I’m not sure of it, but I think my taste buds are sharpening up. I feel like they’ve become a little more sensitive, now that I’ve been eating only real, nutrient-dense foods for (almost) two weeks.
Or it could be that I’m just imagining it. What started me down this path was thinking about how dependent I’d become, pre-challenge, on bread and pasta in my diet. These two were ever-present in the house, ready to be called on for fast and simple dishes: toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, pasta for dinner. And they both involve pretty minimal thinking to work them into meals.
But seeing bread and pasta in a different, Paleo-tinted light, I thought when it comes right down to it, aren’t these really just fillers? I mean, we don’t eat pasta on its own, ever, even if it’s a filled pasta like ravioli. The thought of a plain bowl of pasta is almost puzzling. Of course it needs a sauce of some kind.
And bread is much the same. It also needs something, like butter, jam, a slice of tomato or cheese or something to go with it. (Peanut butter perhaps? Oh yes, please, that would do nicely.) The one exception I have is for a fragrant, tangy, sourdough bread with a substantial crust, like ones from Terra Breads. But otherwise, bread is pretty bland too, a vehicle for delivering other flavors.
So in the last few weeks, eating a Paleo diet where every ingredient counts, the tastes are so much more flavorful than I noticed before, with no fillers to get in the way. Maybe, post-challenge, the dependence I had on bread and pasta won’t be nearly so pronounced as it once was. A few weeks ago I couldn’t have imagined such a thing.
More on the Paleo diet challenge:
Why I’m doing it in the first place
My plan for the 30 days
Image courtesy of MyPaleoDietBlog, via Google Images.
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