Podcast Episode #208: BB Classic: Paleo 101, Part 2

Topics:
1.  [NEW] What’s new for you from Diane & Liz [3:22] 2.  [NEW] Something new that I’m into: Hike it Baby and a new carrier [6:54] 3.  What should I eat and macros [8:22] 4. Integration of Weston A. Price principles [21:04] 5. Superfoods and budgeting [27:54] 6. Breaking the rules and cheating [37:45] 7. Lean meats and canola oil in the original “Paleo Diet” [38:52] 8. Nutrient sufficiency when cutting fruits [46:16] 9. Chewing gum and paleo alternatives [50:36] 10. [NEW] #Treatyoself: cocktails and coffee [56:58] [smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/balancedbites/20820final.mp3″ title=”#208: BB Classic: Paleo 101, Part 2 ” artist=”Diane Sanfilippo & Liz Wolfe ” color=”00AEEF” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ]

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Balance Bites: Episode #208: BB Classic: Paleo 101, Part 2

You’re listening to the Balanced Bites podcast episode 208.

Welcome to the Balanced Bites podcast with Diane Sanfilippo and Liz Wolfe. Diane is a certified nutrition consultant, and the New York Times bestselling author of Practical Paleo, The 21-Day Sugar Detox, and co-author of Mediterranean Paleo Cooking. Liz is a nutritional therapy practitioner, and the best-selling author of Eat the Yolks and The Purely Primal Skincare Guide. Together, Diane and Liz answer your questions, interview leading health and wellness experts, and share their take on modern paleo living with their friendly and balanced approach. Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only, and are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Liz Wolfe: Hey everyone. It’s me; Liz, here with Diane, as usual.

Diane Sanfilippo: Hey!

Liz Wolfe: Hey friend. So, do you have someone in your brain that would narrate your life for you?

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, shoot. Do I?

Liz Wolfe: We really need to figure this out before we get to the sponsors?

Diane Sanfilippo: We do?

Liz Wolfe: Look, think about it, we’ll come back to it.

Liz Wolfe: We are thrilled to have Paleo Treats back on our sponsor roster. We love their treats, from the Mustang bar to the Bandito and everything in between. They have been serving the paleo community since 2009, and were recently recognized by FedEx as one of the top 10 small business in America. Which of course, speaks to how much paleo and healthy eating is growing, but it also speaks to how passionate our friends Nick and Lee and the Paleo Treats team are about what they do. Use the code BALANCEDBITES one word, no space at http://www.paleotreats.com/ for 10% off.

Diane Sanfilippo: So, I’m thinking about this narrator thing.

Liz Wolfe: Yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: Hmm.

Liz Wolfe: I only asked you so I could tell you who mine was.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} So you think you’re really pretty?

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} So my narrator of my life; it used to be Stockard Channing.

Diane Sanfilippo: Excellent.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Which is just, I mean you don’t get a whole lot better than that. Stockard Channing circa when she recorded the Ramona Quimby books on tape, which we used to always listen to on the way to camp.

Diane Sanfilippo: Wow.

Liz Wolfe: And now, my narrator is, I think his name is Steve Coogan.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, it’s a dude! Ok.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. He’s super funny, I think he’s a British comedian or something. Well, maybe it’s not Steve Coogan; it might be his voice, but it’s from the movie Hamlet 2, which he is in.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} No.

Liz Wolfe: And it has an overall narrator.

Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t think anybody has seen that movie. Has anybody seen that movie?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, well they need to. It’s so ridiculous and funny. And {singing} Drop me, rock me, frock me sexy Jesus! It’s so good, and he has a little narrator there that is very refined {accented} and then he went to the store. That’s been my narrator lately, which has been a little bit strange to wake up to, but hey.

Diane Sanfilippo: I don’t have one. I’m sorry to let you down. I’ll have to think for next week.

Liz Wolfe: You will. That’s going to be the question to answer for next week.

Diane Sanfilippo: Ok.

Liz Wolfe: Or the week; the next time we talk. {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Whenever that will be.

1. What’s new for you from Diane & Liz [3:22]

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. So, what’s going on with you these days?

Diane Sanfilippo: So, I’m addicted to Periscope.

Liz Wolfe: Ugh.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} I know right? So I actually, in my email that I sent out this week, I pretty much wrote the word that I think makes that sound, so that would be onomatopoeia, right? Something like that? {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: Basically the “ugh”. I know how people feel about one more social media platform. However; look, if you want to interact. I’m not telling you, Liz, you have to do it. Although people keep saying “we need to get Liz on here!” I’m like, people, do not hold your breath.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. What am I going to narrate a diaper change?

Diane Sanfilippo: People would love it! {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Oh my god.

Diane Sanfilippo: It’s funny. I really like it, because you know me, I like live interaction. I do really well with just off the cuff speaking. I make a few notes on a post it, I talk about a topic, people can then ask questions. I’m doing both nutrition scopes and business scopes, so I title it with whatever I’m going to talk about and I go from there. And it’s been really fun. I feel like there are lots of new folks coming on who are able to interact and learn about who I am and what I do, and lots of people who have been following for a long time.

I think for a lot of people, it’s their first way to get to interact with me at least quasi-live, because some people obviously live in some cities we have not toured to or taught workshops at, or what have you, so for me I really like it for that reason. So I’m there. So if you’re on Periscope, come find me @DianeSanfilippo. If you’re not on Periscope, and you’d like to find a cool new way to interact live, or just something fun to do to pass the time while you’re commuting, etc., plug you're earphones in. You will not be on video; only the person broadcasting is on video, so don’t worry. So there’s that.

And then just really quickly a couple of events coming up. Mediterranean Paleo Cooking, they’ve got a demo and book signing in New York City; Caitlin and Nabil will be there, Tuesday November 15th at Broadway Panhandler, and that’s at 4:30 p.m. I believe she has an RSVP link somewhere on her website at Grassfedgirl.com. So definitely check that out. I think it will be awesome. You’ll probably get to taste some really yummy food. They’re super fun to watch, and listen to and learn from.

And then we’ve got a book signing here in San Francisco; myself, Juli from PaleOMG, and Vanessa of Clean Eating with a Dirty Mind on September 21st. It’s a Monday at Books Inc. in the Marina at 7 p.m., and that’s going to be super fun. I can’t wait for that. And I’ll be officially married at that one, because Scott and I get married pretty soon.

Liz Wolfe: Oh my god, is it September?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yes. And I believe this episode will actually, yeah, this episode airs on September 10th, so yeah we’re in September. We’re in it. We’re in it.

Liz Wolfe: Oh my god.

Diane Sanfilippo: So what’s new with you? You just found out it is September.

Liz Wolfe: What’s new with me is my friend is getting married in a few days.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. Crazy.

Liz Wolfe: This is insane.

Diane Sanfilippo: It’s crazy.

Liz Wolfe: So good. So good! So what’s new with me is right now my husband is wearing the baby in a carrier, running down a country road trying to get our turkeys back on the property.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Other than that, that’s basically it. It’s pretty much same old for me. Full time stay at home mom, working in work where I can and doing tons of stuff for Baby Making and Beyond, and yeah. Trying to get back into the swing of things without giving up time with the baby, which is literally impossible, so there you go.

2. Something new that I’m into: Hike it Baby and a new carrier [6:54]

Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, so what’s a new thing you’re into lately, my friend?

Liz Wolfe: Yay. I’m excited to tell folks about this. So a new thing I’m into lately is my Onya baby carrier, and the Hike it baby community. So, Onya Baby, that’s O-N-Y-A Baby. It’s a soft structured carrier, which is awesome. Go to their website, check it out. And the Hike it baby community is basically, if you’re a mom who wants to get out of the house, do something active with your little one, you can actually find a Hike it baby group in your area and get involved with them. They go on hikes; it’s exactly what it sounds like. You bring your baby, you grab your carrier, and you go on a hike with other moms and babies. Hopefully in some minimalist shoes and enjoy your day out.

Diane Sanfilippo: Sounds like fun.

Liz Wolfe: Very much so.

Diane Sanfilippo: Ok, so this week we have part 2, paleo 101 part 2. It’s a replay because we think that tons of you are new to the show. And if you’re not new to the show, this is information that, if you already heard it once it’s great to hear it again, and if you haven’t heard it yet this is a fantastic foundation to lots of things we talk about in current episodes. So we hope you enjoy.

3. Paleo 102: What should I eat and macros [8:22]

Liz Wolfe: Hey everyone! Welcome to the Balanced Bites podcast paleo 101 part 2 is our subject matter today.

Diane Sanfilippo: Hopefully people tuned in already to the paleo 101 part 1, where we talked a lot about what is paleo, what are the “rules”, why do we, Liz and I, what do we recommend to our clients, and why do we kind of follow this approach? We talked about a lot of that stuff at length, just the basic understanding of what’s the nutritional perspective of why this is what we feel is the way to go. And that took us quite a while to get through, so we wanted to do a follow up with some of the more specific questions that we’ve gotten. I don’t have names on these questions, we know these are frequently asked. A few of them may have been from some specific readers or listeners. But yeah, why don’t we jump into some of these questions and then, you know, as we finish up, if we feel like we need to do another part to this, we’ll definitely do it, or maybe it’ll be Paleo 201 by that point. {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. I think, we will have graduate into sophomore year of Paleo College maybe by the next one.

Diane Sanfilippo: Okay.

Liz Wolfe: All right.

Diane Sanfilippo: Okay.

Liz Wolfe: Question number one.

Diane Sanfilippo: So maybe this is like, yeah, let’s go for it.

Liz Wolfe: This is freshman pre-requisites, right now maybe. All right. Not that I did well in college or anything like that. I mean, whatever.

Diane Sanfilippo: What? I don’t believe that.

Liz Wolfe: Rock Chalk, Jayhawks! It’s just a party. College is a party.

Diane Sanfilippo: Okay.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, shut up, Liz. Let’s just go. Okay; question number one. What should I eat? Should I count calories? Should I Zone? Does Paleo have to be low-carb? {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: Nah, I think the question is basically just you know, what do I eat? How do I do this? How do I balance it, kind of deal.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: All right, so my take on this is the following: I think that people generally should not be worried too much around how to rebalance around what they’re eating. Once you get rid of grains, legumes, and processed non-fat/low fat foods or dairy that might be in there, just balancing out a plate with a portion of protein from, preferably an animal source, veggies, one maybe two kinds of veggies. I usually tell people to eat at least a cup of veggies per meal. It’s not really that much. I mean, I usually fill up at least half my plate with vegetables, whether that’s salad or something cooked, just because I think it’s fun, too. It’s pretty, it’s colorful. But I don’t really think for the most part, for the general public just to be healthy, that it’s necessary to count calories or really go for any sort of specific macronutrient ratio. I think when people generally don’t weigh and measure food, you see if you were to then write it down and enter it into something like FitDay.com to see what you did.

I mean, I know when I was free eating Paleo for the most part, without keeping any watch on anything, without any eye to like, okay, maybe I should watch my fruit intake, any of that stuff, I was probably eating around 50% of my calories from fat, 25% from carbs, 25% from protein. That’s where my percentage landed. I think generally free eating, you know, people who aren’t avoiding fat, generally come out with about 50% of their calories from fat, and the carb and protein breakdown from there can really vary. And that happens just naturally because fat calories are higher per gram, and if you’re not avoiding fat any time you’re eating it, you’re getting 9 calories per gram. Which I think is great. It’s tons of energy. I used to look at it as like, what can I eat that will give me the most food with the least number of calories? And least number of fat grams? And it’s totally a different approach now. It’s like, how will this satisfy me? And if it doesn’t have enough calories or enough fat, then I won’t be satisfied. But most of our food doesn’t have labels. So unless you are writing down really detailed information, you won’t know the specifics.

So all of that being said, I think when it comes to, “Should I Zone?” I think for the most part the Zone is a 40% carbohydrate, 30% fat, 30% protein approach, that’s what the Zone has been prescribed at, I don’t think that most people feel satisfied on that plan. I think it can be very effective for fat loss. You have to eat tons and tons of vegetables if you are doing a Paleo/Zone approach, where your carb calories or carb grams are all coming from vegetables. They’re not coming from, you know, bread and refined foods. But I don’t find that most people feel satisfied with that low amount of fat. I think somewhere in that 50 to 60% of your calories from fat feels a lot better for most people, and it’s much more natural, and you will find that if you’re trying to hit that lower range of fat, you have to throw away the skin on your chicken or you’re only eating chicken breast. You have to get rid of the egg yolks. You can’t eat whole foods. So if you’re eating whole foods, I think most people naturally come at around 50% from fat.

So, just kind of my last take on that is if you are experiencing issues with performance, not being where you want to be in the gym, you don’t have the energy you think you should have, or you’re not sleeping well, or you’re having trouble losing body fat, that’s when I think, if you don’t know what you’re doing, if you don’t have any concept of portions or satiety making sense from different portions, that’s where I think a little bit of weighing and measuring is useful. I think it’s a useful tool to see; okay, I know how I feel, but I’m not really sure what I’m even eating. You know, you may know that you may feel like you didn’t have enough energy all day. Or you may feel like your blood sugar isn’t quite regulated. But if you’re not aware of how much food is going in to adjust, it can be a really, really useful tool.

Sometimes people think they’re eating just fine and they turn out that they’re eating 1500 calories a day, and they’re doing a really intense workout that day. And I look at their height, weight, and their body composition, and I’m like, that’s not enough food. You know, and how amazing to hear that you should be eating more. And for some people, a couple of ounces of extra protein at every meal just because we can cook really delicious food and eating like a few more bites is really not that hard. But you may end up eating almost a whole nother meal’s worth of food every day just because you’ve kind of overdone it a little more. And I think it’s important to just note that. I don’t think it’s critical to do that all the time every day, but I think if you’ve got goals that you’re not reaching, and you’re unaware of what you’re doing, I think it can bring an okay sense of awareness to that.

It’s not necessary to do everyday all the time, but I like the idea of logging, just as much as logging kind of the what you’re eating and how much, I like when people log how they felt before and after the meal. You know; what time it was, how long it to eat, and who they’re with, because for a lot of my clients, we find that the situation they’re eating in, if they’re eating in a social setting, if they’re more engaged in conversation, if they packed up a meal and they premeasured what they’re going to eat, they didn’t overeat. Or if they’re being more social and not feeling like they were filling a void with food, they didn’t overeat. Or if they pre-packed their meal, they didn’t undereat. They knew that that was how much they needed to feel good and didn’t let stress get in the way, or just a work distraction. So there are ways to balance that out, but in general this idea of just eating whole paleo foods, there isn’t one approach that works for every person, whether or not it’s lower carbohydrates, higher, etc. It really just depends on what’s going to feel good and work for you. Your thoughts, my friend?

Liz Wolfe: My thoughts are sometimes people want to know these things. I feel like a lot of times, this question comes from people who haven’t really gotten started yet. Like they want to know everything they can possibly know how they’re supposed to do it, how they’re supposed to execute it, how many calories, if they’re supposed to do X, Y, and Z. But, I don’t know, my feel on it is kind of like…Just get started. Just get started, eat from, and if they want some instructions, if they really, really, really want some rules, I say eat meat, vegetables, and healthy fats. Okay. If it’s not from that family, then you know, you can either learn a little bit more about what’s appropriate or what’s not, or you can just go down that road, however you want to do it, but just get started, and these things are going to kind of unfold.

And you don’t have to know everything right away. I think that’s just kind of a holdover from the diet book mentality, where you read a book, it tells you everything you’re supposed to know about how to be, you know, skinny, healthy, fabulous, whatever, and then you go and you execute it, and you know, you fail miserably and you fall face first into a plate of chicken fingers, and it doesn’t work, so…Just don’t worry about knowing everything ahead of time about how much you should eat, how many calories, whether you should Zone or not. It’s just kind of like, just start eating real food. You’re going to resolve your hunger signaling issues, and then once you’ve kind of got that kind of peaceful roll going after the first couple of weeks, you can maybe start doing some fun, you know, self-experimentation.

Overall the whole key for me is just patience. Like you have to allow yourself that opportunity to learn what’s right for you. Like you said, Diane; no one approach is right for everybody. And I just feel like as hunger signaling tends to kind of fall into place, the whole journey kind of becomes less about these details and more about kind of just the mental connection and how well you know your body and what it needs, which is really a beautiful thing. And we all have that capacity, we just need to kind of connect with it through this journey. And I feel like I just read some kind of New Age/Hippie-Dippie manifesto or something, but I really do feel that way.

Diane Sanfilippo: I think those are really good points, and I think that like a lot of times, people look for rules to be in place that then can create a barrier for them, that they say, oh well, I can’t eat that way because of this. You know, they’re looking for that list of non-negotiables that then they can find the reason why it’s not okay for them. And I think your point is totally what people need to understand is that it’s like, just starting eating whole foods, and then you’ll find your way.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: Like you’ll discover your question, should I be eating more or less carbs, will be more valid when you discover how you feel just eating whole foods. Maybe you lean towards eating salads and non-starchy foods, but your performance in the gym is suffering and the type of activity you like to do requires more starches. You know? And we can’t know what to tell each person to do until they get in and see what they’re doing and then it’s like, oh, did you notice you weren’t eating this? Or did you notice, maybe you had a little too much of this? Try that. You know, see how that works and I think that’s really the best way to do it. And that’s where I just roll with it for awhile. And then if things really aren’t working, or you’re just not feeling right after, I would give it at least a few months, you know, like you just can’t know what’s happening.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: I think too the idea of the challenges or the whole month, you know, 3 weeks or a month of cleaning things up. Sometimes it’s nice because even when we have been doing this for a long time, we kind of fall off of our own little wagons of like, hey wait a minute, maybe I did get myself off the rails a bit over the holidays, or you know, life got busy or hectic and I forgot that I don’t feel as good when I eat this way versus that way. So it’s nice to kind of, I don’t know, just kind of present ourselves with a fresh new plate, so to speak, of hey, this is what’s my plan right now, and then see how you do. I don’t know. I think people can tune in for more answers to like detailed questions on the what should I eat. A lot of our older podcasts have a lot of those questions, right? People with different goals and we kind of give them some more specifics, right?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: I think so. Cool. All right. Let’s hop onto the next one.

4. Paleo 102: Integration of Weston A. Price principles [21:04]

Liz Wolfe: All right, next question. What can strict Paleo eaters integrate from Weston A. Price principles to achieve an even more optimal diet? I love this question.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, I really like this one. I think; I think you probably have more to say about than I do, but I think people can definitely check out the post I put up for New Year’s.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: Because it actually incorporates a bunch. For some reason, I don’t really think I mentioned Weston A. Price that much in it, but a lot of the points, I think you’ll be able to bring up, it kind of comes back to that. So yeah, why don’t you take this one?

Liz Wolfe: Well, I just think this is the way kind of the whole Ancestral Health community is going. It’s kind of merging the Paleo and the Weston A. Price principles, and I think it’s amazing. I think it’s a perfect marriage. I write about it or I have written about it a lot on my blog. There are tabs just right on the homepage. There’s What is Paleo/Primal/Weston A. Price-all that good stuff. Just quick summaries on kind of what these different kinds of families of eating philosophies are all about, and how they come together.

We talk about our buddy Laura a lot from Ancestralize Me, but she was raised in a Weston A. Price family, right? And she’s really into this paleo stuff, as well. She’s going to be an RD here pretty soon. And she and I have talked about this a lot, and we actually had the opportunity to talk to some people that are involved with the Weston A. Price Foundation and publicity and all that good stuff about how we can kind of meld these things going forward, just kind of for the benefit of everybody.

And this is kind of the way I look at it. I really think Weston A. Price principles are focused on nutrient-density, as are Paleo principles. But what Weston A. Price kind of understands, the Weston A. Price Foundation, is that you really get the most nutritional bang for your buck when you look at food not for their conventional value as in we go and we see vegetables, we see chicken breast and ground beef. We see, you know, I don’t know, coconut milk in a can, that type of thing.

Whereas, the Weston A. Price Foundation kind of looks at food as, I don’t know, amalgamations of nutrients that are ancestrally valued. So that’s kind of obscure, but if we look at kind of traditional peoples, more recent traditional peoples, across the world, you see kind of the same thing, across every single culture. Even if they’re eating different foods, they’re getting an extremely high intake of fat soluble vitamins: Vitamins A, D, E, and K. Traditional foods like nutrient dense bone broth, organ meat, cod liver oil, butter oil, that type of stuff, is so, so nutrient dense that irrespective of calories, I think it can really provide some super charged nutrition. Like a Paleo style diet that at times I think can be a little bit too focused on like macronutrients, if that makes sense, you know.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Liz Wolfe: Protein comes from chicken and beef, and carbs from veggies, and fat from coconut oil. We’re looking at the whole kind of synergistic interaction between all of these different fat soluble vitamins, which even in a really good conventional strict Paleo diet can be missing. Like if you’re really only eating some meat, some vegetables, some nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar, you might not be getting adequate fat soluble vitamin A. You might not be getting adequate vitamin K2. You might not be getting a whole lot of minerals in your diet. And I think it also kind of helps to address the question on calcium.

A lot of us Paleo people were kind of resting on our laurels with the argument that calcium involves acid-base balance or you can get plenty of calcium from leafy greens, and you know, while that second part is true, leafy greens are really rich in calcium, I think what the Weston A. Price Foundation is doing is really putting out a lot of research on things like vitamin K2, and these “fat soluble activators” that really kind of help regulate calcium balance, along with other factors like hydration and other minerals and stuff like that. So you see a lot of the Paleo folks kind of adopting the vitamin K2 stuff and Diane, I know you’re big into the bone broth, the chicken liver pate, the fermented foods and all that good stuff, but it’s just really interesting to note that a lot of that stuff is pulled straight from the Weston A. Price files.

Diane Sanfilippo: Absolutely.

Liz Wolfe: It’s really, really cool stuff. And last but not least. We talked to Robb Wolf about this when he came onto the podcast. Sustainable agriculture and, you know, biodynamic perennial polyculture, responsible farming, stuff like that. The Weston A. Price Foundation is really actively involved in that, which I think is amazing. They’re really all about kind of returning to this way of life where we’re producing nutrient dense foods in small economies and really supporting local farmers and local growers, and stuff like that, so. Yeah, I just talked for a long time. I hope that all made sense. I’m really passionate about the Weston A. Price stuff and I really hang my hat on a lot of the things they’ve put out there.

Diane Sanfilippo: Pete’s Paleo is a friend of the Balanced Bites podcast. They’re bacon is insanely delicious, and sugar free, and their premade paleo meals make your life so much easier when everything is getting busy and getting real food on the table is still a top priority, as it should be. Pete’s Paleo is now offering a 30-day gut healing kit containing bone broth, gelatin gummies, instant organic soup packs, and an E-cookbook. It’s the perfect complement to any anti-inflammatory diet. Get yours today at guthealingkit.com. Use code GRABACUPPABROTH to get $25 off; that’s an amazing deal. It’s GRABACUPPABROTH, C-U-P-P-A. And you can grab that code any time at BalancedBites.com to just read and make sure you’re typing it in right. You can also use code BALANCEDBITES to get $5 off any of their regular meal plans. Check out PetesPaleo.com today. Pete’s Paleo; bringing fine dining to your cave.

5. Paleo 102: Superfoods and budgeting [27:54]

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, I think what’s interesting too about that slant is that I guess sometimes I almost forget that those are such huge principle teachings from that foundation and from, you know, Dr. Price’s work because in my studies, both of my main instructors were really, really big Weston A. Price Foundation supporters, members, etc. And it was just kind of, I think at this point, you know, a lot of our listeners and readers are like, okay, we’ve heard you talk about this stuff a lot now. The kraut, the liver, the, you know, fat soluble vitamins, all of that, and yet, I’m sure there are tons and tons of people who are totally new. I get people almost every day who are like, wait, I don’t understand what am I supposed to do, why are you eating it raw, should I eat it or not, all of that. All those questions that are awesome, and I think there’s no limit to how often this stuff might need to be repeated because just like with any other conversation that we’re having, the repetition just helps to reinforce it, and it also helps us to make sure that we are questioning as we go along, you know. Some people might think more is better when it comes to something like raw sauerkraut, and I try and make sure that people know, you know, hey you don’t need tons of it. You’re trying to rebalance gut flora in a positive way and you can push it the wrong direction if you just eat a whole jar of raw sauerkraut every day, you know.

Like with everything we do, there’s a matter of balance, and same thing with balancing macro/micronutrients; all of that. It’s all a matter of just kind of keeping everything in check. So I think if you just keep people reminded of all that stuff and I think it’s important to keep looking to the different foundations for information, and Weston A. Price Foundation is absolutely in sync with what we’re teaching people. Possibly even some more modern updated information to some of the older research that’s done on paleo nutrition as well. So I know we’re always trying to keep on the cutting edge.

And you mentioned vitamin K2 a bunch and calcium. I’ll link to this book in our post, but it’s called Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox. I know Laura at Ancestralize Me wrote a review of it. I haven’t had a chance to finish it yet. I’m still in the middle of 50 projects, so getting through every book I have on my nightstand is virtually impossible. But I’m pretty sure–do you have a copy of it? Did you get through it already?

Liz Wolfe: I do. I don’t know that there is a paper copy. Is there? Do you have it?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little…

Liz Wolfe: Okay. I thought it was unavailable.

Diane Sanfilippo: : How a Little Known Vitamin Can Save Your Life by Dr. K-I don’t know how to pronounce the last name. Looks like a French name or something blue.

Liz Wolfe: Not a clue.

Diane Sanfilippo: She-yeah, I actually received a review copy, so…

Liz Wolfe: Nice.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. If you don’t have that, maybe I can see about getting you one. {Laughs} But yeah, very cool. And I think those are, you know, little nitpicky things that for the people who are getting into the details of this, research it, learn about it, you know. For people who are new, what you had said in the previous question about eating whole foods and then coming into this whole nutrient density, like I’m not….

I’m getting off on a tangent. But I’m not huge on taking supplements. I line myself up with these protocols, and then I basically suck at taking them, and so {laughs} The reality is I’m great at eating raw sauerkraut, I’m great at cooking and making pate, I’m great at using grass fed butter.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: I mean, we were cooking…I probably cooked for like 10 days straight for Bill and Hayley down in Pittsburgh of Primal Palate, and I think I probably used grass-fed butter for almost every single time that I was cooking. That’s just how, it’s just what I like, it’s how I cook, and you know, every recipe will say, grass fed butter or coconut oil or whatever other fats might be useful to use. But the reality is, I think if you are cooking at home, if you’re buying quality foods, you know, people talk about the price of things and how much it costs to eat paleo or eat good food, it’s like well, if you invest in the food, you don’t need tons and tons of supplements.

Liz Wolfe: Right.

Diane Sanfilippo: You know, those foods are basically; those fats are superfoods. Grass fed butter is a superfood. Liver is superfood, you know, {laughs} it’s like…

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: Your fermented raw sauerkraut has multiple times the amount of vitamin C per serving because you’re eating, when you knock that head of cabbage down into one jar of sauerkraut, and you’re eating so much of that per serving, so anyway. I just think it’s really important and I think the nutrient density point is awesome, and I think people need to really understand that with this whole perspective.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, I think it gets tough a lot of times, like when you try and tell people, because like you said earlier, people a lot of times are kind of; and I know I still struggle with this a lot, just the mental game. I want to eat as much as possible, you know. I want a big full plate and I want to finish it, and you know I want to eat 15 100-calorie packs and 25 glasses of Diet Coke, whatever. But it’s not about quantity and I promise people, the clients that I’ve had, I promise them that they’re not going to want as much food once they really get all of this figured out.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yep.

Liz Wolfe: They’re not going to be eating as much because you’re not going to need as much, and that’s part of how you’re going to save money. But that’s tough because the whole culture is just so; we’re just inundated with “You can eat more for less calories,” you know? Keep stuffing this in your face and you can eat more and more of it and still lose weight. I mean, that’s what the Weight Watchers commercials say.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: Eat whatever you want, and still lose weight. So, and it’s taken me awhile to get there. It’s taken me awhile to be satisfied with this fact that I am happy with less food. I think I get all scrambled in my brain about it, and I’m like but wait, don’t I want to eat more? No, I really don’t. I don’t need to, and that’s the cool thing about it. That’s another place you save money with this lifestyle is by getting more from less.

Diane Sanfilippo: I think that’s a good point, too. Yeah. Eat more…get more from less. Yeah, I think I talked about that too; I know I talk about it in my seminar, and I talk about this whenever I tell people to eat fat. Like that’s probably, and that’s why when I prioritize for people; and somehow I guess we’ve gotten onto sort of a, you know, isn’t this an expensive way of eating question for this podcast, {laughs} even though it’s been inadvertent. I guess we’re kind of talking about the whole budget question.

But when you prioritize getting high quality fats into your diet, you end up with satiety that you never had before for a pretty low amount of money, you know, if you’re using something like coconut oil or grass-fed butter, you know, the bang for your buck with nutrient density and calories is so high, that you don’t need 4 plates of broccoli to fill up and you won’t really fill up on that 4 plates of broccoli. I used to build a plate, and I say 4 plates of broccoli because I feel like I used to fill the plate up with half broccoli or three quarters, you know, a huge amount, like a whole bag of whatever it was from Trader Joe’s or something like that of the florets, and I would make the whole entire thing with chicken breast and like a low fat/non fat tomato sauce and spray olive oil. That kind of deal.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: Essentially it’s a really low fat meal. I mean, this is a nutritionist recommending this to me as an athlete at the time, that’s what I was eating. And 20 minutes later, I’d be like, and I’m hungry again. And I’d just ate the biggest plate of food, you know, imaginable. I filled it up. A huge plate. And that’s when the whole transition of like, “okay, let me try this.” Finally I tried it. You know, eating some fat, cooking with coconut oil, eating chicken thighs and a little bit of kale. And it was like, I ate half of what I had prepared for myself because I felt full. And it was just like earth shattering. Like I couldn’t even believe that I didn’t want to finish what was on my plate because I was full.

So I think that’s like a little bit of what you were talking about before with the macronutrient levels and whatnot, and really just getting in tune with how much whole food satisfies you, how much eating fats and nutrient dense foods satisfies you. And it’s not just; I think in the beginning, it’s a visual thing, it’s a psychological thing, of like, I need a whole plate of food to be full. But the reality is, it’s at a cellular level that we feel satiety. You know, our cells need nutrients. They need nutrition. They need, you know, the caloric effects of our food, and they need there to be nutrient density with it to actually send those signals hormonally throughout our body that we’ve received adequate food and we’re not hungry anymore.

It’s not just about a volume filling our stomach. It’s about actual nutrients that come with that food that help to signal the rest of our body that we don’t need more. So that’s the point that you were making, that it’s not about this, “oh let me eat 4 cups of whatever for only 100 calories. “ That’s not actually going to do it for people. And I think that people find that after awhile, right? Like they’re eating microwave popcorn or something and the snacking just never ends. And you actually end up eating a lot more than you thought you would because it never actually satisfies you or filled you up.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: Nutritionally. So maybe that was a budget question? {laughs}

6. Paleo 102: Breaking the “rules” and cheating [37:45]

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, I think we covered, and I think we could even just real quick, cover this question people have about when can I break the rules, and which rules can I break and how often can I break them? I think it’s a good segue because I just have this feeling, like if you feel the need to cheat or you’re planning in this crazy cheat day and you’re going to eat this on this day, then maybe you’re not 100% nourished like at the deepest level, because I find when I am really pushing the nutrient dense foods and I’m adding some liver to my routine, when I’m taking cod liver oil, some butter oil, drinking my bone broth and all that good stuff, I do not care to cheat, and I don’t care to do something that is “off plan”. It just doesn’t interest me. So you know, if that’s that; if you have that urgency and that feeling where you need to go off the rails a little bit, maybe you need to kind of look at incorporating some of the Weston A. Price principles, you know, the real nutrient dense food principles and see where that gets you. It’s fun. We have plenty of time, people to, you know, self experiment. It’s a good time.

Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome. What’s next?

7. Paleo 102: lean meats and canola oil in the original “Paleo Diet” [38:52]

Liz Wolfe: All right, let’s do; here’s a good one. Why were lean meats and canola oil recommended in Cordain’s Paleo Diet book a decade ago? We’re talking about the original Paleo Diet book which I think is the one that a lot of people still have and maybe start out with. What do you think, Diane?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, and let me preface this by saying I haven’t finished listening to the entire episode, but I know that Loren Cordain was on Paleo Solution podcast, I think it was just last week, with Robb and Greg, and he was talking a lot about his new book, The Paleo Answer, and the differences in the books, and how the new book is so much more his own voice and things that he wanted to say that he didn’t get to say in the first book, and also just new research about Paleo nutrition. So I haven’t read the book yet. That’s the, you know, that’s my first note about that.

I haven’t also finished listening to that podcast, but I do know that when I did read the original Paleo Diet, at a certain point I was really turned off by the book because of the recommendation to eat canola oil. And lean meats; that didn’t really throw me off so much because I think the recommendation to eat lean meats is primarily around the concept that grass fed meats are leaner than conventional meats. When we look, I mean, you can see in the case, or even if you just get a cow share or something like that, the meat that you’re getting, typically it’s not as marbled and that’s because cows that eat grass don’t get as fat as cows that eat grain.

So I think that’s probably the first point is that, you know, perhaps the fat content in traditional Paleolithic, grass fed ruminants was a lot lower. I think the second part of that is if you are buying conventional meats, that the theory is that any toxin load or the balance of the type of fats in the meat won’t be as positive as the type of fat you’re getting from grass-fed meat, which is higher proportionately in omega-3 fat or conjugate linoleic acid; CLA. So I think that that’s probably the other perspective is that lean meats, okay, if you’re buying conventional meats, that you wanted to avoid some of the fats in those meats because they maybe weren’t the best fats to be eating.

I don’t know. I don’t really tend to tell people to go crazy on that. I think if you’re doing the best you can to get the best quality meat that you can, then I wouldn’t avoid the fat. You know, if somebody’s really concerned about that, that they have to buy conventional meat all the time, that’s the point where I might say, you know what, maybe get the leaner cut and buy some good quality fats that you can add back to it, like the grass fed butter, like the organic unrefined coconut oil, if you’re concerned about it. I don’t know. I don’t have any other rationale for that. But that’s kind of my take. I don’t tend to avoid fatty cuts of meat when I’m out to eat because what I eat at home is always grass-fed. And quite frankly, it’s cheaper to buy grass fed in bulk. So I buy it in bulk and throw it in the freezer.

But anyway, when it comes to canola oil, I think that the perspective on that was a really conventional perspective that at first glance the omega-3/6 profile of canola oil looked beneficial. And I don’t think that at the time, Cordain was taking into account the fact that the processing and the refinement process that happens to the rapeseed, which is what is used to make canola oil, I don’t think he was taking that into account, and I don’t think, for some reason, he was taking what happens when we cook with those oils that maybe rich in omega-3 or omega-6 fats. I think canola oil actually might be pretty high in omega-3, which might be why he was recommending it, but once we look at the refinement process and how damaged it is right when it hits the bottle, and we look at the further damage that comes from cooking it, I mean, I literally think I put the book down when I read that. I was like, I already knew from my own education process that that was not a good recommendation, and I was really, really turned off by that.

It didn’t keep me from subscribing to most of the other information in the book, but I really was turned off by that, so much so that I wrote a post called, “Canola Oil May Be Paleo Diet Approved, But I Won’t Eat It.” Since then, Cordain’s actually said, okay, we don’t think canola oil is the best thing to be eating, but it was a really upsetting thing for me to read. And I think it’s just part of the whole point of why I was saying that your point of view is valuable, my point of view is valuable. We all have our own point of view based on different things and we’re constantly learning, right?

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: And I think it’s awesome that he’s put out another book. I think it’s awesome that he’s kind of reversed or at least modified his stance on saturated fat not being horrible for you. And I think that’s what it’s all about. And I think it’s the best we can do for our readers and our followers to constantly re-educate ourselves and just share the best information that we have and the best information about how we live our lives with them. And so, you know I have absolute total respect for Loren Cordain. I was really upset by that part of the book, but you know what, he’s done his due diligence and he’s come around. And I think that’s kind of the lesson there. And your take?

Liz Wolfe: Well, yeah, like I’m completely 100% with you on that. I just, I appreciate so much when people are willing to shift their point of view based on new information, and we just don’t see that in the conventional medical community or the conventional paradigm that we’re kind of dealing with. You know, all this Food Safety Modernization Act and all this crazy stuff that is just not really taking into account the most current science and the most current information, in my opinion. You know, I don’t know everything. I know very little, actually if you want to come right down to it. But you know, all these people that I look up to, you and Robb and Chris Kresser and Loren Cordain; they just, they’re willing to shift their point of view as new information becomes available. Because they’re not attached to some ego-driven “well, this is what I said and it has to continue to be right.” They’re really just, you know, prisms to this kind of filter these different things that we know and put them out to everybody. Which I think is absolutely what all of our mission should be.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: Is to just kind of be like a prism for the information and not, you know, get personal and egotistical about it. I really think that’s really what has damaged a lot of people’s health, is just people who are unwilling to shift based on wisdom and new information. Man, I’m wordy today. I’m talking a lot.

Diane Sanfilippo: You’re really not. Really, you’re not.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} Okay.

Diane Sanfilippo: You’re not at all. No I think it’s good.

8. Paleo 102: Nutrient sufficiency when cutting fruits [46:16]

Liz Wolfe: Do you think we have time for one more? It’s your favorite.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, I think we can do this one. And then we’ve got another one a couple down that I think we definitely want to hit towards the end there. Yeah, let’s do, let’s do this next one.

Liz Wolfe: Okay, cool. All right well: Well, I am avoiding; yeah, you want to do it? Want to do it? Yeah?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, yeah, do it.

Liz Wolfe: Okay. We’ll see how it. ”Since I am avoiding fruits due to Candida and dealing with hypoglycemia, am I getting enough nutrients from the meats and veggies? I eat tons of cruciferous veggies daily.” Thoughts?

Diane Sanfilippo: So my thoughts on this, and I haven’t like built a day and run it through a nutrition calculator; which this, I think this came from Facebook, so this Facebook follower can absolutely, you know, run a day’s worth of food through FitDay.com or NutritionData.com and see what you come out. But my hunch is yeah, you can absolutely get everything you need from meat, veggies, and healthy fats.

Cruciferous veggies are great form, but you’re not probably getting the full spectrum of like, I’m going to guess like carotenoids, and you know, maybe beta-carotene, things that you would get from veggies that have other colors. Cruciferous vegetables are things like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale. There’s actually a lot of vegetables in that family, but I would make sure that if you are not getting in some other, you know, red, orange, yellow types of veggies, that you try and get those in, too. They’re just going to have different phytonutrients and different micronutrient levels. I wouldn’t stress much about it if it’s something that you’re doing short term because of the Candida overgrowth, which is just like a fungal type of infection that feeds on sugar and different types of sugars, so if someone is dealing with that and you’re just avoiding sugars, I wouldn’t really be too worried about it. You shouldn’t really need to be on that type of specific diet for more than a few months, and when we look at the way people need to balance macro, or not macronutrients, sorry, micronutrient levels and intake, it’s not a really a meal to meal, day to day thing. It’s really more of like a week to week, month to month, year to year type of thing, so you know we have seasonal fruits and veggies, and getting them in when they’re in season and not when they’re not, totally fine.

And you know, I think it’s important to note too that it takes a long time to see any kind of deficiencies in people. It can take years to see any deficiencies, which I think is a sign that, you know it can take years to develop them. So unless you’re avoiding things for that long, I don’t think you’ll have a problem. If you have one sort of approach right now for this goal, don’t forget when you’ve gotten past that type of cleanse or your hypoglycemia has sort of resolved itself and you’re not eating as many sweet things, don’t forget that you can reintroduce certain things back in when that period has passed. That’s something that I definitely did last year when I was doing like a cyclic ketogenic diet, and I just kind of forgot that there were other vegetables I could eat after awhile, because I had just been eating leafy greens and tons of herbs and really that was what my shopping was, and I just kind of forgot that there were bell peppers, and tomatoes and other types of things that I could be including, and carrots. I know, it was just like kind of crazy and yeah, so that’s kind of what I think about that. I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

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9. Paleo 102: Chewing gum and paleo alternatives [50:36]

Liz Wolfe: Paleo 101 topic; what about gum? How do you feel about gum? Sugar free? Sugarful? Paleo alternatives to gum, if there are any. And I’m going to read the rest of this question because I love the term that she uses. “My husband and I have been Paleo for about 4 months now and are loving it. I started out extra fluffy {laughs} probably around 50 pounds overweight, and I haven’t been on a scale in forever. And while I’m definitely still in the middle of my weight loss journey, I would say mildly fluffy at this point.” I love that. Fluffy. It’s so awesome. “I’m very happy with my progress and results to date. Prior to going Paleo, I used gum to keep myself from eating out of boredom, a big problem for me, as well as using as a breath freshener and post-meal teeth cleaner. After reading what you, Diane, posted about sugar, I’m now freaking out a little that chewing gum is totally sabotaging myself. Help!”

Diane Sanfilippo: First of all, don’t freak out. {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: Don’t freak out. A few things about gum. So I think what this reader was pointing to was some of the like hormonal insulin appetite signaling that can happen just from a sweet taste, and I think actually, I saw an article that got shared about this just within the last day or so. That artificial sweeteners are basically not doing us any favors in the whole weight loss category. I think when we think that we’re tricking our system with an artificial sweetener that has no, you know, calories to follow it up, we think we’re doing something great, but we’re not. Because our body is hard wired to receive calories with sugar, or with the sense of sweetness.

So you know, a couple of different perspectives here on this one. Number one, when you eat something sweet without calories, your body is naturally looking for those calories. It may raise your insulin just because it expects calories to come in or nutrients to come in with that sweet taste. So that’s kind of point one. Point two, artificial sweeteners, I never like. They’re chemicals. Avoid them. I don’t have more to say about that because it’s like I don’t need to tell you to stop eating chemicals any more times, I don’t think. {laughs}

But number three is just the whole mastication process or chewing that begins to signal your whole digestive system that food is coming. So I used to think that that was a smart approach as well to chew gum to keep yourself from being hungry, or you know, to keep yourself from being bored. But the reality is by chewing and creating more saliva, you’re telling your body to expect food. I think you’re actually stimulating your appetite even more. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I used to chew gum, like mad crazy amounts of gum. I used to have packs and packs of gum in my drawer. Somebody could ask my old graphic design assistant. I mean, I had, I think it was Orbit gum, I had a million different flavors. I would chew the stuff like crazy. I loved it. I thought it was the best thing that was when I was on a low fat diet, eating two breakfasts every day, and a whole mess of things going on. But I realized that I’d maybe chew gum like two or three times year, just because if I really have something going and I’m like, I really need to freshen my breath or I’m just, I don’t even know any other reason why I would do it. That would really be it. Totally emergency. I don’t buy it anymore.

But, if you’re going to use one or another, I just say, don’t do anything with artificial sweeteners. I would offer something that has regular sugar as opposed to an artificial sweetener. There’s one kind of gum that’s supposed to be like a more natural gum. It’s called Glee gum, and it’s just G-L-E-E G-U-M that you can find out there. And they have a sugar free version sweetened with xylitol. I’m still not really the biggest fan of sugar alcohols. I don’t really know what the deal is with them. I can’t really get on board with that stuff, but I mean, I could be totally wrong that they’re harmless and whatever, but I’m just not that into it. I would just rather people sparingly have something with sugar if they need to. But that’s kind of my take. I don’t think gum’s the best idea for regular consumption and I absolutely don’t think artificial sweeteners are doing anybody any favors at all.

Liz Wolfe: Agreed.

Diane Sanfilippo: Paleo alternatives to gum? I almost missed that part. I don’t know. I’ve heard of people chewing on stuff like honeycomb. I don’t know. I think if you get the honey in there, that’s a lot of sugar. Or beeswax; I think some people have chewed on beeswax before. I mean, that’s like pretty hardcore.

Liz Wolfe: That is. I think over time if you’re persistent enough, you can kind of eliminate behaviors like that, you know. It’s the same with, I don’t know. I {sigh} revealing a little too much about myself, but in college I did a little bit of, you know, smoking. Ugh I’m so mad at myself that I just admitted that, but really it was a matter of just eliminating that behavior and getting over it. I know that’s difficult for some people, but it’s the same with gum. It’s like you have this thing that you want to do. You want to chew. You want to smoke. You want to whatever. You just have to give yourself like two, three weeks of commitment to eliminating that, you know, tendency, that feeling, that urge to do that, and you’ll be fine. You won’t want gum anymore.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, it’s funny. I never think about it anymore, but I used to chew it really incessantly.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, there was something else I was going to say about that, too. Oh, you know, if it’s a problem of breath and bad breath, then you’ve got something else going on. Like obviously, if you chug a whole bunch of raw onions and garlic or you know, whatever, and ate something pretty gnarly, okay, fine. You know, we’re going to smell that. {laughs} But if you’ve got an issue with halitosis, it’s probably some sort of other digestive issue happening in your stomach, like low stomach acid or some kind of gut pathogen. So if that’s what the issue is, then I would look at it there. If you’re just going to chew gum once in a blue moon, I would just, you know, avoid the artificial stuff or not sweat it if it’s really, really random. That’s it. That’s all I got.

10. #Treatyoself: cocktails and coffee [56:58]

Diane Sanfilippo: Alright Liz, what’s your #Treatyoself of the week?

Clip: Three words for you; Treat. Yo. Self.

Liz Wolfe: This is my new thing, and it is a tart cherry juice cocktail. Which I’m sure I’m not the first person to ever do. But I talked a couple of episodes back.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wolfe: About tart cherry juice and babies and sleep, if you guy want to go back and listen to that episode. So I decided, since I kind of sort of gotten the hang, a little bit, somewhat, minimally.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Of this mothering thing; as in, I’m not, every single day, feeling like I’m going to expire in a puddle of tears and sweat on the floor, I decided it was time to have a cocktail. So I made myself one with a dash of tart cherry juice and a bit of potato vodka and some seltzer water, and it was really, really good.

Diane Sanfilippo: That sounds delicious.

Liz Wolfe: It really was. I don’t know if we still get the benefits of the tart cherry juice when it’s used as a cocktail.

Diane Sanfilippo: There are other benefits {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Yes, yes there are. So what about you; what’s your #treatyoself?

Diane Sanfilippo: Well that sounds delicious, and interestingly enough, my treatyoself of the week is a coffee beverage that I’ve been mixing up. One of our sponsors of yor; of yesteryear, of days past. {laughs} You know that episode of Friends when they’re trying to ask Rachel when her furniture is from, because she says she bought it at the antique fair or something, and it was really from Pottery Barn?

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} No I don’t remember that.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh my gosh! Anyway. Forget it. I digress. So, I’ve been totally enjoying my iced Chameleon Cold Brew, and they have a Mexican coffee, and it’s ready to drink, and it has sweetener in it. It has a little bit of organic cane sugar; which is totally fine, but during the week I’ve been trying to kind of keep away from anything sweetened. And I mixed up my own version, which I actually think my version is better, so if anyone from Chameleon is listening; their Mexican coffee has vanilla extract, almond extract, which I can do even though I’m allergic to almonds, I can do the extract, and a pinch of cinnamon. And that’s all combined, and they do have it lightly sweetened. So their sweetened ones, they’re not cloyingly sweet. They’re fine if you can handle just a tiny bit of sweetness.

But, what I think is even better is their mocha cold brew, just the concentrate that’s not sweetened with a hint of almond extract, which yes I have that in my house, and then a pinch of cinnamon. Then I blend that up with some coconut milk, pour it over ice. Because I feel like a Mexican coffee; I mean, I don’t really know what it should be, but I feel like the chocolateiness, and the cinnamon, and the almond, that together is just pretty spot on for my taste buds. So that’s my treatyoself. #Treatmyself. {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: That sounds pretty darn good. I’ve had those chili chocolates before.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: And I’m probably completely mixing up cultures here.

Diane Sanfilippo: No, I feel like that’s.

Liz Wolfe: But we had those in Santa Fe.

Diane Sanfilippo: I feel like when my dad used to travel to Mexico for business, he’d bring back a traditional Mexican hot chocolate, and it would be this stone ground cacao and cinnamon and I feel like it had a little pinch of a cayenne or some kind of peppery spice, a little bit hot. Which I’m surprised that the Chameleon Mexican doesn’t have a little bit of spice, a kick to it. But that could be another level for this whole thing.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Diane Sanfilippo: So that’s what I’ve been enjoying. Alright, so tell us that you did something to #Treatyoself this week using the #BBPodcast; we’d love to see it.

Liz Wolfe: So it sounds like that’s it for this week. You can find me, Liz, at http://realfoodliz.com/ and find Diane at http://dianesanfilippo.com. Remember to join our email lists; we cannot emphasize that enough. That’s where you will find out about free goodies, updates, and stuff that you just don’t want to miss. You won’t it find anywhere else on our websites or on the podcast. And while you’re on the internet, leave us an iTunes review. We’d greatly appreciate it. See you next week.