Is there anybody else that eats a paleo diet? It is difficult enough to eat paleo but longterm storage of food for a paleo diet is even more difficult. What solutions have you found for solving this problem?

One thing we are doing is gardening. We're also working towards having more property so we can raise some of our own animals. Of course both of those solutions work regardless of dietary needs.

In a very few days, I will be eating a diet heavy in buffalo burgers, rhubarb pie, and root beer floats while on a PALEOntological dig...Does that qualify?

More seriously, as an archeologist, I find some of the underlying assumptions for the paleo diet somewhat questionable, although higher consumption of veggies and fruits and other strategies makes a lot of sense.

Recent work in Michigan demonstrated that mastodon humters submerged their excess meat within a frozen lake - would have worked for a while, at least over one winter. Buffalo hunters on the great plains also dug pits and stored meat underground for a while. They may have had to deal with maggots, but I understand those are highly nutritious.

Freeze-dried meats and vegetables! There are a number of vendors. I've bought from thrivelife.com and found their stuff to be quality. Freeze-dried food is never as good as fresh stuff, but it will meet your nutritional needs. You will need a good source of water, though.

Hikermor's comment reminded me of a book I read -- Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire, which is partly a response to raw foodists who justified the raw diet as the type we have evolved to eat. His objections came from evolutionary biology. It's a very good book on the role of fire and cooking in human evolution, and I enjoyed it very much.

We've been eating better for the last two years, cooking most meals instead of opening packages, using higher quality ingredients from local farms (and our garden) and eating more nose-to-tail. We have also been avoiding sugar, grains, legumes, and industrial oils. When asked, we usually say we are 'eating Paleo', rather than unpack our whole food philosophy on the unwary.

Most of the long term storage foods have a lot of soy and other stuff we don't eat. I've still got some in my preps, 'cuz I already paid for them and would rather eat badly than let my family starve in a long term crisis.

I have also been making (and freezing) my own sausage, dried fruit, jerky, and pickled foods. Eventually I want to try canning, smoke curing meats, and making prosciutto.

Ah, headed back to the Hills, eh? Can't believe it's summer again already!

I do eat a semi-paleo diet. I do think there's something to it; humans haven't had sufficient time in the last 10,000 years for our genome to adapt to the foods we're now eating. However, much of digestion is performed by our gut flora and they adapt and evolve much more quickly than we do.

That said I avoid empty carbs. I eat virtually no sugar save a rare bit of honey or some dark fruit. I avoid bleached flour, all flour really. Meat and lower-glycemic index veggies are the mainstays of my diet.

It's a little harder to store that kind of stuff just because most of the stuff marketed for 'preppers' is the carby stuff, MREs etc. Still, you can can your own stuff and have whatever you like. There are plenty of freeze dried and canned items that will work, too.

Here is a link (happened to be the first one I found) that refutes the no grain part of the paleo diet. Take that one with a grain of salt as I just cannot find the actual link to the paleontologist who discovered either grain starches or pollens in the dentin of recovered teeth from a paleolithic site in Canada. I will continue looking though.

http://thespartandiet.blogspot.com/2010/10/its-official-grains-were-part-of.html

Regards,
Bill

I'd be very comfortable at your table, Phaedrus. Maximize relatively unprocessed foods. Home canning ought to become more popular.

Remember that we are classic omnivores, as shown in our very generalized dentition. We can eat darn near anything.

Other members of the omnivore group are rats and pigs, so we have found our niche...