Healthy nuts

Healthy fats 101 doesn't mention almonds, Brazil nuts or hazelnuts. Is there a reason we should be avoiding these? I'm looking for some more variety as I have a pistachio/cashew allergy, so those are out. Sorry if this is jumping ahead in any way.

Almonds suck, Brazil nuts are good, sorry I left that one out. Nuts for breakfast should be a temporary thing until you transition to a real breakfast. This could be 3 months or 3 weeks

Jeff Serven said:

Almonds suck

Interesting. I have been cutting progressively on nuts in the last few months because I came to the conclusion that eating a lot of them just brings a shit-ton of calories, and also because of the antinutrients (I was glad to see my opinion confirmed by the course), but I never realised almonds were this bad. Mind elaborating on that for my curiosity? 

Bro, its not that almonds are all that bad they are just not great and it drives me crazy that people want to live off of them because allegedly some cave man ate them. 

It we leave the perfectly concocted world of this notion that our ancestors ate x, y and z. And, look at reality you will see that people were attempting to make bread and potatoes one million years ago based of archeological evidence. So the rationale that nuts are good because people ate them during the paleolithic era (2.5MYA-10k) is just dumb. They also ate bread and anything else they could get a hold of. 

If we look at everything from an unbiased position it only takes a quick bit of research to notice that almonds have the same or more anti nutrients than white bread.

Now I will rip on the Paleo Diet. The idea of paleo is to copy what people ate 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. Because 10,000 years ago is when agricultural farming came along and apparently corn was magically created on this day to destroy the world......Let me start with the the fact homo sapiens(us) have only been around for the last 130,000 years so why go back and study the diet of another species? Dumb. Further it is virtually impossible to determine what they ate with any accuracy. Rice has been around as long as we have, asians have been eating it since the beginning of time; why is it not included? 

Homo Erectus who is 4 above us on the taxonomy chart a million years ago was the first to stand and walk upright similar to us, he had a brain 1/2 the size of ours. Why do I want to model my diet off of what he ate? I don't.

Last but not least. If you are religious you believe the world is in-between 6-10,000 years old so you can't believe in a diet before the world started. 

So, they don't suck that much but they're super overrated. Got it. I always found the premise of the Paleo diet to be a bit dodgy in the sense that you can't know for sure what a caveman ate, and that there were indeed several types of cavemen before us. It does make kind of a good baseline when you talk nutrition with people who don't know a thing about nutrition (and basically don't care), as long as you don't take it too seriously.

What about seeds like pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds?

Seeds are high in phytic acid. If you are going to consume phytic acid then eat a really good croissant or something delicious not nasty seeds. 

Off the top of my head pumpkin seeds are some of the highest phytic acid foods pound for pound of anything. 

Dang, made at the store chocolate chip and almond butter is my guilty pleasure. Need to cut back on that!

Coco is also high in phytic acid...haha....sorry Jason!

But, I encourage you to go out and get the junk food you want. Get your chocolate chips and almond butter and enjoy it. When your done, get back to business. 

From time to time I'm eating a paleo cereal for breakfast which is consisting mostly of coconut flakes, hazelnut(did you mention those already?) and cashews.I mix that with greek jogurt.What do you think about that?

Andre - Thats a great breakfast! Don't get tied up in things like nuts have phytic acid, just note it in the back of your head and go easy on them. Compared to 80% of other foods nuts are great. 

One more question about almonds? Are they better after soaking(I have been practising overnigth 8-12 hours of soaking). Of course I would peel them before eating.

In line with the fats at breakfast what would be the best choice of these two options?

Oats with Greek yogurt, sesame seeds and a banana

Or

3 egg omelet with avocado, bell peppers, mushrooms and onions?

That's basically breakfast and lunch for me. One or the other

I would go with the omelette for breakfast and the other for lunch. Do you put the oats in the greek yogurt? 

Jeff Serven said:

I would go with the omelette for breakfast and the other for lunch. Do you put the oats in the greek yogurt?

I put it in after the oatmeal has cooked, alongside blackstrap molasses, sesame seeds and a banana

Hi Jeff , Thank you for this great program !

Wanted to ask you how hummus and other beans fit into the diet and is sour cream a healthy fat?

I'm making sour cream and cottage cheese myself from organic farm milk. 

Ferum, Thank you I'm glad you like it. 

Hummus and sour cream can be good in their originally intended ways but finding them in the grocery store in that form is difficult. 

Hummus is chickpeas, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, tahini, lemon juice and salt. If you can find one that only has these ingredients and uses a legitimate EVOO then great! Odds are what you'll find is one that replaces some or all of the EVOO with a pro-inflamatory vegetable seed oil like corn oil. Then they will add some preservatives that you can't pronounce and now what was good is no longer. 

Sour cream is a cultured dairy product and unless it comes in a full fat fermented form its about useless. Low fat sour cream is no bueno. So in your case of making it yourself that is awesome and so is the cottage cheese! When you are done post some pictures, we would like to hear the story. 

I see , so if i prepare the humus myself from chickkpeas and olive oil , tahini   it's all good?  

If you don't mind me asking ,I haven't been consuming any beans on my paleo diet so I'm not sure if i should be adding them , are there any negatives to eating beans, do they have any anti nutrients the same way some of the nuts have?  Since consuming nuts doesn't  seem to cause any bloating while beans usually do.

Thank you!

Artur Krajewski said:

One more question about almonds? Are they better after soaking(I have been practising overnigth 8-12 hours of soaking). Of course I would peel them before eating.

Sorry I missed this one. Thats a lot of work but yes it reduces the negatives of them.

Ferum - Yep Hummus is great if you make it. There are also some decent ones out there if you look around town. A greek restaurant here in Scottsdale, AZ makes their own and sometime we go and get a container of it. 

Beans are one of those Paleo hated foods that don't have the most logical justification behind it. I am actually not against beans, Im indifferent. Certain types of beans can be okay but while you go through Thrive for the first time I would ask that you stay away from them. If a year down the road you are following the Thrive diet and you want to have some beans as your source of carbs a few times a month then no big deal. But for now I want you to develop other starches that you like and use them as your staples. 

On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 11:07 AM, Jeff Serven said:

Bro, its not that almonds are all that bad they are just not great and it drives me crazy that people want to live off of them because allegedly some cave man ate them. 

 

It we leave the perfectly concocted world of this notion that our ancestors ate x, y and z. And, look at reality you will see that people were attempting to make bread and potatoes one million years ago based of archeological evidence. So the rationale that nuts are good because people ate them during the paleolithic era (2.5MYA-10k) is just dumb. They also ate bread and anything else they could get a hold of. 

 

If we look at everything from an unbiased position it only takes a quick bit of research to notice that almonds have the same or more anti nutrients than white bread.

 

Now I will rip on the Paleo Diet. The idea of paleo is to copy what people ate 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. Because 10,000 years ago is when agricultural farming came along and apparently corn was magically created on this day to destroy the world......Let me start with the the fact homo sapiens(us) have only been around for the last 130,000 years so why go back and study the diet of another species? Dumb. Further it is virtually impossible to determine what they ate with any accuracy. Rice has been around as long as we have, asians have been eating it since the beginning of time; why is it not included? 

 

Homo Erectus who is 4 above us on the taxonomy chart a million years ago was the first to stand and walk upright similar to us, he had a brain 1/2 the size of ours. Why do I want to model my diet off of what he ate? I don't.

 

Last but not least. If you are religious you believe the world is in-between 6-10,000 years old so you can't believe in a diet before the world started. 

The general idea of the Paleo diet doesn't look that bad for me, but it is also an over simplification. Pre agricultural diet for a European caveman may include milk, in America cows were inexistent until Spanish and English colonization. So people with latin American genes (like me) have problems with lactose. If your paleo ancestors were from Egypt, very probably you will be OK eating pasta, bread and pizza, if your paleo ancestors were from central America, you will be OK eating fruits and corn.

I agree 100%. I find the concept so lacking. good idea but once we dig into the facts it's very hard to prove the points they insist are facts. 

Google: Jared Diamond, fertile crest, grains

you will find evidence of bread far further back than the 10,000 years Paleo claims. 

Okay one last thing. The caveman approach to eating is great! And, you can see I agree with some of it but, The Paleo Diet is a trademarked name of a company owned by Loren Cordaine. 

jeff what about flax seeds are they good or the almonds and nuts are a better choice ?

Flax seeds are fine. They get way too much hype because of there omega 3 content but its the ALA form which is the next best thing to useless. 

I personally would not eat them because they taste very funny.