I can’t agree enough with this. I tried paleolithic diet once on the advice of my parents (during a “try everything to see if it works” period before I was properly diagnosed). I lasted about a week before developing a violent and apparently permanent reaction to the courses I had sampled. Six years later I still get sick from a single bite of that stuff, though the why of it has never been clear to me.
Funny thing is, I knew about gluten long before I knew I was gluten intolerant, but I thought it was a good thing. I was cooking with seitan instead of meat (I’ll give you three guesses how I pronounce seitan now!), and I was buying “high gluten” flour for making bread!
Hmm… pizza parties. Yeah, that would be a toughie. I’ve discovered a recipe for cauliflower pizza crust that’s pretty good, but it’s actually got cheese in it. I tried making it without cheese a couple times, and it’s edible, but it’s not really pizza crust anymore.
Nowadays my idea of a great pizza is “pepperoni… hold the pizza.”
Like hives or like puking? I’ve heard many times of people who puke when they eat meat. My guess is that it’s a lack of stomach acid or possibly low digestive enzymes or low bile acids. I think there’s a “use it or lose it” element to some of these things. Hives of course would be allergies.
Paleo is essentially how I eat, but I didn’t start out that way. I just eliminated everything else and then found out that was what it was called. There’s a wide range of things that can be called Paleo, though, and it’s funny what different conclusions people reach about how humans ate a million years ago. Everything from hardcore fruitarian to 100% carnivore is considered “the” Paleo diet by somebody…
The latter. My own fault, mainly – I picked up a primer on paleo, tried it out, decided this was something I should try living by to solve my concentration issues, and fixated on a few dishes. Too few, it turns out. Didn’t know back then that I’d inherited autoimmune disorder and ADHD either, meaning I had the beginnings of an ulcer before seven years of age. All of these factors may have contributed to my reaction.
So I can understand paleo working for a lot of people, but I’m reluctant to personally repeat the attempt.
Yuck! Sorry to hear that.
Have you been treated for H. pylori? H. pylori, which causes ulcers, can also suppress stomach acid production.
Nah. 
It’s on the agenda, but honestly, I’m busy enough with studies and primary treatments these days as it is. Thanks for the thought and the tip, though – much appreciated.
I’m an omnivore leaning as much toward vegetarian as I can manage (how much I can manage depends on whether there’s a burger, pot roast, smoked pork rib or chicken wing within reach). I try to keep it kind of Japanese, in the sense that I mainly eat plants, but with a bit of meat here and there. I’m the main cook in our house, and I try to do a few all-vegetarian meals each week. They’re vegan kind of by default, because we go easy on things like dairy and cheese anyway, so most meals have neither of those things. My life is basically bohemian (with absolutely all that entails), so naturally some of my friends are vegan, and I find it easy to cook for them. A couple of my friends are also into the raw food movement, and I find that a little trickier, but I’m learning 
I crave veggies and fruit all the time … lately I’ve been on a serious kick for fresh oranges, in particular … but … well, they say “you are what you eat,” and if that’s true, then this cow I’m eating is basically just grain, anyway, right? 
Something I’ve always wondered: where do serious vegans tend to fall on the subject of honey? I would assume that since it’s an animal product (comparable to milk in many ways) that it would be off the list, but a lot of the vegan-friendly restaurants and coffeehouses I’ve been to seem to offer it as a sweetener, anyway, next to the agave and whatnot.
Honey’s technically off the list for vegans; there’s no way to harvest honey without killing some of the bees. You can minimize casualties, but it’s off the list for most of the hardcore vegans I know. (Like many dietary practices, though, there’s a continuum in veganism just like anywhere else, and some self-identified vegans eat honey.)
Although I was surprised to learn that Peter Singer (author of “Animal Liberation,” a seminal work of vegan rhetoric) said he thought honey was okay. If I remember correctly, it was in correspondence with Stephen Budiansky, published in Budiansky’s book “The Covenant of the Wild: Why Animals Chose Domestication.”
It’s my impression that the exact details of a vegan diet come down to an individual’s conscience and opinion. Or any diet, for that matter.
My experiences with restricted diets have been mostly out of consideration for friends and significant others. I dated someone who kept kosher at the time, which was good watch-what-I’m-cooking-with experience for a later significant other, who is lethally treenut-allergic and more-mildly allergic to soy, chocolate, and peanuts. The latter was a case in which I had to watch my own diet, since I could not eat treenuts myself for fear of, ahem, cross-contamination. (My housemates first learned about the breakup when they came home to find me eating Nutella straight out of the jar.) The restriction that is my own comes from the fact that I’m a supertaster – I hate the taste of alcohol, coffee, and leafy vegetables, and prefer spiced-ness to spiciness and milk chocolate to dark chocolate (grapefruit is good, though, and spinach is sort-of acceptable).
I have several friends of varying shades of vegetarianism, so I rarely cook meat for any group of friends larger than myself and one or two specific other people. But honestly, I rarely cook meat anyway, since it’s expensive, finicky to cook, and doesn’t store well. I do use chicken broth as a flavoring fairly regularly (unless I’m cooking for friends, of course, in which case I’d use mushroom bouillon), I eat a fair number of eggs, and I love dairy products. I drink milk with every meal that I eat at home, and butter and cheese go in pretty much everything.
=( - to those with dietary issues. I have a couple of gluten intolerant friends, and it can be difficult. A big change.
I grew up on a farm, so trained to eat a lot of meat from an early age. These days I don’t eat so much, partly because I’m on a tight budget, but also because I don’t like it as much as I used to.
I have changed the meat I do eat too. I eat Kangaroo, rather than beef. It’s cheaper, healthier, and better for the environment. I also like rabbit, though eat that less often. I really should cut back on the amount of pig products (bacon) I eat though.
Been vegan for 11 years and veg since 1988.
I like my fiction violent though! 