It seems to me that it is recommended that people who are just starting the paleo diet focus on lean meat. Two reasons, first because most people are coming from a low-fat diet so it helps ease the transition. Second, most people have not been getting their meat from quality sources (think grass-fed, natural diet, no hormones, etc.). Once you are more comfortable with the idea of consuming fat and are getting high quality meat, the lean meat idea goes out the window.
As for eating the whole animal, why wouldn't you . With our last cow we made sure to request that we wanted everything. I have made soup with the bone, tacos with the tongue (hands down the best tacos I have ever had), stew with the heart, liver burgers, etc.
As for the name paleo, I think it can cause confusion and can hurt the diet's legitimacy with too much time is spent defending the name and origins. I do like the term ancestral health. It is a more inclusive term for all the elements of the paleo diet including sleep, stress, sun exposure/vitamin D, and that is it is not a diet so much as a path to better health (which can vary with individuals). Plus the diet does focus on foods found before modern agriculture, so it is a diet our ancestors would at least recognize. That said, with the paleo diet growing in popularity I don't see a name change happening.
I wish I could articulate all this better, but hopefully some of it made sense.
Post by heliocentric on Jun 4, 2012 10:16:56 GMT -5
Thank you, victoria21 and mr+ms, that acutally makes more sense.
I totally agree with eating "wild" meat. It's the only kind I eat (though I rarely eat since it's pricey & can be difficult to find). As a result, I mainly eat a vegetarian diet and rely heavily on grains. This is partly why I'm asking a lot of questions.