I live amongst Inuit and while I don't think vegetables "should" be avoided, they don't have to be the focus. BUT, Inuit survived on an animal based diet by eating nose to tail and that even included stomach contents, blood, and fermented meats/fat/organs (aka "rotten"). So for an all animal diet to be ideal and safe, one really must be committed to emulating it entirely.

Eating animal based does not have to cost more because it also usually means you will eat less volume.

Saral2013 wrote: »

Hi Twibbly,
There are certain veggies I can eat when reheated (asparagus and broccoli). Proteins, tend to be the main problem. Chicken takes on a very unpleasant smell and taste, and even beef tastes off. I will look into the links you posted for ideas.

Hi Akimajuktuq,
I grew up in another country where we ate a lot of things that are not common in the US so I eat things like oxtail and cow's tongue with no problem - I do hate liver, though.

I force myself to eat vegetables because I worry that eating mainly protein would affect my kidneys - they've already have suffered some damage. I may need to give smoothies a try again, I was able to get all my greens that way. I stopped when I discovered that even almond milk made me sick.

Thank you for your recommendations. I appreciate everyone's support.

Allow me to introduce you to @FIT_Goat. He's a prominent member of the Low Carber group, and our resident carnivore over there. Feel free to talk to him if going that route seems like something that might work for you.

Eating all meat does not equate to eating all protein. That's actually a myth. The only way that'd be the case would be if you were trying to live on skinless chicken breasts. Get the fattier cuts and eat the pieces of fat instead of cutting it off and discarding it, and you shouldn't have any issue with protein toxicity. @FIT_Goat's protein to fat ratio is actually somewhere around 60-75% fat to 25-40% protein, as I recall.

Also, how do you reheat your foods? The way you reheat them may be the main culprit in the tastes you're getting. If you've been using the microwave, try reheating it on the stove. Fry the meat up with some coconut oil and see how that works. Do a light steam on the veggies in a pot. If you can't reheat it on the stove, try storing and reheating your foods in glass containers, instead of plastic. It may actually be the materials from the containers leeching into the food that you're tasting.

While I understand the 'super taster' concept (we're not all born with the same number/proportion of taste buds), I gotta say that 'dislike trumps nutrition' is as much psychological as physiological. When a hunter/gatherer is doing so on an empty stomach, he's not going to turn down a clump of kale if he knows it's edible. He'll eat enough to shut his stomach up, and hope he'll find something tastier next time. We've all become dilettantes - turning up our noses at anything that isn't hyper-delicious instead of eating what we need to thrive/survive.

A lot of foods I disdained pre-paleo have become, if not favorites, at least tolerable because I told myself 'just eat the damned thing'. Besides, we all know that taste buds can be retrained or recalibrated: we notice the inherent sweetness in many 'previously non-sweet' foods once we remove the atomic blast of sugar from our diets, and by the same token many things that SEEM unduly bitter become less so once that sweetness recalibration takes place.

monkeydharma wrote: »

While I understand the 'super taster' concept (we're not all born with the same number/proportion of taste buds), I gotta say that 'dislike trumps nutrition' is as much psychological as physiological. When a hunter/gatherer is doing so on an empty stomach, he's not going to turn down a clump of kale if he knows it's edible. He'll eat enough to shut his stomach up, and hope he'll find something tastier next time. We've all become dilettantes - turning up our noses at anything that isn't hyper-delicious instead of eating what we need to thrive/survive.

A lot of foods I disdained pre-paleo have become, if not favorites, at least tolerable because I told myself 'just eat the damned thing'. Besides, we all know that taste buds can be retrained or recalibrated: we notice the inherent sweetness in many 'previously non-sweet' foods once we remove the atomic blast of sugar from our diets, and by the same token many things that SEEM unduly bitter become less so once that sweetness recalibration takes place.

Supertasters have taste buds that are almost non-existent on others. It's a specific term for the phenomenon of having certain taste buds that pick up bitter compounds in certain foods/chemicals. (See also: http://www.livescience.com/17190-supertaster-nontaster-tongue-evolution.html) We're talking upwards of 10x the number of the bitter-tasting taste buds as a non-taster. It goes way beyond the sensation of sweetness depending on if you're acclimated to a sweet or non-sweet diet.

For example, I'm a supertaster. Not as extreme as the OP (and of a variety that actually likes Cilantro), but I can't stand grapefruit, kale, or brussels sprouts, due to the bitterness I taste in them. I kid you not, until about a year ago, I had no idea that coffee actually had different tastes. Even the flavored coffees all taste the same to me, because the bitter compounds (not just the tannins, the tannin amount doesn't matter, there are other compounds in the coffee that makes it bitter) overpower everything else. It wasn't until I happened upon a concoction based on Mark Sisson's Primal Egg Coffee that just so happened to somehow neutralize those compounds did I know there was any difference between the coffee's I'd had. And it didn't just have to do with quality (though I have since found a local roaster whose espresso I can stand with just cream), because it's like that with every coffee I've tried. Even the artisan ones I can't drink straight.

And trust me, it's not for lack of trying. I tried kale chips, I tried adding it to smoothies. I've tried various brussels sprouts recipes that people raved over (go go Paleo potlucks). Three leaves of kale in my smoothie overpowered the cocoa and nut butter I had in it. Three leaves. In a drink with a final size of about 28oz. The brussel sprouts were still bitter. I'd rather eat a lemon than eat a grapefruit. And I'm the type of person willing to try anything once, and can go "okay, I don't really like this, but I can see how other people could like it," or "it's got some interesting notes and starts off awesome, but I really dislike that aftertaste."

If it's just a matter of "oh, I just don't really care for X," I completely agree that tastes can be changed. I've grown quite fond of both coconut oil and avocado through repeated consumption and experimentation with uses of both. I don't know that I'll ever sit down with a bowl of guac and eat it, but a couple slices on a burger or half of one tossed in a smoothie? Sure.

Being a supertaster is more than that, though. Even with, say, avocados, you can taste an array of flavors and hints and whatnot. Whether you like the thing is pretty much purely mental, and if you have the self-insight, you can pinpoint what you do and don't like about a given food, which gives you the basis to try recipes that might deal with that. The bitter compounds, though? They overpower everything. There is no covering them up (except maybe with sugar). Putting a trigger item into a recipe has an effect similar to putting half a cup of salt into a recipe -- it's all you taste and the dish becomes inedible. Forget eating it straight.

As for your hunter/gatherer example, if that hunter/gatherer was a supertaster, that bunch of kale wouldn't be edible. It's bitter as all hell, and bitter things tend to be toxic (or, more precisely, toxic things tend to be bitter; but when all you have to go on is the bitterness, you tend to err on the side of caution) (http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/bitter_taste_identifies_poisons_in_foods). The only way he'd know it was edible in some form is if he had a nontaster family member who he saw eat it, and even then, he'd probably question the edibility of it when he tasted it for himself (especially if the two occasions were separated in time).

(Side note - nifty article on our ability to taste bitterness http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-7j.shtml)

monkeydharma wrote: »

Well, I would have to posit then that 'super taste' is a contra-survival mutation. But whatever. Eat well and prosper!

At 25% of the population, I'd say not necessarily (25% are supertasters, 25% are nontasters, 50% are "medium" tasters). Keep in mind that a lot of the vegetables we eat now have been bred to have their more toxic compounds removed and other such alterations.

We don't need kale to survive. Or Brussels sprouts. Or any of the other handful of plants that are commonly supertasting triggers (or any plants, really, but that's a different conversation). Given its low caloric value, the fact that it's bitter to at least part of the population -- which in primitive situations equates to toxic -- it's better to not eat it. That's not contra-survival, that's pro survival in the bigger picture. It does happen to be wrong in these couple of cases, but not necessarily detrimentally so. As one of the articles linked mentioned -- supertasters do better in new environments (higher chance of not consuming toxic foods while trying new foods), while non-tasters do better in known, safe environments (more variety of food available).

Just like some are better at hunting and others are better at gathering, each kind has their role.

Cilantro and cumin are different plants. Coriander seeds are from cilantro though.

Saral2013 wrote: »

Akimajuktuq wrote: »

Oxtail and tongue are terrific but they do not replace organs (liver, kidney, brain etc). Heart either for that matter.

Inuit diets were high in FAT. They favoured marine mammal fat, blood, bone marrow, and all organ meat, with much lean meat just fed to the dogs. If you aren't eating completely nose to tail I do not recommend a (almost) total animal based diet. Inuit also ate stomach contents, seasonal berries, some sea vegetables etc so there was still some plant foods.

I like bone marrow, but I don't think I could eat organ meats and/or stomach contents. I guess I better stick to smoothies so I can get some vegetables into my diet.

Grinding them up and mixing them with other ground meats helps on that front. That said, you never know until you try. Half of our society's issue with organ meat is mental. There's a lot of negativity around it. You can also freeze it and make it into little "pills" that you then just swallow whole.

Saral2013 wrote: »

Can't do much about texture, though.

I'm with you there. Mental tricks only go so far against a gag reflex. I'm that way with okra. I can tell myself that the sliminess is caused by an abundance of soluble fiber, and it's good for me - but if I focus too much, I can't get it down. And I always get a bunch of it in my CSA basket, so I gotta make do.

First World problems, I guess.

And here I was ready to give my left arm just to try okra even one time. I found some frozen recently and don't even know what to do with it. lol