Paleo Harvest: Healthy cooking with the Bond Girl

Paleo means Free-From: dairy, gluten, sugar (sucrose), soy, bad fats, wheat and grains. It is Diabetic-friendly, low GI and low carb. We have designed all these recipes to conform to the principles of eating in harmony with our Paleolithic past. That is, they are in accordance with the basic guidelines formulated by nutritional anthropologist Geoff Bond in his book Deadly Harvest. So when you follow these recipes you know that you are doing the right thing by yourself and your family. This way of life does not need you to eat in an outlandish way. Your dinner guests will be surprised to find that they have been eating what seem like conventional dishes. Only you will know what subtle, yet vital changes in ingredients – and in cooking – you have made. THE PRINCIPLES Nature fashioned our bodies to be nourished in a particular kind of way – one that is special to us humans. However, for many generations, we have meddled in a state of ignorance with our food supply. The results have not always been happy ones, leading to ‘diseases of civilization’, like cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and diabetes. Geoff's book ‘Deadly Harvest’ (see back page) describes how this happened and how we finally know the right way to feed us humans – or as he puts it: “how to put the right gas in the tank”! There are many surprises. We learn that many foodstuffs that we take for granted are secretly undermining our health. But the message is an optimistic one: we do not need to be ‘food fascists’ – we just need to prioritize what is important and what is not. In this cookbook we focus on the important issues. Thus you will find that the emphasis is on removing ‘bad carbs’ and ‘bad fats’ and privilege the ‘good’ ones. Consumption of fruits, salads and vegetables should be high. We aim to keep the intake of these up at around 75% of the diet and protein-rich foods down to 25%. Of course sugar is a recent menace in our food supply and we substitute it with safe alternatives. We strive to keep sodium (salt) low and potassium high. This happens quite naturally with the high intake of plant food but, in addition, we avoid processed food and keep added salt to a minimum. On the other hand, we obtain sumptuous flavors from the liberal use of aromatic herbs, fresh if possible. We avoid ‘non-human’ foods that give our bodies trouble with allergic substances (like ‘gluten’ and ‘lactose’), and ‘antinutrients’ in plants that are foreign to our bodies. (Antinutrients are naturally occurring poisons that plants make to fight off germs and funguses.) All this might seem quite unusual, but in practice all we are doing is clearing out foods that have been making us sick for generations and replacing them with ones that work in harmony with our bodies. We invite anyone who is interested in knowing the background to these guidelines to check out Geoff's book, ‘Deadly Harvest’ (see back page).