It’s time for your revolutionary food transformation. The point of this blog is to provide instruction on how to literally change the vast majority of your daily caloric intake from processed, fattening, unhealthy foods to healthy evolutionary foods. These instructions should only take you the better part of one day.
Try and do this first thing in the morning, preferably on a Saturday. The first thing you need to do is find some large cardboard boxes. Go to your kitchen and wherever else you store your food. Start to gather up all the food which does not fit into primarily an evolutionary diet philosophy. That means we want to get rid of everything but naturally raised meats, fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts, with a few secondary exceptions. Gather up all of your milk, butter, ice cream and the rest of your dairy foods; all processed grains and all of your processed meats. Grab all of the frozen pizzas, pop tarts, cookies, crackers, snack food, canned soups; all of the processed branded crap that you have. Gather up all of the industrial food that you have from everywhere that you have it; cupboards, fridge, freezer and storage. Put it all into the boxes.
You can keep any fresh or even canned fruits and vegetables, all of your spices, raw nuts and packs of uncooked rice (preferably brown rice), raw potatoes or similar roots. That’s about all you will need to keep. Please be sure to make a list of all of this food you are removing, you will need it a little later in the day.
Now turn on your computer as you will need the internet. If you don’t have one, you may be able to do this with the yellow pages. Get your telephone and a pen and paper. You are going to find 4 things:
First, you are going to find a local food bank to drop off the boxes of processed foods you just gathered up. There is nothing like starting out the day by helping to feed people who may be starving. I hate to give this junk to anyone, but to feed homeless people who really need the macro-nutrient calories is a good deed. This is about the only thing I would do with industrial food – give it to people who have absolutely no food.
Second, you are going to find the closest large organic food store. Hit the internet and try: “organic grocery stores”, “health food grocery stores”, “all natural grocery stores” or any other combinations until you find some good options so you have choices. Our resources guide at: www.eco-diet.com/resources/ will also give you some great options. Get a list of the closest ones and get maps or directions so you can get there easily.
Third thing; you are going to find all of your local farmers’ markets. Do an internet search for your city and “farmers markets”. For example: “Baltimore farmers’ markets”. You can also try “organic farmers’ markets” and see what comes up. You can save time here by going here: www.eco-diet.com/resources/ for some great web-sites and to find national lists. Again, get at least a few options here from your search. Make sure you know the days and hours the markets are open (usually Saturdays and Sundays) and get clear directions.
Fourth thing; you are going to find some local small farms that produce natural food. Hit the internet again and this time type in “grass fed beef”. I have found this to be the best search. Again, you can try some other combinations like “pastured beef”, “grass fed farms” or “game meat farms”. Again, www.eco-diet.com/resources/ will provide you with some of the top lists. Likely within 1 to 3 hours of where you live you will find farms where you can buy animal meat which was raised on a truly natural diet where the animals were raised in their natural environments. Many if not most of these farms will raise chickens, hogs and various other animals along with cows, bison, or game. The meat from these animals will almost assuredly be available directly from the farms you find. There will also be a lot of choices for all kinds of fruits, vegetables, honey and related products from these small farms.
Usually, you can find a farm producing a variety of healthy, pastured meat all year round. If it is too far away they will likely provide delivery. If this is the case, try and buy as much as you can to save on the delivery charge. You can always find farms with pastured animals on the internet who will deliver almost anywhere, but they will likely be expensive. The most economical thing to do is find the farms within a reasonable distance and take the drive yourself every couple of months. In this case, you will need a small to medium sized freezer. This will definitely be your best course of action. There is nothing like actually seeing the place and the animals that are the source of your food.
Call ahead and buy enough frozen meat for 2 or 3 months. This amounts to a pastoral drive into the country a handful of times per year vs. 50 or so trips to your grocery store. A great trade off and you get much healthier food. You can also share and combine orders with friends and take turns driving out to the farm or split the delivery charges. I buy roughly $200 worth of game meat from a farm two hours away from where I live. I get it delivered and it lasts me for at least 2-3 months. Finally, you will also be able to find naturally raised meats at some of the local farmers markets you find.
A quick note on finding meat from grass fed and pastured animals. Depending on what city you are located in, some of the farms will obviously not be as convenient as buying from your local grocery store. Some farms only provide meat at certain times of the year like the fall or late spring. You may have to make a deposit and buy much larger quantities than normal. In this case you will definitely need a freezer, but the prices will be that much better and you will have a ton of meat for months if not the whole year.
Another great idea is to find a local CSA (community sponsored agriculture). CSA groups are basically organized answers to the question of how to obtain much of the food in an evolutionary diet. As a member of a CSA you would pay a certain set amount of money each year and the farm your group is sponsoring would then provide you with regular portioned (usually weekly) yields of its fruit, vegetables, meats, honey, jams, or any other natural foods they provide. These groups are a fantastic way to get people re-acquainted with real food. CSA groups are popping up all over the place in response to our bad industrial food. There is also a great social element to these organizations with interaction amongst members and the farmers. Many have regular get-togethers and harvest-time parties on the farm. You can visit with the kids and everyone learns a ton about the true provenance of their food and the real meaning of organic agriculture. Most of all CSA’s are just a great way to reclaim our food.
In approximately 2 minutes using only one of the websites listed in the resources guide provided: www.eco-diet.com/resources/ I found 419 farms, markets, and stores selling pastured, healthy animal products; all within about 90 minutes from central New York City. This list included websites, prices lists, email addresses and directions. The list didn’t even include additional buying groups, cooperatives, responsible butcher shops, or the many other places to get this kind of healthy food. Removing industrial, mostly non-evolutionary food from your life is going to be much easier than you may have thought. You just have to try.
Alright, if you started on a Saturday at about 7:00 am then it should be around 10:00 by now. Please remember the list of the types of foods that you have put in the boxes and removed from your life so you can replace and substitute many of them when you shop today. If you boxed a ton of ice cream, you will probably need to get a good variety of the soy version. Like me, if you gave away a bunch of snack food, you will need to find some temporary healthier replacements at the organic grocery store. Take all of your resource information that you have just gathered from the computer and internet. Now take all of your names and maps and directions and list of foods and jump in your car. Off you go. You may not make the farm today, but you can get grass fed or truly naturally raised animal meats from the farmers market or large organic grocery stores; it’s just that you will probably pay more this time compared to buying directly from the farm.
Remember, look past the “organic” part when buying your meat or fish and ask what the animal actually ate and how it was raised. Were the cows eating grass, was the chicken truly free range and eating its natural diet? Yes or no? If you can’t make it to the farm, the farmers’ markets will be a far better place to by real animal meats. You will not get the same straight answers or low prices at the large organic grocery stores.
Will you ever again set foot in your local discount grocery store? Of course you will! You will still use these guys for what they are good for. You can still get canned but wild caught fish, out of season fruits and vegetables (they don’t always need to be “organic”), spices, tea bags, coffee, and various other food items. Another great idea is to a find a local fish store or market with responsibly caught, wild fish and other sea food. The idea behind these instructions is to show you that it is entirely possible to change the majority of your calories from unhealthy to really healthy in literally 1 day.
That’s it. Welcome back to your natural diet with all the taste, health and fat loss. Take pride in your new responsibility to the animals, earth, and future generations. Enjoy the incredible results and outright joy this natural food will bring you.
If this post makes sense, feel free to check out our diet plan. It’s called the eco-diet and it’s based on the natural, healthy eating habits our ancestors followed for centuries. There are no excuses now.