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paleo meets vegan vegetarian-min

Paleo Meets Vegan

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There's an interesting talk at the Sydney Opera House tomorrow, as part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas.  The talk is entitles “What We Are and What We Eat”, by Jonathan Safran Foer.  Foer has written a book called “Eating Animals”, and it sounds like he has a strong vegan, anti-Paleo agenda.

From what I've read, it looks like he is very concerned about cheap, factory farmed animal produce, which is a viewpoint I completely agree with.  However, whilst I tackle this by sourcing very good quality, grass fed, organic meat, with a minimal degree of separation between myself an the farmer – I wonder if Foer's approach is tofu and grains?

I'm always interested in hearing and understanding differing viewpoints about diets and food sustainability, so I'm quite tempted to go along.

Must remember to take some beef jerky with me, I think they only sell sweets & crisps at the Opera House…

PrimalCon

7,497 Miles to PrimalCon

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One of the highlights of 2011 so far was the weekend I went to PrimalCon 2011 in California in April.  I enjoyed it so much, that I booked my ticket for the 2012 event as soon as the tickets went on sale this morning.

Sunset at PrimalCon-min

Sunset at PrimalCon

I hadn't realised quite how far America was from Australia when I booked this year.  I went at quite short notice and used my air miles, so didn't pay too much attention to minor details like flight times.  I was trying to minimise time off work, so I left Australia on the Friday and flew back on the Sunday night.  This was a big mistake!  I now know very well that Los Angeles is a very long 14 hour 7,497 mile flight from Sydney.  To make matters worse, as I used my air miles, I was assigned a very impressive route of Sydney to Brisbane, a night in Brisbane, a flight from Brisbane to Melbourne, then finally I got on my international flight at Melbourne!

It was all for the best however, as I met a wonderful new friend on the flight to LA, who was also attending PrimalCon (with just two people going from Australia, what were the chances of us being on the same flight?)

I'm planning to make PrimalCon 2012 into a much more sensible length America trip, especially as it falls the weekend after Easter.

I made some lifelong Primal friends in April, in fact, I spent a wonderful week in Texas with two of my PrimalCon friends, and met up with some others at the AHS in August.  I'm really looking forward to catching up with them and making some more Primal friends.

Over the whole weekend, the food was incredible.  So much was local Californian produce and it was great to have things like Kale and Turkey, which I find so difficult to find here in Australia (if you know of any good sources here, please let me know in the comments!)

One of my highlights from the weekend was the running workshop with Barefoot Ted.   I learnt so much from him and my running style has changed forever.  In fact, it was his workshop that inspired me to buy my Vibrams!  I'm thrilled to see Barefoot Ted is back again for next year’s event – hopefully I can refine my technique further still.
Barefoot-Ted-PrimalCon-Paleo-Network-min

Erwan Le Corre is a new presenter for the 2012 event.  I really enjoyed his talk and demonstration on MovNat at the AHS this year, and to have the opportunity to have a small group workshop with the guy who does this is incredibly exciting!

I just received my latest Amazon book order of Exuberant Animal by Frank Forencich yesterday – so couldn't believe it when I read Frank Forencich is also a presenter at PrimalCon!  I’d better get started on his book…

Hopefully we'll be able to get Mark Sisson over to Australia/ New Zealand in the near future, but in the meantime…  anyone else coming to PrimalCon with me?

Gluten Free Expo Conference Paleo Event

The Sydney Gluten Free Expo

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I went along to the Gluten Free Expo yesterday, at the Sydney Showground.

Gluten Free Expo Conference Paleo Event

I'm not sure why now, but I expected it to be very Paleo friendly and full of Vibram clad feet. Surely going completely grain free would be the natural conclusion for those with Coeliac disease? Ditching the bread and refined carbs in favour of real, whole food?

The Gluten Free event was sponsored by Coles and the stands were almost all offering packaged, processed food. Crisps, pasta, processed meats, ready meals, breakfast cereals, cakes and sweets. They all seemed to have removed gluten and replaced it with more sugar, other grains and lots of chemicals. I studied the ingredients on every stand and managed to find one little jar of spices, that would get the Paleo seal of approval! One product!

Gluten Free expoPerhaps a Paleo stand at next year's expo beckons!

Going Gluten Free?

It's well worth trying to remove Gluten from your diet. So many people don't tollerate it well, without being full-blown Coeliac. When constantly exposed to Gluten, it's hard to even realise what impact it has on your body. It isn't until all traces of Gluten are out of your system that you can begin to understand how it affects you.

Gluten intolerance seems to be strongly correlated with inflammation issues such as IBS, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, autoimmune diseases, HD, ADD, ADHS, Autism, indigestion, stomach complaints and many other health complaints.

If you're looking to go Gluten Free, the Whole30 is a great program to use to kick this off with! I haven't ever heard of anyone regretting going Gluten Free!