Paleo is hard. It’s hard moving from a diet abundant with grains to one completely bereft of them. It’s hard throwing out such a fantastic staple of the Western diet, the pasta, the bread, the baked goods, the quick carb, and replacing it with alternatives. It’s harder to get real serious about it, especially with an active lifestyle, throwing out slow-carb sources such as potatoes and rice, in favor of caloric intake almost exclusively from protein and fats.
And it’s made all the more difficult being a college kid. No more late night pizza runs, the lifeblood of post-dinner meals. No more ramen, the staple in kitchens and beat-up apartments near campuses all across the country. Gone, too, is the a far larger chunk of your wallet1 spent on healthier options and fresher food.
But most disappointingly, gone is bread.
Not just the fresh-baked delight of a baguette, golden-brown and crispy on the outside, and delicately airy and soft within. It’s the Sara-Lee, the wonderbread, the nine-grain, the pre-sliced, pre-saran-wrapped down-to-earth stuff that’s truly the challenge to live without. Because without it, it means no more quick-to-prep lunches – no more sandwiches. It’s really something to be taken for granted, how simple and efficient the sandwich really is. Two minutes, and probably less if your good at it, and you have a travel-ready meal that can be consumed, if need be, in less than half the time.
So how do you replace it? That was honestly my greatest concern when starting Paleo, and it’s still not a question I’ve completely answered. But I have found two things that work, albeit to an extent:
- Cooking to make leftovers: One phenomenal part of Paleo, to it’s great credit, is that I’ve learned to cook protein – fish, chicken, beef, etc. – simply, quickly, and for the most part, deliciously. Mostly out of necessity, or perhaps more accurately, impatience, I’ve cut down cooking times on many meals without comprimising on flavors. Extending this further, and merely cooking a little more than I need, and I have a ready-made meal for lunch the next day. When this works, it works great – who wouldn’t love a fantastic home-cooked meal over dining hall food? Two big questions remain though - What if I don’t cook an evening meal? And what if I cook something that isn’t big enough to split up?
- Pre-cooking lunches: In searching for an answer to these questions, I started attempting to make big, crock-pot meals; meals that would last a week both satisfying my stomach and surviving the fridge. Chilis, stews, taco meat – and again, it was fantastic when it worked. The problem is, and is only becoming more exacerbated over the semester, is when am I going to have time to make these meals? It’s hard to step aside and devote several hours of time to cooking when papers, tests and homework are constantly looming.
So unfortunately I don’t have a catch-all answer yet. If all else fails though, I can make my way to Spain. I hear they like to take their lunches nice and slow.
If you’re serious about Paleo as a college student, I would definitely look into joining a farm co-op of some sort – they offer cheaper prices for better food, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, they deliver either to your house or to some convenient place on-campus. ↩
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