Meat, vegetables and water – Locals go “Paleo”

The muffins look dark and delicious.

They are also labeled “Paleo.”

I ask the waitress behind the counter, “What is Paleo?” I expect she’s going to tell me about some new grain, superfood or nutrient.

She explains that these muffins are wheat-free and made with different fats than your usual snack.

The she points to a statuesque, muscular woman with glowing skin and long brown hair lounging at a large table across the restaurant.

“She practices Paleo,” the waitress says. “You should talk to her.”

Allie Griffin is a Baton Rouge native who played volleyball at the University of Colorado then played professionally around the world before recently settling back in Baton Rouge.

She’s an enthusiastic practitioner of the Paleo lifestyle.

When asked, she will gush about its benefits without hesitation.

“Going Paleo,” as those who have done so refer to it, involves eating a diet worthy of our Paleolithic ancestors. It means cutting out all forms of milk, wheat, beans, potatoes, corn, rice and sugaranything that would, historically, not have been hunted or gathered.

That nixes the gumbo. And the poboys. And the potato chips. And the king cake. Even the coffee.

My question: What’s left?

Answer: Grass-fed meats, many vegetables and water.

Ugh. Why?

“This is what I looked like before I started Paleo,” Griffin says, pointing to a picture on her phone of herself with a worthy package of muscle across her abdomen. “And this is what I look like after Paleo.”

She flips to the next image.

Griffin’s already impressive abdominal muscles are now even further chiseled and seem to have multiplied in the second shot. She launches into an impassioned pitch for the lifestyle.

“It’s a really easy diet,” Griffin says. “You know what your no’s are, and you know what your yeses are.”

Paleo is short for Paleolithic, the long-ago era when humans were used to living off the land. It was a glorious time for the human body, Paleo proponents say, when saber tooth tigers were a bigger threat than cancer.

In 1975, gastroenterologist Walter Voetglin wrote a book called The Stone Age Diet. It calls for going back in time to help the human digestive tract, which, he theorizes, evolved to accommodate far simpler fare than what most of us nosh on today.

Since Voetglin developed this less-than-Cajun way of dining, countless enthusiasts have jumped into the hunt for potential converts lost in a sea of unsuitable and packaged foods that, Paleo preachers believe, are eating away at both body and mind.

Griffin explains that avid Paleo lifestyle practitioners often do CrossFit workouts that strengthen and stretch the entire body.

At Geaux CrossFit, co-owner Amber Leonard preaches the Paleo lifestyle and says the diet complements what customers do in the gym.

She keeps it simple. She resists labels. She doesn’t want to shut anyone down.

“Whenever I am talking to people about making those changes, I tell them to pick one thing that you have frequently and try to give it up,” she says.

“If they say, Every day, for lunch, I have a bag of chips,’ I say, Keep the sandwich, get rid of the chips and have a side salad. Once that becomes habit, and you have accepted it as your new norm, instead of cheese on the sandwich, add bell peppers and more vegetables. Once that becomes the norm, take the bread away and add croutons, and make it a salad. Then when that becomes the norm, let’s take away the croutons and add healthy fats like avocados.'”

It’s tough for anyone to go 100% sugar-free, she adds. Sugar is hidden in so many foods. The key is staying conscious of your intake.

“Once you get clean,” Griffin says, “then you can discover what your body doesn’t like.”

Investment advisor Fred Dent went Paleo two years ago. “My body is pretty lean as a result of eating like this,” he says.

I ask him the question I’ve been dying to address. If a Stone Age person found a Twinkie in the middle of the trail, wouldn’t he scoop it up and scarf it down?

Dent chuckles.

“Once a week, I like to go to Whole Foods and eat a whole birthday cake,” he says. “I do binge, because for me, it is just impossible to stay Paleo all the time. It keeps me from getting a six-pack, so instead I have a two-pack.”

A few months ago, Dent wondered if all of the Paleo-inspired meat eating was causing his cholesterol to creep up.

But his numbers were good at a check up, and he attributes that to avoiding processed foods, which, he says, are the real culprit for climbing cholesterol.

“It is a process,” he says. “Every day is a new beginning, so don’t beat yourself up.”

Baton Rouge dietitian Hilary Shaw believes that the individual components of the Paleo diet are nutritionally sound.

Still, she adds, “The Paleo diet, like hundreds of others, is a part of the multi-billion-dollar industry founded on our relentless pursuit of perfection in eating.”

Another dilemma: We just don’t know for sure if our ancient ancestors were free of disease, whether they actually ate this way or exactly how our genes have adapted to accept the different foods of modern-day living.

So ditching that king cake and picking up an avocado, instead, might be the right thing to do, especially if you’ve been eating king cake every day since Twelfth Night, and now it’s mid-February.

But don’t obsess over it, or your mind might just become your own most toothsome predator.

“Having a healthy relationship with food is of utmost importance,” Shaw says, “more than any one food we do or do not eat.”