During pregnancy, you especially need folic acid. Most ob's prescribe a prenatal vitamin simply because because even a mild folate deficiency can cause so many severe birth defects (spina bifida and other brain/spine/nerve problems, especially). Folates are common in grains, fruits, and leafy greans. How much is enough, can be difficult to determine so I urge you to talk to your doctor immediately about getting you on a prenatal vitamin if you aren't already (the most severe birth defects are caused in the earliest months of pregnancy).

Here is a link you may be interested in, of course it says consult with your dr. but there is valuable info. on pregnancy and grains.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/pregnant-diet/

I like the way he describes eating lots of vegetables "wreckless amounts of vegetables."

Kaplods,
I was just re-reading (and absorbing) what you said earlier. I also think that this whole idea is very individual. Like I said we are allowed 2 "cheat meals" so obviously a slice of pizza or piece of bread won't kill us. So far, we have opted not to do the cheat meal because everything is working so wel for us right now. As I said "for us". I don't mean to even suggest to anyone else that this is the way to go.

Obviously my 12 year old has issues with either grains or dairy, since he has much improved since we started this. He is the most adamant about not doing the cheat meals. This had gone so far that when we go to my father in laws house on Sunday for dinner (he usually cooks spaghetti) we have been taking our own chicken, vegetable, and fruit to eat. I told both of my boys that this is their option and they have chosen to do this. We also don't eat the cake and ice cream, we just stay in another room.

We are allowed all the veggies that we want. We are allowed sweet potatoes, but not white potatoes, go figure, but it makes me happy cuz I LOVE sweet potatoes. We are also allowed to eat all the fruit we want but we are supposed to try to keep the veggies to fruit at a 2 to 1 ratio. We also try to consider the glycemic index when choosing. We are allowed chicken, turkey and beef but no pork and avoid processed food. Like I said, it works for us and I have lost weight without exercise, which I have never done before. This week I am adding walking to me schedule and I can't wait to see the results after that.

I am very grateful for all the information you had to offer. It has truly helped me to look at what we are doing and decide to keep going, at least for now. I also am very interested in the books you talked about and are going to check with my local library on them. As I said, thanks for all the "food for thought" so to speak.

By the way, LandonsBaby, I would be very careful about your diet since you are pregnant. Talk with your doctor. Maybe cutting back on certain things is okay, but I think that pregnant women need a more balanced diet and I think fruit is important. I don't know - I could be wrong but please talk to your OB befoe you make any drastic changes. I also hope the morning sickness goes away. I was pregnant 3 times and was fortunate enought to never be sick, but I understand that it sucks.

I'm on a similar diet for my digestive issues, you can make your own yogurt with no lactose in it. You have to ferment it for 24 hours though. Chedder cheese has almost none either.

Also, for pregnancy that sounds extreme... At least add some fruit and cheese to it!

Ps. Get breaking the vicious cycle and cookbooks on scd diet, it's very similar and has great recipes!

Honestly I had great results on a grain and dairy free regime, but since I found it impossible to stick to despite the benefits I can't say that it really was an answer for me. I do think it's a good way to go if it doesn't bother you. My problem is I live with people who don't need to diet so I've found very restrictive regimes backfire on my because I end up resenting all the skinny people eating normal food around me and end up over-eating. I will say that I am more aware of limiting/moderating the grains and no longer have cereal for breakfast or popcorn at the movie, and that kind of thing.

I have found Dr. Kurt Harris' blog, PaNu, excellent. He explains how and why gluten causes problems. For many people, it's not just grains with gluten, but all grains which are problematic. Sugar/fructose/artificial sweeteners/honey, etc, and grains are the main culprits in many ailments and in very serious diseases. For some people, after they've not eaten grains for a while, they find that they can eat butter, heavy cream, yogurt, and other fermented dairy products, even if they cannot eat milk, or even cheese.

Here is the Get Started page at his blog.

Some of the scientific explanations are beyond my comprehension, but he makes good sense and cares very much about helping people be healthy, and in preventing serious diseases and helping those who have them, to recover.

Hope this is of some help.

I'm curious as to why honey would be banned on a paleo type diet. Our ancestors would have eaten that. Plenty of tribes still do even now. And why ban fruit? They would have eaten that as well when it was in season.

It's important not to look at only what our ancestors would have eaten, but how often they would have eaten each.

Both honey and fruit were part of a paleo diet, and are part of modern hunter/gatherer societies today, but then and now, both would be an extremely small part of the diet. The quantities and freqency of high-carb sweet treats like fruit and honey would have been fairly rare. To imitate the carb,protein,fiber, fat ratios of paleo life, you've got to be fairly limiting on even "primal" sources of carbs.

Honey is not something they'd have daily or even monthly access to. It would be a fairly uncommon treat.

Fruit would be more common (at least during some parts of the year), but modern fruit is a lot different than paleo fruits that would have been available. In a "natural" world, fruits almost never get the chance to reach the sweetness of modern fruits. One reason is that we've bred modern fruits to be far larger and sweeter than their natural/primal counterparts. Secondly, even paleo low-sugar fruits would never reach the peak of ripeness (and sugar content), because there was too much competition (from other humans and every other fruit-eating critter in the area).

I don't consider fruits or honey off-limits, but I do try to remember that these were "treats" not mainstays of the paleo diet (and they were foods that took a fair amount of effort to harvest). Low-sugar fruits would have been much more common (eating them as soon as they were palatable, to get them before the other critters found them).

I also try to keep in mind the amount of effort that foods would have required to harvest, and how much competition there was for it. The most nutritionally dense foods (high sugar fruits, high protein/fat meats....) were the most difficult to harvest, or the least available. You can't pick a bunny off a bush, you've got to chase it down. Sweet fruit is only going to be available for a short period, and you're going to have to beat the competition (be faster, smarter, or stronger).

The food that was the easiest to gather, and the most common would also be the least calorie dense. High fiber, low calorie plants and plenty of insects. Insects are a great source of protein, but not particularly palatable (or safe in most areas). I'm not going to be eating insects, so compromises are in order.

Most meats would be fairly lean, and the leanest ones would be the easiest to catch.

To some degree we have to make up for the fact that our plant foods (vegetables) are much higher in calorie and much lower in fiber than paleo/natural options, our fruits are much higher in sugar, and much lower in fiber, we're missing out on the nutrition provided by insects, and that we're not having to work hard in order to eat and avoid being eaten.

There's only so much we can do to imitate the paleo lifestyle, and "how close" is probably somewhat individual. You're still left with experimentation being your best tool.

Honeythorn, are you asking about the diet at PaNu? If so, Dr. Harris explains how sucrose, glucose, lactose, fructose, etc. are digested, metabolized, and gives very thorough explanations.

His diet is not based on the emotional attachment to keeping what folks might or might not have eaten tens of thousands of years ago, but on what is sound science, keeping our genetic and digestive history in mind. Much of what he recommends is similar to those who follow the "Paleo" diet, but his reference to it is often tongue-in-cheek.

Dr. Harris' premise makes a great deal of sense.

If you are interested in this area of nutrition, please do make sure you follow a plan that has a very sound basis, with excellent resource material, and is not based on conjecture. This particular post, by Dr. Harris, on health and evolutionary reasoning, might be of some help. (Just ignore the silly photo at the beginning of the page.)

Wishing you all the best!

Great article. I think it really clarifies that it's the metabolism of early man that we're trying to duplicate, not every aspect of the paleolithic lifestyle. I like how he phrases it as trying to "manipulating the genes I am stuck with after a billion years of evolution."

The more you know about human physiology and biology, the better you become at knowing which foods will suit your purposes. The more you can recognize the foods that work with your metabolism, and which work against it.

It's primarily the sugar/starch and the "anti-nutrients" in grains (such as gluten) that paleo-diets are trying to address. It's an oversimplification to create a list of "ok" and "not ok" foods - but that's how people expect to get their diet information "Tell me what I can eat, and what I can't." If only it were that simple.

Simplification is important, we need to simplify information to assimilate it - but oversimplify and meaning is lost.

Overindulging in honey and fruit is a problem because of it's effects on the body, not because it was scarce to paleo man. Paleo man didn't have to deal with the problem, because of the scarcity of sugar in his environment.

It's important to remember that it's the foods' effects on the body, not their role in a historical diet, that really is the issue here. Using the paleo-model is just a convenient way of looking at the information.

The problem with convenient models is that the simplification can easily become oversimplification.

I'm back. Here's an update for anyone who is interested. Since we started this new way of eating in late April, my son has lost about 25 lbs. He needed to lose some weight. He was kind of chunky (but not fat) before. Now he looks wonderful. He is about 5'6" and weighed about 140. Now he weighs about 115, give or take a few. I compare how he looks now to his school picture last year and I can't believe the difference. As of today, I have lost 35 lbs. Not to mention we both did this without exercise. I walk some and do quite a bit of gardening, but haven't had to step on a treadmill or jump on an exercise bike.
We are now basically following an Atkins like plan. We eat meat, a LOT of veggies, and some fruit. We pretty much avoid grains and dairy. We are supposed to stay away from the fruit with a lot of sugar, like melons, but it's summer and I like to take advantage of the fruit that is available now. I have all winter to eat apples and oranges. Blah.
We try to stick with this as much as possible, but nobody is perfect. We cheat some. We were on vacation a couple of weeks ago and we went to visit friends. We ate pizza and some chips, but we tried our best to balance it out with good food.
What really got me was that my oldest son, who is eating as we are, but surely doesn't need to lose weight (5'9" and 115) went to soccer camp a couple of weeks ago. We don't have any junk food or soda in the house. That, of course, make it really difficult when we have friends. All you can offer them is water, fruit or veggies. People tend to not get too excited lol.
Anyway, at soccer camp, they had to eat the food they were served. As you can imagine, the meals were pizza, hot dogs, cereal, etc. I should mention that there were several kids on the soccer team whose families eat the way we do. My son and all the other kids like him had stomach cramps all weekend they were at camp. What a shock.
Anyway, I haven't read any of the books that were mentioned (although I would like to) but it sure seem like it's working for us. I have also found that the more weight I lose, the more I want to keep eating this way. When I'm sitting around by the pool and I want that beer or two, losing weight keeps me motivated to abstain. It's working for us and I love it.