A paleo shopping list is built around a few simple essentials:
Grass fed meats.
Plenty of fresh seasonal products.
Paleo breads (ie grain free).
Healthy snacks: There is plenty of choice and very tasty.
Healthy salty snacks: Typically kale or coconut chips instead of potato chips for instance and paleo biltong or jerky.
Paleo cereals and non-industrial spread/jams for the morning (if you ever check this particular aisle in a standard supermarket, you will see how much sugar is added to these types of products.
Baking products: They will add taste and healthy options to your baking (cacao nibs, apple syrup, coconut flour, etc). There are some awesome paleo baking recipes on our website for you to choose from.
Healthy oils: For cooking typically use virgin coconut oil - this heats amazingly. For your salads, try extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil or macadamia oil.
Dairy milk alternatives: Almond milk, macadamia milk - do read nutrition labels as there can be a lot of additives and sub-standard products if industrial companies move in and try to bring the prices down by all means.
Good drinks: Coconut water is very refreshing.
Herbs, spices and condiments for tastier meals - a paleo mustard (no added sugar, wheat or preservatives), coco aminos works as a perfect substitute to soy sauce, and paleo vinaigrette (added no sugar, wheat or preservatives).
Once you start using paleo products you will realise that:
These are great natural, wholesome alternatives.
They work as well if not better than what you may have been using.
They may be a bit more expensive - but they are definitely not loaded with nasties.
Refined sugar is added to most of our standard supermarket products these days, especially in hidden forms like High Fructose Corn Sugar - a true product of modern chemistry that our body finds very hard to metabolise.
Just one example: a standard supermarket tomato sauce can be full of sugar (as much as 24%), along with preservatives, colourants and texture additives. There can actually be more sugar in some common supermarket tomato sauce brands than actual tomato to the point where some countries have banned them from being named tomato sauce.
Paleo food equals a healthy lifestyle. Happy shopping!
The following Paleo food shopping list includes standard paleo alternatives to processed, industrialised food products.