Transitioning to Paleo Breakfast: Pancakes, Smoothies & Seed Cereal
The Standard American Diet is never better represented than in our devotion to processed food, upon rising.
The cereal aisle in an average grocery store is an epic display of our indoctrination into the safety and nutritive claims of corporate food giants.
Recent reports including one by Cornucopia Institute have exposed the dirty secrets behind marketing of "natural" cereals such as Kashi, loaded with genetically modified ingredients and associated herbicides/pesticides. Most of these cereals also contain gluten, dyes, industry secret flavor enhancers, and sugars of myriad varieties. The effect on your body is a set up for supranormal hunger-inducing stimulation, insulin-spiking, and cognitive clouding within an hour or two. Changing up breakfast with the ultimate goal of intermittent fasting is often the most powerful intervention I make for my patients. But what to eat when transitioning to paleo breakfast?
If you can shake the cultural conditioning of needing to eat a "breakfast" food, and instead just consume regular food - greens, some fish, broth, etc upon rising, your options will expand exponentially. If you feel like you'd like something that reminds you in some way of the bowls of oatmeal, pancakes, and waffles you used to subsist on, here are some new and improved alternatives:
Paleo Pancakes
Half a boiled/steamed sweet potato OR 3 tbsp butternut, acorn or kabocha squash, OR one banana
3 pastured eggs
2 tbsp hemp seeds, flax seeds, or sprouted nut butter
Blend and spoon silver-dollar size dollops into medium heat coconut oil. They cook quickly!
Fatty Smoothie Goodness
My latest breakfast choice combines some simple super foods, and keeps me full well into the afternoon. All measurements are extremely adjustable!
Half a cup of frozen organic cherries (or other berries)
8 oz of fermented coconut water, coconut water, or filtered water
3 tablespoons of collagen hydrolysate as a protein base
One tablespoon of sprouted nut butter
3 pastured egg yolks
One tablespoon of coconut oil
1 tablespoon of ghee
1-2 tablespoons of raw cocoa powder
Blend!
Seed Cereal
In a grinder, combine any variety of seeds that appeal to you: hemp, sesame, flax, sunflower, chia and nuts like raw walnuts or pecans.
Buzz them up in a seed grinder and warm them in coconut milk (a BPA-free canned variety or even better, homemade)
A variant of this is chia pudding which is made by combining roughly 1/3 cup of chia seeds with 1.5 cups of coconut milk, and a dash of cinnamon, left in the fridge for an hour.
Of course, there's always eggs - poached, over easy, with greens, with pastured bacon, with root veggies and Real Salt, cooked in ghee or coconut oil. I personally love starting the day with a glass of Sole salt water for its mineral content. Read more about this ritual and the science behind it on Green Med Info.
For more inspiration on paleo breakfast and other meals, here are some of my favorite cookbooks these days
Buon Appetito!
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