Lettuce wraps and poisonous protein powder

Way to go to all of you who are diligently plugging away at your Paleo diets this week. I know its a little rough at the beginning, but after a week or two, you will have soooo much willpower to pass by the things you used to crave constantly. Feeling so good is not worth that cookie!

Here’s what I whipped up for dinner late tonight while trying to figure out something different to do with my steak:

Lettuce wrap Steak and Veggies

I sauteed my sirloin steak until it was browned, with some garlic and a little olive oil.

I also chopped and steamed for a just a couple minutes:

yellow squash and zucchini.

I put large romaine leaves on a plate, piled the veggies on the bottom, put the steak (after I sliced it) on top, then added some tomato and onion slices on top of that. Word of warning here: you need to add some kind of seasoning to this. It doesn’t taste bad by any means, but its also not extremely interesting either. I added a little paleo bbq sauce to one of the wraps and that was really tasty. I would also suggest making a dressing mix with some olive oil and lemon juice with added cilantro and maybe crushed red pepper.

(and yes those are some of my sweet potato fries that I have plenty of in my freezer now)

And here’s a great pic Kevin sent me of his lunch:

So for those of you who don’t read both of our blogs, or who haven’t gotten around to getting a username to send to me so you can have access to the WOD blog, here is an article I posted there also and some accompanying information:

This just in:

Wow. I guess I feel really bad about advising anyone to drink a protein shake post-workout after reading this:

http://news.discovery.com/human/protein-drinks-packing-a-poisonous-wallop.html

Apparently you’re getting a lot of heavy metals in your protein powder and those accumulate in your body, causing all kinds of problems. One of the biggest problems we see nutritionally with accumulation of heavy metals in the body is binding of other important minerals your body needs like calcium, phosphorus and electrolytes. These metal ions can also end up in the brain and central and peripheral nervous system where they build up and cause mental retardation (especially in kids) and potentially loss of nervous function in some cases.

I did a little more research into the heavy metals in protein powder and found these powders that seem to be on the up-and-up, although costly to be sure in some cases:

Primal Fuel (From the Publisher’s of Mark’s Daily Apple blog and Primal Blueprint)

http://primalblueprint.com/products/Primal-Fuel.html

This stuff is $99 for a bottle with 30 servings, or if you sign up for autoship, its $79. That’s not such a bad deal, however way more than Muscle Milk’s months and months worth of supply for $65 in a 5lb container.

EnergyFirst Protein powder

This stuff is more cost effective, although, again not as cheap as your commercial stuff at the grocery store. I bought one of each of these flavors to try out and I’ll let you all know what I think.

Nutiva Organic protein powders

I’ve run across this brand a few times and it always looks so interesting. They’ve got a lot of products that I’d love to try, but I’m not totally sold on the 10-11g protein per serving, versus 20-30 in most other powders.

What I want you to take away from this is: you get what you pay for. I guess we all have to weight the consequences of our actions. Do we need protein post-WOD? Absolutely. Do we want to consume a few too many ppm of heavy metals in order to get that protein? Maybe. It just depends on your budget and what you’re willing to gamble on. Suffice it to say that I will definitely stop giving protein shakes to my son in the morning until I get a different brand of powder for now.

If any of you try any different brands and like them, let us know so we can file that away for future reference.