Eating Clean (and Drinking Clean) on a Budget, prefaced by an angry rant

Your food has to be affordable. Of course, "affordable" means different things to different people. According to Michael Pollen, we as a society spend the lowest proportion of our income on food than any in history. I laugh when people complain about how expensive "Whole Paycheck" is, when they just bought a new flat screen or car, or bought six mixed drinks for $10 each last Friday night. Yet, who am I to judge? I'm not willing to spend an outlandish sum on food. There's plenty I could sacrifice to boost my food budget, but choose not to.

Instead, I see it as a fun challenge to get creative. I've already touched on a few of these tips in earlier posts, but here's a more comprehensive list.

One quick (updated: long) rant before I begin: There are several blogs about this subject already, some of which have decent guides, but many of them lead off by telling you to "forget organic." This is baloney, unless you have a complete disregard for your planet and your body. (I will note that Sebastion Noel, whose blog I've linked to many times and really respect, does not take this misguided approach in his post on budgeting.)

Humor me for a moment, and then we'll get to the budget tips. You might even learn something. 

Grain fed beef comes from cows that were fed a mix of ingredients they were unable to digest. Ruminants (cows) evolved to digest grass. When cows eat grain (like corn), it makes them sick with a host of problems, including bacterial infections such as E. Coli. Due to an abundance of cheap corn made possible by ill-informed government subsidies, it is far more economical to raise cows in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations, or feedlots). These cows are fed a mix of grains, growth hormones and other cheap ingredients, (sometimes even parts of cows themselves), which causes the animals to gain weight much faster and produce meat that is more "marbled," i.e. fatty. This also causes grain-fed meat to be much lower in Omega 3 fatty acids. Due to the living conditions and this toxic diet, the cows become sick; they are pumped with antibiotics to keep them alive long enough to be slaughtered. That's how it works. The process is similar for pigs and chickens as well.

Not to mention the unspeakable cruelty that occurs in factory farms. (I'm not going to provide a link here. Google it if you have the stomach for it).

So let's get this straight, because I've encountered a lot of idiots on the paleo diet who think they're doing it right buying beef from Sam's Club. The paleo diet's fundamental premise is humans should consume the foods they have evolved to eat over millions of years. Yet the aforementioned bloggers are recommending you eat animals that have been raised on feed for which they are completely unadapted? It's laughable. (The paleo authorities like Cordain and Wolf, however, understand the difference and really encourage free-range meat.

Sam's Club markets grain fed beef as if it's premium: "Exceptional flavor, superior marbling." Give me a break.

The same logic applies to vegetables. Cavemen certainly didn't eat food grown on chemical fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides. And the evidence, while still inconclusive, shows that chemically-treated, non-organic foods have lower nutritional value.

And that's just the health aspects. CAFOs and conventional agriculture are devastating to the environment. The main culprit of CAFOs is urine and feces pollution (on the other hand, the poop of free range animals actually helps fertilize the plant life on the ground naturally). Nitrogen runoff from synthetic produce fertilizers is also disruptive; the most known instance of this is in the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. I know that organic agricultural methods have their own problems, but they at least spare huge amounts of land from being bombarded with nitrogen. I could continue, but I promised myself I wouldn't use this blog as a soap box for Michael Pollen proselytizing. (Just read The Omnivore's Dilemma, it is a life-changer). Also, I'm going to do a whole post soon about reconciling the paleo diet with a sustainable lifestyle, and why I ultimately may have to refrain from paleo for environmental reasons. Stay tuned.

Isn't this post supposed to be about budget? Focus, Zack. Back to the topic.

Tips to Eat Clean on a Budget


1) Don't eat paleo. Yes, you heard me. Or...read me. Notice how my title is "eating clean," not "eating paleo," on a budget. As I stressed above, I think it's more important to eat organic, environmentally-friendly vegetables and humanely raised animals than it is to keep your food groups strictly paleo.

Do I break my own rules? Sometimes. For some essential but expensive foods, like blueberries, I'll bite the bullet when organic is too pricey.

In my next post, I will detail which tenets of paleo really ought to be followed and which can be blurred a bit, but for now, just know whole, unprocessed foods are the foundation of agreement from experts across the nutrition spectrum. Milk isn't great for my particular gastrointesinal tract, and it's really meant only for baby cows, but it can be an adequate nutrition source for people who have financial constraints. Grains too. If you can tolerate them, grains from non-gluten whole food sources (think rice, quinoa and steel cut oats) provide carbs much more cheaply than vegetables. Keep diverse fruits and veggies in the mix for their nutrient value, but you can supplement with grains. Lastly, I firmly believe that complementing your meat intake with legumes, provided they are prepared properly, is fine if you can't afford enough quality meat to meet your protein requirements. Stay away from soy, though, which is very high in estrogen and other problem-causing antinutrients.

2) Seize the opportunities at sales. After about a month on my new diet, I settled into a routine of knowing what, and how much, I needed for each week. So when almonds, fish (canned and frozen), or other go on sale, I capitalize. Then I have almonds for the next month. Sunflower's fish is generally previously frozen. If they're having a sale, I ask the guy to grab fillets from their back freezer, so I don't give the fish a chance to defrost. Frozen grass-fed beef at Keller's is good too. Right now, I have 4 lbs of salmon, 2 lbs of shrimp, 2 lbs of cod, and 3 lbs of ground beef in my freezer, all bought for more than 50% off.

For perishable items like fruits and veggies, sale cycles generally encourage you to buy seasonally and also create a nice diversity to what you buy. Compare fresh fruits and veggies to their frozen counterparts; one might be cheaper than the other based on the season.

3) Figure out which grocery store has what cheapest. Sunflower is my go-to for most produce and seafood. But Sunflower's selection of organic fruits and veggies is more limited than Whole Foods, so I get some specific items at the latter. Also, Whole Foods' berries are often cheaper than Sunflower, and anything of the 365 brand is usually cheaper too. I'm blessed to have these two grocery stores very close to me. If it's possible, do a two-grocery run once per week. It's a bit more work but it saves a lot of money.

4) Learn to love affordable animal protein. As I discussed previously, canned fish is amazing. You can get nearly a pound of wild caught salmon for $3 at Trader Joe's. TJ also has no-salt-added varieties. You can't beat that.

Organ meats fall into this category too, as I've stated in a previous post. Organs used to be considered a delicacy, and many hunter gatherer societies traditionally prefer organs over muscle meat. These days, it's a matter of supply and demand. You can capitalize on modern American society's taste for steak, and grab organ meats at bottom dollar prices. It's definitely an acquired taste, but I've been refining a fantastic chopped liver recipe and I'm starting to really enjoy it.

When you do choose muscle meat, consider the cheaper cuts. They're usually less tender, but they come out great in stews. For this reason, I'm getting ready to purchase a pressure cooker. This way, I'll be able to make delicious stews and soups in less time. Crock pots are good as well, but I've read that pressure cookers do a better job containing nutrients during cooking. And even at higher temperatures than boiling, pressure cookers don't have the potential to produce carcinogens the way high-heat methods like grilling do.

Lastly, eggs are some of the best protein bang for your buck. Even the roam-free variety is only $4 per dozen. Now, there are some claims that eggs in large amounts could endanger your health, while there are other claims that eggs are perfectly fine. I've spoken to a couple doctors who say eggs are ok, as long as you're eating plenty of vegetables. I tend to hedge my bet, eating two eggs per day rather than the five or six or even 10 that some paleo dieters consume.

 5) Get rotisserie chickens at Whole Foods. This warrants its own category, because they're so convenient and are such a good value. I go through about two chickens per week, and have completely replaced cold cuts. I try to buy on Wednesdays, when they're on sale for $2 off.

6) Cut your alcohol budget in half. In focusing so much effort on healthier eating, it made sense for me to reduce my alcohol consumption. I did it for health reasons, but it's also a financial expense that I can "sacrifice" in the name of my food budget. I cut my alcohol budget from about $100 to $50 per month and have barely noticed. I still go out just as much, I just don't give into the pressure to have a drink in my hand at all times when I'm at a bar or club. By the way, the general recommendations I've seen for paleo-friendly alcohol is tequila (from agave, unlike other liquors that are derived from grains and other starches), and red wine. Avoiding beer has worked well for me. The most common paleo drink popularized by Robb Wolf is the NorCal Margarita. 

Having settled into a grocery store routine for my new diet style, I'm spending about the same amount as before I started. Maybe 10% or 20% more. It's a small price to pay for the huge increase in clean fuel that I'm now providing for myself.

A great way to track your spending, on alcohol, food, and everything else is Mint.com. It links to your credit cards, so automatically categorizes your spending with only minimal oversight needed. It's a great tool and it's free. They aggregate your data and sell it to companies, which some people might find creepy, but your anonymity is protected.

Thanks for reading! I'm moving next weekend so it may be a bit of time before my next post, but I promise it will be worth the wait! 

UPDATE ON THE INTERMITTENT FASTING: I recently finished a free and extremely informative ebook by Dr. John Berardi on intermittent fasting, and I continue to research paleo mass gain methods. I'm going to do this experiment right. I ordered a body fat caliper, I've been getting on the scale every day to get a baseline for my weight, measuring my biceps, before and after photos...all the Jersey Shore stuff I wish I had done before starting the strict 30 days of paleo. I have lost approximately ten pounds on paleo (while trying desperately not to lose weight...a note for my readers looking to slim down!). I want to gain it back and then some, to the tune of 15 pounds, while maintaining a low body fat percentage. I plan on beginning the experiment with increasing my caloric intake through carbs from rice, lentils and quinoa (the lesser of evils in the Paleo world), then fasting one day per week, and finally easing into a leangains protocol. It's gonna be a rocking good time!

Survival of the Fittest: The Evolution of Breakfast

Breakfast was, hands down, the hardest meal to clean up. In fact, when I was first starting to experiment with the Paleo diet, my Kashi Autumn Wheat with milk and a big glass of orange juice was the last holdout. I refused to even try a 30-day strict paleo diet until I saw a blog post on paleo breakfast cereal. I was excited -- I could have this with almond milk in the morning! That was the moment I committed to try Paleo for real.

Well, that little honeymoon was short-lived. Not only was this paleo cereal nasty, it gave me a stomach ache (probably all the monounsaturated fat from the huge amount of seeds). It was expensive. And it was extremely time consuming. I spent hours in the kitchen on Sundays, creating this wanna-be granola, baking sweet potatoes, boiling beets, and cooking a huge dinner meal, all for the week ahead. It was not a feasible routine for the long run.

Plus, as I was continuing to learn more about the do's and don'ts of Paleo, I learned that seeds should be used more as just a condiment due to their high Omega-6 fat content. Instead, I needed to focus on protein and carbs from fruits and vegetable sources in the morning.

I moved on to breakfast scrambles, with 3 or 4 eggs, spinach, mushrooms, and bell peppers, all sauteed in coconut oil. This worked well for me. I felt better than I did with the seed cereal, but I continued to have grain withdrawal, feeling light-headed on my bike commute to work. A further problem was this breakfast took some time to make. I am not a fan of waking up any earlier than I need to. As I was trying to sleep longer per the recommendations by the Paleo gurus, this issue had even more weight.

I advanced to hard-boiled eggs, over greens (usually raw spinach), with bell peppers and some nuts (pecans or walnuts) tossed with olive oil. This really worked for me in terms of time. I had discovered a nutrient-dense breakfast that could be put together in about 5 minutes. One way I reduced the prep time even further was in the way I boiled the eggs. My grandmother always told me to leave the eggs in the pot with the hot water after boiling, because it eliminates the brown "skin" around the yolk. However, these eggs were often difficult to peel using this method -- frustrating in the morning when you're running late. I did some research and found that if you run cold water over the eggs immediately after boiling, the shells are much less likely to stick. It works great.

While this breakfast worked well, I still felt a bit sapped of energy, even when I had fruit on the side. I also felt hungry only a couple hours after eating, even with three or four hard boiled eggs and several handfuls of spinach. So when my strict paleo month ended, I brought back some carbs from forbidden sources. I've referenced this blog post, and the comment section, as a real guide for me and I continue to benefit from it.

I didn't want to go back to wheat-based cereals, if for no other reason than Tony Horton doesn't recommend gluten. I was a big p90x follower before starting CrossFit, and I still consider Tony my guru. Really, CrossFit is the next logical step in muscle confusion for p90x'ers looking for more intensity and more community / camaraderie. I have a guilty conscience trying this whole Paleo thing, since Tony is a "flexitarian." (Mostly vegetarian, with occasional free-range chicken and fish). Between abandoning his workout for Crossfit and his diet for Paleo, a p90x prodigal son has really gone astray from Tony's teachings. However, when his diet advice and Paleo overlap, you can bet I follow it.

This is the case with gluten. I don't have a gluten intolerance, but I think my body runs better when I avoid it. So instead of wheat cereal, I started doing oatmeal. Now, oats have plenty of dietary lectins that are similar to gluten; they seem to fall somewhere on the "bad" end of the grain spectrum, where wheat is the worst and rice is the best. But I keep oatmeal to just one serving, along with my eggs and greens. And I usually do steel cut oats, which are less processed and have a better glycemic load compared to quick oats or rolled oats. To change things up, I have rolled oats every so often.

The oats, combined with the eggs and greens, keep me full for several hours; longer than if I were to eat the same amount of calories from just oats or just eggs. Oatmeal also gives me a stable energy source for my bike commute to work. Importantly, oatmeal helps boost my carb intake, which is hard to keep up from just fruits and veggies.

So yummy

Recently, I cut out oats for a week, increasing the eggs and amount of spinach to make up the difference. I was interested in seeing if my body had now adapted enough to use fat as an energy source instead of carbs. Well, the first day I tried this, the light-headed feeling returned immediately, I had a rough headache, and I felt hungry soon after eating. A few hours later, I raided the girl scout cookies in my office cabinet. Half a sleeve of Samoas is a good indicator that my body is going to get its carbs, try as I might. The headache / light-headed feeling continued for the rest of the week, except on days when my girlfriend juiced fresh carrots, cucumbers, and oranges for me. Fresh juice is full of nutrients and enzymes and is infinitely healthier than packaged, pasteurized crap juice -- yes, even the Naked brand. I would love to have fresh juice every day, but that damn Jack LaLanne is hard to clean.

As I've said in other posts, I'm happy to cheat routinely if my body responds well.

I will note that oats cause my weight to fluctuate a surprising amount for only being 150 calories. I'm fairly sure this is water weight, since starchy carbs / grains cause more water retention. Without oats, I have more muscle tone but also look skinnier. I'm going to try and figure out how to increase my mass while still maintaining a lean, "cut up" look.

So now, I have a bowl of oatmeal and a bowl of hard boiled eggs in the morning. I can make this delicious, nutrient-dense breakfast in the time it takes for one "snooze" (just ten minutes). Here's how:
-Take advantage of an incredible shortcut with your steel cut oats! It's a secret shortcut, found only on the McCann's tin. The night before, boil one cup of water, add a quarter cup of oats and boil for one minute. Stir and place the pot in fridge over night. (This takes literally 2 minutes. Don't count this towards the ten minutes the next morning, thanks). This will shave 30 minutes off the cook time.
-Roll out of bed, stretch, and put the pot of oatmeal over medium high heat.
-Shell two hard boiled eggs.
-By now, the oatmeal should be simmering. Stir and reduce heat to medium low.
-Quarter each egg, and place over a bowl full of spinach and chopped bell peppers. (I like to chop a couple whole bell peppers on Sundays so I have them for the rest of the week). Stir the oatmeal again.
-Toss the eggs and greens with olive oil and salt and pepper. Sprinkle some walnuts or pecans on top.
-The oatmeal should be pretty much done. You'll know because it will have absorbed most of the water and will be bubbling. Add in a teaspoon or two of Earth Balance coconut butter, one teaspoon of vanilla and / or hazelnut extract, a generous dash of cinnamon, and a tablespoon of flaxseeds. Put in a bowl and add a splash of almond milk. Optional: sprinkle some shredded coconut, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and / or strawberries on top.
-Eat up! Wasn't that worth exercising some will power with the snooze button?

I truly enjoy this delicious morning ritual now. I'm going to miss it when I start my experiment with Intermittent Fasting. I'm turning my body into a lab rat to give you the insights you deserve. Readers: get ready for an enlightening post all about my experience. People who I interact with on a daily basis: prepare for a testy, moody, desperate little man.

Paleo Pesach

I know I said I would be coming out with a breakfast post, and I'm going to make that happen soon, but it was beautiful yesterday and the mountain bike called my name. In the meantime, here's a more time-sensitive topic for my Jewish audience. It will hopefully be relevant to the 90+% of my readership that comprises my mom and her friends. And I know for a fact that some of her friends are paleo, so I'm performing a real mitzvah here.

A side note: I had the idea for this post because I've recently ventured into the world of organ meats, which are an excellent and inexpensive source of protein and nutrients. Some of these nutrients, like copper, aren't the easiest to attain without grains. I've never eaten offal besides pate and chopped liver, so it was a pretty big leap. I read a great post by Mark Sisson on the subject, and decided to give it a try. 

I was surprised at how few grocery stores carry organ meats, and how few butchers there are in Albuquerque. But I finally discovered that Alpine Sausage, on Girard and Indian School, sold beef liver. I highly recommend Alpine -- it's a family-owned German artisan deli, and their stuff is cheaper than grocery stores. Awesome andouille for when I'm in a gumbo mood. Using this recipe, I made some smothered liver and onions. I can't say I loved it, but after the first night of leftovers I'm starting to acquire a taste. It's definitely an adjustment, so I'm wading in slowly. Maybe I'll do kidney next time. Or heart...

It tastes better than it looks. Not really.

Anyway. I wanted to continue my liver foray for passover and started looking at recipes for chopped liver online. This one, in particular, can be done paleo easily by swapping the Manischewitz for red wine, and the vegetable oil for canola oil if you're not using schmaltz.

My go-to Jewish recipe is for my "famous" coconut almond macaroons, which I stole from Martha Stewart. (It's easy to impress when you're a 25 year old male dating a shiksah). Swap out the sugar for honey and you're in business.

Gluten: The 11th plague

What about kugel? I might give this one a shot if I'm feeling ambitious. (Scroll down a bit in the link). Gefilte fish? Matzo ball soup? The Elana's Pantry blog is a great resource.

Now I'm not planning on making this Passover completely paleo. Heck, I don't usually get through a single day paleo. But making Passover a bit healthier, and being able to make paleo Jewish soul food whenever I want, is dayenu for me. (just in case all the earlier puns didn't make you roll your eyes).