer. Buy half of cow and half of hog from a local farmer to save some money in the long run. Do you hunt and fish, wish large freezer you can save a lot of your own game for just the cost of having it butchered. Grow as many vegatables as space allows in the summer. Especially more expensive vegatables like asparguas.

I have stopped the Paleo diet, not due to cost though. Once I remove food unsafe on Paleo and food that is unsafe to me there just isn't much left. The cost is always a factor though unless you are filthy rich.

I have seen things called "meatshares" that are dramatically cheaper. The idea is a bunch of people are pitching in and someone in the group does the actual hunting. It's pretty caveman-ish, definitely not for me but could be a cost effective option for you.

The other thing I suggest is joining a meetup group or Weston Price Fdn in your area to connect with others who are following a similar dietary regiment.

I've seriously thought of finding someone who could hunt me an elk, but there are some obstacles to that. One, I live in a condo and don't have the space for a deep freezer, or an elk. I don't know the first thing about hunting, or else I'd buy my own elk tag and would be good to go. Then, there's the space thing again...

One thing is certain, I need to make some compromises, find a sensible, sustainable middle ground. I really don't want to eat factory farmed meat from the grocery store.
Eat a lot more vegetation, some meat, and few grains as possible?

Ugh! Sometimes I wish I could just pop a George Jetson food pill that wouldn't bother my Crohn's and I wouldn't even have to think about eating.

Ha, I have often said I wish there was a pill I could pop and that it contained the perfect food. No more thought, no more stress, no more worries.

We are paleo and we have a limited budget. I do what I can. Our grocery carries a line of more natural meats and a line of organics. I buy when it is clearance and I freeze it. Also, the good thing about paleo is you are encouraged eat the cuts of meat that aren't the more expensive. We make alot of use of ground turkey and boneless thighs. I can't afford organic eggs. We are planning to get chickens of our own but until then, I buy the best I can but I can't pay $4/dozen for the really good ones Sometimes you have to make compromises. For me, adding grain back in just isn't sensible. I feel too good without it, but I make other choices.
Can you eat potatoes?

I've viewed the different diets, paleo, SCD, vegan, etc. as good starting points. After awhile, if a diet is helping with improving the intestines health then it is good to experiment adding or subtracting different foods to see what helps further. That is what I've been doing. Generally I follow paleo ideas, but have needed to modify the diet to fit my needs.

The nice thing about paleo is its flexibility. There isn't one paleo diet. For example, some writers of the diet will say white rice, all dairy or potatoes are off limits. Others don't have a much problem with these foods. It is up to what one can handle health wise. (Avoiding bankruptcy is important too!)

Something that might be of help with paleo food buying is Robb Wolf's sight. He's written often in the past I've seen about different ways to eat paleo on a tight budget.

One of his articles I found with his search system ~

"Answers To Your Paleo Diet Burning Budget Questions"

http://robbwolf.com/2012/05/02/food-budget-and-paleo-diet-questions-answers/

Best of luck.

I'm with Charleigh on this one, compromise is the way to go. 'Perfect' Paleo is a rich persons diet but Paleo doesn't have to be any more expensive than the standard American diet.

Granted I live alone but in some ways that's more expensive because I can't really buy bulk things. I find Paleo for me to be roughly comparable in cost to eating more grains and dairy, it's really the time that I have to spend shopping and cooking that increased.

I think switching back to non-organic meat and veggies and eggs is a much better plan than going back to gluten and food from packages.

If you really need a filler food something like white rice can help cut down on the cost and isn't as gut mangling as the other options. Properly soaked and prepared beans can also be an option. Even Robb Wolf eats rice and beans a couple of times a week by his own admission.

Rice pasta, even the organic stuff, is no more expensive than wheat pasta where I live. And while bread is certainly cheap my medical bills wouldn't be if I went back to eating it.

The other option is win the lottery :ylol:

Google 'paleo' and 'expensive' and you'll get lots of tips
for example
http://paleodietlifestyle.com/money-saving-tips/
http://paleo.com.au/2012/03/paleo-on-a-budget/
http://www.paleoplan.com/2013/03-07/paleo-on-the-cheap/

Pick and choose the tips that work for you
They wont solve your problem but they will help.

The bad foods are subsidised (with your tax money) so they can be sold for less than it costs to produce them, real food costs more

We have a small freezer but a whole lamb fits in it.
Organ meat and mince go along way

grumpygut said:

I'm going to have to work in limited amounts of grains (ugh! evil word!) I don't mean maul an entire box of cookies, but allow myself some bread with one meal, not all meals. Or pasta some days.

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If you are adding grains then give consideration to rice first, add that and only that , and see how you go.
I'm paleo with cheese and rice

If you have a period of time between adding the next grain (and the next) (i'd say a month), then you might pick up on which ones have the most effect
Wheat (pasta, bread) should be your last option as it (and corn) are the most irritating ones.
White rice is, according to Paul Jamenet (perfect health diet, a paleo based diet google PHD diet an gut) almost toxin free and i eat it without problem.
(I can find rice noodles that are just rice but many have all sorts of shit in them - read the label)

Trevor said:

I think switching back to non-organic meat and veggies and eggs is a much better plan than going back to gluten and food from packages.

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amen to that

Trevor said:

If you really need a filler food something like white rice can help cut down on the cost and isn't as gut mangling as the other options.

Rice pasta, even the organic stuff, is no more expensive than wheat pasta where I live. And while bread is certainly cheap my medical bills wouldn't be if I went back to eating it.

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yup, that too

Don't beat yourself up, a 'real' paleo diet would have been anything that stopped you from starving, wether or not it was 'healthy', just remember why you are doing it -
To Avoid Food Toxins that disturb and disrupt gut function-
this article (2 of4) runs over the main culprits when it comes to bad food and suggests good foods to fill the gap -

Bowel Disease, Part II: Healing the Gut By Eliminating Food Toxins
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/0...i-healing-the-gut-by-eliminating-food-toxins/

The wild asparagus are out and sprouting up all over the bike paths. We've already gathered more than we can use and have been freezing the rest. We're thinking about experimenting with some of the pickeling recipes.

We grow, can and freeze our own veggies, and also buy them cheap in bulk. There's a fresh food mart close by our house that wraps up less than perfect fruits and veggies At the end of each day and selling 4-5 pound bags for .99 to 1.50. Especially great for juicing.

We cheat... a little. We were making almond/coconut breads, but now make and eat our own sourdough bread, fermented for over 12 hours, cultered with our own real sourdough starter, which produces absolutely the most delicious bread ever, and I understand also breaks down the gluten--apparently even celliacs are able to eat real, long-fermented, sourdough bread. Once you've cultured your sourdough starter, the bread costs next to nothing to make.

We buy organic grass fed eggs, meat, and raw milk, but we buy locally, which is far less expensive than having it shipped, and the extra cost is offset by all the other ways we save on our food bill. We do have a freezer, and buy whole cows with several others and divide it up ourselves. We also have quite a bit of free venison. We don't hunt, but almost everyone we know up in Wisconsin andMichigan does, and we get a good amount of meat from them. Pro tip: soak the venison meat in some milk or kefir for a few hours before cooking to eliminate the "gamey" taste. Works for wild fish as well.

Experimented and bought some sourdough bread. Fermented, but it still made me feel like crap. Then I bought the book Primal Body, Primal Mind, and now I'm really convinced grains are evil! Ugh! Cavewoman no like modern times! Where's my spear?
I just have to stick it out, if it means gathering 10 for $10 avocados to get me through famine times. I'm going to try white rice, (I know it's a cheat), and see how it reacts.

When I was eating all organic, it was much more expensive. One of the many reasons I gave up trying to heal myself through diet. I wouldn't have minded the extra cost if it had clearly had other benefits, but since my health wasn't getting any better, it wasn't worth it.

I also realised that having fruit and vegetables and other low calorie food as a big proportion of my diet is far more expensive. It's quite obvious really that if you eat a lot of calorie-dense foods, you won't need as much, but I'd never really thought about until I was really experimenting with food and paying attention to what I eat. The best calorie-dense foods that come in the whole foods category are nuts and seeds, which my digestive system just couldn't handle. I really do think that I'm better off on processed food.

UnXmas said:

When I was eating all organic, it was much more expensive. One of the many reasons I gave up trying to heal myself through diet. I wouldn't have minded the extra cost if it had clearly had other benefits, but since my health wasn't getting any better, it wasn't worth it.

I also realised that having fruit and vegetables and other low calorie food as a big proportion of my diet is far more expensive. It's quite obvious really that if you eat a lot of calorie-dense foods, you won't need as much, but I'd never really thought about until I was really experimenting with food and paying attention to what I eat. The best calorie-dense foods that come in the whole foods category are nuts and seeds, which my digestive system just couldn't handle. I really do think that I'm better off on processed food.

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As long as your digestive system in in distress, you will not be able to digest/tolerate nuts, seeds, and foods of that nature. E could not digest most fruits and veggies until he healed on the inside. It is difficult to "see" when you are in the midst of the battle, but if you eat nuts and get D soon after, the reaction is a symptom to a much larger problem. When E didn't eat grains, dairy, legumes, and sugar and included acidophilus into his diet, his body then began to heal the problem. With healing the "symptom" of not being able to digest fruits, veggies, nuts, etc went away. E can eat whatever he wants, raw or cooked, as long as it doesn't include grains, dairy, or legumes. He also still doesn't digest beef that great but we are hoping he will be able to in the future.

A low residue diet is a band-aid and not a solution.

Charleigh said:

A low residue diet is a band-aid and not a solution.

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I agree. My husband had to go the low residue route for a few months, and he was ok, but just kind of laid around, without any energy to do much of anything.

He's back to zero preprocessed, primarily paleo/organic and is back in full high energy mode.

We now have 2 mulberry trees, which are paleo, and contain as many anti-oxidant benefits as blueberries and raspberries--and we have more mulberries than we know what to do with. They grow like weeds, within a few short years our mulberry trees are gigantic, like 15 feet tall now, and we have mulberries coming out of our ears! We make mulberry preserves (with raw honey, of course), and use them for pies, cobblers, yogurt, kefir, etc.

Oh, and mulberries have a high iron content, which is rare in fruits. Lots of B vitamins, magnesium, manganese, potassium, etc. Extremely healthy, and for us, it's all free.

And now the wild strawberries are also out--strawberries, asparagus, blackberries, etc., have always grown wild along the railroad tracks, which have all now been turned into "rails to trails" bike paths, all over the country. Not difficult to find, providing you're looking for them, and we've been marking their locations in our areas for years. Along with all the wild onions, in particular, the wild mushrooms, especially the morel mushroom--and we sell our excess--and morel mushrooms sell at a rather extreme high premium.

In order to say that you are paleo, you really should do something in the way of either hunting or gathering, My husband and I actually do own a number of guns, but we only use them for skeet. Everyone else we know in Michigan and Wisconsin owns 40 acre+ hunting cabins, and they hunt. Hunting is not feasible in Chicagoland, so they hunt, and we barter--mushrooms, preserves, veggies, etc.

Regular eggs in the supermarket cost roughly$1.50/dozen, but we can buy organic, grass fed eggs from our local farm for $1.99, so the cost difference isn't that much, and we can sometimes barter morel mushrooms for venison or grass fed beef on a pound for pound basis. We barter other veggies and food products as well.

I'm an accountant, run spreadsheets, and the bottom line is that cooking everything from scratch, as paleo, organic and grass fed as possible, bartering, growing our own veggies, including buying raw milk for our kefir, my husband and I are now spending roughly $70/week on food, and that's including oh, everything. Could probably reduce our bill by at least $20/week if I didn't indulge in sushi, lox, coffee or the occasional "cheat"- such as a McD's xheeseburger or diet coke.

How much you spend can depend on a number of different factors, some of which depend on where you live, along your own personal life style, and can also be a function of practicality--whether you have more time or money. My husband is basically disabled at this moment, so he has more time to figure out ways to cut costs and save money, while I earn. When he wasn't disabled, our food bill was considerably higher.

As long as your digestive system in in distress, you will not be able to digest/tolerate nuts, seeds, and foods of that nature. E could not digest most fruits and veggies until he healed on the inside. It is difficult to "see" when you are in the midst of the battle, but if you eat nuts and get D soon after, the reaction is a symptom to a much larger problem. When E didn't eat grains, dairy, legumes, and sugar and included acidophilus into his diet, his body then began to heal the problem. With healing the "symptom" of not being able to digest fruits, veggies, nuts, etc went away. E can eat whatever he wants, raw or cooked, as long as it doesn't include grains, dairy, or legumes. He also still doesn't digest beef that great but we are hoping he will be able to in the future.

A low residue diet is a band-aid and not a solution.

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I tried giving up nuts and seeds as well though, once I realised they were causing me problems. My digestive track still didn’t heal. And because I have gastroparesis (delayed stomach emptying), without high-calorie nuts and seeds, I really couldn’t eat enough on a whole foods diet. The only high calorie food I was really left with was olive oil, which you can’t really make a meal out of!

It sounds like you have a unique situation which might make it more difficult to adhere to a Paleo or whole foods diet.

Although by volume I'd say my Paleo meals are much smaller than my former diet.

That said I can think of a few more high-calorie foods other than olive oil that could replace nuts and seeds as a source of calories. Coconut milk, avocado, coconut oil, ghee, grass-fed butter.

I personally don't really enjoy most nuts or seeds and don't want/need the high Omega 6 content so I don't include any in my diet. That and as mentioned above they are just not great for anyone with autoimmune conditions, especially bowel ones.

I'm just curious where you saw Robb Wolf say he eats rice and beans ever? He is fully against them. It is totally fine if it works for you I'm not saying anything about that. But I've studied Rob Wolf a lot and Paleo diet and he is COMPLETELY anti rice/beans.

Do you have a resource for this info?

Trevor said:

I'm with Charleigh on this one, compromise is the way to go. 'Perfect' Paleo is a rich persons diet but Paleo doesn't have to be any more expensive than the standard American diet.

Granted I live alone but in some ways that's more expensive because I can't really buy bulk things. I find Paleo for me to be roughly comparable in cost to eating more grains and dairy, it's really the time that I have to spend shopping and cooking that increased.

I think switching back to non-organic meat and veggies and eggs is a much better plan than going back to gluten and food from packages.

If you really need a filler food something like white rice can help cut down on the cost and isn't as gut mangling as the other options. Properly soaked and prepared beans can also be an option. Even Robb Wolf eats rice and beans a couple of times a week by his own admission.

Rice pasta, even the organic stuff, is no more expensive than wheat pasta where I live. And while bread is certainly cheap my medical bills wouldn't be if I went back to eating it.

The other option is win the lottery :ylol:

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Although I'm not on a paleo diet I try not to eat grains.

I have found a local veg box producer who grows most of the food, and the rest comes from local suppliers. I find it much cheaper than the shops, interesting veg, and stays fresh for longer. Once I have my box I then plan my meals around that.

With meat its best to go for the cheaper cuts. These are normally better tasting, but due to fashion and cooking times not many people go for them. For instance if buying chicken I rarely go for breasts as they are tasteless and expensive. For a little bit more you can buy a whole chicken that not only lasts longer but the bones make a perfect stock/soup. I dont really eat a lot of meat either (once or twice a week), and find veg to be more interesting taste wise

Another way to go is find someone who knows about local foraging. I make my own elderflower cordial, have free apples and blackberries, and will soon be going on course to learn more about what you can eat in our local woodlands