As part of DailyBurn’s May Paleo Challenge, we’ll be bringing you paleo diet themed content all month. Read on to learn more about how to decide if a food is “paleo-friendly” or not.
 
The paleo diet offers a few basic rules for eating that can help you get stronger, leaner, and feel better. By eliminating processed foods, grains, dairy, and legumes, the paleo diet philosophy states that if you can hunt it or gather it, you can eat it.
 
But what about trying to eat paleo in the modern world? As the paleo diet becomes more popular, it can be hard trying to find foods to eat when the only hunting and gathering we have to do is at the grocery store.
 
If you are having trouble deciding is a food is paleo-friendly, ask yourself these 5 questions:

Is it in a natural state?

In order for a food to be paleo, all ingredients in the food must be paleo. The closer the food is to it’s natural state, the better. For example, blueberries are paleo, but blueberry jam is not, because sugar has been added to the blueberries. Similarly, shrimp is paleo, but shrimp salad may not be, depending on the ingredients on the mayonnaise. Basically, if a food is in a natural state, you do not have to guess if all of the ingredients in the dish are paleo.

Is it a “fake” natural food?

One of the biggest food industry dupes recently has been the substitution of “evaporated cane juice” for sugar. Many of the foods that have evaporated cane juice listed as an ingredient can astonishingly be found in the natural/organic food section of the grocery store. Watch out for hydrolyzed vegetable protein (also known as MSG) and dextrose (also known as corn sugar).

Are there hidden ingredients?

Look out for ingredients for natural flavors, emulsifiers, soy lecithins, and glycerin. These ingredients contain chemicals, soy, gluten, and sugar alcohols. Even if you try to stay away from most processed foods, some foods that seem paleo-friendly like beef jerky can actually contain sugar and natural flavors as additives.

Would your ancestors recognize it as food?

If early humans would be more likely to play with it, fight with it, or keep it as a decorative object, then it is not a paleo-friendly food. Take for example most processed foods. They are so extremely stylized that they more closely resemble a paperweight than a food. Would early humans recognize a bird as food? Yep. Would they recognize a cookie as food? No way.

Will it decompose relatively soon?

All plant and animal matter decomposes at a relatively fast rate in nature. If you leave a weeks worth of groceries out on your counter for a few days, all of it should start to decompose. Sure, some preserved foods like dehydrated fruits, nuts, and salted meats are “natural”, but they also decompose over time. Foods that can sit in your pantry for years contain nasty preservatives.
 
The next time you go to the grocery store and find yourself staring at a shelf, wondering, “is it paleo?”, just ask yourself these 5 easy questions.

Want to know if a food is paleo? Ask me here!