July 2011 is Nutrition Month: A Better Filipino Diet – Paleo Diet plus Rice and Kamote

Since most of you will be too shocked to try an all raw paleo diet unless you are in dire straits. And since most Filipinos are too addicted to rice to give up rice. And after exposing how detrimental the common Filipino diet is today, let me now propose a better 21st century Filipino diet that most of you can do, with ease, and without raising any “weirdo” signals.

The new improved Filipino diet I am proposing is well tested and effective for my wife, children, extended family, our maids and drivers. So we know it works. I call it the Paleo Diet plus pure rice and sweet potatoes / kamote new and improved 21st century Filipino diet. This is mere maintenance diet. Curative diets still belong to raw paleo diets… the total champion.

We have established in the past article how bad the common Filipino urban diet is today. Hopefully you have learned that for disease cures to happen, you must avoid all of those mentioned in the bad aspects of the Filipino diet. So here we go with a good Filipino diet… on the cheap… affordable and “easy” in the sense that this is not a raw paleo diet… this is mostly cooked paleo-ish diet that may be familiar to most. It is certainly not the ultimate… the ultimate diet belongs to a raw paleo diet. We are talking about a secondary diet for those who are on a tight budget and cannot afford to eat hard core REAL FOOD.

Meat / Animal Food / Land Animals / Sea Food – I get most of mine from Farmers Market in Cubao, Q.C.

The Philippines is an archipelago, thus we are blessed with plenty of sea food. Cheap and clean source of protein. Not enough fat in most sea food, but you can and should choose. In Farmers Market Cubao, Q.C. the wholesale time every day is 12:30 pm to 3:00 pm. I would get sea food at 2-4 kilos at a time. And cheap. Cheap for me is sea food costing 160 pesos per kilo or less.

Cheap fish like alumahan, hasa hasa, bubuli, espada, tanguige, dorado, galungong are examples of wild ocean fish. Wild ocean usually means clean. Learn to choose to pick the freshest fish. Best way to cook, either pot of soup or grilled in banana leaves or pan seared using ghee (clarified butter). When you cook fish, you only cook it lightly, just enough for the meat to easily fall off the bones. In a boiling sinigang soup pot made from fresh real sampaloc… dunk the fish slices in and in a while, remove all fish from the soup to keep the fish meat savory. If you keep the fish in the soup, it will continue to cook the meat and it will be dry and no good.

More expensive fish and fattier fish: blue marlin (350 pesos per kilo), tuna (280 pesos per kilo) and tuna belly… very good, very expensive, but can be eaten raw sashimi style… small fish alumahan (130 pesos per kilo) is also great tasting raw with the skin.

Squid and octopus are great clean sea food. At whole sale time the best squid can be bought for 160 to 200 pesos per kilo. Choose squid that have eggs in them… the sellers will call it “itlugan”… with eggs. Those eggs will give you extra fat and the meal more delicious. How to prepare: You can cut in small pieces and dunk in real tuba vinegar kinilaw style. Or you can do light adobo with the ink… remember… no soy sauce… only soft enough to be savory, do not over cook… the word is light, seared, savory.

Oysters and clams and mussels. If you can find a suki to trust, these are wild and clean from clean waters. I choose mine from Bulacan and Bataan. Always keep updated with the red tide bulletins. If your suki is really your suki, he will only give you clean ones. Oysters give the best and most zinc, bar none. Clams give you the best best and most B12 somewhat rivaling beef liver. Unopened oysters are cheap at 40 pesos per kilo. You probably just need 1 or 2 kilos. If you don’t have time to open oysters, plastic packed oysters or okay too but not as delicious as freshly opened live ones. Oysters are great raw, or squeeze some calamansi in them if you are afraid… or heat them on a grill until they open and remove immediately. Clams and mussels are stir fried fast or in a pot by themselves heated until they open and stop. Never over cook. Never eat dead clams, mussels or oysters. I personally eat clams raw. I do not eat mussels raw because they taste bad raw.

Beef – Farmers Market Cubao and Mahogany Market Tagaytay have the best beef. The cheapest cuts are 190 to 200 pesos per kilo. I get the expensive sirloin cuts at 290 to 300 pesos per kilo because I just love the yellow yummy fat. Today I eat my beef exclusively raw. But you can sear your beef without condiments or you can use real salt and freshly ground pepper. Or like my kids you can make barbecue and put it on a stick and sear for 5 seconds each side. Our barbecue recipe is: honey, calamansi, garlic, salt and pepper… it will turn the beef brown… so it looks cooked… sear 5 seconds per side… ready to eat fun food for children. Remember… beef is NOT PORK. Filipinos are ingrained to fully cook pork. BEEF is always only seared… beef is SOFT and TENDER… only over-cooked beef is hard. If your beef is hard… it is your fault… you over cooked it. I do not buy branded beef from the multinational companies or imports because they are fed bad food… not their natural diet. Beef should be grown on rolling hills feeding on grass.

Goats – by default are grass fed. They are merely allowed to roam on the hills. Goats in goat meat shops are fed grass… not feeds. It is best you buy whole live goats. Choose a lively healthy goat and have that slaughtered in front of you and do mind how they butcher and clean the animal. Use every part of the animal. Remember to cook without MSG, if you are doing kinilaw for the skin, use real tuba vinegar.

Fertilized Eggs – get your own fertilized eggs from taking care of your own native free range chicken or you can get fertilized duck eggs in the market. I buy duck eggs at the balut store in Marikina market… they call them “special” eggs. Fertilized is key. Remember that the common eggs in the markets have no sperm in them. There is magic in a fertilized egg because it forms into a chick. Cooked balut eggs are good too, you can buy them yourself and cook them yourself… they taste better fresh. But you can always buy from the balut vendor. Cook your fertilized eggs sunny side up or soft boiled or eat them raw. If you are frying, use ghee.

Cooking oil – best cooking oil is ghee… clarified butter… get from Assads… indian grocery… 450 pesos for 900 grams. If you cannot find ghee… get lard… lard is pork fat (last choice). Do not cook with olive oil, it is not designed for heat. You can also use virgin coconut oil for frying… it does not taste as good as ghee… but it is easier to find when there is no Assads in your area.

Rice. Get pure rice. One single harvest in one plot and milled free of all husks. Get organic is best. If you cannot afford organic, buy from house to house sellers that promise direct from their farm and freshly milled… nothing mixed. For example you have relatives in the province who can supply you with freshly harvested and dried 160 variety rice and you buy a full sack. That is pure rice. Unlike the funny sounding rice names in the city… these are MIXED and perfumed… nothing is pure… they mix in NFA, other imports, old stocks… whatever… that is not what rice should be.

Cooking rice. Best is in pyrex glass… super clean. Next best is stainless steel. Or clay pots. Last is aluminum rice cooker. An accumulation of aluminum may make you sick. I personally do not eat rice. I believe rice is a mere filler. So it can potentially make people malnourished. People are addicted to rice. So eat according to the rice guidelines above.

Vegetables. Get organic by default vegetables. Kamote tops, malunggay, banana hearts (puso ng saging), monggo sprouts (toge), squash, gabi, etc etc etc… and you can cook it with coconut milk (gata) for that extra fat you need. Cook lightly just enough to remove the bitter taste. That bitter taste are anti-nutrients so you don’t eat them. Some people do not do well on cooked vegetables. So observe.

Kamote. Sweet potatoes. A great alternative to rice. Cheap and convenient.

Fruits. Philippines is the capital of fruits. Follow the seasons. Eat what is in season because what is in season is cheap, abundant, and most nutritious. Each month is a different season for fruits. Eat local. The most heavily chemical sprayed fruits are: carabao mango, branded pineapples, cavendish bananas… I do not buy those. If you must buy carabao mangoes, ripen them yourself at home to avoid the widespread use of “kalburo” (using gunpowder chemicals to ripen). The operative word in the markets when looking for non-kalburo fruit is “baklas”.

What to drink. Plain water is rubbish. The recommendation of 8 glasses of plain water a day is rubbish. Your body will probably utilize only 10% of plain water as it is in the incorrect form and incorrect structure for the human body. Your body, your tummy, your tongue says stop, don’t do it. Didn’t you ever wonder why flavored drinks of all types are selling much more than plain water? Humans are NOT plain water drinking animals. We do not have lapping tongues.

Humans are supposed to get their water from raw meat, raw food and fruit. Obvious thirst quenching items are cold coconut juice, cold water melons… ahhh refreshing. Secondary drinks would be cold plain water plus freshly squeezed calamansi or lemon… add a touch of raw wild honey… and you have an unbeatable thirst quencher. Notice that cold is more refreshing because it is in a form / structure that is much more readily absorbed by the body. Respect the temperature difference though when you are overheated due to exercise. There is a danger to shocking the body with too big a temperature difference.

And do not drink during meal times. That is a bad habit that makes it harder for you to digest your food by diluting your stomach acids.

Zero food combining is best. Eat sequentially. When hungry at meal time, eat your meat first. Then if you want vegetables or rice, eat them sequentially.

So there you have it. Experiment and find out what you can afford and what is available. Remember to eat a lot of fat from coconuts and from animals. Never avoid fats… going on a low fat diet is absolutely the worst thing you can do. Trash out with that faulty old food pyramid. It’s now a food plate.

You the patient or the parent must do the marketing yourself. You need to learn first hand. You will make mistakes the first time but keep doing it. Practice makes you a better marketer. You will have to cook or supervise yourself. Never let the help decide what you eat. The most health aware person in the house must be the marketer. There is always time if health and healing is your priority.

I know this works because I practice this diet on my children. They refuse to go on raw paleo diet because they succumb to peer pressure and conformity with their class mates. So I put them on raw paleo diets only when they are sick, it works, like a yoyo. I would rather live on raw paleo diet and be healthy all the time.